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“I won’t.” My voice is fierce. “Don’t talk like that, like I don’t know my own mind. Youtaughtme to be clear about what I want. Trust me when I do.”

“I’d try to make it good for you.” His eyes shift back to mine. “So good.”

“I know.”

“I want you every minute of the day.” His fingers smooth down to the valley of my breasts. “The idea of never having you…”

“Then have me.” I arch my back, and he groans, eyes on the spot between my breasts.

His mouth finds mine. It’s hot and warm, and he kisses me with heady urgency. His free hand is on my bare knee, sliding up, and up, and up. My dress follows his touch, and then he’s brushing his thumb over the damp front of my panties.

I thread my fingers through his hair. Somewhere close by, a bird sings. It sounds triumphant.

“I can’t take it anymore,” he says. His mouth is hot against my neck. “I’ve tried to be honorable, but I can’t. Ican’t.”

“I don’t want you to be.”

He lifts up on one arm. In the sunlight, his eyes look brighter than ever. A warm amber. We both watch as he strokes long fingers over my panties, my knees parted for him. “You need to tell me, if you don’t want this.”

I smile against his lips. “I’ve been telling you that I do for weeks. Can you please just fuck me?”

He groans, and I laugh a little against his lips at the tortured sound. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Here, then.” He grips my panties. “Up, sweetheart.”

I lift my hips, and he slides my underwear down my legs. West’s hand returns, circling my clit, eyes between my bent thighs. He always looks at me like that. Eyes trained like my pussy is the best thing he’s ever seen.

I burn with a hunger that he’s awakened and stoked. I stretch out in the sunlight, in my summer dress, and let West touch me like I’m a goddess.

He slides a finger inside me, and a bumblebee ambles past my half-closed eyes. I’m breathing heavily. That used to be something I thought about, used to be an insecurity when we started this, but he blazes away all those thoughts.

“You’re so fucking sweet. And you’re tight. Even with our practice.”

He settles between my legs, and then he’s going down on me again, and I’ve gotten so used to this now, the way he uses his tongue like I’m the sweetest thing he’s ever had. “I want to be inside you so bad,” he says against my skin. “It’s all I think about. It’s what Idreamabout.”

“West,” I whisper. He’s flicking his tongue back and forth, and it’s sofast,how he’s learned just what I like and what I need. I stretch out my left arm, find the fresh spring grass. “Don’t stop.”

He doesn’t stop, doesn’t relent, and the orgasm shudders through me. Slow at first and then quick toward the end, my knees bent, feet braced against the picnic blanket.

I feel sun-drunk and heavy and aching. West finds the buttons on my sundress, and he undoes them, one by one, spreading the fabric out around me.

He looks like he’s transfixed. Eyes roaming, like he doesn’t know where to settle them. I’ll never get enough of it.

The way he wants me, the way it makes me feel.

The way I ache and the way he’s the only one I want to fill me.

“You told me you’re not afraid of this. But I am.” His hand goes into his back pocket, and he pulls out a foil packet. Has he been carrying that around all this time? “I’m terrified that if I have you once, sweetheart, I’m never going to stop craving this. Craving you. And whatever you’ve started here with these lessons… I won’t be able to stop. Consequences be damned. I’ll keep you.”

The words are everything I’ve ever wanted to hear. I can’t think around them.Keep me.

“Maybe I started out as your teacher, but you hold all the power now,” he says.

“You brought a condom?” I reach for the buckle of his belt. We’re outside. But we’re on his property, beneath his apple trees, with the ocean glittering behind the trunks. There’s nowhere else I want to do this.

He watches me pull his belt clean out of the loops. “I’ve been carrying one around since you first asked me to help you.”

“You have?”

“I knew it was only a matter of time before I caved.” His hand slides under my chin, tilts my face up. “I can’t have you regret this. Regret any of it. As much as it would kill me not to be your first, not to be inside you, it would damn me to hell to be something you later regret.”