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My voice came out rough. “Yes.”

A small smile touched her mouth. “Good.”

I kissed her before she could say anything else.

The rest was heat, hands, breath.

Her mouth found my throat. My hands moved over her slowly, learning the shape of her without assuming anything, and she made no objection—only shifted closer each time my fingers settled somewhere new.

I kissed a line down her neck, her collarbone, the curve of her breast.

I took her nipple into my mouth and her breath left her in a sharp exhale. I stayed there, my tongue tracing slowly, until her fingers found the back of my neck.

Her hands, which had been deliberate about everything, found my shoulders without apparent intention. When I reached her ribs she made a low sound in her throat and her fingers pressed in.

I dropped to one knee in front of her.

Her hand came to rest on the top of my head, not pushing, not pulling.

I pressed my mouth to the inside of her thigh, and she made a sound I’d never heard from her before.

I looked up. “Beautiful.”

Her head was back, throat exposed, eyes closed. Her skin was flushed where my mouth had touched her, and my ŭre sharpened in response, silver-white current brightening beneath my forearms.

I brought my mouth to her sex and worked her open slowly until I found her clit, paying attention to every shift in her breathing, every movement toward me, every place her fingers tightened in my hair.

“Don’t stop,” she said.

I didn’t.

Her breath broke when I found the right place, and I stayed there. Her free hand hit the bed, palm flat, fingers spread. Her hips moved against me without hesitation, and I let them.

I kept the pressure steady and patient until her breathing broke apart entirely. She came against my lips.

When I looked up again, her eyes were dark and unguarded.

She looked at me the way she had in the moment before the first kiss, like she was done calculating the distance.

I rose.

My hands found her without strategy, without plan. The hollow of her throat. The valley between her ribs. The curve beneath her breast. She shook beneath my touch, and my circuits flared brighter wherever our skin met.

I brought my hand to her face and traced the line of her cheekbone with my thumb.

“Talia.”

She pulled me down to her mouth.

The kiss was not gentle.

It was the kind of kiss that happened when two people had been holding something back for longer than was sustainable, and the holding had finally stopped.

Her hands were on my chest, tracing the circuit lines there, and each point of contact sent a pulse of heat through me that I couldn’t suppress and didn’t try to.

She pushed me back onto the bed and climbed onto my lap.

The contact was full, her thighs on either side of mine, her chest against mine, her hands in my hair.