Page 61 of Reckless

“What do you want?”

“You first.”

“Not how this works,” I said, and reached between us.

The first stroke made him gasp. The second made him curse. By the third he was gone—his back bowing off the bed, his hands fisting in my hair, his release hot between our stomachs. I watched his face the whole time. His mouth shaped my name without spilling a sound. He squeezed his dark eyes closed. He came with his mouth open, breathing hard, his body tensing before shaking around me.

I followed him over. Buried my face in his neck and let it take me—a wave that started in my spine and rolled outward, leaving nothing behind but heat and light and the taste of Robbie’s skin against my lips.

His hands slid from my hair to my shoulders.

I pulled out carefully and collapsed beside him. Our legs tangled. The rain kept falling. The sheets smelled of sweat and sex and lemongrass.

Robbie turned his head on the pillow. His hair was a mess. His lips were swollen. He looked thoroughly wrecked and completely peaceful.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello.”

“That was⁠—”

“I know.”

He laughed, a huff of breath that moved the hair on my forehead.

I reached up and traced the line of his jaw, my fingers brushing over the nick he’d left from shaving. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been holding my breath my whole life and finally let it out.”

I pulled him closer. He came, fitting himself against my side the way he had last night, his cheek finding the hollow of my shoulder, his arm draping across my waist.

“Stay,” I said.

“I was planning on it.”

“Good.”

We lay like that while the rain softened to a drizzle and the room grew dark. I thought about the record still spinning on the turntable, the needle stuck in the run-out groove, the soft shh-shh-shh of vinyl turning under the stylus. I thought about Neal, faintly, fleetingly, with both regret and gratitude. And I thought about Robbie, his breathing slow and even against my chest. His hand curled loose on my stomach. His future—our shared future—stretching out ahead of us like the long road from the farm to the mill, with all of it, every inch, waiting to be walked.

“I love you,” I said. I hadn’t planned on saying the words and yet here they were, as unexpected as Robbie Finch himself had been.

Robbie went still against me. Then he lifted his head and looked at me. The light from the lamp caught the wetness in his eyes, the raw red at the rims.

“You mean that?”

“I mean it.”

He held my gaze for a long moment. Then he lowered his head to my chest and pressed his lips to the skin over my heart.

“I love you too,” he said. “I’ve never said that to anyone.”

“I know.”

“I was afraid I’d never get to.”

I tightened my arm around him. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

He didn’t answer; he didn’t need to. His body said everything—the weight of him against my side, the slow drag of his thumb across my ribs, the way his breathing synced with mine until we were one heartbeat in the dark.