But at the end of the day, I’m a practical gal.

He’s practically the sexiest thing I have ever encountered, and I am going to practically do whatever I practically can for as long as he is willing.

He reaches the top of the red line.

I want him to cross it.

“Mmmm,” I hear myself say. “I bet your lips would make everything feel better.”

With my words, he bows his head against me. His grip tightens around my waist.

“Isn’t there something in your way?” My voice sounds suddenly lower to my own ears.

“Yes,” he whispers.

Oh, my…why is this actually working?

“What do you need to do? Want? Tell me.” Slowly, I run a hand though his hair again and again.

“I need…to take off your clothes. I want…I want to…” he breathes into me.

I run my hand up under his jaw. “Want what?” My voice is low, slow. “Tell me.”

His hand at my thigh moves up and twists around my panties. “I want to take these off and spread you open and taste you and tongue you and feel you come apart.”

Gah. Thoroughly outlined. Well done, Canon.

I wrap a hand around the one he has at my waistband and encourage him to pull down. His other hand slides around to help, and I move my hands out of his way.

The panties fall into the ever-growing pile. I feel his breath. He kisses and slides his palms up my sides.

There is probably something I should say now to keep this little scene going, but I’m rather focused on not doing a header onto the sofa.

He presses his lips to my inner thigh, his breath swirls inward, and I pull his hair reflexively. He angles and does it again before he speaks. “Let me take you to bed.” I think my ears trick me into hearing a “please.”

The light hairs along his arm graze my palm as I travel from shoulder to forearm to hand. My fingers drag over his lifeline to reach his fingers, their tips. I curl and hold his fingers, and they curl into mine. Though I wish he would put himself out there, pull me, I pull him and step toward the bedroom, and I feel him shift and rise to follow me.

A half-naked Alaric Canon is following me to his bed. Forget buckling knees or not doing a header, this…this is a bona fide miracle.

I’m afraid to breathe. Afraid to upset whatever astrological alignment has set this in motion. Wherever you are, dear butterfly, keep flapping your chaotic wings. Flap them. Flap them like your little life depends upon it…or at least my little death.

Save for moonlight filtered through the curtain, the bedroom is dark. His feet pad along the carpet behind me.

Next to the bed, I stop; I need to turn and face him. Face this.

I’m not able to make myself turn.

I reach back behind me and find him. Stretching until I feel his arms, then sliding down them until I can feel his wrists and hold them.

I can’t get over the feel of his skin on mine. Warm. Smooth. Real.

I pull forward, and he steps flush against me, his every breath pushing against my spine. My hands travel to cover his, palm to back, and I place one on my abdomen and hold it there while I guide the other beneath the front of my shirt and drag it up my body until it brushes under the swell of my breast.

His breaths burn my neck. I press his hands into my flesh, then leave them there as I arch back and bring my arms around his shoulders and bend until I feel his hands stir. He twists to cup my breast as his lower thumb traces where my thigh ends and the rest of me begins.

As if I think he’s asking needlessly for permission, I grant it. “Yes.”

If I thought we were flush before, I was wrong. He pulls me against him, into him. Palms my breasts.

Yeah, just palms. I’m not big enough for his whole hand. Few would be. His hands are big. Huge.

Big hands include long fingers, a fact of which I’m reminded when the cupping between my legs turns to delving.

Oh, yeah, well, hey now…there. Right there. Oh, please—keep going…or there…up there. Yeah, that works, too…Jesus, I…whoa…I guess there works too…I concede, you know better than…more…holy…wow…All those times my knees threatened to give, to stop supporting me, they weren’t crying wolf; I would collapse if I didn’t have my fingers entwined behind his neck.

I need to lie down. Before I fall down.

I break away and sit back on the bed, and he seems almost worried, but I pull him to me and he drops and hits the floor and ends up looking up at me, hands roaming my skin.

Beautiful. He is gloriously, scandalously, incandescently beautiful.

I want to hold him.

And never let go.

It scares me.

Get back on task. I find a word. “Now.”

He descends into the shadows.

Oh. Okay, so that is what we’re doing. I can barely see his outline. Um, all right. I bless the darkness and hope it hides whatever shows on my face.

“This is not something I have ever been into,” I hear myself say. That is a bit too real. A trip down a memory lane of lame lovers. Wow, over-share much? I know I need to cover my slip. Distract him. “Convince me.” I pull his hair without reason. It spurs him.

Oh, holy night…I have been wondering about this. A niggling. Rooting around in my brain. Why would he need pushing? Act like he needs it? The concern has been there, but I have not wanted to consider it. It would be unfair to have such a pretty package and nothing inside. To look like a sex god but be sans skill set.

Not. An. Issue.

I don’t know exactly what he’s doing down there, and I don’t really care just so long as he keeps doing it for a long, long time and—

Then he adds fingers into the mix. Where was I…what was I thinking?

Each pass and pull works together to remove and erase the fumbling of past visitors who should now, in whatever clouded corner they inhabit, hang their heads in collective shame. Adam with his kitten licks. Paul rubbing out a fire.

My feet on his lower back. Hands in his hair. I trace his eyes.

Now I’m fucking writhing. Writhing! I have zero idea of the logistics of what he is doing, and I think I’ve given up trying to figure it out. Just for all the peonies in Pennsylvania let him keep doing it, and I will endeavor to stay focused on that and pay no heed to how I’m beginning to tear apart at the seams.

Because I am. I’m going to lose it and start saying some pretty embarrassing, revealing things.

Like exactly who I have pictured when sealing the deal solo for the past year.

One hint.

I want to stay staid. In control.

When my hips start to surge forward, I force them back, deep into the mattress. I want to pull his hair and grind against his face and hope he has learned to breathe through his ears. I force my hands to the sheets, nails into the mattress.

It is a losing battle.

Then I am lost. I’m shouting and moaning and maybe channeling sounds I haven’t uttered since sophomore year Latin class. Salve o magister…Is est Olympus quod abyssus…

The Latin word for male genitalia eludes me…

…it might be genitalia…

My breath remains gasps. He looks at me, eyes sparkling in the window light.

I want to kiss him.

But I don’t.

That doesn’t seem to be what we do.

My hand touches his face. The reverence he seemed to give me yesterday, I return to him.

I notice he is not still. Rocking. Rutting into the mattress.

I peel my shirt off, lean back on my elbows, and point to my chest. “Here.”

His pants go away, and he moves over me, and I try not to be too damned obvious in my perusal—that is the polite word for it—as I devour him with my eyes.

He sits back on his heels, straddles my chest.

That’s where his eyes are fixed anyway.

My tits.

He studies. His shadowed face looks nearly pained.

I hold his hand and bring it over where his gaze has frozen. “Hold me.” As the words leave me, his hand envelopes, thumb easing across, teasing to a point.