Page 8 of Smoke

He opened my jeans, pushed them down with my underwear and sank to his knees.

Seeing Smoke between my thighs again hit me almost as hard as his mouth did. His hands steadied me while his tongue moved over me slowly, relearning before certainty took over. Then he found the rhythm that used to break me apart, and my fingers locked around the counter.

"Fuck, Smoke."

He looked up once, eyes dark, and his fingers joined his mouth.

The orgasm built fast after that. I came with one hand buried in his hair, and he stayed with me until the last tremors eased before standing. I pulled him into another kiss immediately, tasting myself on his mouth and wanting more instead of being shocked by the intimacy of it.

My hands found his belt. Smoke caught my wrist lightly, making me look at him.

"You don't owe me anything."

"I know." I opened the buckle anyway, and he was already hard, and when I wrapped my hand around him his forehead dropped against mine. "Fuck, Beth."

There had been other people for both of us in the years since our divorce. Neither of us had stopped living, and I wasn't interested in turning those years into proof of who had loved whom more. None of those people were in this room now.

Smoke lifted me onto the counter, and I wrapped my legs around his waist before he stopped with enough control left to say, "Bedroom."

We reached it between kisses. The room held different bedding and lamps around the same old bed frame, another mixture of change and memory I didn't have time to analyze when Smoke came down over me. He kissed me slowly before pushing inside, and my eyes closed at the first stretch of him. Smoke stopped until I opened them again.

"You okay?"

"Yes. Don't make me repeat it every thirty seconds."

His mouth curved with the first hint of amusement. "Bossy."

"You like it."

"Yeah, I fucking do." He moved again.

My body remembered him without being exactly the same body he'd known before. There was familiarity in the angle of his hips and the way one hand slid beneath my thigh, but when I shifted beneath him, Smoke adjusted without hesitation.

"Harder," I said.

His control tightened for a second before he gave me what I wanted. The next thrust drove a gasp from me, and I wrapped my legs higher around him while his hand tightened at my hip. The pace changed, our breathing filling the room as I met him stroke for stroke.

I remembered sex with Smoke. I remembered how easy this part of us had once been. What I hadn't expected was the difference between remembering him and wanting the man over me now.

His gaze held mine while he slowed just enough to ask, "Still with me?"

"Completely."

He kissed me and moved harder, and my second orgasm came fast, sharpened by the pressure of his body and the way he still knew when I wanted more. Smoke followed moments later, his face buried against my neck as he came.

Afterward he pulled me against him and stayed there, his arm around my waist while our breathing settled. The ease of being held by somebody who once knew exactly how I fit felt more dangerous than the sex.

"This doesn't mean we're back together," I said eventually.

"I know that."

I waited for more, but he only kissed my shoulder.

Back then, I had wanted him to say more when I needed him to fight. Now his refusal to turn sex into an answer I hadn't given felt like its own kind of change. I traced the new scar near his ribs and told him he still owed me the story behind it, earning a faint smile.

The kiss in the kitchen had been easy to blame on getting caught up in a moment. This wasn't. I'd chosen Smoke with my eyes open, knowing who he was and remembering why we had failed before, and I could no longer pretend the pull between us belonged only to the marriage we had lost.

CHAPTER 4