Eli stumbled toward the bed and collapsed onto his back, taking her down on top of him. They panted and tried to regain their sanity.             

Tia was stunned. Her body and brain buzzing with what just happened. God. He was a sex mastermind. She hadn’t even known that sex could even be like that. That wasn’t even in the same category as anything she’d ever done. Part of her wanted to say that it was all him. That he had transformed her from a frog into a princess with the power of his passion. But she pushed those thoughts down. Because she’d been there too, damn it! She’d been just as passionate and loose as he’d been. It wasn’t simply that Eli was amazing at sex, which he was, it was that they’d made something together. Something real and overwhelming and so, so hot.

Eli traced his hands up and down her back and even as exhausted as he was, he couldn’t control the gruff laughter that bubbled up out of him.

Tia lifted her head. “What’s so funny?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m happy. That was... that was…”

If he’d looked up, he would have seen the insecurity race over her face. He would have seen her confidence fight with it and win. She screwed up her courage to tell the truth. “I’ve never felt anything like that.”

“Yeah,” he murmured as his smile fell away. He pressed the back of his hand to his eyes for a second. “Neither have I.”

She sat up on his chest, looked back, and quickly dealt with the condom, tossing it into the trash. When she looked forward again, he was watching her through the branches of his fingers.

She cocked her head to one side. “You haven’t? But you’ve had so much sex.”

He smiled, but it came out as more of a grimace. “Not as much as you probably think I have. Gossip sites and tabloids exaggerate to make a better story.”

“Oh.” Even though she’d been the one to bring it up, Tia found herself wanting to talk about anything but his sexual past right now, while she was still naked and straddling him.

“But to answer your question,” he said, stroking and petting his hands over her like he couldn’t help himself. “No, I really haven’t felt anything like that before. That was…”

And still, he couldn’t find a word for what he was trying to say. Tia desperately wished that he could.

He tugged her down next to him and stroked a hand through her hair. “I can’t believe I’m here,” he whispered against her lips.

“What do you mean?”

“I kept telling myself that it was never going to happen. I wanted it to. But you’d told me it wasn’t. So I didn’t want to hope. But I wanted you so badly. I imagined myself like this, with you, at night. Even while I knew I would never see you this way. Tangled and flushed and bright from me touching you.”

His words, though not the ones she’d thought she wanted to hear, were soothing her, delighting her, reassuring her.

“But now, here I am. In your room.” He looked around, his eyes long since adjusted to the dim light, and took in her room. The dark gray walls and the colorful paintings here and there. She had a good sturdy dresser with jewelry and lipstick scattered across the top. And of course, a huge bookshelf on one side. Just like every room that was hers. Her bed, though fully destroyed beneath them, had a colorful quilt over top and a ridiculous number of mismatched pillows at the head. “Nice room, by the way.”

“Thanks.” She bit her lip for a second. “I kind of can’t believe that you’re here either.”

He turned back to her. “What changed your mind? About sleeping with me?”

She wanted to lie. To say that there had been a logical, calculated reason. One that she could justify in grounded thinking. But she looked into those tawny eyes and remembered what they’d just done together. The raw, seeking, searching honesty of it. To lie now would be to disrespect what they’d just done. And she found that she couldn’t do it.

“My feelings for you changed,” she admitted. His eyes softened and opened to her, letting her in as his smile grew. His friendly, creased smile. “I started with just a crush. Well, actually, it was more of a memory of a former crush. One I used to have on you. And I knew that all I had to do to express it was kiss you.” She absently traced her fingers over his lips. Those perfect lips. “But then things changed. You were so sweet. So funny. So… you. And it was more than a teenager’s crush. It was a grown person’s feelings. And those can’t be expressed in just a kiss.”

“No, they can’t,” he agreed, pressing a kiss into her palm. He was delighted, thrilled, and terrified by her honesty. Because it was exactly how he felt too.

“Oh,” Tia let out a small sound of dismay as her eyes fell upon his shoulder. The bright red and purple mark that perfectly matched her teeth. “Oh my god, Eli.”

“What?” His hands followed hers to his shoulder. A grin immediately creased his face. “Ah. You marked me up a little, huh?”

“I’m so sorry.” She looked at him with absolute horror on her face. As a surgeon who’d taken the Hippocratic Oath, biting someone into a bruise was utterly horrifying to her.

“Don’t be,” he insisted. “It felt good while you were doing it. Tight. Like you couldn’t get me close enough. And I like having a mark from you. It’ll give me something to smile about every time I look in the mirror.”

“Are you sure? It’s just so,” she brushed her fingers over the bruise and blushed peach, “intense.”

“Yeah, well, we got pretty intense there.”

She nodded. They sure had. I want to get so lost in you I can never get out. The words he’d said to her right before they made love echoed in Tia’s head. No one had ever said anything remotely like that before to her. In the heat of passion or not. She wondered absently if he’d really meant it.

Eli propped himself up on one elbow. “Are you on call tomorrow?”

She shook her head. “Day off.”

“Good.” He rolled over her, his mouth sinking to her neck. “Because I want to keep you up late.”

***

Tia stared, disoriented and strangely off kilter, at the man who slept, sprawled across her bed. He’d held her the entire night through, and honestly, his large body had been like a pile of cinderblocks she’d had to crawl out from under to go to the bathroom a few minutes ago.

She’d fed Ham and let him out back. And now she stood in the doorway of her bedroom, staring at a buck naked Elijah Bird.

Well, the good stuff was covered up with her quilt, but she knew for a fact that he was naked under there. He lay on his stomach, most of his head buried under a pillow at the head of the bed. He was so big that his feet hung off the bottom of the bed by a good foot. The sight made her smile just a little bit. Softened her toward this huge foreign object in her room.

Over the last year, since she’d broken things off with Owen, Tia had gotten used to being alone most of the time. She’d certainly gotten used to being alone in her home. And whenever Owen had slept over, he hadn’t demanded quite so much…air.

It wasn’t just Eli’s sheer size. There was something about his presence that just made her aware of him. Aware in every single way. She’d slept hard after they’d finally fallen into exhaustion. But even in her dreams, she’d felt his heartbeat against her, his breaths clouding over her.

She leaned against the doorjamb as a sudden thought swamped her. He was consuming her. She was so much more into him than she’d ever planned to be. Even before the sex. But now, after what had happened last night, Tia found herself tumbling into a Grand Canyon-sized hole. She wondered what she was supposed to do next. Did she try to tumble with grace? Or did she flail for a handhold?

Either way, she knew landing was gonna hurt.

She shivered as she reflected on all the ways they’d torn into one another last night. She was strangely unhappy about it. She’d hated feeling like she wasn’t good at sex, but in a weird way, she’d also grown used to the idea. Sort of comfortable with it. She knew that she simply could just not have sex and then she wouldn’t have to think about. But Eli had made her stare it in the face. He’d proved her wrong over it too. Tia wondered now if she’d had the misfortune of having a string of subpar lovers. Or if she and Eli really had something between them that lit the bed on fire. If their chemistry trumped nerves and performance anxiety. All they had to do was both show up and surrender.

Tia felt so many things sliding around inside her. So many things she just knew to be true. They weren’t so true anymore. She was off kilter and slipping and all she could think to do was reach out for the steadiest thing she could name. Eli.

Eli stirred and Tia instinctively froze. And then she tried to stifle the laughter that threatened to bubble up out of her. Because instead of raising his head and opening his eyes to look for her, Eli merely sent out a searching hand. His palm fumbled across the bed, under the covers and then over. And then tried to navigate the sea of oddly shaped pillows that littered the bed.

After a few minutes of fruitless searching for her, Eli gave a disgruntled huff and finally raised his head up from under his pillow. His hair stuck up on one side of his head and was flat on the other. He blearily looked around the room until he spotted her in the doorway.

“Too many damn pillows,” he grumbled, flipping over on the bed and pulling his face into a frown.

She had no idea why him being such a grumpy morning person was so unbelievably charming to her. Maybe because he was so cheery and smiley at all other times. Seeing him like this, grumpy and sleepy, pushed Tia even further into the Grand Canyon. He was just so cute.

Eli opened one eye and glared at her. “You gonna get back in bed by yourself or do I have drag you in.”

Tia took a few steps toward the bed and then paused, considering. Getting dragged into bed did sound kind of good, actually. But she hesitated a moment too long, because Eli’s hand shot right out, looping around her waist and dragging her into bed just the way he’d proposed.

He lay on his back and settled her over his hips, pushing her up into a sitting position so that he could look at her. “You put on a nightgown?”

“No,” she shook her head.

“Oh,” he realized. “You’re wearing my undershirt. Damn.” His voice went low and gruff. “You look good in my clothes.”

He didn’t give her the chance to say much else before he leaned up and took her mouth with his. His hands lit a path up from her hips to her breasts. This time he kept her on top as he moved his hips underneath her. He stoked a slow-building fire that rose and rose before breaking away from them like a runaway train.

She couldn’t do anything but let her head tip back and take everything he was giving her.

He couldn’t do anything but watch her, the thin column of her throat, the flush rising up her chest.

It thrilled him beyond belief to see her like this, undone and needing him.

He brought them both to where they needed to be and when it was over, she fell panting across his chest and his morning grumpiness had fallen away completely.

He smiled into her hair and brought her face up to his. “You’re better than a cup of coffee,” he murmured into her hair.

She couldn’t help but smile back. “I guess you really are recovered, huh? You’ve had quite the workout over the last ten hours.”

He brought his hands down and checked his ribs. “Still a little sore, but more than ready to get back into the swing of training. That’s for sure.”

“When will you start?”

“Well, since that requires getting out of this bed, never.”

***

They spent the day together. Simple as that. They’d had a late breakfast on Tia’s back porch and then taken Ham on a long meandering walk through her neighborhood. A few people had recognized Eli, given speculative glances at his fancy slacks and  undershirt he wore in lieu of a change of clothes. She’d cooked dinner for them and he’d done the dishes. And then they’d sprawled over her couch. Pretending they were going to watch a movie but really just drowning in one another.

Yup. They’d spent the night together and then they’d spent the day together. Simple as that. And since she had a busy week and wasn’t sure when she’d be able to fit him in again, they spent the next night together as well and that morning and a little of that afternoon.

It was pretty much two days since Eli had shown up at her house for their date and he was just dragging his ass home. He pulled his car into his driveway and bounded up his front stairs, feeling light and heavy at the same time.

The effervescent joy he’d felt the last two days at Tia’s side was starting to dissolve away as he stepped into his empty house. He’d had the adrenaline, the momentum to keep him going this weekend without thinking too hard about what was happening.

But now, as he stepped into his own shower, and then into a pair of sweats, the reality of his life was starting to settle over him. He was thrilled that she’d changed her mind about sleeping with him. It was the best experience of his life, hands down. But it also had intensified and crystallized everything he was feeling for her. Before, he’d simply let himself experience her. He knew they couldn’t be long term if she wasn’t ever going to have a physical relationship with him. He’d just let his feelings for her float and feel and be. But now, he suddenly found himself wanting to plan with her. To know what came next. It was a strange and foreign feeling for him. He’d never felt it before. With women, he knew what came next. Nothing. And with his friends he knew what came next. More friendship.

But with Tia? He had no idea.

He had the creeping suspicion that there were options that would feel good and options that would devastate him.

“Yo!” a deep voice called out from the front of Eli’s house. Marcus.

“Hey,” Eli said, scrubbing a towel over his hair as he stepped into the kitchen where Marcus was already helping himself to some leftovers.

“Oh. You already work out today?” Marcus asked, squinting at Eli’s freshly showered hair.

“Nah. Not yet.”

“Wanna ruin that shower? I came by to see if you wanted to go on a jog.”

“Hell yeah. Let me get my shoes.”

Marcus had always been Eli’s favorite person to work out with. The man was durable, tenacious, and didn’t mind pain. Exactly the same as Eli. They had a lifetime of competition behind them. And honestly, it was only when Eli was in his top season shape that he could easily beat Marcus in a race. Marcus kept fit for his job with the FBI. He took his body very seriously.

Plus, Eli didn’t really want his first few workouts back to be in front of the team trainer, or the other guys on his team. He needed a few days, maybe a week, to get some of his wind back before he went out there and tried to show them how he was doing. He knew that Marcus would push him but never judge him.

A few minutes later, the two men bounded down from Eli’s back porch and headed down the five-mile loop along the water that they often did.

“Gotta be honest, dude. You kind of look great, but you also kind of look like shit,” Marcus said as they hit a stride along the river.

“Huh?”

“I mean you look rested or whatever. But you look, I don’t know, unhappy.”

“Yeah.” Eli swallowed his pride and decided that he needed to talk to his best friend more than he needed to hide the fact that he was already winded. He spoke in puffs of air. “I’m actually really happy. Like joyful even.” He looked sideways at Marcus. “Things are going really well with Tia.”

“Ah.” Marcus slid his eyes sideways. “Y’all rang each other’s bells a little bit?”

Eli shook his head and rolled his eyes at his friend. “You could say that. Yeah. We got down this weekend. Finally.”

“And… what? It wasn’t good? Does that explain the storm clouds over your head?”

Eli gritted his teeth against the ache in his ribs, the burning in his chest. “No, man. It was, ah, incredible. Best sex of my life. With a bullet. Hands down. No question.”

“Alright, alright,” Marcus grumbled. “No need to rub it in.”

The reminder that Marcus was not currently getting any had Eli’s grin growing irritatingly bigger. But it fell away as they hit an uphill stretch and Eli felt as if there was an elephant sitting on his chest.

Marcus, seeing that his friend was physically struggling, endeavored to keep distracting him. “So, if the sex is good and things are good and she’s good, then what the hell is your weird mood about?”

Eli’s face hardened, he tucked his head and sprinted to the top of the hill. He knew that the only reason he’d beat Marcus was because he hadn’t clued his friend in on the race, but still, it was just the boost he needed. Eli put his hands on his knees and looked down toward the river for a second before turning and jogging down the other side of the hill. Marcus followed close behind.

“In a way,” Eli started, just when Marcus was beginning to think that he might not answer after all. “The fact that it is so good with Tia is making me really sad. I don’t know. It just makes everything I was doing these past few years, the girls, the partying, it just makes all of it seem really dumb. Really petty. I never thought I’d be ashamed of living my life the way I did. But here I am. Kind of wishing I’d pumped the brakes a little bit back then.”

“She on your back about your history?”

“Nah. Not really. I can tell she’s not totally thrilled about it, just little comments here and there. But no. I think this feeling is coming from me. I think I regret wasting all that time. And I’m ashamed that I’m surprised that this thing with Tia is so good. You know? I mean, my parents had such a good relationship. They loved each other, never strayed. I should have been able to figure out that connecting with one person is a hell of a lot better than hooking up with a hundred strangers. I mean, I’m embarrassed that I haven’t ever had a real adult relationship. And now that I’ve got this amazing woman, I don’t really know what to do with her.”

“You need help figuring out what to do with her?” Marcus raised his eyebrows suggestively and easily absorbed the punch to the shoulder he knew was coming his way.

“Shut up. No, I mean everything’s fine when we’re shacked up at her house or my house. Great, actually. But then I leave and come home and I’m not sure what to do next. Like, everything in my life is up in the air right now. My health, football, and now my social life is on its head too. I just don’t really know what to do.”

“I think,” Marcus said as they veered off the river path and into a wooded area. “You just gotta enjoy it, man. And do your best to treat her right.”