Walking down the hall of our old high school with Serena’s hand in mine seemed like a dream. I couldn’t help stealing glances at her, to reassure myself that she wasn’t a figment of my imagination.

I discovered that she was doing the same thing, looking up at me shyly.

“Should I not have done that?” I asked her. My body still vibrated with tension, but I put the asshole out of my head.

She shook her head.

“No I shouldn’t, or no it’s okay?”

She nodded, swinging our clasped hands between us. What the hell did that mean? The woman was infuriating.

With a low growl, I tugged her to the side just before the big glass doors at the entrance. Gently, I pressed her against the tiled wall, right beside an anti-bullying poster.

Oh, the irony.

When I laughed, she turned her head to look.

She giggled. “Oops?” Her head tilted back, lifting her face to mine. “I fantasized about this,” she said softly.

“Me kicking some idiot’s ass?”

“Well, that too. No, this. You, me.” She licked her lips. “I wanted you to kiss me at school.”

My eyebrow lifted. “You wanted me to get beat up?”

“I wanted everyone to see what I saw in you. That you were smart, kind, sensitive—”

“You’re making me sound like a pussy, Serena.”

She touched her forehead to my chest. “No, you weren’t. You were just… stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I kissed the top of her head, wrapping my fist around her hair. “And now I’m in the right place at the right time?”

Her hum vibrated against my chest, just above my heart. “Now I just don’t care.” She looked up at me, her blue eyes wide. “I still like you, Marcus. Do you—do you think—”

I grinned. With one hand I tugged her hair to tilt her head back, and with my other hand I cupped her jaw. “You want to send me a note asking me to check a box if I like you too, yes or no?”

Her cheeks bloomed. “Sounds kind of juvenile, huh?”

“No. We’re all grown up, now.” I pressed my lips to her neck, touching the tip of my tongue to her thrumming pulse.

Her scent, the warmth of her skin, her curves—they’d stayed the same yet matured in the most intoxicating way. If I thought I’d had a crush on her ten years ago, it was nothing compared to the way I could fall for her now.

Was she playing me? I’d trusted her before and gotten burned. I wanted to believe the best of her, now. I wanted to believe the best of me. That was it; that was what she meant. Forgiving her for the past was a gift to myself, not for her.

“Marcus?”

“Hmmm?”

“Kiss me?”

I touched my lips to hers. It was not a kiss, but instead barely a graze. Her lips parted in a whimper. I kissed her again, a little harder. Still, I held back, like I thought rationing myself would quell the urge to consume her totally.

It didn’t.

With a groan, I pulled her to me and tasted her fully. My tongue swept into her mouth, exploring, pushing, dancing with her. The other night, at her house, wasn’t enough. I needed to sink my dick into her tight heat. The prospect made me painfully hard and afraid at the same time.

“Do you really want dinner?” she gasped against my lips.

I jerked my head back, trying to interpret what she meant.

“Take me home. Take me to your hotel. Fuck, take me to a broom closet. Just, please, Marcus—take me.”

My cock pressed against my fly. “I think we can do better than a broom closet.”

* * *

In the end, my hotel room was closer. And while there was some nostalgic value in her parents’ house, the hotel was a kind of fresh start. It had only gone up a few year prior, so it didn’t hold any bad memories.

It was time to make new memories. I had the feeling that no matter what happened, I would remember this night for the rest of my life.

Our shoes came off. Our jackets came off. Our armor came off.

“All grown up,” she teased, her hand spreading over the crotch of my slacks.

“Jesus, you have no idea.” I steered her to the bed, lifting her arms to pull her pale blue scrub top off. I glanced down at the matching pants. She hadn’t changed after work. “Seeing you in this, I’m feeling the urge to ask for a sponge bath.”

“Ha ha,” came from beneath the fabric. She groped at my chest, her fingers walking over me. “Damn sweater. No buttons.”

I pushed her hand down to my waist. “Here’s a button for you to work on.”

She blinked at me as her head reappeared, her hair a little mussed but a smile on her face. “This one?” She popped it open and tore the zipper down.

“Fuck.” I tilted my head back and groaned as she reached inside my boxer briefs.

“You’re gonna have to take off your own sweater,” she told me. “My hands are busy.”

No problem. I wrestled off the sweater and t-shirt, tossing them on the floor beside her top. It took no time at all for me to tug on the drawstring of her pants, and somehow we both kicked off everything but our underwear.

We stood there for a moment, hushed by awe. The lace of her white bra seemed like it was woven directly over her gorgeous breasts, like a spider web. Her panties didn’t match at all, and I couldn’t care less. The appearance of her undergarments—welcome as it may be—was temporary, at best.

“You’re gorgeous,” I said.

My thumb traced a line from her collarbone into her cleavage, swept under the delicate material of her bra to seek out her hardened nipple.

Her lips parted as her gaze went up and down, from my hand on her body to the weeping tip of my cock sticking out of the top of my briefs. I throbbed under her appraisal, unashamed of my need for her.

Biting her lip, she tugged my briefs down over my hips and squatted at my feet to pull them off my legs. My hands automatically went to her head as it hovered near my cock.

“Oh god, Serena.”

I asked for nothing, expected nothing—but just her position made me want. Everything.

She licked a hot trail from the base of my cock up to the tip, her hands squeezing my balls from beneath.

“Fuck!”

“I never got to do this before,” she reminded me. “I was too shy. Afraid I’d do it wrong.” Her last word was a little garbled by the way she curled her tongue around my girth.

“Holy shit, there is no wrong. Not with this, baby.”

She beamed up at me, her fist wrapped around my length. “Good to know.”

And for all that this was a new experience for us, she mastered it pretty fucking quickly. Pants and groans fell out of my mouth as she drove me to the brink faster than I’d prefer.

“Serena, you gotta stop.”

She shook her head and continued bobbing her head up and down over me. Her mouth was hot and slick, the contrast between the smooth roof of her mouth and the spongy back of her throat driving me insane with its unpredictability.

My hands rested on her head, my fingers tangled in her hair, but my grip was limp. I could no more direct her than I could resist her.

It was when she dragged a finger underneath my balls that I lost it.

“Oh fuck, baby.” Everything in me swelled—exquisitely hot and ripe—before bursting forth and shooting into her mouth.

She made a strange noise but didn’t move away, just rubbing me and sucking on my sensitive tip until I was done pouring down her throat.

My knees felt weak when she finally released me. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” she said, her cheeks and chest rosy.

Why the fuck hadn’t I let her before? Or had she not wanted to? Did it matter?

I pushed her onto the bed, kneeling between her spread legs. Her panties were soaked through, sending the scent of her arousal curling into the air like incense.

The pale skin of her belly folded as she crunched up and reached behind to undo her bra. At the same time, I drew her legs together long enough to drag her damp panties down her legs.

Then she lay there before me, splayed out on the blank canvas of the white hotel duvet. A flush spread over her chest and up her neck to her face. Her breasts fell to the sides a little, her turgid nipples the color of August raspberries. Between her creamy thighs, a tuft of blonde hair directed my attention to the arousal shining on the lips of her pink pussy.

“Marcus, please.” She reached for me but I pulled back, not done admiring her.

For all that I’d seen her intimately a few nights earlier, and even years before that, there was something about her right now that touched my heart more than my libido. With a shock, I realized why.

There was no part of me that felt she was better than me, or that I didn’t deserve her. We met now as equals, naked and vulnerable to each other.

Had I forgiven her? Or just forgiven myself for holding on to all that rage and bitterness? Either way, the intensity of my emotions threatened to overwhelm me.

Her blush deepened, and her legs began to close as she looked away from me.

“Oh no,” I told her, my hands splayed across her thighs. “No, you don’t.” And I bent over to run my tongue over her swollen cleft.

“Ahhh!” Her hands fell to her sides.

“Fuck, you taste delicious.”

Her head tossed from side to side on the bed, like she wasn’t sure whether or not to argue with me, or deny herself the pleasure of my mouth on her.

I didn’t give her the chance to decide as my tongue circled her quivering entrance. My palms spread across the back of her upper thighs, spreading her open. In and out, my greedy mouth dove and withdrew—savoring, torturing, pleasing her, without any firm thought in my head but to bring her to the edge.

When I flicked the tip of my tongue over her swollen clit under she finally cried out and spilled into my mouth. She grasped at my shoulders.

“Oh god, oh god, oh my god, so…!”

As soon as I felt the pulse of her pussy and her come flooding past my lips, I rose up and crawled over her.

“Can’t wait,” I panted.

With an urgency that should have concerned me, I held my swollen cock at her core and pushed forward. She was still coming around me, her walls squeezing me. She cried out again as I seated myself fully inside her slick heat.

“Keep coming for me, Serena. I want you to come all over my cock, now.”

Her eyes were dark and wild as she met my gaze.

Having my fingers and my tongue inside her was one thing, but this—this was fucking heaven.

What did that mean? What did that make me? An angel kicked out of heaven, like Lucifer? But this wasn’t the time for deep philosophical thought; this was the time for deep penetration.

I hadn’t felt this kind of pleasure since my first time with her. It made my eyes squeeze shut and the base of my spine tingle. It was so. Damn. Good.

She wrapped her arms and legs around me, her heels digging into my ass and her short fingernails scraping over my shoulder blades. “Oh god, I missed you,” she murmured into my neck. “I’m so sorry, so sorry. Forgive me, please. Forgive me, forgive me.”

I gathered her to me, as close as humanly possible. Her scent filled my nose, the taste of her breath lingered on my tongue, and the heat of her skin branded me everywhere we touched.

With the next rock of my hips, I tilted her face up to meet mine. My thumbs wiped away the tears from her flushed face. Her lips trembled.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” I said, and as I kissed her I felt my orgasm rush over me.

Rather than the piercing pleasure of before, now my body just rippled against her, my climax spilling over the walls I’d built around myself. The reality of now displaced the memories of then, like stepping into an overflowing bathtub.

We clung to each other, gasping and gulping in oxygen, our limbs hardening into cement around each other.

Apparently, neither of us knew how to let go.