She gasps against my mouth, her body coiling tight around my cock. “Carter.” I feel her cry before it comes and muffle it with my mouth. She whimpers against my lips, and I slowly move, pulling out and sliding deeper with each pass.

I don’t know how long we stay there. Kissing as our bodies rock. But it feels more intimate than anything I’ve ever shared with anyone else before. And when her body tightens around me and I feel her orgasm coming again, I pull back to watch her face—to memorize the way she looks as the pleasure washes over her. She bites back a moan, her dark lashes on her cheeks as she lets her release roll over her again.

Something unlocks in my chest. For the first time in months—maybe for the first time ever—I understand what it means to make love. I’ve used sex to hide from the shitstorm inside me, but lovemaking is the storm. As I move inside her, the connection between us tears down the walls around my ravaged soul and throws them open for her to see. For her to judge and decide if I’m worthy. And for the first time since the warehouse fire, I want to be worthy. I want to be enough for someone’s tomorrow. I finally want to plan my own future.

The thought fills me with more elation than fear, but there’s an even stronger emotion that grips me as I press my mouth to hers. For once in too long, it’s one I want to share and not hide, and it fills me with hope as I find my own release.

“We should probably sleep.” I stroke a hand up Teagan’s bare stomach to settle between her breasts. I can’t stop touching her, holding her, feeling her. Tomorrow is a busy day that starts with us spending hours apart, and I feel like I have to soak up as much of her as I can tonight so she doesn’t slip away in the morning.

“Probably,” she says on a sigh. She’s no better, keeping her fingers threaded through mine or a hand in my hair, on my chest, my thigh. We crossed a line tonight—not just physically, but emotionally—and neither of us is in any rush to fall asleep.

“You have to be up early for the . . . What did you call that ceremony?”

Teagan turns in my arms, rolling to face me with a hand under her cheek. “It’s called a Mehndi party, and it’s a tradition where the bride and her bridesmaids have henna designs applied to their hands and feet.” She smiles softly. “Saanvi’s will be the most complex, so we’ll keep her company and entertain her while it’s done. It’s more fun than it sounds, but it gives the bridal party time to give the bride advice before her big day.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

“I’m glad Saanvi wanted to pair some of the Hindu traditions with the traditional Catholic wedding ceremony, which”—she rolls her eyes—“is long.”