Piper presses back into me, which blows my last “we’re just friends” thoughts all to hell because I’m already hard as fuck after her impromptu wet t-shirt show in the kitchen. I’ll never be able to smell ginger ale without getting an erection again.

She nestles her sweet little ass into my groin and I want to grab her and grind into her, but my brain’s moving slow (probably because all my blood headed south) and before I can catch her she’s gone, leaving behind the mouth-watering scent of peaches.

Fuck, I’m hungry.

She stops about a foot away, her back still to me, and lifts her arms in the air, finding the beat and getting lost in the music. Her hips are twitching, but that’s not going to be enough. She wants to really move. Piper is not a sway-in-place kind of dancer. She’s a force of nature who cannot be contained once she gets into it. I should know; I’ve spent enough hours watching her on the dance floor—nursing my beer and wanting to pound the shit out of any guy who got too close.

But her balance is off and she’s not going to be able to dance the way she wants to unless I help her.

Will you help me?

Dance with me.

Piper asking for help is huge, and while she used to tease me about never joining her on the dance floor, she never straight up asked me to dance. Looking at her now, her strong legs disappearing into her silky sleep shorts, her hair tangled down her back like she’s been busy in some lucky bastard’s bed for hours, I cannot imagine why I never just danced with her.

Who the fuck cares about looking like a dick when the trade off is my hands all over Piper’s body? Life is too short, man. I know that now, and I’m not going to miss another second of this ride.

She jumps a little when I put my hands on her hips, but she doesn’t pull away. She presses her back against my chest and her arms drift around my neck, but she keeps an inch or two between her ass and my dick, which makes me groan in frustration.

She laughs a little. “Something you want?”

Her hands are playing with the hair at the nape of my neck and her scent is all around me. I lower my head and ghost my lips over her ear, because two can play this teasing game and I remember all the spots that make her wild. My memory still isn’t perfect, but my brain has retained every single second I spent driving Piper out of her mind, and I’m about to put that information to good use.

Example A: there’s a direct line between her ears and her clit.

“You know what I want.” I trace the shell of her ear with my tongue and she gasps, then moans when I bite down gently on her lobe. She stills, losing the rhythm of the song, barely breathing as she waits for me to suck that little piece of plump flesh into my mouth.

But instead I swipe it with my tongue—a barely there touch that makes her whimper—and lift my head.

“Something you want?” I ask.

She laughs, low and husky, and grips the back of my neck.

“I want to dance,” she says. “That’s what we’re doing, right?”

But I don’t answer. I can’t, because she pushes her ass back and grinds it against my dick, rolling her hips to the beat of the song. I don’t dance, but tonight with her I’m a mother-fucking rock star because somehow I’m matching every single one of her moves, our bodies pressed together, moving as one. I glide my hands up to her waist, stopping to wait for her impatient huff before drifting higher, until my fingers brush against the bottoms of her breasts.

No bra. The ginger ale incident made that very clear.

God bless ginger ale.

I tease her for a few minutes, following the beginnings of her curves back and forth over the damp material of her shirt, but I can’t hold out for long. I need her warmth and her satin skin. I need all of her, but I have to make sure she’s right here with me. Everything I’m picking up on is telling me she’s into this, but trusting my own instincts isn’t as easy as it used to be. I hate showing her my broken places, but she showed me hers tonight, which makes it easier.

So I pull my hands away, which earns me a disappointed groan and a few tugs on my hair.

“Where are you going? You were just getting to the good part.”

I glance down at her gorgeous breasts, hypnotized for a moment at the way they’re moving as she dances, the hard buds of her nipples poking through her shirt. My brain goes offline and hey, I’m not going to even feel bad about that. Plenty of guys who haven’t lived through a traumatic brain injury would lose their mind at the sight of Piper Easton dancing with a damp white t-shirt plastered to her chest.

“You’re staring at my tits, aren’t you?” She pulls my hair again. “Focus, Adam.”

I shake my head, and she laughs, low and rough and so sexy. “You’re so predictable.”

“You’re so gorgeous,” I tell her. Because it’s the truth. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and for the first time since I woke up in the hospital I know that I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.

“Piper.” I breathe out her name as soft as I can because I want her to turn her face toward me, and she obliges, twisting so her ear is right in front of my lips.

“I want to kiss you now.” I’m mostly mouthing the words and she’s chasing the faint sound, burrowing her body into me until my arms go around her, tight and strong, pulling her back and keeping her still.

She twists more, giving me her face, and fuck but I wish I could see her eyes right now. I want to be able to read what she’s feeling, to know if she’s here with me for real or just looking for something to take her mind off her pain.

But again, I can’t trust my people-reading skills for shit, so maybe it’s better that I have to force myself to ask. Even if it feels like dropping in on the gnarliest spine a mountain ever threw at me, just pointing myself downhill with no clue what I’d encounter once gravity took hold.

“Do you want me to kiss you?”

Her tongue darts out and she licks her lips and raises her face toward me, but I pull back. I have to be sure.

“I need your words, Piper.”

She drops her hands from around my neck and wiggles in my arms until she’s facing me, a few inches between us. My hips push forward, searching for the sweet pressure of her body, but she grabs my hands and shakes her head.

“I don’t want you to kiss me, Adam Westlake.”

Her expression is fierce and serious and now I’m so fucking glad she can’t see me, because this feels almost as bad as when the doctor told me I’d never ride again. So painful that there is no defense or armor, only the raw vulnerability of every feeling in my body playing itself out on my face.

I try to pull away but her hands tighten around my wrists.

“Kissing isn’t enough,” she says. “I want you to ravage me.”

She drops my hands long enough to pull her shirt over her head, then reaches out, finds my shoulders, and follows my arms down until she finds my wrists again. I don’t help her because I can’t move. All I can do is stand there, breathing hard and staring.

“Now,” she says, and she pulls my hands to her breasts and rises up on her tiptoes, her lips searching for my mouth.

Damn. My brain might be a few seconds behind, but my body takes over because a command to ravage me and two hands full of the sweetest breasts in the world is pretty damn clear. I cup her breasts, groaning at the weight of them and the unbelievable softness of her skin.

“Kiss me, Adam.”

Her lips are slick and pink and ready, and I should savor this moment and kiss her softly, even sweetly, but when my mouth finally finally touches hers, there’s nothing soft about it. There’s only hunger. It’s not a pretty, movie star kiss. It’s a fucking explosion.

She opens for me instantly and fuck I could come right now just from the feeling of her tongue slicking against mine. Just from her taste, which is sweet and perfect and familiar but new at the same time. She’s sweet, the ginger ale lingering on her tongue, but underneath is the unique taste of Piper. The taste of home.

She sucks my tongue into her mouth and grips my shoulders, pulling herself up so she can get my hardness exactly where she wants it. I stumble backward until the backs of my knees hit the sofa and guide her down so she’s straddling me. Our mouths are glued together the whole time, tongues chasing each other back and forth, teeth clashing, swallowing each other’s gasps and moans. I run my fingers through her hair, cradling her skull, and give her earlobes a little yank, because I know it will make her hips kick, pressing her pussy even harder into my dick.

That stops us for a moment, because she’s so hot and I’m so hard and it feels so good that I can feel the start of my orgasm tingling at the base of my spine and I don’t want to come. Not yet. Not until I get her there.

“Shirt off,” she mutters. Her hands are running all over me, tracing the muscles of my stomach, rubbing circles on my pecs, playing with the trail of hair leading down to my aching cock. She yanks my shirt up, giving up when it gets stuck on my head and leaves me blind as she bends down to tongue my nipples. She bites down and I throw my head back, breathing in the hot air trapped in my shirt, blind and helpless for as long as her lips are on me.

When she pulls back and I can move again, the shirt is gone, thrown across the room, and it’s my turn to kiss my way down her chest. Again, I want to tease her, but that will have to be for next time, or maybe next fucking week, after I’ve had enough of her to satisfy this wild need inside of me. So instead of licking circles around her nipples until she wiggles and squirms, I pull one into my mouth, rough and fast, and suck hard enough to hollow out my cheeks because that’s what Piper loves and hey, I’m here to ravage.

Her fingers go to her other nipple, rubbing and plucking, and I love to watch her touch herself but tonight that’s my job, so I push her away and put my own fingers to good use.

“Adam, Adam, Adam…” She moves her hips in time to the rhythm of my name, pulling back on the first syllable and then grinding down at the end. I bring my other hand down and touch her over her shorts and she’s burning up and soaking wet, and we are both way too vertical and way too clothed right now.

I release her nipple with a wet pop, and she turns her face toward me, her mouth slack with lust and wanting, her chest heaving as she sucks in air.

“Bed,” she says, then gasps and wraps her legs around my hips when I stand up immediately and start to walk her toward the stairs. She doesn’t ask if I can handle it or demand to be let down, just buries her face in my neck, drawing pictures on my skin with her clever little tongue, and trusts me to get her where she wants to be in one piece.

I pause in the hallway, not sure if she wants my bed or hers. We’ve been together in my bed, had plenty of hot and dirty times, but her room was ours, the place we made love and slept and woke up together, so the rush of joy I feel when she raises her head from my neck and says “my bed” is intense. It feels like a promise.

I lay her down and take a deep breath, a second of being still to look at her and fix this moment in my mind. Piper, my Piper, cheeks flushed, lips swollen from my kisses, sprawled out on the bed and reaching for me. She’s both the hottest and the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. She’s everything I’ve wanted for years, and she’s finally about to be mine again.

“Come here,” she commands. “I want you inside me.”

I shake my head, then remember she can’t see me. “I can’t. Not tonight.”

She pushes herself up on her elbows, her swollen lips set in a pout. “Why not?”

“I want to look in your eyes while I’m inside you.” I lower myself down over her gently, taking most of my weight on my arms, then dip my pelvis down to rub against her. She sighs and pushes up into me.

“Please, Adam,” she begs. The need in her voice makes my dick throb so hard that it’s actually a good thing I’ve taken sex off the table. I’d blow before I got all the way inside her at this point.

“I’ve got you,” I whisper. “I’m going to make you feel so good, Piper.”

“Better than pain pills?”

“Better than anything,” I promise. And then I put my lips on her neck and start licking my way down.