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“You’re not noting anything, you’re already—” Whatever she was going to say goes when I lift her onto the island, her back meeting the marble through her shirt with a gasp, her knees coming up around my hips before she’s decided to let them. “Okay. The counter. We’re doing the counter.”

“Problem?”

“No, just, Penelope makes eggs here, that’s all I’m saying, I’m simply noting it for posterity.” But she’s already pulling at my belt, sure and fast, and I get her shirt up and over her head, the bra following, and for a long moment I just look at her. Sitting on my counter, half undone, breathing hard, hair everywhere.

“You’re doing the staring thing,” she says. “Where you go quiet and look at me like I’m a number that won’t sit still.”

“You don’t sit still. Your ass is shaking. I checked.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment because I’ve had a day.” Her breath catches when my hands find her waist and drag her to the edge of the counter, and for a second the words actually leave her, just a second, before she finds them again. “Are we really doing this in the kitchen? With the lights on? Where anyone could—”

“Stavros is in the city. Evander’s with him. Penelope’s gone for the night.” I get her out of the leggings, and she’s already soaked. I run two fingers through her once, and her head drops back against the cabinet.

“That’s cheating,” she manages.

“What is?”

“You know exactly what you’re doing to me, and I haven’t even started yet, and I’m already—” Her hips roll into my hand on their own, small, involuntary, the kind of thing her body does before her mouth catches up to defend it.

I don’t draw it out tonight. There’s nothing in me built for slow, and I don’t think there’s much in her for it either. I get my pants open, and she pulls me in by the back of the neck, legs locking, and I push my cock into her in one stroke that doesn’t stop until I’m fully seated, and the sound she makes against my throat is half my name and half something with no shape to it at all.

“Okay,” she gets out. “Okay, I had a whole comment ready, and it’s just gone, completely gone. I’ll find it later.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Don’t gloat, I will find it.”

I start to move, and she meets every stroke, hands braced behind her on the marble, hips rolling up into mine, and I get a fist in her curls and pull her head back to put my mouth against her throat. She’s gripping me on every drag, slick, tight, and for the first time in nine days something is filling the space instead of widening it.

“Harder,” she says, and I give it to her.

The sound of it fills the kitchen, and she’s not quiet, doesn’t try to be, nails digging into my shoulders, breath coming in short pulls between sounds that stopped being words two strokes ago. I feel her start to climb, the way she clenches tighter on every other thrust, and I slow down on purpose, just enough that she growls in frustration against my jaw.

“Don’t,” she warns. “Whatever that was. Do not do it again.”

“You’re close.”

“I’m aware of my own condition, we covered this days ago. Now finish what you—”

I lift her off the counter mid-sentence, her legs locking tighter around me, and carry her the few steps to the table, setting her down on her back. I push back in, deeper from here, and her hands fly up to grip the far edge of the table, her spine arching off the wood.

“New venue,” she manages. “Bold.”

“You had opinions about the counter.”

“I had observations, there’s a difference, and now you’ve relocated us to the table, which Penelope also—” Whatever objection she had left disappears completely when I hook one of her legs over my shoulder. I drive into her from this angle and watch her hands fist in the tablecloth, watch the color climb her chest and throat, and I get my thumb against her clit and work it in time with every stroke until that’s the thing that finally ends the argument for good.

She comes with her head tipped back and her whole body drawn tight, a sound tearing out of her that bounces off the kitchen tile, and I feel it grip around me in waves, but I don’t stop, driving through it, chasing my own a few strokes behind. I come deep inside her, filling her, hips pressed flush to hers, and for a long moment neither of us moves, her chest rising fast under my hands, my forehead dropping to her collarbone.

“Okay,” she says eventually, to the ceiling, voice wrecked through. “I take it back. The table was the right call.”

I pull out slow, and she props herself up on her elbows to look at me, flushed, hair a complete mess.

“That helped,” I tell her, and it’s the truest thing I’ve said all day.

“Glad to be useful. Put it on the books somewhere, under operating expenses.”

I lean in and kiss her once, quick, nothing like what just happened on the table, and I’m out the door and straightening my jacket before she can try to read me.