“Take me inside.”

“I will take you. Inside,” he says, laughing and opening the door behind me so we half-tumble out together and he has to crawl awkwardly out of my side of the car, practically laying me down on the sidewalk. Anyone walking by would think we were drunk.

Is that what this is?

It’s chemistry, I know that for sure, something numbing and piercing at once, something that makes me feel like I’m alive for the first time and dead in other ways—murdered memories of what anyone else felt like before this man. Murdered memories of what it felt like to be over a hundred miles away.

I know the weight of his hands and body, how he tastes just like me after only two deep kisses, the way his laughs turn into moans, and how he watches my hands when I touch him.

Oliver pulls me up so I’m standing and throws me over his shoulder, charging down the walkway and bursting into the house. He lowers me so that I slide down his front, all along him, and feel his chest and stomach and his cock pressing at me from beneath his jeans. His fingers tickle my waist, he gives me a tiny smile and my shirt is up and off, followed by my bra.

The breeze picks up and the open door squeaks on its hinges, Oliver’s R2-D2 knocker rattling against the wood. The cool air rolls along my skin, over goose bumps that pebble my arms and stomach. I kick the door closed, blocking out the intrusion of this one additional string left loose and untended. Quiet seals up around us, and then all I can hear is the soft sound of Oliver kissing up my neck.

His hands curve over my breasts, my waist, my hips. My pants are unbuttoned and sweetly coaxed down my legs.

I never want to run out of clothes because every time he peels something away, he kisses me lower, hums against the skin, and bites just the smallest bit. It’s like having lust uncorked and poured in bubbly streams across my skin.

“You’re soft in all the best places.” His voice turns to smoke against my skin as he kneels, pulling my underwear down my legs one tiny inch at a time. “Even sweeter than you are soft.”

His mouth finds my breast, nibbling and blowing across the tips while his hands are busy helping me step out of my underwear. The entryway light is on and he looks up at me, whispering, “You like having your tits sucked?”

I nod, bracing my hands on his shoulders, right there, mere feet from his front door. I push into his mouth and wonder how I’m standing naked and he’s fully clothed, and I feel like I can’t move because I don’t ever want him to stop what he’s doing . . . but I want more. I grow heavy, desire filling the space beneath my skin until I can’t help but beg out loud. He smiles as he kisses me and moves to the other, neglected breast, licking in long draws of his tongue until he gives me what I really want: the closing of his lips around me, the delicious relief of suction.

I stare down at him, at his mess of brown hair brushing against my skin and kiss-swollen lips playing with my breast.

“Is this really happening?

Oliver nods, drawing his tongue across my nipple—like he’s licking an ice-cream cone—and then sucks it so deep into his mouth I wonder if he might consume me. My breasts spill from his hands and he licks and bites whatever he can’t hold. It’s a frenzy; my body has been waiting days for this and has no patience now.

“Fuck.” My fingers curl into his hair and he pulls back, looking up at my face as his fingers stroke the inside of my thigh. I make fists in his shirt, pull it over his head, and relish the slide of my palms over his wide shoulders as he kisses my navel, my hip.

I don’t want to do this here.

I take a step backward, and then one more, and he’s up, following me down the hall with his hands on my hips and his mouth on mine and he’s telling me I’m so fucking sweet, he wants me so much.

The world tilts and his bed is soft beneath my back.

The panel shows him looking down at her. She’s wide open: the first day with these new eyes. He would take a bite out of her if he could.

Oliver takes his glasses off and sets them on the table near the bed. He braces his hand at my hip, gazing down, letting his gaze move over every part of me. In my peripheral vision, I can see my chest rising and falling but I can’t tear my attention from his face.

I remember the time he made me laugh so hard I spit-sprayed Diet Coke all over his Hellraiser T-shirt.

I remember the time he ran up to the loft to show me the Detective Comics 31 someone sold him.

I remember when he said “I do,” even though he didn’t.

I remember leaning on the kitchen counter, sipping coffee, watching him sleep on the couch.

“What’s going on in that mind of yours?”

I’m trying not to panic, obsess, fall too fast, too deep.

“I’m feeling things,” I whisper.

He bends, speaking against my stomach as he kisses it. “What kind of things?”

“Panicky things.”

I can feel his smile. “Let them go.”

I close my eyes, threading my hand into his hair. How can such happiness push a sharp spike through my lungs?

“It’s good,” he promises, kissing down to my hip. “I’ve wanted this for months. And I know you feel the same. I love you. I feel you thinking it every time I say it, in the way your hands find some part of me to hold on to.”

His fingers move between my legs, slide down over my clit, barely dipping into me. It’s a luxury, doing this, feeling this, being here. It’s a luxury to have all night, to have nothing but this thing between us to tend to. He strokes me, soft at first, so slowly, and then he speeds up as my breath catches and my legs open wider, him kissing his way to my mouth, asking quietly if I like it, if his fingers feel good. I nod, arching from the bed, working my body closer, wishing his pants were off so I could feel the thick weight of him in my hand and pushing inside me.

I don’t know what he’s doing with his fingers but it’s fast and slippery and I’m so close, almost there, everything is turning transparent and—

His hand leaves me for a split second and then I feel the stinging bite of his fingers spanking me there.

The panel shows the earth, split in two.

He swallows my shocked gasp with a deep kiss, covering my mouth and groaning when heat melts into a fevered need for more and he feels me arch under him, shuddering.

“Oh, God.”

He exhales something between a sigh and a “Yeah?” against my lips and strokes me gently again for several soft, slow kisses before he spanks me again three times, fast and sharp.

The next time his fingers circle gently across my clit, I’m crying out, filled with something warm and silver and it bursts out of me, sliding over my skin and filling my blood with smoke. He strokes me satisfyingly hard, eyes wide as he watches me come. When I close my eyes and melt into the mattress below me, he ducks, kissing my neck, hand trailing over to my thigh to spread me even wider.

“You liked that,” he says, lips finding my jaw. “I spanked your pussy and you liked it.”

I moan, wanting his mouth on mine, the odd reassurance of it.

“You’re filthy,” he praises, licking my lower lip. “You’re glorious.”

I sit up, pulling him between my legs and going to work on his belt, his button fly, shoving his pants down his hips with impatient hands. My mouth is watering and his hands brace on my shoulders, ready. His cock juts in front of me, thick to the point of excessive, and I feel the way his torso clenches when I pull his foreskin back, bend and lick around the crown, sucking.

I’ve only given a few blow jobs in my life and each time it was such a conscious effort filled with so much thought—

is it good,

oh, God, my jaw is sore,

will I have to swallow?