Suddenly we were standing by the window all tangled up together, tugging each other’s shirts over our heads. I could feel myself shimmer with heat everywhere Talia touched me, as if she was leaving glowing handprints like some neon rave paint on my skin. Together we half stumbled, half tripped toward the bed in a clumsy dance, awkwardly yanking off shoes and pants as we went, kissing like we would have rather swallowed each other whole.

Every so often we’d pull back a little and pause, hands still tangled in the other’s hair, to just look, and marvel, and grin dizzyingly at each other, that this was really, finally happening.

“Damn, I feel like I could eat you,” I exhaled into the curve of her neck, sliding my hands down the long line of her spine to the neat tuck of her waist.

“Then what, exactly, are you waiting for?” she whispered back into my hair, a smile curled like a secret into her voice.

When we fell onto the bed together, Talia’s seafoam sheets were just as soft as I’d expected—though nothing in comparison to the searing softness that was her skin.

I traced the smooth outline of her with my hands and mouth, my lips on her instep, ankle, and then the tender back of her knee, all the way up to the silken inside of her thighs. I nipped at her lightly before biting harder, sinking my teeth in just deep enough to draw out those moans I’d been dying to hear from her for so long.

Then she was on top of me, with the scented tangle of her hair hanging around us, holding my face cupped between both hands as she kissed me hard and deep.

“Emmy Harlow,” she whispered against my lips. “I want to do everything to you.”

Then her mouth was a blaze down my neck and breasts, teasing out a moan low in my throat when she drew each nipple into her mouth. She trailed a scalding path over my belly, tracing circles around my hips with her tongue and lips, biting down on the thin, sensitive skin pinned taut over the bone. I twitched helplessly against her, caught by the tidal undertow of sensation, until it was all I could do not to outright beg her for more.

“Say it to me, Emmy,” she demanded between kisses, husky and low, as if she knew just how wild she was driving me. “Ask for it.”

“Please,” I said, when I thought maybe I’d implode from the gravity of all that pulsing want. “Talia, just . . . please.”

Then her mouth was between my legs, parting me down the center; her hair sliding against my thighs, and everything inside me surging up to meet her.

I arched my back like a bow, not even caring how I sounded, stars swirling against the darkness behind my closed eyes. I said her name so many times that I lost count.

Talia, Talia, please, Talia.