“Good,” he says again, and I’m so turned on by the way his breath comes short, the way it sounds as if he’s speaking tight, almost through his teeth, holding fast to his control.

“Come with me,” I beg. “Please, please, please.”

And I don’t know how he does it, Reid with his mysterious, magical numbers, but he does, every one of those pleas a count for him and his perfect, hard thrusts—

one

two

three

—and then I shatter, crying out my relief and release, feeling him tense and then shudder with his own, and when we both come down from it, our breathing heavy and our bodies sweaty and our limbs tangled together, I’m so sated and proud and exhausted; I’m so relieved to be back with him that I don’t think either of us notices the way I’m tracing my fingers on his back, writing and rewriting that heart-holding L, the beginning of something special and rare and beautiful.

Something it’s too soon to know if we can finish.

It’s still daylight when I wake up.

Alone.

In the cool quiet of Reid’s bedroom, I’m tangled in his crisp, soap-and-swimming-pool-smelling white sheets, his dark navy coverlet a light, pleasing weight over my still-naked body. It’d be better, I think, to have him beside me—to have that weight be his arm around my waist, to stretch my sore muscles against the lean strength of his long body.

But it’s okay to have this drowsy, waking-up moment alone, too. All alone, I don’t worry about the blush rising to my cheeks, remembering everything that passed between me and Reid, hot and hard and honest. All alone I can press my hands over my face, feel the giddy smile spread across my cheeks. All alone I can do a goofy, whole-body wiggle, a celebration of what we did that first time, and the two times after (Reid is definitely “into it,” one of those times proved), and an anticipation of all the things we still have yet to do.

I take a deep breath, quieting my body and taking in my surroundings for the first time. It’s spare in here, almost ruthlessly so, a reminder of what Reid had told me about this place in those sated, soft-speaking moments before I must’ve drifted off. “I moved here after,” he’d said, leaving Avery’s name out of it.