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When you circled a person for three years, wanting them and never actually having them, things had a right to move faster than the average couple.

He was sitting in the chair when I walked in. The chair. The one where I’d kissed him and he’d pushed me away. I saw as he smiled he knew it, and he’d done it on purpose.

We’d spent every night since the first in my bed—though we hadn’t had sex again—and that first morning he kissed me outside Deja Brew effectively erased my memory of his rejection there.

“Trying to get rid of all the bad things?” I asked.

“Maybe. Maybe I just needed to sit.” As soon as I was within reach, he pulled me to him. “How are you?”

“Tired,” I admitted. “I’ll probably be tired until Thursday.”

“Not worrying?”

I shook my head. “No, I think it will be okay. I hope it will be okay. The rest of it—” I sighed. “I’m not sure if I’m ready to talk about it tonight. I’m not hiding it. I just don’t have the energy.”

The way Jude was gently trailing his hands up and down my spine was distracting, as was the fact that it felt so natural. It shouldn’t shock me we fit together so well after so long, but it still did.

He looked as tired as I felt. “Long day?”

“Not too bad. Why?”

I stroked a hand through his hair and winced. “You look tired.”

“I am a little.” Then he tightened his hands on my body. “Not so tired I don’t want to take you upstairs. But first,” he said. “I want to ask you one thing. Then I promise I won’t let you think about anything else the rest of the night.”

“I like that promise. Does it mean…?” I looked at him meaningfully.

Jude smiled. We hadn’t had sex, but that wasn’t to say nothing had happened. Jude had continued his thorough exploration of my body and maddeningly declared he still wasn’t finished. Not that I didn’t enjoy the way he reduced me to nothing but breathless sighs and shaking pleasure. But one of these days, I was going to get him to let me explore him and lick all those muscles from head to toe.

There was a sparkle in his eye. “We’ll see. But this is what I want to ask—on Thursday, are you ready? Do you want me to pull back physically at all?”

It wasn’t the question I expected, but I understood why he was asking. Thanksgiving would be our first time with the “family” as a couple. There were sure to be teasing and jokes, all in good fun, but he wanted to know how much of a couple we should be in public. “Well…” I tried to hold in my smile and failed. “Anything besides you staying all the way across the room from me will practically be like we’re married.”

He laughed, sudden and loud. “I was doing my best to stay away from you.”

“What would have happened if you didn’t?”

I watched as his eyes darkened and briefly dropped to my lips. “Nothing that would have been appropriate for family dinner.”

“Yeah?”

“It might have been wrong,” he said. “But the things I imagined doing…pulling you away and making us both filthy. There was a reason I needed to shove myself into a corner to be contained.”

I slid my hands over his shoulders, leaning into him. “What about the wedding? When we danced?”

“Until the other night? The best moment of my life.”

Wrapping myself the rest of the way around him, I let him hold me. This was what it felt like to not be lonely, and every piece of me loved it. “Do you ever feel like it’s too good to be true?”

“You’ve always been too good to be true, Lena.”

My heart skipped a beat. I thought I’d eat something before we went upstairs, but I wasn’t interested in food anymore. “I don’t want you to pull back,” I said. “Not for Thanksgiving. Not for anything. They’ll make their jokes and I’ll be embarrassed, and then they’ll get used to us together. But I don’t want to pretend we’re less than we are.”

“Good,” he whispered. “Because I’m not quite sure I’ll be able to keep my hands off you. Even if it’s just holding yours.”

“I like that more than you know.”

In one movement, Jude captured my lips with his and lifted me as he stood. He carried me upstairs and kept his promise not to let me think the rest of the night.