It’s Vegas all over again: rowdy, with his palm on my ass and his other hand digging so hard into my hip I look forward to the tiny bruises I know I’ll find tomorrow. But I finally recognize Vegas for what it was: It wasn’t his “usual” stranger fuck, Finn being domineering and rough. It was Finn unbound, Finn laid bare with me, his perfectly matched stranger. All at once I know with someone else he would have been careful that first night—slower-handed, softer words, easy, rolling hips—but with me he couldn’t be.

He could only do rowdy because he felt what I felt: that whip-crack unleashing that comes when you meet the person who frees you.

Finn lowers us to the floor, running his hand down my sweat-slicked spine, and then I feel his own sweaty chest press into my back as he curls over me, entering me again and immediately riding me fast and smooth, his greedy hands cupping my breasts.

He’s insatiable on the floor, against the wall, back up on the bed with my legs on his shoulders. It’s like this, under the firm touch of his fingers, that I come apart with a scream and his teeth bared against my ankle. I can tell he’s close to his own release but he slows his thrusts, humming into my leg.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask, running my hand down his sweaty chest and lowering my legs to his sides.

“It feels fucking amazing,” he says through heavy breaths, bending to kiss me. “I want to come, but I also don’t.”

“There’s no rush,” I purr, pulling him down so his chest presses all along mine.

“I got a taste of you bare, earlier,” he admits quietly. “Do you have any idea how good you feel without this fucking condom? I can’t stop thinking about how warm and sweet you were.”

How is it possible I’d forgotten what we’d done in the car? A mixture of longing and anxiety shadows my thoughts.

“It’s like I’m trying to fuck this thing off.” He laughs into my shoulder and begins moving again. I remember how warm he felt, how smooth.

I want to feel it, too.

I push on his chest so he pulls out of me and I reach for him, sliding the condom off.

“No, Harlow, I didn’t mean—”

“Shh, I know,” I say, reaching for the wet cloth on the bed and using it to wipe him off this time. “Come here.”

I lay back, pulling his hips up higher, over my face. Of all the things he’s done to me, he’s never let himself finish this way.

With his knees on the mattress at my sides, he carefully slips between my lips, and into my mouth.

“Fuck.” He groans, squeezing his eyes shut. “You’re gonna ruin me.”