Wedding Dashers

Chapter 25

16 hours until the wedding

The night ends with Carmen puking in the bathroom and Britney losing her shoes, but all in all the night is a success.

When we make it back to the castle, I make sure everyone drinks enough water before sending them to bed with two aspirin and a reminder to Venmo me eighty dollars in the morning.

I have a renewed appreciation for Jack as I wash Allison’s face, perform her entire fifteen-step skincare routine, then help her under the covers—all while forcing her to chug glasses of water.

“Where’s Collin?” she mumbles, water spilling down her chin. I wipe it away with a tissue from the bedside table.

“He’s out with his friends,” I remind her.

“Go get him,” she whines. “I can’t sleep without him.”

“I don’t know where he is,” I tell her. Not a strip club, I hope. “Also, you’re the one who wanted to sleep separately the night before because you said it was more romantic. Remember?”

She mutters something that sounds like that’s bullshit before shutting her eyes and sinking back into the giant, fluffy hotel pillows.

I let three beats pass, waiting until her breathing changes to long, heavy breaths before deciding she’s out. I’m just about to reach for the bedside lamp when she speaks again.

“I know you don’t like Collin,” Allison says, eyes still closed. “But I love him, Addy.”

My heart squeezes. Addy. I know she’s drunk and likely won’t remember this conversation, but she hasn’t called me that in a long time, and for a moment it feels like things are back to normal. Like everything is right with the world.

“I know you do,” I tell her. Then I plant a gentle kiss on her forehead, turn out the lights, and return to my room.

Back in my room, I stare at my reflection in my bathroom mirror, watching the rise and fall of my chest. I’m still a little sweaty from dancing and my cheeks are still flushed with an alcohol-induced tinge, but I’m feeling focused and clearheaded now. And with each passing second, I’m feeling more confused.

I like Jack. A lot. And judging by the way his tongue was down my throat, he likes me too. But now what?

Was that a one-time thing, destined to never happen again? Or will he come to my room to pick up where we left off? I shoot a cursory glance at the door as though half expecting Jack to materialize.

But maybe the real question I should be asking is, What do I want?

Of course I want to sleep with Jack. But I also know myself. If I sleep with Jack, I’ll want more than just sex and no strings. I already want as many strings as I can get when it comes to Jack Houghton.

But , my brain whispers, if this is all I can have from him, maybe that can be enough. Maybe it has to be.

I look at my suitcase, wondering if maybe I should change my underwear into something more presentable—you know, just in case—when I hear a soft knock, knock, knock.

“Ada?” Jack’s deep voice calls from the other side of the door, and my entire body freezes as twin threads of anxiety and excitement weave together inside me.

It’s two a.m. and Jack is outside my door.

Sure, he could want to talk. Just talk. Or maybe he’s here to tell me what happened at the bar was a drunken mistake and redefine us as friends. Or maybe he just wants to check I made it back safely. Or not.

Hopefully not.

When I open the door, the top buttons on his shirt are undone, his hair is a mess, and is that… glitter ? In his hand is a paper bag.

“Hey.” He grins and the corners of my mouth pull upward, mirroring him.

“Hey,” I say back.

Jack leans against the doorframe, his head tilted at an angle. “Can I come in?”

“Now? It’s two a.m.?” I can hear my mother’s voice. Nothing good happens after midnight. But my mom also thinks low-rise jeans are flattering, so what does she know?

Jack’s mouth curves. “Are you hungry? I come bearing sausage.”

Every cell in my body leaps to attention. “W-what?”

He shakes the paper bag in my face. “Mini sausage rolls. From the party.”

Oh. Of course. Silly me. He means literal sausage, not whatever perverted euphemism my brain was imagining.

I open the door wider and gesture for him to come inside.

“I saw they were gonna throw out the leftovers,” Jack says, walking past me. “But I, like the good conservationist that I am, decided I knew a much better use for them.”

“My mouth?” I try, but Jack apparently doesn’t seem to notice the innuendo as he makes a beeline straight for my bed and falls back on the mattress.

“I’m exhausted,” he says, sinking his head into the pillow.

“Me too,” I tell him. But I’m not. I’m wide awake.

“Come here.” He pats the spot next to him and I lie down, hips brushing his.

Not more than a few hours ago his tongue was in my mouth, but somehow lying here, side by side, feels much more intimate.

“This bed is amazing,” he says to the ceiling. “It’s like lying on a cloud.”

“I know. These rooms are seriously nice.”

He rolls his head to face me. “But I think I like Mrs. Poyevich’s better.”

The way his eyes land on mine feels like a balancing act. One where I’m trying to juggle too many plates and they’re sure to all come crashing down around me.

A stray piece of glitter catches my eye and I flick it from his hair. “Did you guys end up at a strip club?” I ask.

“No, but some lady outside the bar flashed her tits at us. Does that count?”

I laugh and the bed shakes beneath us. “What changed your mind?”

His expression shifts, brows narrowing into a thoughtful v before he says, “I thought about what you said and I realized it might not be a good idea to take Collin to a strip club the night before his wedding. Especially with…” He gestures vaguely but doesn’t finish the thought. But he doesn’t need to. He’s making good on his promise.

“So you stalked us instead?” I tease.

He grins. “I didn’t have to. I heard Britney talking loudly in the elevator about where you were going.”

“You just really wanted to see me make a fool of myself on stage, didn’t you?”

“The first half of that is true.” He pauses, eyes lifting to meet mine. “I just really wanted to see you.”

The intensity of his gaze is suddenly too real, too palpable, too much like friction, and my eyes jump away, looking for something to focus on. They land on the bag of sausage rolls, and I reach for one. Not that the concept of a sausage is particularly helpful right now.

“Ohmygodthesearesogood,” I groan between bites of buttery goodness.

He pops one into his mouth too. “These are better than the pizza .”

“ The pizza ,” I say, shutting my eyes. “I wanted to marry that pizza and have its babies.”

“I can’t wait for pizza in Naples.”

“When do you leave?” I ask.

He shifts and the back of his hand grazes mine. “Day after the wedding.”

Right. I’d almost forgotten his plans to go to Italy and how the window of time is closing in on us. Day after tomorrow he’ll be gone. Then what?

We chew in silence until Jack reaches into the bag for another one. As he does, his shirtsleeves ride up, exposing the rigid veins crawling under his skin and something I didn’t notice until now: a poppy on the inside of his wrist. Small and delicate, a jarring contrast to the rest of him.

Before I can even think about what I’m doing, I trace the smooth skin on his wrist. Goose bumps spread like wildfire up and down his forearms and I pull my hand back.

“I’m sorry,” I blurt out.

His eyes hook up to mine. “It’s okay. You can touch it if you want.”

I smile unevenly, letting my fingers go back to tracing the pattern. I can tell it’s a high-quality custom design. Highly saturated shading. Packed coloring. Consistent line work. It’s the kind of piece that doesn’t come cheap.

“It’s really beautiful. Does it mean anything?”

“I got it after my mom died,” he says. “It’s a symbol of remembrance.”

His gaze locks on mine, eyes so delicate it feels like one of us might crack.

“I love it,” I tell him. “It suits you.”

“Because I’m a secret softy?”

A half laugh judders out of me, and he shifts closer, knee riding up on mine, but I don’t move away.

“It’s surprising and unexpected,” I say after a beat. “Like you.”

He hums in response.

“Do you have any other tattoos?” I ask.

“I do.”

I skim his body, taking in every inch of revealed skin. “Where?”

His mouth ripens into a grin. “None of your beeswax .”

I give him a playful shove and Jack laughs. The tenor of it settles in the hollow of my stomach before sinking lower and finding a home in the space between my legs.

“So, now that you’ve seen mine, are you ever going to show me yours?” he asks, one eyebrow inching toward his scalp.

My bottom lip disappears between my teeth, poorly suppressing a grin. “Fine.” I fold down the waistband of my skirt, showing him the mermaid on my hip.

The line work was hard to do myself from this angle, but I’m pleased with how it turned out. I especially like the way her tail disappears below my waistline with a seductive flourish. Something Jack also seems to be aware of.

He inhales sharply, eyes lifting to meet mine. “Can I?”

I’m not totally sure what he’s asking, but I nod and Jack’s fingers skate along my hip bone, tracing the shape of the mermaid’s tail. It’s a chaste gesture, hardly more intimate than a handshake, but the way he’s doing it, slow and languorous, it might as well be his tongue.

“Does it have any significance?” he asks.

“When we were little, Allison and I used to play mermaid,” I say. “We’d put our legs in pillowcases and pretend they were our tails, which usually involved us writhing on the floor pretending to ‘swim.’?”

Tender lines wrinkle around his mouth. “That’s adorable.”

“I don’t think my mom thought it was very adorable when she’d get home from work and find us swimming when we were supposed to be in bed,” I say with a half laugh, remembering all the nights my mom would work late and I’d be responsible for Allison and me. Usually, I was good about getting us to bed before Mom got home, but sometimes we stayed up too late and we’d have to sprint to our shared room and pretend to be asleep by the time her keys were in the lock.

Shhh, close your eyes , I’d whisper into the darkness.

The memory expands in my chest, making me feel unexpectedly hollow.

I know Allison’s not a little girl anymore, that it’s no longer up to me to make her dinner and put her to bed, but there’s something sweet and tender about those fuzzy memories of childhood, memories of moments I’ll never get back.

Jack tilts his chin, eyes wavering across my face. “Did you take care of Allison a lot growing up?” he asks.

“My mom tried her best, but being a single parent wasn’t easy and she couldn’t always be there,” I tell him.

Jack nods, eyes tracing the outline of my features. “I guess that explains why you’re so protective over Allison. Right?”

He says it like a question, but I can see the mental puzzle piece slide into place—the subtle shift behind his eyes—and I can’t help but wonder if he’s been building a picture of me the way I’ve been doing of him. If all this time he’s been filing away snippets of information, hoarding them like trading cards he’s hoping to collect the whole set of. The thought strikes across my core, igniting friction in my chest.

We slip into silence until Jack asks, “Can I ask you to design my next tattoo?”

“Depends. What are you thinking of getting?”

“Hmmm. Not sure yet.” His body bows toward mine. “I was thinking about a compass rose, actually.”

“Why that?”

“I like traveling. Seeing new places. Meeting new people.” He pauses, eyes slicing to mine. “Especially strangers in hotels.”

I’m newly aware of how soft and buttery the sheets feel against the backs of my thighs.

“We were never really strangers,” I say. “We were always going to meet. It was sort of inevitable. Right?”

He nods, considering. “That’s true. Maybe fate just sped up the process.”

Fate.

The word scorches down my center like a match on granite and suddenly I know exactly what I want to do.

I reach for one of the complimentary hotel pens on the nightstand. “Can I?” I gesture to his forearm.

He sticks out his arm like he’s giving blood.

I haven’t so much as doodled since the break with Carter, and even before then, after losing the business, it was hard to summon the will to create. But now, I feel the surge of need rising inside me, powerful and all-consuming, like if I don’t draw something right this minute, I might combust.

I can’t say for certain where it comes from, only that I’m confident it has something to do with the man in front of me. The man whose presence feels like new air in my lungs.

As I sketch the outline of a compass on the inside of his forearm, using thick black strokes for the points and thinner lines for the sub-directions, I feel a kind of certainty coursing through my body. An awareness that this is what I’m supposed to be doing. This act of drawing—creating—even a silly sketch on Jack’s arm, is when I am most perfectly myself. When all the chaos stills and suddenly everything feels okay. Everything feels right.

When I finish, I look up and see that Jack is watching me with a mix of awe and something else. Something heated.

“Like that?” I ask.

He smiles and I can’t help the tiny tug of victory in my chest. “It’s perfect. But now it’s your turn.”

“Mine?”

He holds out his hand for the pen and our fingers brush as I give it to him. He takes my arm and starts to sketch a triangle on the soft inside of my forearm.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Shh,” he chides. “Don’t disturb an artist while he’s at work.”

“Oh, so you’re an artist now?” I tease.

I crane my neck to get a look, but he swats me away. When he pulls back a moment later, there is a triangle with squiggles in it.

I bark out a laugh. “What is this? A Rorschach test?”

“It’s a slice of pizza. And not just any pizza. A pineapple pizza. See those chunks?” He points to deformed lumps.

I hug my arm to my chest. “I love it. I’m never washing this arm. Ever.”

He laughs and his body vibrates against mine. We’ve inched closer now. Close enough that his breath warms my cheek, and memories of his hot, damp mouth pressed to mine race through me like a fast-acting drug.

The moment feels like foreplay.

And maybe it is.

We both swallow. Another breath. Another tempered exhale.

There’s still a second for one of us to pull back, to stop things before they go any further. But neither of us does. Instead, he pulls me to him, cupping my jaw in his hands.

“I should tell you, I didn’t come here to draw tattoos or eat sausage rolls,” he says.

My breath hitches, pulse thumping against my rib cage.

“And what did you come here for?” I mean it to sound teasing, coy, but the tremble in my voice betrays me.

Jack’s gaze lingers on my mouth before lifting to meet mine. There’s captive hunger in his eyes—naked and obvious in a way that’s palpable. “I came here to tell you I don’t want to be just friends, Ada.”

I open my mouth, hoping something funny or sexy comes out, but my throat is immobile. Everything is immobile as his fingers slide across my cheek and into my hair, drawing us closer. One more inch and our lips would be touching.

There’s another beat of stillness, eyes holding in one last cursory gaze. Then Jack tips his chin to mine and whatever thinly veiled restraint we’ve been operating under snaps like a twig as our mouths collide in a desperate, frenzied rush of hot tongues and swollen lips and simmering need.

All I can think as he drags me to him is that kissing Jack makes sense . It makes sense the way the law of gravity makes sense. I can’t explain the mechanics of it. It just does.

He kisses me fuller, deeper, hungrier. Each tip of the mouth and brush of teeth comes with a thrill that sends bolts of electricity racing down my spine. I want to swallow him. Or be swallowed. I can’t decide. All I know is that I can’t believe all the time we wasted not doing this.

“Come here,” he rasps, pulling me on top of him. His hardness presses against me with aching urgency and a small, hungry sound escapes me.

“Do that again,” he breathes, lips dragging against my neck.

“Do what?”

“That sound you just made.”

I laugh. “I can’t just make it again. I have to be prompted.”

He pulls back, eyes falling over me in heavy waves. “Is that a challenge?”

That’s all it takes for the floodgates to open inside me. Every hesitation, every thought of caution I’ve had over the course of the last few days disappears. I’m intoxicated by him. His body. His smell. His taste. All of it is both too much and not enough.

Before tonight, the idea of sex with Jack was just that, an idea . A hazy, improbable hypothetical. But now, as his hands wander between my thighs, awakening little flames across my skin, my mind races between the thrill of newness and the emerging realization that this is actually happening. This is real.

Our movements become more desperate, more hurried. My hands twist in his shirt, thumbs catching in the hem as I pull it up and over his head.

I’d known he was tall, that his shoulders were broad. But here, now, as my eyes take him in, getting lost in all the sharp corners and deep ridges of his chest, he’s bigger, firmer, more solid than I realized.

Banded muscles wrap around me like tree trunks, somehow both gentle and demanding, wanton and restrained. It’s intoxicating knowing that he could rip my skirt, throw me down, easily take control, but instead he’s careful, thoughtful.

Slowly, almost methodically, Jack slides the straps off my shoulder and undoes the clasp of my bra, letting the thin lace fall away from my chest. He moves with a well-maintained restraint that has my mind skipping ahead, wondering how he’ll tease me. How long he’ll keep me teetering on the edge before finally letting me have what I want. What I need.

“God, I’ve wanted this for so long,” he whispers, breath hot on my sensitive skin as he dips his mouth to my nipple, circling me with his tongue.

“So long?” I tease. “You mean four days?”

“It was a hard four days. Emphasis on hard .”

“You fooled me.”

His lips curve. “I’m thirty-three years old, Ada. I know how to hide an inconvenient boner.”

“Hmm.” A contented laugh vibrates in my chest. “Tell me more about these inconvenient boners.”

“Maybe later. I’m sort of in the middle of something.” Then he pulls me onto his lap in a straddling position and kisses my neck, eager and determined.

Every vertebra liquefies. Nothing but molten heat fills every nook and cranny of my body as he cups my ass, jumbling every last residual thought in my head. A decadent groan echoes in the back of my throat, and he grips me harder, needier.

I reach for his belt. I can’t wait any longer.

“Is this what you want?” he whispers, lips still grazing my throat.

Is this his way of warning me—a last-chance indemnity notice? That this will be a one-time thing? That we have an expiration date?

But I can’t stop. We’re in a car racing down the highway with no brakes.

“Yes,” I breathe back. “I want this.”

A determined hand splays across my thigh. Then higher, inching under the hem of my skirt. Close, but not enough. I wriggle in his grasp, desperate for more.

“Touch me,” I plead, my skin singing with singular want.

Jack’s lips curl into a stomach-twisting grin before kissing me again. His mouth never breaks contact as his hand travels under my skirt and between my legs, teasing the shape of me through my underwear, lingering over the spot I need his touch most.

“You’re so wet,” he murmurs against the hollow of my throat. “So fucking wet.”

“Then stop fucking teasing me.”

Keeping his mouth locked on mine, he pulls my underwear to the side and slides one long finger inside me. “Better?”

I can’t answer, all I can do is make a pathetic little whimpering sound, which only encourages him.

His touch is light—vexingly so—and I grind against his hand, riding the rhythm of his strokes. He matches my intensity, making a come-hither motion, and I arch my back, eager for more friction. He slides another finger in and I gasp.

“Tell me what feels good.” He sinks his fingers deeper. “There?”

“Yes,” I pant.

“And here?” He turns circles with his thumb and forefinger.

“Yes. Fuck, yes .” My lips part and an involuntary moan rises out of me. “I’m so close,” I gasp, voice so breathless it’s nearly unrecognizable.

He increases his tempo, fingers pumping in and out of me with perfect precision. “Do you want to come on my hand or my mouth?” he asks.

His words set off sparklers inside my chest, and it takes everything I have to utter back, “Mouth.”

In one fluid motion, he picks me up, taut muscles hardening against me, and finally answers the question I asked the night we met: What would it be like to be thrown down on the bed by those arms ? The answer: fucking amazing .

Together we tumble onto the mattress, a mess of arms and legs and ragged breath against skin.

He starts by kissing up the inside of my legs, moving at a pace so agonizingly slow, so restrained, I swear time starts moving backward.

I wiggle my hips, demanding more, but he ignores my request, instead leaving a trail of kisses all the way up to my hips until his tongue runs damp circles around my tattoo.

“So fucking sexy,” he murmurs, voice hazy like he’s lost in the moment. In me.

His tongue moves back and forth, up and down, drawing patterns on my skin. Then, just when I can’t take it anymore, he hooks his thumbs in my underwear and tugs them down my thighs.

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath.

“What?” I ask, worried I’m about to find out, now, at age twenty-eight, that I have an abnormal vagina. “Is something wrong?”

He shakes his head. “You’re perfect. Absolutely perfect.” His eyes flash to mine, heated and heavy. Then his head is between my legs, gently coaxing my thighs apart and I lose all sense of time and space and thought.

I can’t breathe. I can’t think. All I can do is want.

His tongue circles my most sensitive spot, pausing and lingering, then losing track and starting all over again like my body is a maze he can’t seem to find his way out of.

Need stretches inside me like a spiderweb as determined fingers sink into my thighs, and I lift my hips, eager to meet the pressure of his tongue.

“Yes. Don’t stop. Jack… Jack …” I pant his name over and over until the syllables blur together and I’m just moaning.

How is it possible I’ve existed twenty-eight years on this planet and never known anything quite this good? This pleasurable? How is it possible that every flick of his tongue, every gentle sucking motion leaves me hungrier, more feral for him?

I realize, as he brings me to the edge for the third time, that every intimate moment before this pales in comparison, nothing more than a cheap imitation of what Jack can offer. That he can bend me to his will, playing my body like a finely tuned instrument and I’m nothing more than a gasping, panting heap of want, ready to beg for anything he’ll give me.

“Jack, please ,” I finally ask.

“Please what ?”

My body starts to shake with need, demanding he release me from this decadent punishment. “Please let me come.”

He pulls back, eyes roving up to meet mine. “Are you begging me, Ada?”

I groan in frustration, pushing my hips into his face. “ Yes , Jack. I’m begging.”

With one hand gripping my ass, angling his mouth to my center, and his other slipping inside me, that’s all it takes for me to tip over the edge into an onslaught of pleasure.

I cry out—not entirely dissimilar from my alleged porn star screams—and normally I’d be embarrassed about such a showy display of pleasure, but somehow Jack has managed to strip me of all shame. Like nothing else matters. Nothing except the slow, steady release of pressure between my thighs.

When I open my eyes, Jack’s watching me, clearly pleased with himself.

“Wow…I…” But I can’t even string together a sentence. “Wow,” I say again, a lopsided grin stretching across my face.

He kisses me again and I taste myself on his tongue. “Good work, kid.”

It’s not until he pulls back, revealing the amused glimmer in his eyes that I realize he’s alluding to the joke he’d made the first night in London. I don’t know whether it’s hot or funny or both, but the memory feels charged, like a million volts of energy all connecting at once inside me. All I know is that I need him. Now.

“I want you to fuck me now,” I tell him. “ Please. ”

For a second, he just looks at me, blinking, until his mouth stretches into a wicked smile. “Say it again,” he whispers.

A lurid laugh bubbles out of me. “You’re so bossy.”

“I think you like it.”

I fight back a grin. “I want you to fuck me, Jack.”

“You forgot the please .”

I bite down on my lower lip. “Fine. I want you to please fuck me, Jack.”

His hips roll over mine, and I haul him flush against me, desperate to close the gaps. A feral moan escapes barely parted lips, and my skin singes with the knowledge that I made him sound like that. That I had that effect on him.

Our movements are frantic now—rushed and brazen. We can’t wait another second. He tugs my skirt down over my hips and I greedily reach for his belt, letting it fall to the floor with a thump. Then I coax his boxer briefs down his thighs and his erection springs free. My mouth goes dry, trying to calculate how exactly that’s going to fit there. But Jack gently presses me into the mattress, and everything blurs.

We’re skin to skin—nothing left between us—and I know right now, in between hazy thoughts of pleasure and need, that I’ll always remember this. That this is a moment that will be forever scorched into my memory—a catalog of skin and friction and sweat.

“Condom?” I gasp.

He reaches for his discarded pants, digging his wallet out of the pocket.

“Should I be worried that you brought condoms with you to deliver sausage rolls?” I tease.

He rips a foil packet with his teeth. “I told you, I always come prepared.”

“This is the second time I’m thankful to hear you say that,” I say.

A laugh breaks in his chest as he rolls the condom on and lowers himself between my hips.

I gasp at the sudden sensation. At the feeling of him wedged against me, long and hard.

“Is this good?” he asks, eyes pinned on me.

I bite down on my lower lip and nod. It’s not just good , it’s better than anything I’ve ever felt. So good that the word for it does not yet exist in the English language. Or perhaps any language at all.

He slides in a little deeper and everything shrinks to the space where our bodies connect. Where he’s pulsing inside me.

“Ada, you’re shaking.”

“I’m just nervous,” I tell him.

Jack pulls back, eyes dragging over me. “We don’t have to do anything. We can stop.”

In that moment I’d go anywhere with him, do anything with him. Anything but stop.

“No, it’s a good kind of nervous,” I tell him. “I want this. Promise,” I add.

He eyes me carefully. “You sure?”

“Yes, Jack,” I say, my voice a little breathless. “Please, just don’t stop.”

He slides the rest of the way inside me, body seizing as he fills me up.

As he goes deeper, his expression shifts, jaw clenching.

“What is it?” I ask. “Are you okay?”

He shuts his eyes. “I’m fine. I just… fuck , you feel really good. I might need to”—he winces—“go slowly,” he says.

Jack’s first few thrusts are slow and deliberate, an exercise in restraint. But as his pace increases, our movements become less rhythmic, losing all sense of tempo and structure until we’re both crashing into one another, pupils blown out, lips parted, gasping.

I close my eyes, trying to hold on to the moment. The weight of Jack on top of me, inside me. The electric probe of his eyes locked on mine as we move together. But I can already feel it slipping away. Like there’s not enough time. Not enough him.

He feels it too. I feel it in the hungry rhythm of our hips rocking together and the needy way his hands wind through my hair. I feel it in the determined heat of his eyes falling over me in heavy waves, like he’s trying to commit me to memory.

Jack’s thrusts slow down, tapering off into long, languid strokes before coming to a pause. Dark eyes sink into mine, deep enough to draw blood, and I realize it’s the first time we’ve truly stopped moving since we started. It feels like stepping off a roller coaster. I’m standing still but the earth is still shifting and spinning underneath me.

“What?” I ask, frowning. “Why did you stop?”

His pupils are blown out, eyes wide and hungry. “I…I just want to look at you.”

He’s inside me for goodness’ sake, but it’s those words that bring a surge of heat to my cheeks.

“There hasn’t been a whole lot I’ve wanted to remember in the last year.” His thumb traces my jaw, holding my gaze captive like he’s afraid if he looks away I might evaporate right out from under him. “But I want to remember this. I want to remember every single second of this night.”

He holds my eyes, two, three beats longer, then he dips his chin to mine, pulling me into another kiss. But it’s different from how he kissed me before. This one isn’t rushed, in a hurry to escalate things. This is soft and slow as he takes his time, hugging the curves of each moment like I’m something to be savored in agonizing detail. It’s tender and thoughtful and utterly unexpected from someone who claims to only expiration date.

And somewhere between the exploratory search of his damp mouth on mine and the breathy exhales I swallow as though they were my own, I fall a little harder, a little deeper. I fall far enough that I’m not sure I’ll be able to find my way back.