“Dammit.” I flatten my palms against the wall over the headboard. My knees tremble as he laves me again and again and again, the languid, steady sweep of his tongue and lips there nearly too much. My knees pull in against a pleasure that’s almost unbearable, but he grips my ass, pressing me harder into his mouth, giving me no respite from the hungry kisses he lavishes on me.

My forehead drops to the wall between my palms and I rotate my hips in rhythm with the glorious work of his tongue. He passes his thumb through my wetness, caressing my clit with each stroke and then tracing the puckered track between my buttocks, pressing there.

“Can I?”

I nod, pushing back, anticipating penetration in the place too rarely touched. His thumb slips in, big, intrusive, perfect. My breath hitches at the tantalizing pressure, the sublime fullness. His other hand reaches up, cupping my breast while he pumps his thumb inside. I gasp, a shiver working itself through my body with sudden force. He slides his other hand down, leaving my breast, gliding over my belly, and finds the bud of throbbing nerves. He works me into a frenzy with the pressure inside and the delicate, unrelenting stroke across my clit. I churn my hips into his touch, caring about nothing but this urgency blooming inside me. It overtakes me, washing over every nerve ending with tsunami force that wrenches a sob from me. The orgasm uncoils, loosening my limbs and leaving me spent.

He slides from beneath my limp body, gently laying me flat onto the bed, turns me onto my back. Slack-jawed, arms and legs limp, I slit my eyes open. His eyes burn over my face, down the length of my body. There’s so much barely leashed passion in his expression, in his eyes. I force my arm to move, reach up and smooth the muscle ticking in his jaw, brush the artfully sculpted bow of his mouth with my thumb. He turns his head into my hand, kisses my palm.

“I love you,” I whisper, watching his long lashes fall, his eyes close as he absorbs the words, allows them to water the dry places I recognize because I’ve been dry without him, too. I’ve been lonely. I’ve been, at times, uncertain how this would work, how it would end. And now—love, relief, reunion.

He stands, stripping efficiently at the foot of the bed, tossing the jeans and shirt away. He’s the same as I remember, muscles hewn from rock, skin cut from swathes of velvet, but having been so long without him, there’s a novelty to his form. A freshness to his male beauty that I’ll never take for granted again.