Kate clenched the sheets in her hands, feeling like she might actually die of anticipation.

It wasn’t that she was inexperienced. But this was something different. Kirk was focused, so focused on her, that she thought she might fly apart before he even touched her.

He pressed his lips to her sex and she saw stars.

She cried out shamelessly, and he rewarded her with a slow stroke of his tongue against her opening.

She whimpered and tried not to lift her hips up to his mouth for more.

“Mmm,” he hummed against her clit.

Her hips quivered and the room began to fade before her eyes. There was nothing, no apartment, no city, no universe - only the leisurely movements of his tongue against her sex.

He licked and stroked her slowly and carefully, seeming to refine his movement based on the whimpers and cries that he wrenched out of her with his teasing, but never giving her release.

When she thought she couldn’t bear any more, he pressed a finger against her opening.

Kate moaned.

“Is that good, my love?” he asked her tenderly.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she whimpered.

He lowered his head again and licked her right on her throbbing clitoris.

Kate cried out helplessly.

She could feel him smile against her thigh.

He licked her again, moving his finger inside her gently.

Kate lifted her hips, pressing herself wantonly against his mouth, wordlessly begging for more, more, more. She had never felt so frantic, so desperate.

Kirk responded immediately, licking her clit into his mouth, sucking lightly and stroking it with his tongue, all the while moving his finger gently inside her.

Pleasure coiled inside her like a spring. Kate cried out and felt herself exploding with ecstasy.

Her body spasmed and she arched off the bed slightly, but Kirk held her down firmly, working her with his mouth and hands, extending her rapture until she couldn’t take any more.

When the last tremor had faded, he crawled up to lie beside her.

“That was… amazing,” Kate whispered to him.

“Yes, it was,” he whispered into her hair.

He stretched out on his back and pulled her on top of him.

She smiled and slid a hand down his upper arm. He was so muscular it defied reason.

She let her hand slide lower, against the ridges of his abs.

Kirk wrapped a hand around her wrist, pinned it to his chest instead.

“That’s enough for tonight,” he told her. “You should rest now.”

“But don’t you want—?” she began.

“Of course I want that,” he said, his voice tight. “But it’s not the right time.”

“Why not?”

“Kate,” he said, then paused. “Kate, I know you don’t want a mate right now. I’m afraid that if we make love, I will click with you. And there is no going back after that.”

“Oh,” she said, surprised.

“I have chosen you as my mate,” he told her casually.

“Wait, what?”

“That doesn’t require anything of you, darling,” he told her. “That’s about me. And it’s done. I didn’t have to say the words. It’s been true since the moment we met.”

She leaned her head against his chest, felt him brush his lips across her hair.

“If you don’t want me around, it will be difficult, but I’ll be able to leave. On the other hand,” he went on, “if I were to click with you, I might not be able to help myself.”

“Oh,” she said, again, trying to get her head around it.

“And you already have one stalker too many,” he joked.

“You would never be like him,” she told him earnestly.

“I would never put myself in that position, my love,” he told her. “Sleep now.”

She wanted to argue, to ask him questions.

But the slow beat of his heart under her ear and the movement of his hand across her shoulder blades lulled her into sleep.