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I found her clit and circled it with the tip of my tongue, softly at first. She gasped. Her thighs shook against my shoulders. I flattened my tongue against her and worked her slowly, steadily, and listened to every sound she made, learning what she liked. When I sucked her clit gently into my mouth, she let out a cry that I’d remember for the rest of my life.

I slid one finger inside her. She was so hot and wet and tight that I groaned against her, and she bucked up into my mouth. I added a second finger and curled them forward, and her whole body went taut.

“Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, Shepherd, don’t stop. Please don’t⁠—”

I didn’t stop. I kept my mouth on her and my fingers moving, and I felt her start to tighten around me, and her breath came faster and faster, short, high gasps⁠—

She came apart.

Her back arched off the mattress. She cried out my name, and her thighs clamped around my head, and I felt her pulse hard around my fingers, wave after wave. I stayed with her through all of it, gentler now, until she was trembling and gasping and pushing at my head with weak hands.

I kissed her hip and her stomach and worked my way back up her body. When I reached her face, her eyes were wet and dazed, and she was smiling at me like I’d hung the moon.

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” She laughed shakily and pulled me down to kiss her, slow and deep. She didn’t seem to mind tasting herself on me. If anything, it made her kiss me harder.

Then her hands went to my belt.

I let her open it this time. Her fingers were steadier now. She unbuckled it and unbuttoned my jeans and pushed them down my hips, and I kicked them the rest of the way off. Then she slid her hand down my stomach and wrapped her fingers around my cock.

I groaned against her neck and gripped the quilt to keep still.

She stroked me slowly, base to tip, watching my face. Her thumb swept over the head, and I jerked in her hand and swore under my breath.

“Is that okay?” she whispered.

“Hazel.” I could barely get the words out. “If you keep doing that, this is going to be over before it starts.”

She smiled, pleased with herself, and did it again.

I caught her wrist and pinned it gently to the bed above her head. She laughed. I kissed her until she stopped.

“I don’t have anything,” I said against her mouth. I’d been so careful not to plan for this that I hadn’t planned for it at all. “I didn’t bring⁠—”

“My bag.” She pointed at the chair by the window. “Front pocket.”

I looked at the bag. I looked at her.

Her cheeks went pink all over again. “I’m an optimist.”

I laughed. It came out of me before I could stop it, and she laughed too, and I got up and found a box in the front pocket of her bag. It was unopened. I held it up.

“How long has this been in there?”

“Since the bonfire.” She covered her face with both hands. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re going to tease me about it forever.”

“I might,” I said. “I really might.”

I came back to the bed and tore the packet open and rolled the condom on. She watched me do it, biting her lip, her eyes dark. When I settled over her, braced on my forearms, she wrapped her legs around my hips and pulled me in close.

I looked down at her. Paint in her hair, on her nose, across her collarbone. Her lips swollen. Her eyes soft and fixed on mine.