Caleb situated himself between her legs. “You sure?”

Now that he was here, on top of her, gazing at her in a lush sprawl beneath him, he wasn’t sure he could hold back anymore.

She nodded. “I want to. I’m just scared.”

“Don’t be scared,” he murmured, kissing her, softly at first, and then more deeply and passionately, as the tightly coiled need inside him finally found an outlet.

As they kissed, they started working on their clothing, until Caleb’s pajamas and Kelly’s shirt were tossed over the side of the bed.

Caleb was still hard, and he was so achingly needy now that he wasn’t sure he could last very long. He felt between her legs again, sliding a finger inside her and pumping it to make sure she was still wet enough.

She let out a shaky sigh and gazed up at him, eyes wide and urgent, supple mouth full and deeply red.

“You ready?” he asked thickly.

She nodded, her fingers pressing into his skin as she gripped his shoulders.

Bracing himself on one arm, he lined himself up at her entrance. Pushed into her, grunting as he felt her tight, wet channel clinging to his hard flesh as he sank in deeper.

It was so good. His cock was already pulsing with intensifying pleasure. He froze, squeezing his eyes shut and jerking his head to the side as he fought to control the overwhelming pressure surging through him.

This was different. So different than it had ever been before.

And suddenly he realized one of the reasons why.

With a rough exclamation, he reared up urgently on straightened arms. “Fuck,” he rasped. “The condom.”

Kelly was shifting and shuddering beneath him, and he managed to open his eyes to look at her. She was biting her lip, and her cheeks were deeply flushed. “It’s all right,” she panted. “Birth control is covered. You’re healthy, aren’t you? And we’re not sleeping with anyone else. Right?”

He couldn’t help but release a lingering groan—at the knowledge that he was buried inside her, nothing between them at all. “Yes,” he huffed, tightening his body as he kept struggling for control. “God, Kelly, you feel so good.”

She was squirming now, her full breasts jiggling with her restless motion. “You too. Please move.”

Caleb clenched his jaw and held himself rigid on his arms. He managed to pull his pelvis back and rock into her, feeling a wave of uncontrolled pleasure as he did.

Kelly arched her back and reached beside herself to fumble with the sheets. “Caleb, please,” she whimpered. “Need you. Need this. Need to come.”

Almost growling in response, he jerked his head. Thrust again, his eyes, his ears, his head, his heart, his cock starting to pulse with the cadence of his need. “Fuck, Kelly,” he gritted out, fucking her in urgent little thrusts. “So good. Can’t last long.”

It was almost humiliating, to need her—to need anyone—this much.

But he did.

She must have been pretty far gone herself now, since she was squirming her pelvis ceaselessly against his penetration. “It’s okay,” she gasped, arching her neck and twisting her features with effort. “Just—another minute.”

She reached down beneath his body, which he was holding off of her as much as he could. Her knuckles brushing against the base of his cock in a way that made him shake, she rubbed her clit in fast, little circles, starting to huff out breathless grunts.

Her body started to tighten and her knees drew up beside his hips. He could feel her pussy pulsing around his throbbing cock as he thrust into her with short, clumsy pumps.

Kelly’s face was contorting in pleasure and concentration, and she kept grunting softly as her instinctive motion became more frantic.

Caleb was so close to losing it that his vision blurred over, and he had to stop his motion abruptly.

Kelly was whimpering loudly in shameless need, her hand working frenziedly on her clit. “Caleb!” she almost sobbed. “Caleb, please!”

He took a harsh, painful breath. Drove into her with six more fast, hard pushes.

She arched up, practically coming off the bed, her head tossing to the side and her whole body shuddering with her release, tears streaming from her eyes into her hair.

Caleb almost roared as he felt her hot, hot pussy clenching around him ruthlessly. And he froze as his climax took him, hard and overwhelming.

The spasms of pleasure drew up in his balls and throbbed through his cock. He felt the pulses of his release inside her. He experienced an uncontrollable swelling of primitive pride in claiming her this way.

His elbows buckled, and he collapsed on top of her, panting into her hair and shaking a little. She was holding on to him, her body soft, loving, and pliant beneath him. They didn’t talk for a long time, just clung to each other in needy silence.

Until finally Caleb’s reason and recognition returned. He rolled off her a little, so she wouldn’t have to support his whole weight. His cock was soft and wet, and it slid out of her easily.

Stroking her warm face, he said dryly, “I think I might be out of practice.”

She smiled up at him and caressed his hair. “Well, then we better start practicing more.”

Caleb shook his head in amusement and readjusted until he was on his back, and she was curled up beside him. He didn’t say any more, feeling uncomfortable with anything too mushy.

But he was silently wondering if this was how it felt to be with someone for real.

—

The following evening, he was sitting at the desk in his home office, trying to get through some email before bed when his phone rang.

He stared for several seconds at the screen—the name of the caller—before he clicked over to answer it. “Hey, Moore. It’s been a long time.”

“It has,” Sean Moore replied. He was Caleb’s first supervisor at Vendella. Mentor. Never really a friend.

“What’s going on?” The men never talked for social reasons, so Caleb knew there must be news he needed to hear.

“There may be a problem—with an old project. The one that gave us the most trouble. You know which one I’m talking about.”

Of course Caleb knew.

“What problem?”

“Someone has been looking into it. There have been inquiries. About me.”

Caleb felt a chill run down from the tension at the back of his neck. “What kind of inquiries?”

“I don’t know. I can’t find out the source of them, or even who’s doing the asking, but there have been rumbles. We may need to do something. I don’t have to tell you the fallout if that comes to light.”

“Okay,” Caleb said, moving immediately into mental crisis mode. “I’ll look into it. Keep me posted if you hear anything more.”

After he hung up, he sat for a long time, staring at his phone, thinking urgently, trying to come up with a plan to deal with this new problem.

Caleb had a lot of black marks on his soul. He would be the first to admit it. But nothing else in his history, his past, his career, made him feel so guilty.

He thought about Kelly, who was outside right now, happily throwing Ralph his favorite ball.

She could never know.

She might understand him. She might know the kind of man he was and want to be with him anyway. She might be able to brush off threatened scholarships or threatened Russian gangsters.

But there were limits to what she would be able to overlook, and losing her just wasn’t an outcome he could allow.

He clicked through his documents until he got to the folder of the project in question. There was nothing here. Nothing that could put him or his career in danger. Just reports and budgets and marketing plans.

But there were things that had happened that had never been written on paper.

Caleb wasn’t a good man, and he’d never pretended to be. But there were a few sins that even he wished could be erased from the record of his life.

He stared for a long time at the list of research scientists who had worked on this one project.