We fall into one another’s arms, clinging, kissing as if no one’s every going to tear us apart again. He worships my mouth with his, loving me slowly even while heat pulses between our bodies, pulling us together.

Breathless, I end the kiss, resting my lips against his chin. Pressed against him, I feel his savage heartbeat in my own chest; I even feel the wild rhythm under the tips of my fingers as I lay them against his neck.

I stroke him there as he cradles my head with both hands.

“The only woman I’ll ever want is you, Nova,” he whispers. “I want to be with you, and only you.”

He doesn’t have to explain: no more contracts, no more deals and stipulations. There’s just us now.

Before all of this, I would’ve been so unsure about what he’s telling me. I would’ve second-guessed him, asking him why he’s saying this to me out of all the other girls. But I don’t have to now as he pulls back just enough to look into my eyes. All the answers are there.

Lust rams through me, spearing its way into my veins and belly and sex, but there’s more to this than just the way I want him. So much more. In his gaze, I see that I somehow saved him. I don’t know from what, but for this passionate moment, I know everything else about Travis. I know that he loves me enough to go out and search for me high and low, to claim me as more than just a prize in a bidding war.

With all the emotion I’ve just found in him, he kisses me again.

I lower my hand to his chest, pressing against his heart, urging him toward the back of the jet, toward the bed I know is there. It’s the same bed that I’d been afraid of on that first night, the one I thought he would rush me to because he’d paid so dearly to take my innocence.

Tonight it’s my choice to go there as we walk to it.

By the time we reach his bedroom, everything in me is swirling around—my thoughts, my need for him, the blood that surges through my body in sharp expectancy of what’s to come.

Our true first night together.

As he watches me with such love in his gaze, I reach up to untangle his tie. I slip it from around his neck as if it’s the first step in undoing him altogether. He seems to sense that, too, and there’s a wariness in his gaze, as if, deep down, he’s cautious about what I’m going to see that no one else has seen before.

But I’m not afraid. I want every bit of him. I want it all.

I unbutton his jacket, then walk around him to slide it off his shoulders, his arms. I discard these protective layers, throwing them on a chair. I feel as if I’m taking down that wall between us, stone by stone.

His breathing is tight as I reach around to undo his shirt. My own breathing hitches in time to his while I ease the fabric from him, revealing his tanned skin, the firm muscles of his torso. After I drop this layer, too, I press my face against his back.

God, the hard smoothness of him. Intoxicating.

I run my hands over his sides, and steam builds in me, ticking and pulsing and expanding. I again reach around him, this time to unbutton his trousers. His zipper makes a moaning, buzzing sound as I lower it.

“Nova.” His whisper is rough, like something that’s just been mined. Something unpolished.

“I’m yours. All yours.” I skim my hand over his cock. It’s already hard for me.

I circle to the front of him, then trace my hands over his waist and to his ass. I bring him to me, his erection prodding my belly. I’m still in the jeans and T-shirt I was wearing when I left my old house, but as Travis looks down into my eyes, I feel sexy, beautiful. I feel like his everything.

We both take off the rest of his clothes together, then he does the same for me, slowly, with a breath-holding awareness that burns between us. My clit is humming, and as we stand together, watching one another, never looking away, I’m so wet for him that I think I might die if he doesn’t take me now.

Primal heat flickers in his gaze, and I know that he knows what I want, what I need. He bends slightly, cupping my bottom and bringing my hips forward just enough so that his bare tip parts my pussy folds. My wetness makes a slick, hungry sound.

He groans, and it’s all I need to hear. His walls are finally falling.

My heart crashes as he sweeps me into his arms, bringing me against him and smoothly pushing his cock up and into me.

I moan loudly, wrapping both of my legs around him to take him in as deeply as I can. Time seems to suspend in that sublime moment, because we are one another’s worlds.

Everything is ours.

I begin to gyrate against him, and he strokes into me again, cupping my bottom, slowing down my desperate need to feel him come inside me.

“My one…” he whispers as he takes me to the bed. He lays me down, still inside me. “My only…”

As he fucks me gently, he never looks away. There’s no shyness to hold me back now, and I meet each silken thrust as our rhythm picks up. My entire body is buzzing for him—my skin, my core, my clit—and I dig my nails into his arms as the carnal hum gets louder inside of me, taking me over.

“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, Travis…”

Our cadence quickens, and he pounds into me. I abrade his skin, dragging my fingers down as my tiny cries of delight meet his every thrust. He pounds into me once again, then finally comes in a series of explosions that blast into me.

I cry out, the intensity of my own climax meeting his perfectly.

When I come, it feels like another wall falling, stones raining down and crashing against one another and finally blowing apart: one, then another, then another that completely cracks my world open to a mind-crushing darkness…

When my consciousness clears, Travis is lazily kissing me. I kiss him back, knowing we have all the time we need ahead of us.

Forever.

The word lingers in me as the jet engines sing on, carrying us back to New York where the rest of our lives await us. He runs his hand down my sweat-prickled body, exploring it even further, and my skin sighs with ecstasy. One more sudden aftershock rocks me as I slightly arch off the bed, and he buries his face against my neck.

It’s as if this is his favorite place to be, and he kisses my tender flesh there. I hold onto him tighter, luxuriating in the moistness on his skin.

I wallow in the feel of him next to me, touching me and possessing me in a way that he never has before, because now he’s mine, too.

As my pulse levels out and my breathing begins to match the slow, steady rhythm of his, we lay together with my head resting on his chest, his arms around me. Then, just as I think he’s drifted off to sleep, he speaks.

“I thought my old wounds had all hardened up enough so that I could never feel anything again. Then you came along.”

His words rumble through me, touching places so deep down that my chest aches.

And when he starts telling me everything he’s been hiding, I open even more for him.