“‘“I have loved you since the first moment I saw you rolling around on that library floor,” he whispered into Charlotte’s ear. “Don’t ask me to go. Stay with me. Tell me you want me, always.”’”

“Enough,” Ryan says, his voice breaking. The manuscript is torn from my hand and is sent flying across the room. He grabs the hem of my dress and bunches it at my waist, pulling it up even farther until it’s off my body completely.

His mouth is everywhere and so are his hands, possessive but feather-soft. I’m nowhere near as graceful, clawing at his back and shifting all over like I’m delirious, which I am. My bra is gone and he’s there instead, kissing and licking. I grip the back of his hair with no intention of letting go. Ever.

He asks if I have protection and I remember the box I keep in my bedside table drawer. I reach for the handle but end up pointing, and Ryan opens it himself. He sits back on his heels and pulls out a foil packet, almost ripping the box in two. He’s red-faced with wild eyes. I made him like that. It’s a heady feeling.

He’s soon pulling down my plain white panties and throwing them across the room with my other clothes. He kisses me hard and he pushes me down farther into the mattress. His pants and boxers join the pile on the floor. The feel of his weight, the heat of his skin—I’m never leaving this bed.

He eases in, inch by blissful inch, until there’s nowhere else to go. My eyes close and my head tilts back. I’m savoring every second. He rocks into me with an unhurried rhythm, his body reminding mine that he was there first, that no one else fits me like he does. I urge him on and he gives me what I want, moving faster and telling me to look at him, to keep looking at him or he’ll stop. A slow-burning tension flares and stretches inside me, building and surging until I break and a sharp groan that sounds nothing like me tears from my throat. Ryan follows, pitching his hips forward and calling my name as his back arches and his muscles shake.

He goes slack a few seconds later and his cheek rubs mine. Our eyes find each other’s and we both see the same thing even if we don’t say it.

Everything has changed.

13

The room is quiet and calm as my eyes flutter open. I watch the steady rise and fall of Ryan’s chest beside me, feeling the soft trail of his fingertips as he skates his hand across my arm. A maelstrom of questions scratches at the walls of my content state but I push them back. Nothing can touch me in this moment except for Ryan.