She gasped, fingernails digging into my back as I worked my way in and back out again, savoring the sensation of her friction.

I wanted to look at her beneath me but I found my eyes squeezing shut as I gripped the sheets beside her, clenching until my fingers hurt. I drove myself into her again and again, breathing hard along with her. I’d known I would enjoy this. I’d known it was going to feel good as hell. The part I hadn’t expected was the connection I felt. Everything we’d talked about in our brief time together. Everything I knew about her and the countless things I still wanted to learn. Being with her like this was making it all take on a new, deeper meaning in a way I couldn’t fully grasp in the moment.

All I could really say was I felt myself slipping toward something–something I didn’t think I would be able to pull myself out of, even if I wanted to.

I lifted my head, looking down at Pearl’s face. She was staring back at me, eyes lit with something that seemed both alarmed and excited. Was she feeling the same things I felt?

I forced my thoughts away and focused on what I was doing with all my energy. If this was the only time, I was going to make it count.

When I felt my own orgasm coming, Pearl sped it along by gasping out and curling up to cling to my torso. She wrapped her legs around my waist, clinging to me as I fucked her. Her walls clenched, practically begging me for my own release.

I groaned with the effort of holding it back, then finally couldn’t any longer. My climax ripped through my body like ten tons of explosives–like taking a sledgehammer to the face.

I gasped as my cock twitched again and again inside her and she continued to squirm and moan beneath me.

I finally rolled off her to my back so we were both lying the wrong way across the length of the bed. She looked over at me, eyes still fuzzy with pleasure. Her lips were red and a little swollen from the intensity of our kisses, and her bare breasts rose and fell rapidly with each heavy breath.

She looked into my eyes and I looked back. In that wordless moment, I thought I could’ve dictated her thoughts word for word if I had to. I was pretty sure they would’ve sounded a hell of a lot like mine, too.

I could’ve told her right then and there that I wanted to make this thing real. No more faking. No more pretending. Because the shit going on in my chest at the moment was absolutely real. There was no denying that.

But the force of those feelings scared the shit out of me.

I’d never cared this much about a woman, let alone one I’d practically known for a handful of hours. It wasn’t just ridiculous, it was dangerous. If I could be tempted to fall this hard after just a day or two, what would happen after weeks? Months? What would happen when I put every last ounce of hope I had into making this shit work and it ended up failing like every other relationship I’d been in?