My heart is knocking against my chest, and I swear I see stars floating around my vision. Turning to look at her face, I notice the moisture in her eyes.

There are a lot of fucking crazy thoughts coursing through my mind at the moment, and I know I could just blame it on the post-sex hormones or some shit because I’m feeling a lot of very intense things about Shelby, and by the way she’s looking at me, she feels them too.

Shelby

I’ve never climaxed so hard during sex in my life. Scratch that...I’ve never come at all during sex. But Rafe unravels me. He tears apart everything I thought was real and reconstructs it in a new light. I don’t recognize anything when I’m with him, and it’s the only explanation as to why I haven’t felt happier.

This sex wasn’t about first times or losing virginity or anything like that. Rafe is way too hard to see through that lens. This was about destroying demons and doing it together. It was about facing fears and sending a big old fuck you to the people who hurt him. The ones who do not control him anymore. And that is so much more powerful than any first time melodrama.

For a long beautiful moment, he’s staring at me, and I feel so connected to him. It’s scary how intense it is, and my heart tries to warn me, but I can’t help it. He consumes me. My whole life lately has been nothing but Rafe, and it’s all I want.

But then he stands up and walks to the bathroom without another word, and worry creeps in. I don’t want him beating himself up in there, letting those demons win. So I stand up, letting the blood drain back to my legs which are still tingling from that explosive orgasm.

I give the door a simple knock. “Tell me you’re good.”

“I’m good,” he answers in his deep gravelly voice.

Not knowing what to do, I turn back to his bed and decide to crawl in. I don’t want to leave him, and he hasn’t minded me sleeping over before. I also decide to stay naked, hoping that once won’t be enough for him. I could do that all night. Not to mention, trying out all the positions to see his reaction sounds like so much fun at the moment.

I hope I’m sore when I go to work tomorrow.

When he finally comes out of the bathroom, he stops at the end of the bed and stares at me like there’s something he wants to say. For a moment, I have this irrational fear that he’s about to dump me and send me home. His first time and he’s already jumping into the hit it and quit it mentality. Seems a bit extreme right out the gate.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He’s hardened since before, a natural reaction for Rafe as I’ve come to know, but I can’t say I blame him. He’s probably working through a lot of emotions and feeling super vulnerable about it. Normal people would struggle with opening up about that, so it’s no surprise that Rafe sure as hell won’t.