I’m so horrified by the image of Ellie standing there, a witness to something so soul-shattering, that I’m at a loss for what to do.

All I know is that I need to be touching her. I need to be kissing her.

She melts under my touch, her body relaxing into mine. It’s a kiss that starts out so sweet that the feeling is a pure sugar rush from my chest to my fingertips. Then Ellie arches, my clothes loose around her curves, her breasts pressing against my chest, and it becomes something else entirely.

Her fists curl around my shirt and she yanks it forward, pulling me in as close as she can get. Ellie breaks the kiss, pulling back. Her eyes are reddened from the tears, making the gray look that much more vivid, and her face is a picture of pain and lust and need. “I want to forget, Dash. I want to forget that shit. Make me forget.”

I’m already thrumming with the ache to protect her, to go into the past and throw myself between that man and Ellie Collins, even if the asshole was running away. I put a hand on the back of her head, strong and fierce, and push my face into hers. I can match her intensity. I can do anything.

The grin that spreads across my face is all heat. “Make you forget?” She takes in a short, sharp breath. “Now you’ve begged me twice.”

* * *

I forget about the spaghetti sauce.

For all I care, the spaghetti sauce can cook down into burnt embers. It makes no difference to me, as long as the house doesn’t catch on fire. Because Ellie? She’s blazing.

She wraps her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist and kisses me so hard I’m sure she’s drawn blood.

There is no time to get to the bedroom. This is the Ellie who dropped it low in the coffee shop, totally uninhibited, totally herself. She’s a fucking tigress, clawing at my clothes, my skin.

I strip my shirt off first, then hers. She has nothing on underneath and her breasts are full and gorgeous. The air against her nipples makes them hard. My thumbs against them makes them harder. She wriggles out of her shorts when I drop mine and then she’s completely naked and folding herself back into my arms.

I lift her in one motion, perching her ass on the immaculate countertop. Ellie throws her head back, her wet hair hanging behind her, an invitation that I fully accept. I swirl my tongue around one of her nipples, then the other, and spread her knees open with one of mine.

She’s wet and waiting and sheer perfection. No hesitation this time. She’s as consumed by this moment as I am, and part of me wishes it would last forever.

I think you can guess which part.

“Yes. Yes,” Ellie hisses when I stroke between her legs, two fingers sliding through the juices already collected there. She spreads a little wider, her hips rising off the countertop, and I plunge two fingers into her. She tenses around them and that tightening shatters the rest of my restraint.

A low growl comes from the animal part of me, and shit starts happening fast. Ellie wraps her legs around me and I hold on hard, her hips in my hands, aligning the head of my cock with her opening. She freezes, staring down at it, and when she looks up, there’s a flicker of doubt in her eyes.

“Don’t worry,” I promise her. “You can take it.”

She gives me a wicked grin. “I know.” Then she edges forward, impaling herself on the tip with a sigh and a shudder that turns into the first inch sinking inside of her, then the second.

Ellie is so tight that with half my length inside of her I force myself to stop.

“Ellie.”

Her hips tilt back and forth in my hands, begging silently for more, her hands playing at the back of my neck. “What?” she whispers, eyes closed, cheeks pink. I won’t forget her face this way for as long as I live.

“You’d tell me, right?”

Her gray eyes fly open, a smile flitting across her lips. “Tell you what?”

“If this was your first time.”

Her mouth drops open and she goes still. “You think this is my first time?”

It’s taking every bit of self-control I have not to bury myself in her. The pressure is intense. “You’re so tight.” It’s all I can manage.

Ellie tips her head back again, engaging all her muscles to squeeze me even tighter. I am dying. I am dead. This is the best fucking feeling on the planet. She starts rocking her hips side to side, her smooth skin against my palms, drawing me in another inch, then two. “This is not my first time.” Again her eyes meet mine. “Fuck me, Dash. I’m begging you.”

“As long as you’re begging.”

“Longer than that, I hope,” she says, and my entire body bursts into flames. That’s it. I turn her laugh into a cry, taking all of her at once, keeping her steady in my hands.

It’s an explosive, raw rhythm, and Ellie is barely on the countertop. She’s wrapped around me so tightly that I feel it when she starts to come, the trembling starting down low in her hips and bursting out in all directions. She bends her head forward and muffles her cries in my skin.

But I’m not finished with her yet.

“You owe me,” I growl into her ear. “Come on my cock again.”

“I can’t,” she breathes.

“It’s not a request.” In and out, harder and harder. “Reach down between those pretty legs and touch yourself until you come.”

She braces one hand on my shoulder and reaches down, her fingers searching out her clit. I feel every pulse of desire between her legs and pick up the pace.

It’s another small earthquake a minute later, and she shakes under the weight of it, coming hard, my name on every breath. 

I follow her all the way to the end.