BRADLEY

“No. No, please,” I groan, waving my hand frantically over the toaster. “Shit. Stop. Please go away.”

No amount of praying, bargaining, or cursing, will stop the smoke from rising. Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve been in this position. I know that there are exactly fourteen seconds before the fire alarm will sound.

I am shit at cooking. Horrendously horrible. Still, I decided to try and make Lexi breakfast in bed this morning, and now it’s backfired. Her first memories of waking up in my apartment will be forever charred. Instead of waking up to the delicious scents of breakfast food, she’ll wake up to the screeching of the smoke detector.

“Lexi,” I yell, determined not to let that happen. “Good morning, beautiful!”

I hear her stumble out of bed in the next room. Seconds later, she’s rushing into the kitchen and waving her hands. “Are we on fire?”

I wince as the smoke alarm sounds now. Fourteen seconds, right on time. “I’m so sorry.” I grab the broom and knock it against the alarm a few times. The alarm and I have been around this block before. It’s a relationship that unfortunately just won’t quit, and eventually, it stops screaming at me.

“What’s going on?” Lexi has my bed sheet wrapped around her body. It’s thin, which means I can see that underneath it she’s naked. I don’t even realize I’m staring until she calls my name for the third time.

“Sorry,” I mumble. “What?”

A slow smile creeps over her face. “Distracted?”

I cock my head to the side and stare some more, just in case I haven’t convinced her already. Yesterday might’ve been the most intense, erotic, and yet incredibly sweet evening of my life. Somehow, I’m more enthralled than ever. More desperate than ever for more.

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Lexi says. “Stop staring already. When you do that for thirty seconds straight I start to get creeped out.”

“No creepage. Sorry.”

“No creepage,” she agrees. “But in all fairness, I think I should get to creep on you. Take off your shirt.”

“What?”

“Take off your shirt.”

I like where this is going. My shirt is gone.

“Have you gotten even more in shape since your accident? I didn’t think that was possible. Yes, I looked before,” she says. “It wasn’t a secret you were hot.”

“Hot, huh?”

“Oh, shut up before you get too full of yourself. What were you doing in here, anyway?”

I turn and gesture toward the tray behind me. It’s a sad mess of toast crumbs, sugar, a chunk of butter that I’d intended to use for something that I’ve since forgotten, and a bottle of champagne.

“Breakfast of champions, huh?” she says, leaning behind me and grabbing the champagne. “I assume you have orange juice to go with this?”

“Oh, right.” I jump to attention because when Lexi reached for the bubbly, the sheet slipped down to reveal a hint of creamy white flesh above her breasts. Just a hint, and that sneak peek had my mind spiraling toward other places. “OJ is in the fridge.”

Lexi opens the fridge and then, to my shock and wonder, lets the sheet fall all the way to the floor. I’m stunned as she bends, reaches for the orange juice, and then straightens.

She turns to give me the full view, and I’m almost knocked unconscious by the sight before me. Turns out I was wrong, however—she wasn’t naked under there, just pretty damn close. Scraps of lace cover her essential pieces, and if anything, the light barrier makes me determined to see the rest of her.

“Who needs breakfast when we have Vitamin C and grapes?” She holds up the champagne bottle and the jug of juice and gives my dumbfounded face a wink. “Now that you’ve startled me awake, why don’t you calm me down in bed?”

“I’m sorry I startled you,” I apologize profusely and follow her like a zombie. “And I’m sorry I yelled to wake you up.”

“Why did you yell? I mean, the alarm would’ve woken me just fine without your help.”

“I didn’t want your first memory waking up here as my girlfriend to be the smoke alarm screaming at you because I burned breakfast.”

“So, you thought yelling at me would be better?”

“I wanted to be the one to wake you up.”

“Bradley Hamilton...” she sets the fixings for mimosas on the bedside table, and I set the two glasses I swiped next to them. “The way your brain works amazes me.”

“It’s a mess, but it’s all I have.”

“That might be the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done,” she says, leaning in for a kiss on the lips. Her scent, floral and sweet, pulls me to bed with her, and it’s all I can do not to let my lips continue down her neck, dusting her collarbone, tasting her breasts.

I stop daydreaming when she straightens and gives me a funny look.

“What’s wrong?” I look into her bright green eyes, trying to decipher her expression. “Did I say something? I’ll stop ogling you, I swear.”

“Girlfriend?” She turns the word over in her mouth, just now putting it together. I’d already forgotten I’d called her that. “I suppose that makes you my boyfriend.”

“I shouldn’t have said that before asking you—I’m sorry if it was too much.”

“Brad. Relax.” Lexi grasps my shoulders with her hands, her fingers delicate against my skin. “I like it. I’m just getting used to it. Making sure it’s not a daydream.”

“It feels like a daydream,” I say, watching as she gently slides the athletic shorts down from my waist. I’m left in only my boxers and a very obvious signal of my arousal. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure you know this isn’t a daydream.” Her hand reaches inside my boxers, and I’m about to tell her to wait, that we have plenty of time for this later. Then her fingers circle my length, and I very nearly die of happiness.

“Lexi,” I groan. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I don’t do anything I don’t want to do,” she says with a smile on her face. That same smile of utter bliss she wore after the first taste of the hamburger in the elevator, so long ago. “Admit you like this.”

“Like it?” My hands find her waist and hold tight. “I never want you to stop.”

Her mouth finds mine, and her body crushes against me. She lets my hands explore and touch and massage and feel, and I cherish every brush of her skin.

When she wriggles down the bed, her hands resting against my chest and pushing me back, I’m positive this is the best day of my life. I’ve never been so ready. I’m a steel rod against her hands, her touch, and... oh, her lips.

When she takes me in her mouth, it’s game over. I know I can’t last long, not with whatever she’s doing to me. I try to count to a hundred in order to make this last, but I only reach seventeen. Then I succumb to the need to have her. Entirely. Thoroughly.

“I’m not going to finish without you,” I tell her. My voice is throaty and hoarse. I reach for the condom. “Just let me—”

“Do you trust me?” she interrupts.

“Of course I trust you.”

“I’m on the pill, and I’m all good.”

“Me too. I mean, I’m not on the pill, but—”

“Brad, stop talking.” Her eyes darken to a shade of jungle green as she raises her body over me. She dives into a kiss, dark and delicious as she aligns her body with mine. I unhook her bra, then snap off her panties with a flick of my finger.

“Those were new,” she says, a hint of dismay. “You broke them.”

“You bought them for me?”

“For me,” she corrects. “For you to look at.”

“I’ll buy you ten more. But I’d prefer you don’t wear any of them.”

She laughs, which is a delicate sound in the otherwise confident aura she’s projecting this morning. The laughs, the smile—I’m in awe that a moment like this can be sexy and fun and intimate all at once. The combination drives a new facet to this thing we’re calling love.

I slide a hand down, feel how ready she is for me. The second my finger slips inside, we groan together. “Have I told you I love you yet?” I murmur between peppered kisses. “Even more than yesterday. And more than the day before.”

She acknowledges me with a whimper as her core rests over me and slowly, perfectly, she locks her gaze on mine. Her lips are parted, her eyes cloudy, and while she’s the Lexi Monroe I know and love, she’s also something more. A confident, beautiful woman that’s driving me wild in every way.

I’m transfixed by her face as she slides onto me, the way her back arches as she descends and her head is thrown back. Tendrils of her gorgeous hair dangle over her back, and the sight of her on me, taking me, driving me to the brink of insanity, is something I could’ve never imagined.

She moves, rocking her hips against me. I hiss as we connect fully, her little gasps as I fill her completely driving me to madness.

“In case I didn’t tell you,” she says between ragged breaths. “I love you too, Brad.”

“I need you,” I say, as her hips grind against me. I grasp her thighs. “Forever.”

She can’t respond, the pulse is too fast, too perfect. We’re both lost to the rhythm, the beats, the waves. I sense her losing control as she grips my arms, sailing beyond, into some endless sea carrying us both further and further until we crash, as one, into the depths of it all.

She cries out my name, a sound I’ll never tire of hearing. Then again and again as she rides the momentum of her climax. My release comes a second later, and I tense, hold on to her, and sink into oblivion.

When reality finally eases its way back into my bedroom, back into our lives, I’m still in awe. There is something so colossally grand, so indescribable, in watching another person shatter before you into pieces.

We shattered together, and from now on, I’ll have it no other way.

“Now that,” Lexi says, her limp body malleable and soft in my arms. “Is a wakeup call.”