Just the texture of her skin under his palms. The sound she made, low in her throat, when he unhooked her bra and let it fall. The specific weight of her breasts as he cupped them, tested them, learned their architecture.
She pushed his pants down. He stepped out of them. She was still wearing her jeans, and that seemed like a problem that needed solving, so he solved it—button, zipper, fabric sliding down her thighs. She kicked them away.
They stood facing each other in the moonlight. Nearlybare. He in boxer briefs, she in cotton underwear that matched the bra she’d discarded.
Morgan reached for him.
She wrapped her hand around his cock through the thin fabric, and Lincoln heard a sound escape him—unplanned, uncontrolled, something between a groan and a gasp. She stroked him slowly. Firmly. Her grip confident in a way that suggested she’d been thinking about this, planning it, waiting.
He tried to focus. Tried to analyze what she was doing, to identify the technique, to file it away for future fantasies. The analysis wouldn’t come. There was only sensation—the pressure of her fingers, the drag of fabric, the heat building at the base of his spine.
“I want you,” she said. Not a request. A statement of fact. Data.
He understood data.
He walked her backward until her knees hit the mattress. She sat, then lay back, and he followed her down. The weight of his body settling over hers. The way her legs parted to make room for him. The press of her hips against his, cotton against cotton, heat against heat.
He kissed her throat. Found the place where her pulse jumped—sixty-eight beats per minute, elevated, accelerating—and pressed his mouth there. She arched into him. Her hands found his back, his shoulders, the curve of his ass. Pulling him closer. Demanding.
He worked his way down. Collarbone. The swell of her breast. He took her nipple into his mouth and felt her whole body jerk beneath him. The sound she made wasn’t words. Mere vocalization, stripped of language.
He wanted more of those sounds.
He pulled her underwear down her legs and dropped it somewhere—he’d lost track of locations entirely now, hisorganizational systems in complete disarray. She was bare beneath him. He looked at her in the moonlight and tried to find words for what he was seeing.
Calling her beautiful was insufficient. The term was too generic, too imprecise. She was specific. The particular curve of her hip. The shadow pooling in the hollow of her throat. The way her hair spread across his pillow like she belonged there.
He slid his hand between her thighs.
She was wet. His fingers found slick heat, and he explored it—learning the landscape, mapping the terrain. Here, the sensitive bundle of nerves that made her gasp. Here, the entrance that clenched around his fingertip when he tested it. Here, the spot inside that made her say his name like it was the only word she knew.
“Lincoln.” Breathless. Urgent. “Lincoln, please?—”
He retrieved a condom from the nightstand. His hands fumbled with the wrapper. His usually precise fingers uncoordinated, shaking. She watched him struggle and didn’t laugh. Just waited, her eyes dark in the dim light.
He rolled the condom on. Positioned himself. Looked at her face.
“Yes,” she said before he could ask. “Please, yes.”
He pressed into her.
The sensation obliterated thought.
Tight. Hot. The specific resistance of her body yielding to his. He sank in slowly, giving her time to adjust, and every inch felt like drowning. She wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him deeper, and he went—all the way in, fully seated, his forehead dropping to rest against hers.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Her breathing. His breathing. The place where their bodies joined, pulsing with a shared heartbeat. He could feel her around him—every flutter, every clench. Could feelhimself inside her. The intimacy of it was almost unbearable.
She rolled her hips beneath him—a slow, deliberate grind that made him groan.
He took the hint.
Long strokes at first. Pulling nearly out, then sliding back home. The friction was exquisite—but not enough. Not nearly enough.
He didn’t plan what happened next.
One moment, he was above her, moving in the careful rhythm he’d always defaulted to. The next, he was pulling out, flipping her over, positioning her on hands and knees before his conscious mind caught up with what his body was doing.
