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“I’ve wanted you since I kissed you in this tree,” he says, his voice low and rough and completely certain. “Since before I had any business wanting you. Since before I knew what to do with how I felt about you.”

“Oh.” My heart is pounding so hard, I swear he’ll hear it above the rain. This is what I wanted. These are the words I’ve been waiting to hear for almost as long as I’ve known Grayson Douglas. And all I can manage is ‘oh’.

“I love you.” His forehead drops to mine. “You’re my obsession, Sienna. There’s never been anybody else for me but you.”

Then his mouth is on mine again, and I stop being capable of thought. Only sensation. The rain and the bark and the heat of Grayson’s body, his hands gripping my thighs hard enough to leave marks. He works his jeans open one-handed, the other arm still braced under me, holding me against the tree like I weigh nothing, and watching him do it fills me with heat, and want that threatens to rip me apart. The sound of his zipper cuts through the downpour.

“Look at me,” he says. “Sienna. Look at me.”

My eyes lock with his, the blue bleeding into black, and I feel like I’m drowning.

He doesn’t break eye contact as he pushes inside me.

Slow. God, so slow. Every inch deliberate, every inch a claiming, and my mouth falls open, and my nails dig into the wet cotton of his t-shirt, and the tree scrapes my spine, and I don’t care. I don’t care. He fills me completely, stretches me in a way that borders on too much, and the fullness of it pushes a broken sound out of my chest.

“There,” he grits out, forehead dropping to my shoulder. “There. That’s—fuck.”

“Shit.” I suck in a breath as he fills me. “Don’t stop.”

“I’m not stopping.” His hips pull back and thrust forward again and the bark grinds into my shoulder blades. “I’m never stopping. Not with you. Not ever.”

The rhythm builds.

His fingers dig into my ass, using the leverage to pull me onto him with every thrust. The wet slap of our bodies coming together echoes off the tree trunk. Rain slicks our skin. He dips his head, and his mouth pulls on my nipple, rolling the peak between his teeth. I cry out, my head falling back, my blue curls catching on the oak bark.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs with my nipple between his teeth. “So fucking beautiful, do you know that?”

I curl my arms around his head, guiding his mouth back to mine, and kiss him long and hard. “Because I’m yours, Gray.”

“Say it again.”

His lips are on mine still, and I taste coffee and rain and salt. Our breaths combine till it’s impossible to separate them. Rain lashes his back and drips onto our heads from the branches above us. And the scene from The Notebook that I set my first-kiss standards on has nothing on this moment.

“I’m yours, Gray.” I suck on his bottom lip and wait for my heart to burst. “I’ve always been yours.”

The pain in my back sharpens with every thrust. The bark is unforgiving. Each roll of his hips presses me harder against it, and the sting blooms down my spine, and somehow it makes everything brighter, sharper, more real. I kiss him slow and deep, our tongues dancing around each other, giddy from the lack of oxygen pumping around my body.

“Harder,” I hear myself say because I can’t get enough of him. “Fuck me, Grayson. Fuck me so hard, I’ll still feel you inside me tomorrow.”

A sound rips from his throat,half groan, half growl,and then he drives into me with a force that makes my vision spot at the edges, that makes the bark scrape lines into my skin I’ll trace with my fingers in the morning.

“Hard enough?” His hand comes up to grip my jaw, his eyes finding mine through the rain.

“More,” I whisper against his mouth. “I’ve waited too long…”

My heart slams against my ribs as his strokes deepen, and I give into the pleasure flooding my veins, my walls clenching around him, holding him in because this is where he belongs.

“I love you,” I gasp, because it’s the only true thing left.

His rhythm breaks.

He goes still, completely still, and pulls back far enough to look at me, really look at me, rain streaming between our faces.

“I didn’t hear you,” he says, his voice scraped raw.

“I love you, Grayson,” I repeat, steadier than I’ve said anything in years. “I love you. I’ve always loved you.” I tilt my head towards the rain and smile with the sheer joy of speaking the words out loud.

Something in his face comes undone. There’s no anger, no guardedness, only something he has been hiding behind everything else for a very long time.