He exhales a low curse, pressing his mouth to the skin just below my ear. “Fuck,” he says again.

When I roll my hips under him, pulling him even deeper, he stops me with a rough hand on my hip. “Wait. I’m too—”

I still beneath him, except for the slow roaming of my palms up his back when he pushes himself up onto his hands. It’s the most surreal feeling, to feel joined to someone else like this. Not just rutting or moving together but actually connected.

With a slow exhale, he pulls back slightly and pushes in, groaning and giving in to the act as he starts to really move.

And I find I was wrong: slow and deep is just as perfect as Oliver’s frenzied fucking.

I’m amazed how he looks, moving over me. I’ve seen him from every angle a friend could see: standing side by side, seated across a table, in my car or his, on my floor while I’ve sketched him. I’ve even had my head in his lap looking up at him, and seen him roll out from beneath my car after he’s checked a suspicious leak. But I’ve never seen him like this. Naked, damp with sweat, with his hands propped beside my neck as he stares down the length of our bodies, watching himself. Arms flexed, lip snared between his teeth . . . enjoying just looking, feeling as he slides lazily forward and back.

I close my eyes, let out a tight choked breath, and his body snaps forward, so deep.

“Lola. Fuck. I . . .”

My hands find his hips, guiding him when he falters and I want him closer, want all of that skin on mine, sliding up and over and all around in me. One hand trails up his side, to his shoulder and around to his neck, pulling, urging him lower.

Oliver bends, his hair brushing my forehead. “I can’t. I can’t believe it. I can’t stop looking at you.”

He’s so hard inside, stilling as he catches his breath, and I know it’s more from emotion that he’s lost it in the first place. This time certainly isn’t rigorous sex. It’s so slow it’s almost embarrassingly intimate.

Still, I would have expected to feel self-conscious to look him in the eye while he’s inside me. He seems even more naked without his glasses. But it’s not weird, not even a little, and in an explosive burst of emotion I adore him so acutely it’s nearly painful. This is the man I’ve spent nearly every day with, joking, talking, unloading my triumphs and fears. Without warning, my body clutches him, needing, and he groans, finally bending his elbows and carefully lowering his chest to mine.

“Did you know how long I wanted this?” he asks.

I smile into his neck, before sucking it gently. “No. Harlow says I’m so oblivious it’s painful.”

He laughs, and when I laugh, too, he gasps and pulls his hips back, nearly leaving my body before he slides back in. So deep.

“I didn’t think you were interested,” I admit. “I asked you to sleep with me that night, you know.”

He stills, kissing my shoulder. “When I met you, I didn’t think you were the kind of girl I’d fall for, because of the Vegas situation. Then you were the kind of girl I’d fall for.” His mouth makes its way up my neck, to my ear. “And then you were the girl I was falling for. I didn’t want our story to start in some cheesy-ass Vegas bullshit. I didn’t want to fuck you that night in some crusty hotel room. That’s the quickest way to ruin something, by rushing in like that.”

“Not for our gang.”

He growls out a little laugh. “True.”

I kiss his neck, sucking. He tastes so good, he’s firm and warm and I imagine biting down onto the smooth, strong skin.

“I’ve loved you for a while now,” he says. So simply. God, it’s so bare and straightforward and it makes me want to be brave.

I’m terrified of loving him.

I don’t know how to keep it from happening, though.

“You don’t have to say it back,” he adds in a whisper before kissing the corner of my mouth, and I can tell he’s sincere.

“I’ve had feelings for a while, too,” I say, and it sounds like a lame admission but it feels big. I love him for so many reasons, I’m not sure my heart is ready for that kind of love yet. The biggest kind of love.

“Have you ever been in love before?” he asks.

I swallow thickly before admitting, “No.”

He hums into my neck, sucking. I want him to move, but I also don’t. I’ve never had a conversation like this at a café or in a car, let alone while someone was over me, inside me, moving in a way that makes me want to beg.

“Can I make you come again?” he murmurs, sliding closer to kiss me, and I hear his smile in the words. His mouth moves from mine and down, sucking at my jaw. “And then we can talk some more?”

I nod and he shifts over me, back and in, kissing my chin, my cheek, and then my mouth, his hand sliding into my hair and the other at my hip to hold me in place as he begins to move harder, in earnest. I’m seeing this side of him that feels dirty and secretive: his firm hands, the deep shove of his body in mine, his unapologetically wild mouth. Someday we’ll sit with all of our friends and talk about mundane everyday things while the entire time I’ll remember the way he tilts my hips, greedily thrusting into me, fingers slipping between us to rub me, his rasping voice, accent thicker with pleasure when he tells me to keep fucking up into him, that it feels so good he might keep me spread under him all night.

He talks about how soft my thighs are, how warm and slippery I feel.

He rolls to his side, fucking me hard with my leg over his hip, and he grunts hoarsely with every deep, hard shove. Biting my neck, he wonders absently how it’s even possible my cunt feels better than it tastes.

My skin ignites, shock and lust curling tight inside me at his words.

He grates across my clit again and again, each time with more intent, and I can tell he knows exactly how close I am when he pulls back to watch, his eyes so close to mine, teeth pressed to my jaw as he growls out tiny sounds of encouragement.

I close my eyes under the weight of the looming explosion, but he bites down into my jaw, hissing an Open, and cupping my ass, rocking me up into him.

I gasp, my wide, thrilled eyes meeting his calm, knowing ones and an electric storm builds in me, curling my spine and pulling my legs apart. He groans when he feels me go off like a bomb all around him. A million tiny eternities pass with his teeth pressed roughly against my jaw, my body liquefying beneath him.

The panel shows the girl dissolving into a sky full of stars.

“Lola,” he gasps, hips faltering and then gaining speed, and if he ever managed to iron out that accent I would crumble.

He grunts into my neck, hand moving up my body, gripping my breast somehow too hard and just right and then he’s moaning, “I’m coming . . . fuck, here I come,” and I feel him shake over me, pushing deep. The sound he makes when he does—a choking, rasping approximation of my name—carves itself deep into my heart.

I can hear the ocean in the silence that follows. The distant hum of cars, a palm frond scratching against the side of the house in the wind. Oliver’s breath is warm and rapid against my neck, his hand sliding up over my breast and down my waist, along the curve of my hip, my thigh, to my knee, and then back again, over and over, as if measuring me with long, sure sweeps of his hand.

“I don’t need you to love me yet, Lola, but I can’t do casual with you,” he whispers when my eyes open and I return to orbit. “I’m completely in love with you and if this is only—”

My heart catches high in my throat and squeezes so tight I cough. “It’s not. It’s not casual.”

Oliver’s eyes stall on my lips, and he grins with relief, kissing me once, softly, before pulling out of me, pushing the covers back, and sliding the condom off. He reaches for a tissue and I watch him the entire time; there’s so much man to his movements: the easy comfort he has touching his own cock, knowing exactly what to do with the condom, the shadow of dark hair on his chest, the muscular line of his shoulders as he turns and climbs back between the sheets with me. His hand slides down over my stomach and between my legs, where I’m still warm from the friction of him pounding into me. I love the possessive flat plane of his palm, the confident command of his fingers when he touches me.