He was silent, letting me find my way, letting me look at him, and kiss him. Taste and touch. Soft and slow. Until finally I ducked my head and licked him from root to tip. I stopped and looked up, only to find him watching me with hot, deep eyes.

Approval and affection and respect poured off of him. It rained down on me and I knew…without a shadow of a doubt that I was in real trouble.

Real. Trouble.

I would leave this house in a few hours and go back to the trailer to sort out my life, to get back on my feet. I was going to go back to being Annie McKay. But I would be leaving a part of myself here—a part of myself I liked, and I didn’t know if I would ever get that back. Or find it again.

My pleasure was now tinged with a kind of grief that made it sharper. Sweeter. It twisted harder inside of me.

Good pain. It was all a kind of good pain. It was happiness pushed as far as it would go.

Feeling his eyes on me, I ducked my head and slipped him past my lips. The head of his cock slid across the top of my mouth and then touched the softer muscles at the back of my throat.

“Oh God, Annie…”

I slipped him out of my mouth. “Is that…is this okay?”

“So good, baby. You’re killing me.”

I smiled up at him, at the bright color in his cheeks, the heat in those dark eyes, and then took him again, into my mouth.

He took my hand and wrapped it around the base of his cock. He squeezed my fingers until I was holding him hard in my hand. Sucking him hard in my mouth. My lips stretched tight around him.

His hand left mine and then touched my ear and then the back of my head and he pushed me, just a little, into him. Pushing me just a little past what was comfortable.

I hummed in my throat, hoping he got that I liked that. That I wanted that.

I looked up at him, just to be sure he understood, and he put both hands in my hair, the strands tangling on calluses, caught between fingers. The small licks of pain adding to the fire building inside of me.

He stopped me, pushed me back, which I resisted, because I wasn’t done. Because there was a whole world of experience I was aching to have. Right now. With him.

“I want to fuck you,” he said and the words, God, his words, made me crazy and he slipped out of my mouth with a pop. A string of saliva between my mouth and him.

“Yes,” I breathed. “Yes.” Yes to all of it. Yes to everything.

He tore out of his clothes. The white shirt thrown over his head, revealing a tattoo on his chest. The other half was pink with scar tissue.

His chest, stomach, and arms were thick with muscles.

If he wanted, he could hold me in one hand. That was the sense I got, anyway. He could hold me or tear me apart—with one hand.

“Take off your clothes,” he said, and then jumped over the couch, heading for the other hallway.

I was astounded to see that I still had my top on. I ripped it over my head and lay down on the couch, which felt like butter, soft against my skin.

How odd to be lying down in this strange room in front of a wall full of windows when I couldn’t do it in my own trailer, the curtains shut.

Suddenly shy, I sat up, looking for my underwear.

He came back into the room and stepped around the couch to stand beside me. He had a silver strip of condoms in his teeth. Watching me, he pushed down his pants and stepped out of them. His boots had been kicked off in his bedroom. He tore one condom off the strip and tossed the others down on the ottoman.

I reached for him, touching the bottom of the soft sac behind his penis, and he twitched and then reached for me, skipping my thigh, skipping everything but the heart of me.

His fingers spread my folds and then slid right inside of me.

I gasped. Arched. My breasts shimmied with the motion.

He added another finger and I groaned.

“It’s good?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s going to be better when it’s my cock. I’m going to fill you all the way up, Annie.”

“Hurry,” I breathed. He ripped the condom open with his teeth and pushed it on and then sat down at my feet on the couch.

“Come here,” he murmured. And I must have moved too slowly because he pulled me up into his lap. He pulled me so hard I practically flew against him. He kissed me, deep and hard. And I kissed him back just as hard. Just as frantic.

And then he grabbed my ass. Grabbed all my ass he could. Grabbed my ass like he wanted to rob it.

“Oh God, oh my God. Please, do something. I need you to do something,” I whispered into his neck. “Or I’m going to do it myself.” I reached my hand down my body like I was going to make myself come, but he grabbed my hand and held it behind my back.

I leaned away from his neck, looked him in the eye.

“Lift yourself up,” he said.

And I did, wobbling a little against his chest.

With his free hand he reached behind me and then slowly began pushing me down onto him and I felt him…there at my pussy. Too hard. Too big.

I cried out. Moaned. Suddenly scared. Suddenly worried. I tried to climb off of him.

“Does it hurt?”

“Too…it’s too much.”

“Go slow. Take me slow.”

I shook my head.

“Annie, baby, look at me,” he said. And when our eyes met the fear was gone. The worry evaporated. It was just us. And he cared.

“Do you want to stop?”

I shook my head, words beyond me.

The hand on my shoulder did not hold me or force me. It was just…there. Letting me set the pace. Which was slow, my body accepting his inch by inch. And what had seemed foreign was just…right.

“It’s never felt like this before,” I whispered.

Sweat poured off of me. Pooled between us. We were slick and we were heaving. And his patience and my trust made this something totally new.

Finally, I was seated hard against him. Our hips so tight it nearly hurt, and I was gasping with every breath.

“Now what?”

He smiled. “Hold on,” he whispered. My head was too heavy to hold up, my body too cumbersome to control, so I put my head down on his neck and let him do it. Let him move me. He grabbed onto my hips, pushing and pulling me against him in a slow, hard grind.

I could feel him inside of me, brushing up against nerve endings I didn’t know existed, creating a kind of burn I’d never dreamed of. But when he pulled me toward him, he pushed up against my clit, creating the pressure I loved, and the combination of the two things with the heat of him, the strength of him all around me…very soon, it wasn’t enough anymore.

I shifted harder against him and I could feel his breath catch, felt it in my chest cavity. And suddenly it was game over.

He tilted us sideways and laid me out on that couch, my legs spread wide around his hips, my hands on his shoulders.

“You okay?” he breathed through clenched teeth.

“Good. So good.”

He pulled out, almost all the way, and then pushed back into me. Again. Harder.

“Still good?” he asked.

All I could do was nod and clutch at his back, his body, try to hold on as the seas rose around us.

He growled, swearing under his breath, and then grabbed onto the arm of the couch, using it for leverage as he began to pound into me.

“Touch yourself,” he told me.

“No,” I said, because what was happening was new. What was happening was different. “I’m going to come. Just like this. Keep. Just…. ”

I didn’t have to tell him twice. He pounded into me three more times, each time so deep, impossibly deep, and then I was coming, unraveling beneath him. My nails digging into his back.

“Oh…fuck. Annie,” he cried, and then he buried himself inside of me and came.

I held onto him, stroking his hair, his back, the scars on his neck, and wondered what happened after something like this?

How was I supposed to still be Annie McKay after this?