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Head back, my fingernails dig into his back.

“God, you feel good,” he says, teeth clenched, hair hanging over his face as his dark eyes lock onto mine.

He kisses my neck, now slick with sweat, and slides out of me—slow—causing my hips to chase his until he gives me what I want.

Once.

Twice.

Then.

Three things happen at once: he pulls out completely, hooks an arm around my waist, and flips me to my belly.

He pauses, kisses the space between my shoulder blades, and whispers against my skin. “I love you, but hang the hell on.”

When I start to respond, it comes out as a yelp because he’s back inside me, making my fists clench the sheets at the same time his hands grip my hips, and he lifts me to fit him.

This time when he drives into me, it’s hard. And I scream—loud.

It’s good.He’sgood.

I push my palms to the bed, back arching, him moving, barely able to see straight.

Thrusts turn to slams—the wrecking. His promise a fruition.

Grunted curses and moans scattered between kisses are punctuated with his unrestrained movements and a desperate sounding, Now, Birdie, from his lips.

With one final drive of his hips and as if my body is completely under his control,nowit is. With him.

A shaky, sweaty, whimpering impact of pleasure as his fingers grip tighter somehow, last slow movements finishing us both.

Our panting in the dark forms a kind of sexy song I never want to end.

A staccato of breaths and pounding hearts as we crumble onto the mattress.

When I drop to my belly, he’s lying next to me, kissing my shoulder. Tender. Both of us working to come down from the highest of highs.

“Tell me something you like,” he says as I roll to my back, and his fingers immediately find the lines of my tattoos in the low light.

I laugh under my breath. There are many ways to answer that. His magical tongue that I probably need to tell Mabel about. The way he flipped me over and effortlessly destroyed me. Or, perhaps, the fingertip-shaped bruises that I’m sure will be covering my body when I wake up in the morning.

Instead, I smile. “You molesting my earlobe with your tongue.”

He vibrates next to me with his own laugh, finger still tracing the flowers on my chest.

My smile hurts my face as I turn to look at him, barely illuminated by the candlelight. He’s goodness embodied. Every single piece of him.

“You?”

“You loving me,” he says.

He means it, and that sends a million butterflies fluttering through me.

“I like that too.”

Thirty-five

I sip my coffeeon Bo’s porch in the morning while George Strait sniffs around the yard at a curious skip. It’s foggy. Misty. The way the air gets this time of year in the mountains. The cool greyness of fall completely smothers out the final drops of warm sunshine from summer.