As soon as our lips touched, I knew I had made the right choice replying to that text. I had second-guessed it a few times when he’d been messaging me since, wondering what the hell I was encouraging with this, but I couldn’t resist the thought of pushing things as far as I could. I wanted to see him, wanted to feel his strong arms around me again, wanted to know that he had ached for me the same way I had ached for him. I missed him so badly, but he was with me again, and we could work out the details when this part was over.

“Mmm,” he moaned against my mouth as he slipped his hands beneath my robe and let it fall to the floor. He moved his fingers over my bare waist, my hips, my thighs, and I silently thanked God that Zoe was spending the evening down in the pool and sauna area. We had decided to take some self-care time individually, so she wasn’t going to come in and disturb us. The last thing I needed was to have to explain what the hell my recent ex was doing in my hotel room where I had come ostensibly to catch a break from moping over him.

The towel slipped from my head as he pushed me onto the bed, and I pulled him on top of me, our lips not breaking for a moment. It was as though we were trying to make up for lost time. That was certainly what it felt to me, as though both of us were doing our best to remember how good it felt to be together, how hot our chemistry still was even after all this time.

I could feel him getting hard, and I moved my hand between his legs to squeeze his cock through his jeans. As soon as I touched him, a deep need rose within me. I needed him inside me more than I needed anything in the world. He bit down softly on my lip, teasing me, and I wriggled beneath him and wrapped my ankles around him, pulling him down close.

“I want…” I moaned in his ear, but I couldn’t find the words to tell him what I needed from him. He kissed down my neck, across my breasts, drawing each of my nipples into his mouth in turn. My mouth hung open uselessly, any attempts at speech vanishing as I watched him pleasure me with his tongue.

“Tell me what you want, baby,” he whispered, moving back up to look me in the eye. One hand was stroking my hair and the other was slipping down between my thighs, and the blur of sensations was making it hard to think straight.

“I want… you,” I finally managed. “Inside me.”

“How?” He dipped his fingers down against my slit, tracing them around my entrance before he pushed them briefly inside. “Like this?”

I groaned and pushed my head back into the pillow behind me as he penetrated me with his fingers. It wasn’t quite what I had been talking about, but it felt so fucking good that I didn’t care. He was grinding lazily against my thigh as he moved his fingers into me, reaching his thumb up to play with my clit as he did so. My legs began shaking, and he kissed me again as he played with me as if bringing me back down to Earth where I belonged.

“You feel so good,” he murmured against my mouth. “So wet.”

“Ah.” I groaned once more, lifting my hips and grinding back against his hand with more purpose, but I needed more than his fingers. I needed him to fuck me, to give me what I had been missing since we had last seen each other.

“I want you inside me,” I told him. “Fuck me, Holden, please.”

“Anything you want.” He brushed his lips over my cheek in a gesture that would have been almost chaste had it not been for his fingers in my pussy, and he reached into his pocket to pull out a condom. I was so wet, my pussy aching and throbbing to feel him inside of me.

He unzipped his pants, took his cock in his hand, and sheathed himself quickly. I was wriggling with excitement on the bed below him, trying to remember the last time I had craved someone as deeply and fully as this. I was going to burst with need for him, with want. He guided himself toward my slit, and I spread my legs and tilted my hips back so he could push into me more easily.

We both let out long breaths as he penetrated me, as though the two of us had been waiting for this for a long time. I knew I had. Until I had seen him standing there at my door, and my body had exploded with that visceral reaction to his presence, I hadn’t noticed how badly I had missed him. How badly I’d missed being with him in this way.

He drove deep into me, pushing all the way inside of me in one long thrust, and I sank my fingers into his back and pulled him down on top of me. I wanted to feel how our bodies fit together. I wanted, more than anything, to feel the weight of him bearing down on me as he moved inside me, how natural we felt together, to scrub all those doubts from my mind and leave behind everything that had been wrapped up in these last couple of weeks.

“I missed you so much,” he murmured, turning his head so he could say the words straight to me.

“I missed you too,” I replied, and he kissed me once more, his tongue in my mouth as he slowed his thrusts and apparently took a second to savor the moment. I wrapped my legs tighter around him and pulled him into me, rocking my hips back to meet him, insisting on deeper, harder, more, more, more.

I moved my hand down between my legs and began to play with my clit as he fucked me. He pushed himself back up from being on top of me and looked down at my hand, a grin spreading across his face as he took me in.

“I love it when you touch yourself like that.” He watched my fingers as they moved across my delicate nub. “You look so fucking hot.”

“Not so bad yourself.” I giggled, and then the smile was wiped off my face as he plunged deep into me and sent a shudder of pleasure through my body, contorting my muscles for a moment.

“Fuck,” I moaned as he moved into me, and suddenly he dropped down on top of me and wrapped his arms tightly around me. He ground his hips into mine, desperate, hungry, and I pushed back as best I could, needing him, the pleasure building and growing and swelling.

When I came, I didn’t make a sound. I couldn’t have if I had wanted to. All nonessential systems in my body shut off for an instant, the pleasure taking control as my pussy clenched around his cock, and the lust transformed into satisfaction. He held himself deep inside of me, letting my pussy massage his dick as I lay helplessly back on the bed while the pleasure coursed through me. A few seconds later, I felt his cock twitch inside me, and he came himself, his body shuddering from head to toe as he reached his climax.

He held himself there for a long while, probably knowing we were going to have to talk about things after he pulled out and no doubt as reluctant as I was to do so. But after a moment or two, he slid out of me, pressing one last kiss to my lips as he did so. He got rid of the condom and rolled back on to the bed with me. I was stark naked, and he was still mostly dressed, and I giggled as I noticed the difference between us.

“I feel very exposed right now,” I remarked, grabbing the covers and pulling them up over my body. He tucked them in around me and handed me an extra pillow for my head, stroking my hair back from my face as he did so.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” I murmured.

“Me neither.” He grinned at me. “But as soon as I got your text, I knew I had to see you again. I just missed you so fucking much.”

“I missed you too,” I agreed, and he lay his head down on the pillow next to me, caressing my stomach and watching the way I reacted to his touch.

“So what do we do now?” I asked, my voice tiny. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear an answer to that question. Yet here, I knew we couldn’t hide from it for much longer.

“I met with my ex while we were apart,” he told me, pushing his head up so he could look me directly in the eyes. I felt my stomach clench at the thought of it.

“Oh?”

“And seeing her…” He shook his head. “It made it crystal clear to me that you’re the one who’s supposed to be in our lives. Mine and Hunter’s. It just makes sense. I know it might be hard for you, and I respect that, and I’m not going to push you to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

“I’m comfortable with this,” I assured him, and he smiled at me.

“I’m not sure if things are all wrapped up with her now or not,” he confessed. “But I don’t want to be apart from you. If you’re ready, I am.”

I looked deep into his eyes and felt that rush of love for him, that certainty that came with knowing I was with the right man and that having him lying next to me was the only way I wanted to spend the rest of this evening.

“I think I am,” I agreed, and he smiled into a kiss, moving his hand up to cup my face gently like he was touching something impossibly precious.

When he pulled back, he brushed his nose against mine and raised his eyebrows.

“I didn’t expect to find you in Vegas, though,” he said. “Doesn’t seem like your kind of place.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure it is,” I admitted. “Zoe booked the trip for us after what happened, and I figured it was better to come out here than to spend all that time lying around at home feeling sorry for myself.”

“Well, I don’t care where you are as long as we’re together.” He grinned.

“Trust me, I’m looking forward to getting back to Portland,” I told him. He raised his eyebrows.

“Hey, there’s some fun stuff to do here,” he pointed out. “It would be a shame to miss all of it, right?”

“You’ve been here before?”

“I did some work for one of the hotels down here, and I figured it would be fun to stay for a few days just to say I had.” He shrugged. “And yeah, it was pretty cool. You just have to know where to go.”

“Well, I’m all ears,” I agreed, and he kissed me again like he couldn’t resist for a moment longer.

“I can’t wait to show you this place,” he murmured, looking deeply into my eyes, and a thrill ran through me. This trip was going to be fun. As long as he was by my side, everything seemed like a good time.