“Which one?” I asked, grinning into the darkness. “The one on my shoulders or the one you came all over?”
“Lincoln!” She tugged the pillow from beneath her head and hit me in the face with it.
“I’m kidding,” I said on a laugh. “So it’s the first time you’ve come from dry humping and the first time we’ve come together. I’m not mad about either one of those. And I definitely wouldn’t be at all mad if we did it again.”
She didn’t respond. Not even a huff of irritated breath.
“Hellcat?”
Still nothing. Was she even breathing? I had no idea.
“Willa? What’s?—”
“Fine! I’ll tell you,” she snapped. “You don’t have toharassme about it.”
“I wasn’t?—”
“It’s the first time I’ve come with someone else, all right?” she blurted, like she couldn’t hold the words back anymore. “Are you happy now?”
I blinked, sure I’d heard her wrong. I turned on my side to face her, able to just make out the shape of her in the darkness. “Wait… First time, like…this month?”
“Would I be freaking out if that were the case?” She heaved out a sigh that sounded like it carried the weight of the world. “I mean first time, like,ever.”
Those words hung in the air as the room fell silent and my brain short-circuited. A beat passed. Then another.
“You’re telling me no one else has ever made you come?”
She huffed, and I could practically hear her eye roll. “Could you not sound so damn pleased about it?”
“Oh, I absolutely could not.”
“Maybe it didn’t even have anything to do withyou! Did you ever think of that?”
I barked out a laugh. “Nice try, but it wasmycock you were grinding all over. Pretty sure it had a big something to do with me.”
“I should’ve kept my mouth shut,” she muttered.
“Too late now, wife.”
I grinned into the dark, something other than masculine pride sparking in my chest. Not smugness like she’d claimed—though I definitely felt a bit of that too. But this was something more like awe. Like I’d somehow stumbled onto something elusive and rare.
And she’d let me have it.
I was the first person to witness Willa Jameson fall apart—to watch those walls crumble as she shook and shuddered through release.Willa. The same person who’d been holding herself out of reach since we were teenagers. Who’d been looking at me for half our lives like I was the physical embodiment of a migraine.
Willa…who’d climbed into my lap like she was tired of resisting and then come so hard she’d undonebothof us.
She was quiet, a heavy awkwardness hanging between us. It was the kind of silence filled with tension I didn’t want between us anymore.
So instead of letting it linger, I slid my arm around her waist, tugged her into my chest, and settled my chin on top of her head. “Since I’m batting a hundred right now, you wanna do it again?”
“I hate you.” She smacked my chest less forcefully than I was used to and muttered, “Jackass.”
“That’s not a no,” I said, smiling into her hair.
Even though I’d half expected her to push away or shove me to my side of the bed, she didn’t. Instead, she settled in, her forehead on my sternum, her nose brushing my chest, her hands folded together between us.
It wasn’t the first time we’d been close like this in bed. We’d somehow always managed to end up in this position atsome point in the night, waking up closer than either of us had intended.
