Asking for more would have been like winning the lottery and daring to complain that it wasn’t enough.
Itwasenough. More than that, Nick was in love.
Which he knew would prove agonizing when Aubrey left for NYU. But try as he might, he’d gone careening off that cliff, all the while knowing that nothing waited at the bottom but a bone-shattering impact. Yet he only seemed to have two settings—full throttleandfuck no, and he couldn’t seem to remember the latter’s existence when all he felt was the former.
So he would take what he could get, and suffer for it later. That part, at least, would feel familiar.
That simple fact circled in Nick’s mind as he stretched on his side in Aubrey’s bed and tongued her earlobe. She writhed, her breath a hot tide against his bare shoulder. She’d flung his shirt away somewhere, into her darkened bedroom, while he’d worked her down to a bra and pajama shorts. Their combined weight made the bed dip, and he felt submerged in her, shipwrecked on the headiness of her sunshine scent, on the warmth of the leg she’d draped over his hip.
“Nick,” she whimpered as he suckled at her throat. Her fingers bit into his shoulders.
His mouth trailed downward, his tongue skimming the blade of her collarbone. Fuck, she tasted sweet and salty at once, like a delicacy he’d always coveted but had never tried until right now.
She said his name again, this time with enough force that he paused. He’d made it to the valley between her breasts, and he pulled back with a muttered curse.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, shit. I got carried away. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, don’t apologize.” In the darkness, she curled close. Her whisper ghosted against his lips. “I want more, trust me. I wantyou. So, so badly. I just. . .”
He waited, but she didn’t finish. “What?”
“I don’t know. I’m scared.”
“Of what? It... hurting?”
She laughed, a thick sound that coiled him tight inside. “No. Of disappointing you, I think. Of... not being any good. Not satisfying you.”
He exhaled through his nose, short and sharp. “That would be impossible. And I’m the one who’s supposed to be doing thesatisfying, anyway. You’re just supposed to lie there and enjoy it. Hopefully.”
This time, he felt her laughter more than heard it. “I’m pretty sure there’s more to it than that.”
“If there is,” he said, “I don’t care. If you ever decide you want to do that with me, it’ll be all about you. What you want. You’ll have to show me what you like, but whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
Her breath caught. “God, see? This is what I love about you.”
He stilled. That incomparable word soaked in to the silence, saturating the inches between them.
Nick told himself to relax, that it was just a phrase. Aubrey hadn’t said she lovedhim. Just something about him.
“Sorry.” She wriggled away.
He let her go, at a loss to do anything else.
“I even promised myself I wouldn’t do that,” she said. In the faint starlit glow from the window, he could just make her out, lying on her back, a hand pressed to her chest as she stared at the ceiling.
“Do what?”
The shadows hid her expression. “Say it before you did.”
His pulse stalled. “Saywhat?”
“Oh, come on, Nick. That I love you. Everyone knows the girl isn’t supposed to say it first.”
He dragged in a breath laced with fire. A few dozen rockets launched off inside his skull and detonated somewhere in the vicinity of his breastbone. “Do you? Love me?”
She turned his way, her face pale in the darkness, a beckoning light. “Of course I do. But it’s fine. You don’t have to say it ba—”
“I love you.” The declaration barged out, so ferocious he felt like he’d thrown it at her. “I love you so fucking much.”
