As soon as I had sheathed myself in a condom, I rolled on top of her, sliding my hands up her body to pin her arms above her head. She let out a soft moan – I wasn’t sure if she was even aware she was making any noise, but every time she let one slip from between her lips, I swear it got me even harder.

I held both of her wrists down against the bed and took my cock in my hand, guiding it toward her; I teased her for a moment, rubbing my head against her slit for a moment or two and earning myself a couple more of those inimitably sexy noises in the process. And then, at last, unable to hold out any longer, I slid myself inside of her for the first time. And it was everything I had always fantasized it would be. Only way, way better.

She was tight and warm and slick, probably from the couple of orgasms I’d given her already – damn, even thinking about the way she had moaned as she came was pushing me close to the edge, and I wanted to hold off on coming for as long as I could. I pushed myself inside her all the way up to the hilt, burying my cock all the way into her, and she pushed her hips up off the bed to take me even deeper.

"Holy shit, you’re so big..." she murmured, and I turned my head and kissed her on the mouth. Her tongue slipped instantly into my mouth, and I let go of her hands so that she could wrap them around me. Her fingertips were hot on my back, her pussy was tight around my cock, and I took my time in fucking her, going in long, slow strokes. I wanted to savor every second of this. This wasn’t some quick fuck that I was just using to get myself off. No, I wanted to show her just how much she had been missing when she had danced with me that night and then gone home alone. I wanted to imprint myself onto her memory just the same way she had imprinted herself onto mine.

She lifted her legs and hooked her ankles behind my back, allowing me in even deeper. I thrust a little harder, moving with more purpose, and pushed myself up on top of her so that I could watch her reactions. Her eyes were hazy, on the brink of rolling backward into her head, and I was determined to see them vanish entirely.

I took her hand and pushed it between her legs toward her clit – I wanted to focus on fucking her, and she would know exactly what she needed to push herself closer to the edge. She began to play with herself, and I looked down to take her in. The sight of her fingers on her clit as my cock slid in and out of her pussy was one of the single hottest things I had ever seen in my life. I growled with desire, burying my face in her neck and distracting myself by running my tongue over her throat.

I could feel her heart racing faster and faster against my chest, so fast that I thought it was going to burst right out of her, and it thrilled me to know that she was getting off on this as much as I was – in all of the fantasies I’d had about the two of us together, nothing had ever come close to this. This was beyond intense; all of the feelings that I had been holding back were overflowing and bursting out of me. I wanted to fuck her all night long – or at least until I had gotten her to come a few more times.

"I want to feel you come, Kari," I murmured in her ear. I’d noticed that she seemed to react to the sound of me saying her name, and I loved that. I loved that she seemed hypnotized by everything I did to her. I mean, I had reason to think I was good, but this was something else entirely. This was two bodies in perfect harmony, as though this was the thousandth time that we’d fucked, not the first.

"Mmm," she groaned. I felt her pussy clench around my cock, and I pulled back just in time to see her eyes roll all the way back into her head as she gave in once more, her body trembling beneath mine just the way it had done in the hot tub. She looked so fucking hot when she was coming – not holding back or trying to perform, but just getting full-on lost to the feelings that were running through her. I knew how she felt. Right now, it felt as though there was nothing else in the damn world but the two of us, this moment, and the way she felt as her pussy pulsed around my cock.

"Your eyes rolled all the way back," I teased her gently, and she opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before she managed to get the words out.

"Now let me see if I can make you do it," she grinned as she gently pushed herself off of me. I stared at her with amusement, waiting to see what she would do next. And then, she flipped around on the bed, landed on all fours, and arched her back. Shooting a look over her shoulder, she raised her eyebrows at me.

"You think this might do it?”

Honestly, I was dumbstruck for a moment: I had no idea what I could say at the sight of her like that. So I didn’t bother saying a thing to her. I just moved forward and started touching her, all laid out for me on display, like the best Christmas gift I’d ever received. I ran my hands over her exposed ass, over her hips, and over her waist, watching as a rush of goosebumps appeared everywhere I touched. She was moaning, her arms trembling, and I knew I had to give her what she wanted. What I wanted.

I positioned myself beside her, held her hips tightly in place, and then slipped inside of her. The feeling at this angle was so different than what I had felt before that I could hardly wrap my head around it – she was somehow tighter, the grip of her pussy on my cock even more intense than it had been before. I slipped all of the way inside, right up to the hilt, and held myself there for a long moment, getting used to this new feeling, to the way her body felt around mine. Then I began to fuck her.

I didn’t hold back, not for a second – I wanted her to remember this, to remember me inside of her and never forget how it felt for the two of us to be joined together like this. I ran my hand up her back and gripped her hair, pulling it back so that I could see her face. Her mouth was slightly open, and her eyes were glazed with pleasure. I could have stared at that face all day long. I slowed my thrusts for a moment, grinding my cock inside of her, and watched as her body shivered with how great it felt.

I wasn’t sure how long we fucked like that – everything seemed to slide away from us, including time, as I moved inside her from behind. My hands traced the shape of her body, and I remembered how it had felt when we’d danced together and I had touched her for the first time, how much I had wanted her like this. She came again, her body weak from the intensity of it all, and I had to reach down and loop an arm around her waist just to keep her upright. She moved her hips back against me, taking me even deeper, as though she couldn’t get enough – as though there was no way in hell she could ever get enough.

Soon, I felt myself getting close. I wanted to keep going; I wanted to tease this moment out for as long as I could, but I knew I had to give in. Besides, she shot a look over her shoulder and smiled at me, apparently sensing my urgency. She spoke, softly but plainly.

"I want you to come inside of me," she murmured, and that was all I needed to tip over the edge into orgasm.

When it hit me, it was explosive: beyond anything I’d ever felt before in my entire life. I had fucked many women, but none of them, not one, had ever made me feel the way she did. It wasn’t just the pleasure of coming in her gorgeous pussy, though that was incredible – it was knowing that I had her, that she was finally mine after all of this time. The one that had gotten away was in my bed, coming around my cock, and that was all I needed to get me there.

I held myself deep inside her as my cock exploded with release, my fingers sinking so deep into her hips that I was sure they would leave some kind of mark. But I didn’t care. Maybe I even wanted her to remember me that way. Maybe I wanted the memory of this night imprinted on her for good, just the way she had imprinted on me the first night we’d met.

When we eventually pulled apart, she pitched head-first onto the bed before her and lay there for a moment, catching her breath. She looked as though she could just fall asleep on the spot, so I reached over and stroked her hair gently.

"You okay?" I asked her. She nodded, not quite able to speak yet, and I figured now was a good chance to get myself cleaned up.

So I did just that, sliding into the bathroom and tidying myself up, disposing of the condom and washing my face and hands. I looked at myself in the mirror – I thought I would feel different afterward. Triumphant, even. But I wasn’t sure what I felt, and I wasn’t sure I liked that.

When I emerged, she was still splayed out on the bed in front of me, and I made my way over to her and wrapped some covers around her carefully. She smiled up at me, finally making it back to the real world again.

"Morgan, that was incredible," she murmured to me, reaching out so I would come sit next to her. Honestly, this was pretty new territory for me: I was much more likely to find some way to kick a woman out of my bed than lie in it with her after we’d finished fucking, but I wanted her to stay there. And that was a new one on me.

"Yeah, it really was," I agreed. I knew that wasn’t a big deal to admit, but I was usually the guy who bragged at how that was pretty standard for the encounters I normally had. Some part of me wanted her to know just how damn good she had been for me, just how much I had loved being with her, but there was another part of me that had no clue how to navigate that conversation.

"I’m starving," I remarked, and I was – it hadn’t been that long since we’d had dinner, but all of that athletic fucking had worked up an appetite once more.

"You have food in the house?” she asked. "A cook, maybe?”

"I’m not that bougie," I shot back playfully. "No, but we could order in."

"It’s not bougie to have food in the house," she laughed, and I shrugged.

"Hey, I’m not used to cooking for myself," I reminded her. "I’m normally too busy."

"Alright, so where do you order from?” she asked. I went to grab a couple of menus from the kitchen. I returned, and the two of us picked out a Chinese place that we thought looked good, and I called and placed an order.

It arrived not long afterward, and I carried the food to the bed, where she was waiting for me.

We split the food up between us and ate ravenously – while the food at the lodge was amazing, it was also served in comically tiny portions that left me wanting more, especially after spending the whole evening fucking like we had just done. We chatted about nothing in particular and got crumbs on the bed and laughed about everything that had happened that day. When we were finished, I cleared away the boxes. While I deposited them in the kitchen, she must have passed out because when I came back, she was flat-out on the bed and fast asleep.

I made my way toward her and pulled the covers over her body – even though I could have treated myself to look at her gorgeous, naked form a little while longer. She wriggled against the sheets and let out a little snuffling noise, causing my heart to warm. She was so cute.

I sat there on the edge of the bed for a while, just watching her sleep, and I wondered how it could be that I was so unbothered by her presence here in my bed. Normally, I would have been trying to figure out the best way to get her back home in a taxi without coming across as too unrepentant an asshole, but with Kari...I wanted to lock the doors and pretend the world outside didn’t exist so that we could spend a little longer in here, just the two of us.

I went into the bedside table and pulled out the small box where I kept my cigars – yes, they weren’t good for me, but if I didn’t indulge myself at all, I would go crazy. I pulled out a hand-rolled one, grabbed my lighter, and headed out onto the porch once more. I had gotten dressed to greet the man with our food, thank goodness, so I didn’t have to bother with the arduous task of pulling more clothes on.

The air was bitingly cold outside, but I didn’t mind. In fact, I liked it. It felt as though it was scrubbing my head clean. I didn’t know what the hell was going on with me – what the hell had to be running through my head for me to want to do this with her. Not just the sex; I understood where that was coming from. But all of it. Everything that came with being near her felt exciting in a way that nothing else had in a long time, and I was already craving more of her.

I puffed on the cigar, watching the smoke as it mingled with the icy air around me. The thought crossed my mind – coming from nowhere – that I could do this every night: I could fuck her senseless, eat junk food, and come out here to smoke my cigar and look at the gorgeous scenery around us. And that thought scared the living shit out of me because it wasn’t the way that I functioned, not by a long shot. I was the guy who kicked you out after one night, not the one who asked you to move in before you left the next morning.

But with Kari, it felt different, strikingly different. There was something about her that felt more grounded than every other woman I’d ever been with. Maybe it was the fact that she had kids, or maybe it was how passionate she was about her charity, or maybe it was something more than that – but she felt solid, like she was connected to the earth, not floating away in space. So many of the women I was with seemed like they were just drifting randomly, hoping for something to come along and make things worthwhile, but she already had a full life without me. That was what made her so attractive – knowing that she could go on without me, that she wasn’t dependent on me for anything.

I leaned on the railing next to the hot tub and looked down to the woods in front of me. They were dark, pitch-black, and I found the quiet soothing. My head began to clear, and I found myself able to focus on what was right there in front of me for a change.

I had been sure that this was all about getting her into bed. It would have been easy if that was the case. I could have just rolled out this whole day, romancing her and pulling every string that I needed to in order to get things going, and then I could have given her a roll in the hay that I knew she would never forget and move on. But now that I’d had that from her, now that I’d shared with her the one thing I’d thought I wanted, I was craving more.

And part of that was the sex – of course it was, I wasn't crazy. That had been some of the best sex of my life, and I knew that she felt the same way. I had seen the satisfaction painted across her face when we were done. The way she had told me how much she had enjoyed it; I knew she wasn’t just paying me lip service. The two of us had some powerful sexual chemistry, and I would have been lying to myself and anyone else paying attention if I had said that wanting to roll in bed with her again wasn’t a major factor in pursuing things.

But knowing she was lying there in the bed, asleep and ready for me to join her – that was what really excited me. The thought of falling asleep next to her, of getting to hold her in my arms as she dozed, of waking up beside her the next day and getting to look at her sleep-bleary eyes and kiss her good morning. That was what I really wanted. That was what I was truly looking forward to.

And that scared me, more than a little. There wasn’t much I was actually afraid of – I did all of my own stunts, so not much unsettled me these days – but her and the power she had over me? Yeah, that was a different story.

So what did I do about it? I’d never been one for just sitting back and letting the universe declare what I should do. I was in control of my own destiny, and right now, I was pretty sure that my destiny was slumbering a couple of rooms over from me, not aware of anything that was running through my head right now.

But I knew this couldn’t be the end of it. I had assumed that when we finished fucking, I would feel some sense of release, some freedom from the intensity of the desire that had driven me to do this in the first place, but if anything, our intimacy had only made things more intense.

And I wasn’t going to let it end here. Actually, I was going to make it so that it started here. Yeah, that was what I needed to do – this was going to be the beginning of things for us. I was going to slide back in there, climb into bed, and when we woke up the next morning, I would tell her that I wanted to date her. Date her. Now there was a phrase that I hadn’t given a lot of thought to in the last few...decades. But then, I hadn’t found anyone before who vibed with me the way she did, who made me feel safe and settled the way she did. Who made me believe there was actually something positive to being safe and settled in the first place.

I finished the cigar, stubbed the butt, and tossed it in the trashcan. I didn’t know what I was doing out here when I could be curled up in bed with her. I went back inside, warming my hands by rubbing them together, not wanting to surprise her with my cold-ass touch. I paused for a moment over the bed before I got undressed, just looking at her face framed by that messy hair as she lay exhausted, tangled up in the sheets. And I knew that I couldn’t wait another second to be next to her. I pulled off my clothes, slipped beneath the covers, and wrapped my arms around the woman I knew I was going to make my girlfriend.