Page 85 of The Sweetest Return

“There you go.”

Her eyes met mine.

“Better?”

“Yes.”

I pushed in deeper, slow enough to feel every place she had to make room for me. Her mouth opened on a quiet sound, and I stopped again, jaw tight, chest tight, my whole body shaking with the effort it took not to move like instinct wanted me to.

“Tell me if that changes.”

“It won’t.”

There went that confidence again.

I smiled and kissed her, and when her body finally softened enough to take the rest of me, I held still.

All the way in.

Her pussy clenched around me like she could not decide whether to let go or keep every inch.

My breath left me rough.

“Dre,” she whispered.

“I know.”

I did.

I felt all of it.

How much trust was in the way she looked at me. How much want was in the way her body held me. How much restraint it took to stay still while she was wrapped around my dick, wet and tight and mine in a way I did not have enough sense to be casual about.

I waited until her hand slid up the back of my neck and her hips moved beneath me again.

Only then did I start moving.

Small strokes at first. Barely leaving her. Letting her feel me without losing me. She started telling me what she liked instead of making me drag every answer out of her, and I listened. I told her what I noticed. She got wetter every time I did, tightening around me like she wanted to prove my point.

I learned that too.

Beneath all the heat, beneath how good she felt and how badly I wanted to lose myself in it, something quieter kept moving through me.

This was Imani.

The woman who argued with professors and remembered my mother’s birthday. The woman who knew when my shoulder hurt before I admitted it. The woman who looked at my future and kept asking where I existed inside it. She was under me now, trusting me with something she could never give anyone twice, and the responsibility of that didn’t make me feel trapped.

It made me want to be better.

I lowered my forehead to hers.

“I love you.”

Her eyes filled. “I love you too.”

I kissed her before either of us got too soft to survive it, and when she came again, she was looking directly at me. I held her through it, watching pleasure take over her face, feeling her body pulse around me until I couldn’t hold back anymore.

I followed her with my mouth at her temple and her name caught somewhere in my chest.