I freed him, pushing his shorts off his ass.

He stayed himself with a long, steady exhale that broke our kiss.

“Tell me you have a condom,” I breathed, stroking him.

He hummed, catching my lips once, his hands patting his pockets before delving inside and emptying their contents onto the table. Keys. ID. A credit card.

And a condom.

I gave him a look and burst out laughing. “You are such a whore.”

But he smirked, smug and sure of himself and unruffled, as always. “Didn’t you just beg me for one of these?” He held up the packet in display before ripping it open.

“You don’t even have a wallet, but you have a condom?”

A shrug, his hand covering mine, gripping his base as he rolled the condom on. “I’m a minimalist, Tess. What can I say?”

A chuckle puffed out of me, our hands working his shaft together, our lips coming together, open, then closed. And then the laughter was gone, burned away by anticipation, by the shift of his hips that nestled his crown in the rippling flesh of my body. My hand clamped his neck, holding me steady as I leaned back, ass hanging off the table, lips parted, inches apart, eyes locked. Breath heavy.

His body rolled, slow and deliberate, and with the motion, he inched into me. Every wave brought him closer, closer, deeper, until he filled me completely and left us both breathless. And neither of us moved, his forehead pressing mine for a long moment. The pulse of his cock in me sent an echo back.

And then he kissed me.

Hungry was the kiss, his restraint pulled tight enough to snap, a devouring kiss.

A retreat and a thrust.

A gasp of pleasure-pain, thighs wide. He forced my knee higher, glancing down the line of my body as he pulled out slow, rolled his body to fill me up. Again but harder, the table jostling, the clanging of pottery. Again, he pumped his hips, brought his lips to mine. Tucked my knee into his ribs, leaned over me, pressed himself into my body, and I held on. That was all I could do—there was no pleasure I could give him he wouldn’t take for himself. But there was pleasure he could give me, and he did with single-minded focus. Every thrust, he rolled his hips, stroking me outside and in.

Seconds, and another orgasm slipped over me in a whisper, then a sigh, then a moan. Then a cry as it pulled me under, as my body pulled him in, swallowed him up, flex by flex, pulse by pulse.

I sagged, edging consciousness. He sped, fingertips dragging ruts in my thigh. A gasp. A strangled grunt, a lock of his hips for a second—one long, protracted second of weightlessness—and he came like thunder, hard and hot, wild and untamed. His body was locked, every muscle stone as he pumped, released, let go of the reins and rode away.

He kissed me as he slowed, the kind of kiss heavy with relief and gratitude and something deeper, that unnamable sense of connection, as real as a tether, binding us together.