I swallow the sudden lump in my throat, my nose clogging, pressure building behind my eyes, and I blink a few times, forcing them to stop watering.
“What do you think?” she asks in a quiet voice, and it’s a while before I can meet her gaze, afraid I’ll give it all away.
Afraid that I’ll let it slip exactly how much I love her.
I’m not sure when it happened, but I know I love her.
I know it in my bones.
I don’t even have to think about it. It’s muscle memory, so deeply embedded, I don’t even remember what it was like not loving her.
She has very simply become a part of me.
And I’m so overwhelmed by the realization, I can’t do anything except take her face in my hands and kiss her.
“Nico,” she protests, laughing. “I need to?—”
“Shh.” I silence her with a kiss.
She melts into me, her hands gripping my shirt, even as she says, “I need to clean up and?—”
“After.”
I walk her backward until she’s pressed against the door, and I can finally kiss her like I want to. I trail my mouth down her neck and throat as I let my hands explore any and every part of her, pushing at her clothes. I did tell her to wear my team sweats today. I like the idea of her wearing my clothes. They’re a bit big on her, but the inner knot of the strings comes apart easily enough, and with one tug, they drop down to her ankles.
I do too.
I barely have her underwear off before I’m licking at her pussy.
My conscience warns me this isn’t the time or place, but—fuck—I love this woman. The right time and place to worship her is all the time. In every place.
Her fingers curl into my hair as her legs tremble. “Nico, I… I…”
I stare up at her in the red-tinged light, her stomach heaving with her breaths, her nipples pointed and showing from how I have her shirt and bra rucked up carelessly. But I can’t get close enough, fast enough.
“Come fast, Jo. I need you to get there.” I slide two of my fingers inside her. She’s already soaking wet. “Please, Jo. I’m dying.”
“Iam dying,” she says between pants. “Dying.”
I smile into her wet flesh then suck on her slit, petting the swollen spot inside her until she convulses, her orgasm causing her to go weak-kneed. I stand and catch her around the waist in time, hauling her into my arms. She pulls down the waistband of my joggers then wraps her legs around my waist as I blindly pat at my pockets for my wallet. When I find it, I open it single-handedly, only to find it empty of condoms.
My mind fills with images almost as if to torture me in this moment, of our first time together, of the night of five times after my last series of road games, of the afternoon I fucked her on my dining room table, and this morning when I bent her over the edge of her bed.
It occurs to me now that I used the last condom then. Son of a bitch.
I shove my wallet back into my pocket. “I don’t have a condom.”
She lifts her head from where she’d been sucking on my neck, her eyes glazed. “It’s okay.”
“What?”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s okay?”
She leans back, and I readjust my hold on her, my dick straining between us, literally weeping at the tip when she winds her hand between us to brush her thumb over the slit. “I didn’t tell you. I mean…I wasn’t sure…”
“About what?”
