Page 58

Certain forces in life are just too strong to fight. The lure of sleep when you’ve pulled an all-nighter, a wave breaking overhead. From the moment he begins kissing me, I know Brendan is one of those forces tonight. There’s no use even trying.

My hands are on his skin, pushing the towel away while his remove my shorts and rip my T-shirt over my head.

When that guilty voice somewhere in my brain tries to make itself heard, he silences it. "Don't think," he says, his breath hot against my neck. "It'll be fine."

It's weak, accepting words you know can’t possibly be true in order to get what you want. But I am weak, which is not news, and I’m especially weak where Brendan is concerned, which isn’t a surprise either.

He pushes me backward toward the bed. The moon is bright through the open window. Bright enough to watch him crawling over me, to see that look on his face—hungry and feral and tender all at once.

His fingers slide up the inside of my thigh, light as a whisper. His sudden lack of haste is agonizing, and when his hand finally reaches its destination, fingers pushing inside me, I make a sound I’ve never heard myself make. He groans in response.

“Hurry,” I plead, “before I change my mind.” He reaches over me to the nightstand, and I hear the sound of a condom wrapper tearing. It's been ages since I heard that noise, and even that is exciting to me. I feel him lined up, and knowing what is coming, how close he is, makes the ache border on unbearable. I pull him down, closer, finding his mouth, my nails pressing into his back, and in a single swift thrust, he's inside me.

"Jesus, Erin," he groans. "You feel amazing."

He winces and pulls back just enough to push back in hard—hard enough that the headboard slams against the wall, hard enough that I gasp "oh, fuck" involuntarily. And before I've even recovered, he does it again, kissing me possessively, his arms planted on either side of my head.

There are no words. No way to tell him—if I were capable of speech at the moment—what this is like, how different this is from anything I've ever had.

"Oh my God," I breathe. "Keep going."

But instead he pulls out entirely, kissing me, working his way down my stomach. "Why are you stopping?" I cry. "I'm close."

"Because if I hear you gasp like that one more time while I'm inside you, I'm gonna blow." His mouth moves between my legs, and suddenly I'm ratcheting up and up and up.

“Oh God,” I moan, seizing around him, except even when I’ve settled back onto the bed, he doesn’t stop.

“Brendan, I don’t… I’m not going to come again.”

He raises his head, grinning up at me with the cockiest smile I’ve ever seen. “That sounds like a challenge.”

And not two minutes later, it’s a challenge he wins.

The moment I’m done, he’s sliding over me. “I can’t wait anymore,” he says, his eyes shut as he thrusts.

The headboard slams again and again. He holds out, but I can tell he's struggling as he drags his lower lip between his teeth and clenches his eyes shut. I'm sure that I'm done, but as I watch him like that, grabbing the headboard with one hand, pushing hard, I discover I’m not.

"Oh my God," I whisper. I sound shocked, almost frightened. "Again?"

And the moment it hits me, he loses the fight, slamming into me one last time while I come around him.

A few moments later, in the complete silence that follows, I realize Brendan and I were just unbelievably loud.

"Oh my God,” I groan. "The entire house just heard that, didn't they?"

"They're all asleep. No one is listening."

I reach up, just for effect, and slam the headboard to the wall once, demonstrating the loud noise we just made at least 30 times, and then we both start laughing.

"Okay, yeah, everyone heard that. But you know what? It was so fucking worth it."

I sigh happily. "Definitely. I thought multiple orgasms were a myth."

"I think maybe we should see if it was just a freak occurrence." He is already hardening again, pressing into my thigh.

"I can't. I can't possibly come again."

He rolls me onto my stomach and grabs my hips to drag me to my knees. "When are you going to learn not to challenge me, Erin?"