She strokes once, twice, her thumb sweeping the tip, and I catch her wrist because if she keeps going I'm going to lose this before it starts and I need to be inside her.
I need to feel her around me with nothing between us—no ring, no ghost, no wall.
I settle between her thighs.
She opens for me—legs wider, hips tilted, her hands on my shoulders pulling me down.
I brace on one forearm and reach between us, position myself, and hold.
Our eyes lock.
This is the part that wrecks me.
Not the sex—the seeing.
Her eyes are so dark they're almost black in this light, and they're wet, and they're open, and there is nothing in them but me.
No fear. No guilt. No waiting for the retreat.
Just a woman looking at a man she loves and letting him see all of it.
I push into her, slowly, inch by inch.
Feeling every degree of her body opening around me, the tight, wet heat of her taking me in.
Her lips part. Her nails dig into my shoulders. But her eyes don't close. Neither do mine.
We watch each other as I fill her.
The intimacy of it is almost unbearable—more naked than the bare skin, more vulnerable than the ring on the nightstand.
This is the real exposure.
Two people looking at each other without hiding.
I bottom out.
Hold still.
Buried in her completely, her body tight around me, our hips flush, our breathing ragged. I press my forehead to hers.
"Bex." Her name. Not a moan, not a gasp. A vow. The way a man says a word when he means it with his entire body.
"Lee." A homecoming. The way a woman says a name when she's been waiting to say it without grief between the syllables.
I move. Slow.
A long, deep withdrawal and a slow press back in that makes both of us shudder.
Not the hard, claiming pace of the stall—not the desperate crash of the tack room.
Something entirely new.
I rock into her with a rhythm that matches our breathing—steady, unhurried, each stroke a complete sentence.
I feel everything.
The drag of her body around me.
