“I wish I could slow this down,” Shane mused against my skin, his expert hands stripping me like he’d done it a thousand times in his dreams. He had me pressed into his comforter, my thighs spread around him, his erection pressing into where I ached for him most. “I wish you could understand how much I’ve missed you, how badly I’ve longed for a redo, how much I’ve tried to bargain with every deity known to man to go back in time and never let you go.”
I kissed him silent as he unfastened the buttons of my silk pajama top, and the groan in his throat when he pressed back on his knees to look at me made my neck burn furiously.
“Fuck, Ari,” he said, voice husky with reverence as his eyes drank me in. I wasn’t wearing a bra, all part of selling theI went to sleepstory to Nathan, and now I was exposed for Shane for the first time in decades. “You are so beautiful.”
I flushed deeper. “Not exactly the youthful girl you once touched.”
His eyes snapped to mine, a firm line appearing between his brows. “Don’t.” He leaned back over me, one hand braced beside my head, the other settling warm and sure at my waist. “Don’t talk about her like she’s gone,” he said quietly. “Like she was better because she was younger.”
His thumb traced the soft curve of my stomach, slow and deliberate, like he wanted me to feel every inch of the path.
“This body,” he went on, voice roughening, “has lived. It’s carried years and choices and love and loss. It’s held you through everything that tried to break you.”
His gaze softened, something almost fierce in it now, and then he lifted my hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss over my scar. He held my gaze as he let his lips linger, telling me without words that he saw and knew every part of me and loved me still.
“When I’m touching you tonight, I’m not thinking about what you used to be,” he said, swallowing hard. “I’m barely holding myself together at the realization that I get to touch younow. Because every line, every curve, every place time has kissed you feels like a privilege for me to experience after I’ve waited and wished for so fucking long.”
He dipped his head, pressing his forehead to mine.
“I’m honored you let me see you like this, Ari,” he whispered. “I’m honored you let me touch you at all.”
“Shane…”
“I mean it,” he said, punctuating his intention with a long, deep kiss and a roll of his hips into mine. “Now, let me see all of you.”
It was incredibly tender and yet bursting with heat, the careful way he stripped me then. The silk of my top slid over my shoulders, pushed by his fingertips. My shorts went next, pulled to my ankles along with the panties I wore beneath them. When I was bare, Shane shook his head, lip pinned between his teeth as his gaze trailed every inch of me.
And then it was his mouth on that path, kissing the arch of my foot, the soft skin inside my ankle, along my calf, my thigh, sending chills through me as he took his time climbing all the way back to my mouth.
His tongue danced with mine, and every sweep had me caught up in a memory. He was right. I felt honored to touch him now, to feel how time and distance had changed his body. Myhands explored the new dips and valleys as I wrangled him out of his t-shirt. He hopped off the bed long enough to rid himself of his joggers and briefs, smirking as he allowed me one long, appreciative glance at his naked body, and then he was on me again.
“I can’t wait to figure out everything you like,” he whispered against my lips, and then he was kissing down again, licking a long, hot path along my inner thigh as he settled between my legs. “I wonder what’s the same. I wonder what’s changed.”
My back bowed off the bed as he spread my thighs wide, his gaze hungry as he took in the sight of me sprawled out for him. A satisfied groan rumbled through him as he reached up to play with my tits, thumbing my pebbled peaks and squeezing just tight enough to make me moan.
“Same,” he mused, smirking against my thigh as I squirmed under his touch. He remembered how much I loved having my nipples played with, how those little sparks of electricity got me wet faster than anything else.
He took his time there, playing and teasing and toying until I was practically shoving his face between my thighs. I kept my hands in his hair as he turned his attention, and with the first lash of his tongue against my clit, I trembled out a moan.
“Same,” he echoed, smiling wickedly up at me as he flicked his tongue back and forth, up and down, circling and sucking as I panted with disbelief.
His eyes were a shocking blue, the silver in them familiar and new all at once. His dark hair fell over his forehead just enough to drive me wild, and I fisted the bit of it I held harder in a silent plea for more.
Shane slicked his fingers through my wetness before pressing them against my opening. He slid one finger inside, curling and smiling when I rewarded him with a gasp. A second finger joined the first, and then he was pulsing them inside me, slow andrhythmic just how I liked, perfectly in sync with the swirling of his tongue and the gentle sucks of my clit.
When I was close, I reached down, guiding his fingers out of me. The middle one was still slick from my desire, and I coaxed it down an inch, heartbeat roaring in my ears as I asked for what I wanted without a word.
Shane lifted his head with his eyebrows shooting into his hairline, his grin boyish and amused. “Here?” he asked, teasing my backdoor entrance.
I nodded, biting my lip and squirming under the teasing touch.
“Mmm,” he said, gaze falling to where he was touching me. “New.” His grin faded into a heated gaze as he pressed against the tight hole, and then my eyes rolled back, fists twisting in his comforter as he lowered his mouth to my clit again.
It didn’t take long. The forbidden shock of his finger inside my ass, the expert suck of my clit, the fact that Shane was touching me again when I never thought it possible… it was the perfect cocktail for my release.
My orgasm ripped through me like a tornado, picking up everything I was before and shredding it in the process. I felt the old me leaving my body, willingly or not, and reveled in the feeling of being completely upended. I moaned and cried out his name, one hand in his hair and the other fisting my own as I rode out every last wave of pleasure.
I was liquid by the end of it, my limbs melting into the bed, chest heaving as I tried to catch my breath. Shane smirked against my clit before pressing one more gentle kiss to it as he withdrew his finger.
