“Yes.”
His shoulders slowly lose all of that back-rigid tension as he approaches me, hands landing loosely on my hips. “We don’t have to do anything, it’s not—”
I cut him off with a kiss, sighing when his hand comes up to gently cup my jaw. This kiss is careful, testing, as if we’re asking a question, wondering how well we still know this. But it comes to us as easy as breathing, him deepening the kiss, me tugging him back toward the bed.
It’s a little reckless of me, having him here, pulling him down onto the bed with me, and guiding his hips until they’re between my legs, his body surging into me. All I can think is ‘Yes. This’. God, I’ve missed this. I’ve missed the way he pushes open-mouthed kisses to my neck, and I’ve missed the solid length of him, hard and insistent, pressing into my center. I’ve missed the white-hot zing of burning lust I feel when he does. I’ve missed the way his hand snakes up my shirt and grabs a handful of my breast, and I’ve definitely missed the rough groan he muffles into my kiss at the feel of it.
He pulls back when I grab at his shirt, letting me shuck it over his head. His chest is heaving with his every breath, much like mine, and the look on his face when I pull off my own shirt is full of something unguarded and wanting.
He touches me like someone who’s afraid it might be snatched away. Slow and careful, trembling.
I run the tips of my fingers down the hard planes of his chest, over the ripple of his abs, and then hook them into his waistband. “Do you have a condom?”
He stares down at me with hooded eyes, lips wet and red. “Uh.” It seems to take him a moment to shake the fog, eyebrows wrinkling together. “I don’t know.” Before I can question that, he reaches back, sliding his wallet from his pocket. I know the answer just from the relief in his eyes when he peers into one of the folds, but he pulls it out with a victorious smirk.
We finish undressing one another slowly, and I’m not sure if it’s because we want to take our time, or because we’re both weirdly nervous. Either way, it seems like it takes hours before his fingers finally make their way up my bare thighs, hooking into the elastic of my panties. He holds my gaze as he slides them off and keeps pinning me there as his fingers find my bare center, fingers sliding into my wet folds.
I spread my legs and bite my lip, letting my eyes close at the feel of him. His mouth drops to my neck, breath washing warm across my skin as he kisses the skin below my ear. Suddenly, the world seems very small, reduced down to all the places we’re separated; narrowed in on the way he feels, hard and eager against my thigh; shrunken down to the curl of his shoulder as his arm works between us, fingers sending me to the edge and back again.
I have to nudge him impatiently before he finally opens the condom and rolls it carefully over the hard length of himself. He holds my gaze as he pushes inside, and I can tell by the strained, desperate look on his face that this isn’t going to last long.
He can probably tell by the look on mine that it really, really won’t need to.
He makes a ragged sound when he’s fully seated, elbows digging caverns into the bed as they bracket my head, and I feel like all the air has been sucked right out of my chest. He moves in these short, grinding thrusts that make me dig my fingers into his back, biting hard on my lip to keep myself quiet. He watches me with those heavy gray eyes, and we haven’t lost this—the crackling intensity that’s all at once thrilling and terrifying—only now, it’s a different kind of fear.
It’s not long before I feel my toes curling with the mounting pleasure blooming in the pit of my core. I know he feels it, too, by the way he rocks into me, punctuating every thrust of his hips with a lingering push against me, the friction bringing me right to the precipice.
My orgasm hits me with a sharp gasp into his mouth, eyes slamming closed with the overwhelming tide of it. I feel him following me, hips crashing mindlessly into mine as I swallow his rough groan.
Later, we catch our breath while curled into one another, having tucked myself beneath his arm, head resting on his shoulder. We stay on top of the blankets, leaving it all bare. He curls his fingers and brushes his knuckles over the side of my breast, eyes heavy, as if lost deep in thought.
“Hey,” I whisper, reaching up to run my fingertips over his new beard. “What are you thinking about?”
Instantly, and without any shame, he answers, “Your tits.” He looks up when I laugh, mouth curving into a smile. “Well, you asked.” After a beat, he adds, “I’m also thinking about how you burned my list. You have no idea how long that took me.”
I shrug. “I’m not sorry.”
“Now there’s a list I can give you, right off the top of my head,” he says, fingers carding through my hair. “Things I’m not sorry for.”
I peer up at him, exhausted and yet somehow too excited to fully fall into sleep. “Is this going to be more stuff about fourth grade?”
His chest bounces with a soft laugh. “Nah, it’s only got one thing.” He pushes a kiss into my hair and lingers there, inhaling. “I’m not sorry for falling in love with you.”
My breath stutters and stalls, and then escapes me in a hard whoosh. If I could find a way to put it into words, I’d explain that breathless swooping-chest feeling to him, that I know what it is, and what it means, and how much I want to keep it safe. Because when you’re running with a Devil, you might get tattered and torn and broken and bruised.
“Neither am I.”
Alternatively, the Devil may care.
Epilogue
“Congratulations!”
I’ve heard the word so many times, it’s starting to do that thing where it stops sounding like an actual word in your head. Nevertheless, every time I hear it, I feel pride swell in my chest. Earning Valedictorian wasn’t easy—not when you’ve got Hamilton Bates chasing your tail the whole time.
Literally and figuratively.
“One tenth of a point,” he reminds me constantly. Ironically, the class that pushed me over the edge was Dr. Ross’. He thinks I had the upper hand because I sit in the front of the class, “wearing those little goddamned skirts every day. It’s a fucking miracle I came in second place.”