Page 26

“Hazel,” I said.

“I know,” she whispered. “Me too.”

I reached down and guided myself to her. She was so wet. I pushed inside her slowly, an inch at a time, and she gasped and dug her fingers into my shoulders.

She was tight and hot and slick around me, and it was almost too much. I had to stop halfway and press my forehead to hers and just breathe. She breathed with me. Her body softened and opened, and I sank the rest of the way in until there was nothing between us at all.

We both went still.

“Okay?” I asked. My voice was shaking.

“More than okay.” She rolled her hips under me, slow, and we both groaned. “Move. Please. Shepherd, please move.”

I did.

I kept it slow at first. Long, deep strokes, all the way out and all the way back in, and every time I filled her she made a soft, helpless sound against my mouth. The old bed creaked under us. The lamp threw our shadows across the wall. I could smell paint and cedar and her, and I could hear the wet slide of our bodies and her breath catching every time I hit deep. Her heart was racing against my chest.

She ran her hands down my back. She gripped my hips and pulled me deeper, and when I bottomed out inside her, she arched and moaned my name.

I drove into her harder. She met every stroke, her heels digging into the backs of my thighs, her nails biting into my shoulders. The headboard knocked against the wall.

I rolled us without thinking. I wanted to see her.

She ended up on top of me, startled, her hands braced on my chest and her hair falling around both of us. For a second she just stared down at me. Then she sat up slowly, taking me deeper, and her eyes went wide.

“Oh,” she breathed.

She started to move. Uncertain at first, rocking her hips, finding the rhythm. I put my hands on her hips to guide her, and she found it fast. She rode me slowly, her head tipped back, her lips parted, the lamplight sliding over her skin. Orange paint on her collarbone. Her breasts moving with every roll of her hips.

I’d made a lot of beautiful things in my life. I’d never seen anything as beautiful as her right then.

I reached up and cupped her breasts and rolled her nipples between my fingers, and she gasped and moved faster. I slid one hand down between her legs and found her clit with my thumb. She tightened around me so hard I saw stars.

“Shepherd.” She was shaking. “Shepherd, I’m going to⁠—”

“I’ve got you,” I said.

She came with a cry, her whole body clenching around me, her hands fisted on my chest. Watching her pushed me right to the edge. I flipped us again, and she wrapped herself around me, and I drove into her three more times, hard and deep, before I came so hard my whole body shook. I buried my face in her neck and groaned her name against her skin.

For a long time, neither of us moved.

I rolled to the side so I wouldn’t crush her. The bed was so narrow that she ended up half on top of me anyway, her cheek on my chest and her leg thrown over mine. Her hair was a mess. She was sticky with sweat and paint. I’d never seen anything better.

“Well,” she said finally, into my chest.

“Well.”

“I’ve been wondering about that for weeks.”

“Was it worth the wait?”

She lifted her head and gave me a look. Then she started laughing, and I did too, and she flopped back down on my chest and laughed until she was crying.

Eventually we had to deal with the paint. She got up and turned on the shower. The pipe banged like it always did. Then we stood there in the tiny bathroom, naked, waiting for the hot water.

“Ten minutes,” she said solemnly. “Somebody told me once.”

“Somebody should’ve fixed that by now.”