Page 25 of XOXO, Yours

Her fingers slide into my hair and hold on, and when I finally settle between her thighs and taste her.

“There. Right there. Don’t you dare stop,” like she’s threatening me.

I don’t dare stop.

I learn what she likes by the way she breathes. The catch when I circle her clit with my tongue. The way her hips lift off the quilt when I slide two fingers inside her and curl them. The sound she makes, low and raw, when I figure out exactly how much pressure she needs and give her exactly that.

“Payton.” Her thighs are shaking against my shoulders. “Payton, I’m⁠—”

She comes with my name in her mouth and her fingers fisted in my hair hard enough to sting. I don’t let up until she’s pushing at my head, completely wrecked.

“Okay,” she wheezes. “Okay, you—come here.”

I crawl up her body and she drags my mouth down to hers. She doesn’t care that she can taste herself on me. If anything, she kisses me harder.

chapter

seven

Payton

“I don’t think you needed any instructions. You seemed to know exactly what you were doing down there,” she says.

“Still want to get you right.”

“Condom.”

I reach for it, then rip it open. She watches me roll it on with her bottom lip caught between her teeth, eyes dark. When I settle back over her, she hooks one leg around the back of my thigh and pulls.

“Slow,” she says. “At first. There’s a lot of you.”

“So you’ve mentioned.” I give her a big smile.

She smacks my shoulder. Then I push inside her, inch by inch, and neither of us is laughing anymore.

She’s tight and hot and so wet I have to stop halfway and just breathe. My arms are braced on either side of her head, and I want to memorize every second of this. I’ve wanted this woman since the second she turned around at that vending machine with her fist in the air. But more than that, I’ve wanted this—what I feel with her, for her—and I don’t want to screw it up. I also, would like to last longer than thirty seconds.

Her fingertips trail down my back. “You okay up there?”

“Give me a second.”

“Take your time.” Her voice is soft. Teasing, but soft. “We’ve got all night.”

All night.

One night.

I shove the thought away and start to move.

She tells me what she wants the same way she did everything else tonight. Deeper. Like that. Harder, Payton, God, harder.

I give her every bit of it. I watch her face the whole time—her eyes going heavy, her mouth falling open, the flush climbing up her chest to her throat—and all I can think is her. She’s the one I’ve been waiting for.

Then she pushes at my shoulder, and I roll onto my back without thinking. She climbs on top of me, and then sinks slowly down on me. Her hair falls around both of us, loose brown waves. She braces her hands on my chest and rides me, taking exactly what she needs, and I let her. Of course I let her. I grip her hips and hold on and try to remember my own name.

“You feel so fucking good,” I tell her. “Jules. Look at me.”

She does. For a second, just a second, she looks right at me without any of her well-crafted armor.