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I feel huge. Terrified and powerful and soft in places no one gets to see.

“Clint,” he says.

I lift myself slightly and sink back down. The sensation punches through me, bright and strange and almost too much.

I do it again.

Paul groans, hands flying to my hips.

“Hold on,” I say.

He looks up at me, dazed. “I’m not pushing.”

“No. I mean hold on.”

His hands close around my hips.

I start moving. Badly, at first. Clumsy. Still learning what hurts and what makes my cock jerk without touching.

Paul lets me set the pace. Lets me ride him like I know where I’m going.

Eventually, somehow, I do. My thighs work. My hands brace on his chest. His cock fills me on every downward stroke, and the pain turns into heat, then need, then something deeper than either.

Paul’s fingers brush my cock.

I gasp. “Yes.”

He wraps his hand around me as I ride him harder.

Paul’s face twists under me, open and helpless and more beautiful than any version of him I’ve ever seen.

“I love you,” I almost say.

Paul strokes me faster. I move faster over him. The bed starts knocking the wall, and we both laugh, breathless and ruined. Then I’m coming over his hand and stomach, shaking so hard I lose the rhythm completely.

Paul pulls me down against him. I’m still full of him when he comes, hips lifting once, twice, his voice caught against my shoulder.

Afterward, I collapse onto him. Not thrown. Not this time.

His hand moves up and down my back.

Tomorrow is still coming, but this belongs to me.

Chapter forty-two

PVR - SDF

Paul

The airport is all heat and exhaust and wheels clicking over concrete.

Taxis nose toward the curb. Families cluster around suitcases. A man in a straw hat argues with someone on speakerphone while two sunburned women try to reorganize an entire luggage set on the sidewalk.

Clint stands beside me with one hand on my suitcase handle. He hasn’t let go of it since we got out of the taxi.

I should take it from him. I wait instead.

His sunglasses are pushed up on his head. His shirt is wrinkled from the seatbelt. There’s a small patch of peeling sunburn high on one cheekbone, and for one absurd moment, that’s what nearly undoes me.