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“God, Allison,” he said. His voice had gone completely rough. “Look at you.”

It went all the way through her. It wasn’t a compliment. It was a fact. It was the way he said things that were true.

She felt beautiful.

It was such a simple thing, and she felt it so completely it almost made her laugh out loud. Beautiful and soft and strong and entirely herself, sitting in her own bed in the Christmas light with her whole body open to the morning and nothing on it but his hands. She wasn’t holding her stomach in. She wasn’t arranging herself into some shape she thought might be easier to want. She was just here. All of her. Exactly as she was.

It was the freest she had ever felt in her life.

She leaned down and kissed him, her breasts pressing soft and warm against his chest, her hair falling around both their faces like a curtain.

Then she took her time with all of him.

She kissed his jaw, the stubble rough under her lips. His throat, where she could feel his pulse jump against her mouth. She found a small pale scar on the inside of his left forearm that she had never noticed before, and traced it with one fingertip.

“Table saw,” he said. “I was seventeen.”

She lifted his arm and kissed it, right along the scar.

He made a low sound in his chest.

She kissed the center of his chest, over the heartbeat she could feel going hard and fast under her lips. She kissed her way down, slow, across his stomach, and traced the lines of him with her fingertips and felt the muscles jump and tighten under her touch. She smiled against his skin. His hand came up and slid into her hair, not guiding her, not pushing, just holding on like he needed something to hold on to.

“Allison,” he said.

She kept going.

She learned him. What made his breath catch. What made his fingers tighten in her hair. What made that low sound come up out of him, the one she had first heard at the edge of the bonfire in October and had been chasing ever since. She kissed lower, and lower, and felt his whole body go still under her, and then felt him let go of the stillness completely, his head going back into the pillow, her name coming out of him rough and broken. She learned all of it, and she did it again, until his breathing had gone completely ragged and his hand in her hair was shaking and the man who was composed about everything was not composed at all.

She loved it. She loved that she could do that to him. She felt powerful in a way she had never had words for. Warm and sure and completely at home in her own body. A grown woman in her own bed, taking exactly what she wanted and giving back every bit as much.

“Allison,” he said, and there was something almost desperate in it. “Come here. Please.”

She came up his body, and he caught her face in both his hands and kissed her, deep and hungry, and rolled her under him in one easy movement.

She laughed against his mouth.

“I wasn’t done,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “My turn.”

And he gave it all back to her.

He was gentle about everything except wanting her. About that, he was not gentle at all. His hands were everywhere at once, greedy and certain, like he could not get enough of her and had no intention of trying. He filled his hands with her. The soft weight of her breasts. The full swell of her hips. He slid his hands under her, over the round full curve of her backside, and gripped her and pulled her up hard against him, and made a sound deep in his chest like she had taken something from him he was glad to lose.

His mouth on her throat. The soft place below her ear that made her gasp every single time, that he had found in the storm and remembered, and came back to now on purpose, and smiled against when she gasped. His mouth on her breast, slow and warm, until her back came up off the mattress and her fingers dug into his shoulders. He kissed his way down across the soft round swell of her stomach like it was the best part of her, like he had been waiting all morning to get there. He pressed his lips to the silver lines on her hips, one at a time, slowly, like each one mattered.

Lower still. He spread her thighs with his broad hands and kissed the soft inside of one, and then the other, taking his time, until she was trembling. And then his mouth was on her, and she stopped thinking about anything at all.

She didn’t quiet herself. She didn’t even try. She twisted the quilt in both fists and said his name at the ceiling in a voice that filled the whole room, and she didn’t care if the whole valley heard her, and the gray light in the window turned to gold.

“That’s it,” he said, low and rough, and the sound of his voice undid her all over again.

She pulled at his shoulders.

“Shane,” she said. “Now. Please.”

He came back up over her. He braced his forearms on either side of her head and looked down at her, his face so close she could feel his breath, his chestnut eyes on hers.