The way she moved when she was in her element only made it better.

“You’re so pretty, Cal,” I whispered, grabbing one of her hips with an open hand and settling the other palm on her warm back. “I don’t think I’ve really told you that, but it’s true. From the very first moment you glared at me, your eyes have been my undoing.”

Speaking of the devils, they narrowed playfully at the use of the word ‘glared’.

Still she said nothing as we lay there with our legs intertwined and touching, and as the silence stretched on, my curiosity started to over-ripen and bruise with worry.

“Callie?” I asked softly, wrapping my palm around the curve of her cheek.

Leaning forward, she touched her lips to mine, speaking with them there in the same way that I often did.

“Make love to me, Nik,” she breathed on one soft exhale.

My eyes squeezed painfully shut before prying themselves open again.

Sweet Christ Almighty.

“Here?”

“Here,” she nodded, resolute. “Right now.”

“Cal—”

“I want to know how it’s supposed to feel,” she interrupted on a silky whisper, touching the very tip of her delicate nose to my large one.

I wasn’t ashamed to admit a full body shiver made quick work of my six foot tall frame.

“God, Cal.”

Pain from consideration splintered in my rational mind and indecision warred in my belly, but one team was fighting with an intensity that the other side had not one chance of matching.

I figured it had a hell of a lot to do with redirection of blood flow.

“I want to go on record as having said this is a bad idea.”

Her eyes made an understated revolution before her lips settled softly atop mine once more. “You’re hereby absolved of responsibility.”

I shook my head in response, knowing I’d go head to head with any challenge whether I’d been the brain behind the idea or not. Especially one where I was able but completely unwilling to say no.

“Unnecessary,” I murmured as I sealed her lips to mine, bringing a hand to the back of her exposed neck and pulling her even closer. “This is one action I find undeniably worth any and all consequences.”

My only concern now was making it good for her. Making her feel comfortable and cared for and taking the super shitty reality of her first time and replacing it with memory much worthier of keeping.

She giggled as I rolled her, trapping her small body under mine and shifting my hardening hips directly into hers.

My hands went straight to her hips, digging and scraping and trying to get under a hem that wasn’t there.

“Of course you would have to be wearing the world’s most impossible garment for achieving skin to skin contact,” I grumbled as I kissed her neck, inhaling the smell of apples and citrus that seemed to seep from her skin. She’d been sweating and working all day, but she smelled as appealing as ever, and I was convinced that was another one of God’s well-thought-out plans.

Not only was olfaction big in sensory memory, it was a scientific aphrodisiac, literally endearing you to people biologically matched to you.

Okay, I didn’t have any actual research on the subject, but I could have sworn I’d seen an article about it at some point.

Callie’s scent called to me, begging me to get closer, to burrow my way inside her skin and get as close as possible.

“There’s skin everywhere,” she disagreed through a laugh, her bare legs and arms curling around me with meaning.

And there was.

But it wasn’t the skin that I wanted.

“You sure you want to do this here?” I asked, shaking my brain inside my head when it hinted at the fact that we (me, my brain, and my dick) didn’t want to stop.

“Yeah,” she confirmed quietly, nodding and slipping the strap of her leotard off of one smooth shoulder.

Knowing how tricky it was to get out of one of those damn things, I helped her slide her entire arm out and then repeated the process on the other side.

Languidly, fabric scraping softly over each nerve and eliciting goosebumps, I slid the rest of the leotard down. Past her hard-peaked chest, over the line of each rib, along the smooth ridges of her muscled abs, over the defined bones of her hips, and down the line of her toned legs.

Her turned on eyes followed me the whole way, meeting mine when I was done with an intensity and security that astonished me.

The dichotomy between the trust she showed me and the skepticism she showed everyone else humbled me. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve it.

“Why me?” I asked quietly, the desire to know outweighing everything and anything else in that moment.

Callie was, of course, confused. She hadn’t been inside of my head to follow the same thought path I had.

“Why do you trust me?” I clarified, running my hands up her naked legs but focusing directly on her eyes.

They searched for the answer as she did, studying my face by touching on every part of it.

I knew it wasn’t necessarily a fair or easy question. The complexity behind her reasoning would be hard enough to pinpoint, let alone condense into one, succinct statement.

It would be for me anyway.

“I don’t know.”

I nodded, knowing that I couldn’t be disappointed at the lack of an answer for my difficult pop quiz, but she wasn’t done.

“I guess it’s because you’ve gone to great lengths to see me.”

I smiled.

“And make sure I see you.”

I leaned over, touching my lips to the skin of her abdomen and breathing her in. I felt satisfied. Justified in my intentions and actions.

Pulling my face up and away from her belly, she raised a brow in question.

“Why do you trust me?”

Just one corner of my mouth curved up, knowing I was going to bug the hell out of her.

“Same.”

“Oh!” She smacked my shoulder and shoved at me as I started to laugh. “You cheater! A big, fat, cop-out of a cheater!”

“It’s not my fault you took the good answer first,” I remarked through my chuckle, appealing to her ego and accusation at the same time.

I trapped her hands as she swung at me, taking her arms by the wrists and pinning them to the ground above her head.

Laughter turned serious, and smiling eyes warmed to hot.

My hands slid into hers and our fingers interlaced as I settled my body on top of hers.

Air compressed and moved, vacating the narrowing space between us as I settled my lips onto hers. A sigh escaped through them and floated into mine as she opened herself to me.

My tongue worked in tandem with the slow grinding movement of my hips, caressing the tip of hers and soaking in the feel of it.

She felt incredible, all smooth skin and flexible limbs, and her legs came up to wrap around my waist.

I pulled back, though, not wanting to be trapped for fear that I wouldn’t be able to make myself move again. And we still had too many layers of barrier between us.

Removing myself from her hold slowly and carefully, I sank my butt to my heels and pulled myself up to standing, shedding my shorts and underwear in one smooth movement.

Her eyes rounded from below me. The sight of me naked had either surprised or frightened her, but I was hoping for the first.

“You alright?” I asked.

She gulped and pushed up onto her elbows, thrusting her chest out further into my view without realizing. “Yeah, it’s just…you weren’t naked and then all of a sudden you were.”

“Hah!” I barked with humor. “That’s usually how it works.”

“No, I know. I was just expecting it to go…slower.” Her eyes were alight with mischief and fun and no longer held an air of fear, releasing me from worry and opening up the opportunity to taunt.

“You want me to do a striptease?”

“There’s nothing left,” she pointed out.

I pointed to one of my feet and offered, “I bet I could do a hell of a job making taking off my tape look sexy if you had your heart set on it.”