I woke up slowly, piece by piece, the fog thick in my head. My body felt like it was carved from stone. Heavy and clumsy.

“Move, Pest,” I muttered, shifting my hips so the dog would jump off the spot on my back where she liked to sleep. Why I encouraged that, I had no idea. Well, that wasn’t true. It was from the drug days, when I was putting shit in my body to forget all the shit that was in my head.

I let her sleep on me so I wouldn’t feel like I was floating away.

Pest yipped but hopped off me, coming up on the bed to lick at my nose.

“Good morning to you too,” I said and rubbed her whole head with my hand, which for some reason she seemed to love.

I rolled over, staring up at the wooden beams of the ceiling of the cottage. I knew between one breath and the next that she wasn’t here. I knew without looking that she was gone.

The air was just air. The room was just a room. There was nothing electric or magic or waiting about any of it.

Sitting up, I confirmed it. The room was empty. The chair, the cold fireplace, the stash of food on the desk.

I had no fucking right to be surprised. I said some seriously mean shit to her. Of course she left. I groaned, the memories of what I said to her echoing in my brain.

Why did I do that? I wondered.

But I knew why. Because I was scared to say what I really wanted to say. When she’d been looking at me in the bathroom, talking about sex like it was nothing. Like it was a casual thing we could do and forget about, I’d been paralyzed with embarrassment.

Because there was nothing casual about me and sex.

And my instinct was to push her away, to make her stop wanting me like that, instead of telling her why I couldn’t fucking deal with her wanting me like that.

“Beth?” I said, looking at the shut door of the bathroom. “Beth, you still here?” I stood up and knocked on the door. There was no answer, so I turned the doorknob, easing it open with my fist, wondering what it was exactly that I wanted to find.

What I wanted to feel.

Happy she was gone?

Happy that she’d stayed?

The room was empty. The towel she’d used hung on the rack beside the shower. I touched the edge of it and found it damp and forced myself not to smell it. The sink was splattered with water, strands of her long hair clinging to the porcelain.

I drove her away.

And all at once I was…fucking crushed.

Truly fucking crushed.

She was gone. And it was over.

The part of myself that I’d been ignoring for the last seventy-two hours, the feelings I’d been shoving away or ignoring altogether, they swamped me.

I’d driven her away and I hated it.

That was it. The last time I’d see her. The last time I’d have her in my life, and I’d done what? What exactly? Ignored her? Hurt her on purpose? So she’d stop saying those things to me? Stop looking at me like I was something delicious she wanted to eat.

What kind of fucking coward was I?

The worst kind. The kind that made a woman feel bad because I couldn’t get a grip on my own feelings for her. My own fucking memories.

I acted as if that shit with the Pastor happened to me.

“Goddamn it,” I muttered. She’d been here. Here. In this place, with her freckles and her beauty, and I’d pretended like I didn’t give a shit. I couldn’t even stand talking to her because I was an idiot.

A fucking virgin. Who didn’t know how to go about not being one.

Loss gutted me.

I crossed the room and grabbed my phone. Simon would fucking never let me hear the end of this. He’d be ruthless. And I pretty much deserved ruthless.

On my phone I saw there’d been an outgoing call to a number I didn’t recognize, and I hit redial. Two rings and an outgoing message kicked in.

“This is Sherman Bliss. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you. If this is an emergency, call my assistant, Jason, at—” I hung up. She must have called her manager.

That made sense. She had to be getting herself back to her life. She had responsibilities. Obligations.

God. She was a worldwide pop star. Of course she’d left.

Of course she left me. I barely even talked to her. I fucking kidnapped her.

Rubbing my hand over my face, getting rid of the last of the grit and the sleep in my eyes, I shoved my feet in my boots.

She probably took my truck too.

Simon was going to love picking me up out here. It would give him so many hours to ream me out for letting the girl I’d put in the center of my life like some kind of sun I orbited, leave me.

Without touching her again.

Kissing her again.

I yanked open the door only to see the gray truck pull into the spot between two pine trees that framed the cottage. She saw me through the windshield and smiled. She’d bought sunglasses, big black ones, and she’d put on makeup and her hair was up in a bun on the top of her head.

My body buzzed with relief. I put my hand on the door jamb because I was light-headed with it.

She wasn’t gone. She didn’t leave.

Another chance. Another few hours.

To answer the questions I’d been asking myself for seven years.

All at once I decided not to fucking waste it. No, I was going to make the most of these hours. Make the most of her.

“Hey,” she said, hopping out of the truck. She had grocery bags and a McDonald’s bag and a fountain pop cup that I imagined she had full of Diet Coke. Because she’d loved Diet Coke with an intensity that couldn’t just go away. “I picked up some more food,” she said, holding up the bags like maybe I hadn’t seen them.

I saw them. I just didn’t care. I wanted to hurl those bags into the bushes and pull off those ridiculous clothes I’d bought her so I could see her body.

“Hamburgers,” she said as I continued to stare at her. “Doritos and baby carrots. You used to love those things, so I took a stab that you still did.” She stopped in front of me because I was barring the door, and instead of jumping out of her way, I shifted just a little so she had to squeeze by me. It was a dick move.

But I was feeling like a dick.

Her lips—painted bright red—parted like she knew what I was doing, and fuck, she probably did. In this, we’d shared a mind. A brain. I’d known as a kid how to touch this woman in a way I never knew how to touch anyone else.

For just a second doubt rippled through me, but I ignored it. I’d been a virgin then and I’d still gotten her off, pushed up against a bulletin board in an art room.

Here I was going to lay her out on that bed and fucking worship her.

Virgin or not.

She turned sideways, brushing against me, sliding through the space I’d left for her, and I felt her shoulder, her breast. The hair in a top knot on her head brushed my chin. Her eyes were on mine every single inch.

I could barely breathe.

The air was suddenly kerosene, waiting for a match.

Once she was in the room, her back to me, I shut the door. The sound of the lock clicking home made both of us drag in a breath. She’d tied her T-shirt into a knot in the small of her back, pulling the fabric up to reveal a slice of skin between her leggings and the shirt.

She had a freckle near her spine that I could not look away from.

Where else did she have freckles? That was a question I’d had for seven years that suddenly, urgently needed answering.

She turned, her sunglasses still on, hiding her eyes, and that was okay with me. That was…easier for me. While I watched, sucking in shallow breaths, my dick pounding against the zipper of my jeans, she put the cup and the keys to the truck down on the table, and I reached out and trapped her hand there.

I watched myself do it from a million miles away. Like it was me, but not. Her, but not.

I felt like we were strangers, but not.

Please, I thought, understand what I’m doing so I don’t have to say the words. Talking will ruin this.

I felt her try to move, and I wouldn’t let her. And then, that tensile tension in her arm vanished.

She knew what this was. And she wanted it too.

The bags in her other hand hit the floor.

“What do you want, Tommy?” she breathed. So close. So beautiful. With her free hand she took off her glasses and tossed them on the ground. Her eyes, lined in black liner raked over me.

And mine raked over her.

“You,” I said, so raw I was practically inside out. “Just once.”

She laughed low in her throat. “You have a few questions you want answered, do you?” she asked.

“Don’t you?”

“God yes.”

She stepped forward until she was nearly touching me. It took my inhale for my chest to brush hers. I exhaled and our bodies retreated. She inhaled and we touched. Exhaled and retreated.

We each did it again. And then again. Breathing each other in, in turns. Finally it wasn’t enough and I stepped toward her, and my cock pressed against her stomach and she pushed against me. Her breasts and belly imprinted on my skin.

“One time,” she said. “One time and we go back to our lives and get on with things. I’m going to forget you, Tommy. And you’re going to forget me.”

I doubted it, but I wasn’t going to argue. Not with my dick pushed up against the tight muscles of her stomach. Not with her breath, sweet from the pop and the candy she’d eaten, making me crazy.

“I’m serious, Tommy,” she said as if she could read my mind. “I don’t want to be hurt anymore, and I really, really don’t want to hurt you anymore. Promise you’ll forget me.”

“I promise,” I said, because when threatened with the idea of hurting her, I’d agree to anything to stop that. “I’ll forget you, right after I fuck you.”

She laughed, which was the point. “Maybe I’ll fuck you, Tommy. Maybe that’s how this plays out.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t that boy anymore, following her lead, happy just to have her notice me. I was a man. And this was going to have to go my way. Or it wouldn’t work at all.

“Take down your hair,” I said.

She looked at me, puzzled.

“I want it down.” Beth had her hair up. Jada would take it down.

Jada. Not Beth.

That’s how I’d do this and let her go tomorrow. That’s how I’d do this and not fall apart.

Jada. Not Beth.

With her free hand she pulled out the black rubber band that held her hair in place and the damp blue and green and pink hair fell down around her shoulders.

“It’s different—” she started, but I shook my head.

“No,” I told her. “No talking.”

Beth had been a talker, constantly chatting. I’d loved it. Her voice had chased out so many of the demons. So many of the fears. I couldn’t let that voice back in.

She shut her mouth with a snap, her eyebrows furrowed.

“My way,” I said, “or no.”

“You’ve changed.”

I hadn’t, but it was all right to let her think so.

“So have you.”

“What if I want to talk dirty?” she asked, tilting her head, playing with me, taunting me, turning me inside out. “What if I want to tell you to take out your dick. Or to suck my tits. What if I want to tell you to fuck me harder. Or slower. What if I want to tell you how good your cock feels...”

I kissed her. I kissed her to shut her up. To keep those words from filling my head with every one of those visions. I kept her hand pinned to the table, but with my other hand I grabbed the back of her neck and held her still while I kissed her.

While I kissed her the way I’d dreamed of kissing her.

Nothing careful. Nothing shy. I opened her lips with mine, and I let myself into her. I kissed her like she was already mine.

Mine.

She gasped and melted against me, her free hand grabbing my shoulder, her nails digging into my skin, and maybe she was thinking the same thing. That I was hers.

That we’d agreed to this moment years ago.

She tasted just the way I remembered. Her mouth was warm and damp, and I wanted to die there. I wanted to push my cock between her lips into her mouth.

Fuck. This was going to be over fast.

She pushed her stomach against me, trapping my cock between our bellies, and she pushed and retreated just a little, with every breath again. Fucking me between us. I clenched my hand, pulling her hair, and she groaned and gasped, pulling away from my mouth to breathe.

Oh. Right. Breathing.

Her lipstick was smeared, her mouth wet from my mouth and I loved it.

“Fuck,” she breathed. “Tommy.”

I bent my lips to her neck, kissing her there. The hard ridge of her throat and tendons, the velvet skin that covered all of it. She pulled herself up on her tiptoes, using me as leverage, her breasts against my chest. Her legs against my legs.

“I need,” she breathed, and it was all so familiar. So familiar for a second I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to pull away. I wanted to run. My body went still, and she writhed against me once more and then stopped.

“Oh no,” she breathed, shaking her head at me, her eyes all blissed out. “No. You can’t fucking go all Tommy on me now. We’re finishing this.”

She yanked her hand free from my grip. Dumb, I stood there as she whipped off that ridiculous wolf T-shirt that I’d bought her and she made look better than it ever should, and beneath that her bra, and then she toed off her shoes and put her hands to the waist of her leggings.

“No,” I breathed, my hand out, brushing the tender skin of her tummy. The fragile bones of her rib cage. “Just. Wait.”

I was taking her in, soaking her in. Burning the memory of this woman bared to the waist for me into my brain.

She was beautiful perfection. Her waist was curved, her belly button had a dark scar where she’d once had a piercing. Her collarbone, the thin strength of her arms. The curve of her neck. All of it beautiful.

And her breasts, with their dark brown nipples, answered another question.

Beth had amazing tits.

“Done staring?” she asked, her chin up.

“No.”

“Take off your shirt.”

I did, without thinking. My body was its own thing. A tool, like a jackhammer or a saw. I did nothing to it besides work it to the bone nearly every single day.

“Jesus,” she breathed. “Tommy. Look at you.”

“I’m looking at you,” I said.

“You’re…” She ran her hands from my shoulders down my arms to my hands. And then she did it again, only along my chest, across the muscles of my stomach. Over and over again, she touched me, top to bottom, as if mapping me. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”

There was nothing to say, so I slipped my hands around the bare skin of her waist and she gasped. Twitched.

Fuck. My hands. They were so goddamned wrecked. “I’m sorry,” I said, pulling back.

I almost told her then, that I didn’t know what I was doing. But the truth, that I barely let myself think about, was embarrassing. Ridiculous. I couldn’t even imagine telling her—that other than a few minor exceptions, I hadn’t touched another woman like this.

Ever.

And no I wasn’t joking.

She would have questions, and I had no easy answer for those questions except that she’d moved on and I’d stayed stuck.

“No, no, no.” She grabbed my hands again, and this time put them on her breasts. “Yes,” she gasped as if she was answering her own questions. I covered her breasts with my palms and the rough skin on her tender flesh felt like a sacrilege to me, but she seemed to like it.

I gripped her. Squeezed. And she moaned. Cried out. Like I was perfect. Like my touch was just right.

“More,” she begged.

Growling, I put one arm around her back and picked her up off her feet, turning her so her back was against the door, and I leaned into her, keeping her there. She wrapped her legs around my waist, her arms around my neck, and I put my mouth to hers and devoured her.

We kissed like we were dying. Like an antidote for pain was in each other’s mouths.

We kissed like it was the first time and the last time all at once.

My cock felt the damp heat between her legs, and I rode that spot, arching into her so hard I was sure it had to hurt. But every time I pushed, she arched back at me, a push and pull that made me crazy. Wild.

She shoved her hand between our bodies, her fingers tugging at the button of my jeans, and they were old and soft and came undone without any effort on her part. The button, then the zipper, and then her hand slipped inside my boxers to find the stiff, hard length of my cock.

“There’s a question answered,” she breathed against me, smiling through lips covered in smeared lipstick. Her mouth was swollen, and I’d done that too. “You’re big, Tommy. You’re big all the way around.”

She stroked me, her thumb slipping over the top, finding the cum leaking out that I couldn’t control. Wasn’t even sure how I would try. She brought her thumb up to her mouth, her gaze on mine. Burning into my brain.

She put her thumb in her mouth, tasting me, and I leaned forward, kissing the taste from her tongue, her thumb.

“Fuck,” she breathed and her hand was back between my legs, jacking me slowly. I felt the orgasm rising up out of my blood, a ball of tension in my lower back. My feet feeling numb. And I pulled away from her.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m not coming in your hand.”

“I want you to come in my hand,” she said and licked my throat. Sucked the skin of my neck into her mouth, hard enough that I gasped. Hard enough I’d have a mark. “It’s like an art-room alternate reality. Where I get what I want.”

“I’ll give you what you want,” I said.

I tore the leggings off her. They were cheap and I was strong as fuck and they made a sound in the quiet between us that I could tell she liked. Every time I worried I was going too far, it seemed it wasn’t far enough.

Not for Beth.

Jada.

I tore the leggings until they hung off one ankle and I put one arm on the wall beside her head and the other hand between her legs. Where she was unbearably hot.

And had considerably less hair than when we were in high school.

My fingers slipped right over her, her folds slippery. Wet. My fingers were coated in her. Drenched.

“Spread your legs,” I said, and she did, breathing in great sobs. I cupped her in my palm. The whole of her sex in my hand. I pushed against her clit and watched her eyes roll back in her head.

When we were kids, I’d made her come like this. Pressure and pressure until she came apart on my fingers and I’d felt like I’d given her something real and precious and important.

But this time, I pushed my fingers inside of her. One and then another. Another.

And she took them all, asked for more.

And I pressed my thumb against the hard knot of her clit.

“Jesus,” she cried, pulling at my hair, scratching at my neck. She was taut and strained. Every muscle clamped and wild, and I turned my head and captured her nipple in my mouth, pulling and pulling until I heard her gasp, like the sound of a lock unlocking, and she went to pieces against me.

She cried out and jerked, twisting between me and the door.

“Tommy,” she sighed, her body fluid and soft. I took my fingers out of her, away from her, the air cold against my skin where I was wet with her. I could smell her, musky and sweet. I remembered the smell from years ago, how I’d carried it on my skin for a day.

I put my fingers to my face, breathing her in. I licked my thumb, where it had been against her clit, and her eyes, watching me, opened wide. I put a finger in my mouth, sucking off the taste of her. I put my other hand between her legs, and when my fingers were wet enough with her, I put them to her mouth. Wiped them against her lips until she opened them and we were tasting her together.

Her eyes locked on mine, and I saw the way she was after this, the way she was living this, like there were no other moments between us but this one.

And I was so fucking envious of that, my teeth hurt. I was envious of the way she looked right at me without shame or worry or fear. Like the intimacy of this, of each of us sucking her cum off my fingers was bearable to her.

Because it was unbearable to me.

I looked away.

I felt more than heard the sigh of her disappointment, and I could have told her that my whole life had been about avoiding these moments. Avoiding getting close to anyone, because it ultimately turned to shit. It was the first lesson I ever learned, alone in that apartment waiting for my mother to come home.

But I wasn’t ever talking about that. Not ever.

“Tommy,” she breathed, “what’s wrong?”

Instead of answering, I kissed her. I kissed her with everything I’d never said and wanted to. Everything I never said and should have.

I remembered suddenly what I’d really wanted in that classroom. What I’d thought about over and over again until I’d worn myself raw in the bathroom. I stepped away from her, my hand at her waist, keeping her against the door when she would have pulled away from it.

“Stay there,” I said.

“I don’t want to.” She pushed against me, and I pushed her right back. Keeping her where I wanted her. She tried again, harder, rearranging the boundaries of this thing between us, and I, clumsy and unsure, pushed her back harder. She gasped, smiling. Her eyes wide and delighted.

She fucking loved this.

Well, if rough was fun for her, I could be rough.

All I was, was rough.

I kicked her legs out wider. “Move from this spot,” I said. “And I won’t let you come.”

Her breath was ragged, her hands in fists at her sides as she waited for what I was going to do to her. I wondered if she thought I’d hurt her, because that wasn’t going to happen. I was rough. Not…that. Maybe?

But the not knowing was turning this thing between us into something razor-sharp, both of us being cut in ways we liked, so I kept my mouth shut. I put my hands to her waist, holding her against the door, my fingertips biting into her flesh, her skin bowing beneath the pressure. I could feel the muscles under there.

She gasped.

And then I went to my knees.

“Tommy,” she breathed.

“This is what I want,” I said, breathing over her pussy, pink and swollen. Wet. “Are you going to give me what I want?” I asked her.

She nodded; I felt the movement in the muscles of her stomach. Her name rose to my lips, but I swallowed it down and leaned forward, pressing a kiss to the small bit of hair on her pussy. I licked her, finding the hidden seam that hid all her secrets.

All her secrets I wanted. I shifted, finding the right place, and this time when I licked, the point of my tongue went right through that seam. Right into heart of her. She gasped. Twitched. I picked up her foot and put it on my knee, opening her up.

“Yes,” I said. I held her open with my thumbs, pulling the skin taut until she winced. I kissed her in apology. Licking the folds, finding her clit, the hole of her pussy. My hand slid beneath her leg, stroking the hard muscle of her thighs, the sleek skin of her ass. I gripped her in my palm and squeezed. I squeezed until she cried out and jerked forward into my mouth.

I held her there against me, and I fucked her with my face. My mouth and tongue. I licked her and kissed her and sucked her down. My fingers were all over her. She was shaking and crying, her fingers on my skull, over my hair, squeezing my head so hard it should have hurt but that was the nature of this pleasure between us.

We needed it to hurt.

I sucked on her clit, pulling it into my mouth while I fucked my fingers into her, and she came for a second time. A wild gush against my palm and even that wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. I kept going until she came again, and when she pushed me away, I was so into it, I ignored her. Eager for more. Ready to make her come again and again.

“Please, Tommy,” she breathed. “It hurts.”

I let go of her. Sat back on my ass, my hand too late to catch my weight. I felt like I’d spent the last hour jackhammering. I was numb and shaking and my body didn’t feel right and my hands felt like they were alive and twitchy with nerves coming back to life.

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking up at her where she stood at the door.

Fuck. Me. Like forever.

She was naked, and her hair was a wild cloud and her eyes were full of fire and desire and she was looking at me like I was hers.

“Sensitive,” she said, her hand over her pussy, like some sham portrait of modesty. Fuck. I could come just looking at her. “That’s all.”

I didn’t know that was a thing, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.

“Get down here,” I said, pulling her onto the ground with me. She split her legs over mine, her hand back at my cock, now leaking cum like a hose with a hole in it.

“Ask me to suck your dick,” she said, watching me through her hair.

“Suck my dick.”

“Ask me.”

“I told you.” I pushed my jeans down past my ass, the floor cold against my overhot skin.

“What if I fuck you instead?” she asked.

I shook my head. Not… I mean, it was fucking ridiculous to think it, but I wasn’t ready. I was twenty-three years old and I wasn’t…ready.

“We don’t have a condom,” I said.

She shook her head, the black lace of her hair parting over her creamy shoulders. “You always were the reasonable one,” she said, and without saying anything else, she gripped my cock in her hand and bent over me. Her hair hid what she was doing, and that was okay. I was strung so tight if I watched her lipstick-smeared lips taking me, I’d fucking pop.

I felt the heat of her breath, the dampness when she opened her mouth over the head of my cock and then—

“Fuck. God!” I groaned. And then it didn’t matter if I came in an instant; I had to see it. I had to watch her. I gathered up her hair in my rough hands, probably pulling it, but I didn’t care and she didn’t either. We were blown out with lust. We were numb to anything but this fucking fire between us.

“Yes,” I breathed, watching her mouth stretch wide, slipping down over the ramrod-hard length of me. The veins and tendons were slick with her spit. She took me fast and slow, her hand gripping the base of me, holding me still. “Suck me.” The words were barely breaths out of my mouth. Barely thoughts in my brain. But she liked them. I could tell, the hum of her pleasure reverberating against me.

Years ago she’d begged me to talk. To tell her things, and I’d thought I had nothing to offer her, this brilliant star. And so I’d said nothing.

But these words. These filthy sex words. I had them. I had a lot of them, pent up and kept inside for seven years. If she wanted these words, she could have them.

“Jada-“

She flinched at the use of her other name and for a second I thought she was going to stop. So I kept talking. Like my filthy mouth could keep her here.

“Suck my cock, baby. Oh my God. Yes. Yes. Just like that. You look so fucking good like this.”

It worked, and she took me deep, my cock disappearing, and I tried to arch up onto my heels, the pleasure too much, it felt like electricity in my veins, and when she let me go, it was with a gasp and pop. Her eyes were watering, black mascara running down the side of her face, her lips swollen and smeared.

“You are so beautiful.”

“You like this look,” she said with a smile that told me she knew how fucking sexy she looked. How dirty.

I wanted to tell her that I liked her. Every way she was. Every way she looked.

But she bent down to me again, licking me and sucking my head. Her fingers playing with my balls. Her fingertip brushed the crease of my ass, and I flinched away.

“No ass play, Tommy?”

“I want to come down your throat.”

Her cheeks went pink, her eyes went wide and when she bent over me again, she meant fucking business. It was heat and pressure and suction and I didn’t last. Couldn’t last.

“I’m going to come,” I said, and she held me deep in her mouth as the orgasm rolled over me, took me under like a wave. I came in spurts, wild and messy, and she stayed with me the whole way. Not letting me go.

Because I was begging her not to.