I look up as heat pools to my center.
“I don’t want to be some guy you hook up with.” He says it plainly, no joke anywhere under it, his eyes steady on mine in the dark. “I need you to know that, going in.”
The smile pulls at my mouth before I can stop it. “Then what do you want to be?”
His eyes stay on mine, searching, not grabbing for the easy thing. “More,” he says. “I want to be more.”
“That’s a big commitment.”
“I think this is too.” He nods at the small dark space between us, at all of it. “Sex. With you. I think it’s a big commitment, too, Aspen.”
Something in my chest cracks clean open. “You do?”
“I do.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?”
I nod. “Yeah.” I reach down and slip off the last of what I’m wearing and let it drop, because I am done hiding any part of myself from this man. “Don’t put your clothes back on.”
I rise up onto my knees in front of him, meaning to be bold, meaning to ask him the bold thing. I watch his breath falter, and I forget what I was going to say. He just stares at me like I’ve rearranged his entire understanding of the world.
“You okay?” I ask, smiling.
“Linwood, I’m about to fall apart just looking at you.”
I laugh, delighted, and sit back. “Really?”
“It’s a real problem I’m having right now.” He glances down at himself, earnest and mortified, and it’s the most endearing thing I’ve ever seen on a man his size. “This may go very fast.”
“So you’re going to last two seconds?”
“Probably.” He grins, shameless.
“We can work up to two minutes.”
“You’re putting me through conditioning?” he asks.
“Lots of practice,” I tell him solemnly. “It’s the only way.”
He laughs. It’s full, helpless, the realest sound in the world. Then he crosses to the bed, finds the condom from his wallet, and holds it out, eyebrows up. “Wanna do the honors?”
I take it from him and tear it open. When I pull it out, I look up at him. My heart is racing, knowing that he’s watching me. I hold the condom against him and roll it on. His breath catches and stutters with every inch, his hand fisting then releasing. When I hear his exhale, I shudder. The power I feel of being the one in control of his undoing settles something in me that’s been clenched tight for years.
I lie back on my elbows. He crawls over me, and his shoulders have gone tense again, the nerves crowding back now that we’re here, so I reach up and take his face in both hands and run my fingers back through his hair and kiss him until I feel it leave. Now his whole body goes loose and warm against mine.
We kiss like that for a long time, skin against skin, no rush, and even before anything else happens, I realize I could do this for a long time and still be satisfied. I’ve never felt this close to someone before. His hand splays over the small of my back and draws me into him. He hums against my mouth like he can’t help it.
“I want you,” I tell him, opening my legs to let him all the way against me. I inhale sharply when his hard cock presses against me.
He lines us up and eases into me, slow and careful. I gasp and grip his shoulders, and he goes still, watching my face in the dark, kissing me softly.
“Are you okay?”
I can’t keep my eyes focused. “More than okay.”
He moves, and I lift to meet him. He groans low into my neck in a way that lights up something brand new all the way through me. And then I stop thinking. For the first time in years, there’s no analysis, no reading, no part of me hovering above the bed watching for the catch — there’s only him, his face over mine, the unbelievable fact that it’s his face doing this to me, and I am more present inside my own skin than I have ever been in my life.
