“What is it?” I ask, letting her in. As soon as my door closes, she’s up against me, kissing me and steering me toward the bed. I’ve kissed her hundreds of times by now, but these kisses seem intense, and urgent. Starved.

We hit the bed hard enough to bounce, and then I’m stretching out underneath her, tangling my fingers in her curls. One second her bodyweight is pressing down the length of me, and the next she shifts to the side a little. She rests her knee in the space between my legs, and at first I think it’s for balance. Then she shuffles higher, and her knee makes contact with me, and I pause mid-kiss.

“Is it—” She breaks off just before it becomes a question, but I answer it anyway by bringing my hips up toward hers. Until I found this friction, I had no idea how much I wanted it. It gives instant relief to the aching feeling I’ve become familiar with recently. More than relief, even. Something way better than that.

I try to press into her harder, and she responds by leaning her weight forward to meet me more firmly, kissing me deeply as she does, and I make a sound I’ve never made before. She takes both of my hands in hers, threads her fingers through them, and then rests them both on the mattress above my head, so all I can do is arch my back and kiss her harder as she starts to move forward and back. Every time she pulls away from me, the ache returns, heavier and more insistent than last time.

At first, it makes every time she rises back up better than the last. But eventually, it stops being enough. I grab at her as she goes to move away and pull her back in, shaking my head. She’s happy to oblige, and she closes her eyes, lips slightly parted, as I pull the full weight of her down on me. “Danni,” she whispers, letting go of one of my hands. “I want to…”

When I realize what she means, it’s like being slammed by a hurricane wall. So many things are true at once. I want her to as well, so badly, more than I’ve ever wanted anything, because her knee isn’t enough to subdue the ache anymore. And my heartbeat is going crazy, and I can barely breathe, and I can hardly even think. But the part of me that can think is coming up with lots of very scary thoughts. Like, how will I know what to do? And, what if I’m really awkward and horrible, and it makes her not like me anymore? And, what if she hates what she sees under my clothes?

She studies my face, and swallows. “We don’t have to,” she whispers, and no, no, I definitely—