"And," he says, "I got a text early this morning."
My heart stops. Starts again. Hammering hard.
"We're both negative and good to go. All is good with the world, baby."
The words land on me and for a second I can't process them. They just hang in the air, too good to be real. I search his face for the catch.
There isn't one.
"Both of us are clean?" I ask. "Me too? You're sure?"
"Both of us. Double-checked the portal again this morning. Negative across the board. Both of us. I've been lying here for an hour waiting for you to wake up. An hour, Stormy. Do you know how hard it is for me to be quiet for an hour? That's a personal record. The previous record was eleven minutes and that was because I had laryngitis. Sheila called it the best week of her life."
I'm clean.
The word moves through me like warm water. It starts in my chest and radiates outward, through my ribs and my stomach and my arms and my legs, washing through every dark corner where the shame has been living, flushing it out, carrying it away.
Clean.
The men who hurt me, who used me, who took and took and took, they didn't leave this behind. They took years of my life, but they didn't poison my blood. They didn't plant something inside me that would follow me forever, that would hurt the one person I love.
My body is all mine now. Undamaged in this one way that I was so terrified to check.
"Hey," Tex says softly. "You okay, darling?"
I don't answer with words. Instead, I put my hand on his chest and push hard.
He goes backwards. He lets me move him because he always lets me set the pace, lets me decide what happens and when and how. He rolls onto his back and I follow, swinging my leg over him, straddling his hips, sitting up so I'm looking down at him.
I can feel him beneath me — half hard already, thickening against me through the thin cotton of his boxers —and the heat of him between my thighs sends a pulse through my whole body. His hands come to my thighs, light, just resting there, and his eyes are dark with desire.
"Stormy—"
"My turn," I say. "I've been wanting to do this. Forever. Let me."
His hands tighten on my thighs. His chest rises and falls under me. "Anything," he says. "Anything you want, baby. I'm all yours."
I lean down and kiss him. Not the soft morning kiss he gave me. This kiss is mine. I set the angle and the pressure and the pace. My mouth on his, my hands in his hair, and I kiss him the way I imagined kissing him. The way I wanted to kiss him the morning I woke up, traced his tattoos and was so scared I might give him something.
Now that I know I'm negative, I'm not holding back anymore.
He groans into my mouth. His hands slide up my thighs to my hips and his fingers press into my skin. I roll my hips, grinding down against him, and the friction through the cotton makes us both inhale sharply. He's fully hard now. I can feel the length of him pressed against me and the size of him should scare me but it doesn't. It makes me want more.
I break the kiss then start again at his jaw. My mouth moves along the line of it, through the beard, feeling the coarseness against my lips, tasting the salt of his skin underneath. His neck. The pulse point that jumps when my tongue finds it.
He makes a sound, deep and involuntary, and his head tips back against the pillow, giving me access, giving me everything. I kiss the hollow of his throat. The broad plane ofhis chest, my lips moving across the hair, across the muscle, tasting him with my mouth. I find his nipple and I drag my tongue across it, slow, circling, then close my lips around it and suck gently. His hips buck under me and his hand flies to the back of my head, not pushing, just holding on.
"God, Stormy." His voice is already wrecked and I've barely started. "You have no idea what you're doing to me."
But I do. I can feel exactly what I'm doing to him. He's hard and straining against my thigh, his hips making small involuntary movements, his body asking for more than his mouth will demand. And the power of that, the clean, beautiful power of making Tex fall apart with my mouth, is intoxicating. This is what it was supposed to feel like. This is what desire is when it belongs to me.
I move lower. Down the center of his chest, following the line of dark hair, kissing each ridge of his stomach. His abs tighten under my lips and his breathing goes ragged and his fingers are in my hair. I trace the trail of hair below his navel with my tongue, following it down, and I feel the muscles in his stomach jump and quiver under my mouth. I can smell him — warm skin and arousal and the clean soap from our shower — and it makes my mouth water.
I reach the waistband of his boxers. I stop. I look up at him. He's looking down at me, propped on his elbows, his chest heaving, his face flushed, his eyes dark and burning and so full of want that it takes my breath away. The outline of him strains against the cotton, and I press my mouth against him through the fabric. A slow, open-mouthed kiss along the length of him and the sound he makes is almost pained.
"Can I?" I ask.
"You never have to ask me that." His voice is barely a whisper. "But yes. God, yes."
