She sighed when his lips touched her skin. Her nerve endings sparked like live wires as he lifted one of her knees to his shoulder and kissed his way along her thigh. She lifted her hips when he got close to her mound, desperate to be enveloped in the heat of his mouth.

He pulled back before she got what she wanted and she hit the couch with one of her fists.

He chuckled, the vibration of it traveling up the skin of her other thigh as he gave it the same attention, nibbling at her flesh, licking and kissing his way back toward her throbbing pussy.

This time when he got there, she grabbed a fistful of his hair and slid down a little closer to his mouth, making clear what she wanted. Three months of lovemaking with Max had obliterated all her old inhibitions.

He’d seen all of her. Had tasted all of her. Been inside all of her.

There was nothing to hide. Nothing she wanted to hide.

She half-expected him to tease her, to make her wait. It was one of his favorite games.

To her relief, he slid his hands under her ass instead. His breath was soft against her aroused center, her knees resting on his shoulders as he stroked through her folds with the pad of his thumb.

She arched her back and sucked in her breath, her hands still in his hair.

“You’re so wet, Abby,” he murmured. “So fucking wet.”

“It’s for you,” she said. “Now what are you going to do about it?”

After all the hours in bed with him, she still never knew exactly what to expect. He might lick her from one end to the other or fuck her with his fingers first. He might drive into her with his cock and then withdraw, leaving her panting and begging for more.

This time he went straight for her clit, locking his mouth down on it and sucking, giving her no time to build to the pleasure that rocked her body.

Not that she was complaining.

He sucked until she couldn’t bear it another second, until the pressure was an exquisite blend of ecstasy and pain. Her channel was crying out for his fingers, his cock, anything to fill the yawning emptiness of her pussy, all the more demanding for the sensation exploding in her clit.

He wasn’t going to give it to her. Not yet. She could tell from the firm placement of his hands under her ass, offering her up to his mouth.

He wanted surrender. Wanted her to prove that she trusted him as much as he trusted her.

She pressed down against his mouth and let go, relinquishing her desire for his fingers and cock, giving herself over to the fevered lapping of his tongue.

The wave of her orgasm rose almost immediately, a roar that built in her core until she could almost hear it, like a tidal wave rushing toward shore.

She moved her hips in time with his tongue, grinding against his mouth, disappearing into her urgency, into the heat seeping from his mouth to her already-hot pussy, contracting as her orgasm reached the point of no return.

She was a split second from letting go, from spilling into bliss, when he surprised her by withdrawing his mouth.

She gasped, opening her eyes to look at him.

His jeans were unbuttoned, his cock a perfect staff jutting between her thighs, already poised at her opening. She didn’t have time to wonder why he was withholding her orgasm when in the past he’d always insisted she come at least once before he penetrated her. They were half-formed thoughts trying to swim to the surface of her passion-fueled fog as he drove into her with a ferocious growl.

She cried out, the pleasure of his massive cock pushing through her swollen channel almost more than she could bear.

He rolled under her until she was straddling him again, back where they’d started. Gravity did the work of dropping her even further onto him. The deep penetration coupled with the friction of his stomach on her clit had her moving immediately, rocking her hips against his as she held onto his shoulders.

He held her head in his hands as he thrust into her, matching her frantic movements with a fever of his own.

“It’s just us, Abby,” he said between kisses. “I don’t need anything else.”

She knew what he was saying, felt it as surely as she felt his body joined with hers: other people would come and go, but their world revolved only around each other.

It always had. It always would.

She gave him her tongue, gave him her body, gave up any idea of separation between them. She didn’t know where she ended and he began. Maybe it had always been this way — the two of them operating under the illusion that they were different people when they had been one and the same all along.

The thought was a match to the embers of her orgasm, burning low in her belly since he’d taken his mouth off her. It flared to life, hungry and demanding release as he plunged upward into her.

The pressure on her clit was ecstasy. She moved faster, wanting the perfection of his cock filling her and the stimulation on her clit all at once, getting there the only way she knew how — by moving faster, by sinking onto him again and again, letting his cock impale her, his head slam into her cervix until she was teetering on the brink.

“Open your eyes, beautiful,” he said, as if he’d felt the subtle shift in her body, the impending flood of release. “Look at me when you come.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. She was secure in his arms, his body a wall of muscle against hers, his hands still holding her head like a rare and precious jewel as she moved her hips into position, giving her body permission to let go.

There was fire in his eyes, but love, too. So much love.

She didn’t know which one tipped her body over the edge, but a moment later she was crying out, fighting to keep her eyes locked on his as she shuddered around him.

He let loose a guttural groan as he came, his eyes on hers as he drove into her over and over again, their hips working in unison as their bodies trembled, suspended in a sky full of stars, their pleasure spinning them through the dark and quiet expanse of space.

She bent her head to his as her orgasm subsided, dropping kisses all over his face.

“I love you,” she said. “I love you, Max.”

He closed his eyes. “Abby…”

Her name was a sigh on his lips. A prayer.