When he lowered his hand to touch me, I arched my back, but didn’t look away from what was about to go inside me. “Manning?”
“Mmm?”
“Even after I turned eighteen, you wouldn’t come near me. Did I not turn you on?” I knew how he’d answer, but for all the times he’d shut me out, I wanted to make him squirm. “What’s different now?”
He followed my line of sight down to his erection. “Nothing. I’ve been hard for you before.”
Manning didn’t squirm at all, but I did, wiggling with excitement, biting my bottom lip. “When?”
“That turns you on, huh?” He grunted, lazily exploring me with his hand. “All the times you tortured me just by being close?”
“A little,” I admitted.
“A lot.” He removed his finger and licked it. “I’ve barely even touched you and I can taste you on my hand.”
My heart beat in my stomach. Manning may have kept quiet about these things in the past, but it definitely wasn’t because he was shy. He took me under the knees again, spreading my legs to lie between them. “Wrap them around me.”
I locked my feet behind his back.
“Now your arms,” he said. “If it gets to be too much, tell me. Or dig your nails into my back and I’ll stop.”
I circled his neck and tugged on the ends of his hair. “Is hair-pulling allowed?”
He dropped a kiss on my lips. “You can do anything you want. Can’t hurt me.”
With that, he started to push inside me. He paused to adjust himself, working only his head in. I sucked in a breath but it didn’t hurt as much this time.
“There was that time on the horse at camp,” he said. “You were between my legs and your hair was so soft. You were scared. I felt protective.”
I wondered if all the love I felt showed on my face as I looked at him, thinking back to that time when I’d been head over heels for him. It’d affected him, too. Manning got up on his hands and pushed harder into me.
This time when he thrust, it felt good. Slick. My arms loosened, and he grabbed my wrist, putting it back around his neck. “Don’t let go, Lake. Please.”
I squeezed him more tightly, even as he stayed propped over me. “Then what?” I asked.
“I got hard for you. I was so fucking confused.” He started to move, sliding in and out of me. His neck went veiny as he groaned. “And ashamed.”
For all the times over the years I’d felt confused and ashamed, I didn’t want that for him. I knew how hard this was for him, letting himself have the girl he wouldn’t even allow himself to want. I gripped the back of his neck. “I’m glad it’s you.”
“I don’t know if I deserve this.”
I pulled on him. “You do. Please. Show me how much this means to you.”
He bent his head to kiss me, and the moment our lips touched, he let loose. Now I knew what he’d meant. Our bodies were made for this. Each thrust came more slippery, more out of control. I opened for him, taking him deeper, a man who’d never been anything but composed around me. This was a side of Manning I hadn’t yet seen, and I couldn’t believe I was doing this to him.
“Am I hurting you?” he asked through clenched teeth, even as he seemed completely lost in it. “Fuck.”
“No,” I said, accepting all of him now. “Don’t stop.”
He kissed me hard on the mouth, sliding one hand over my hip to lift my thigh. He ground into me with more force, driving so relentlessly that the ache deep in my stomach became more of a throb. It was no longer a feeling I wanted him to ease but a place I needed him to fill. He tore his mouth away, keeping his forehead against mine. “How does it feel?”
I was sure I had tears in my eyes when I said, “I can’t even answer that.”
“I can. You make me so fucking crazy, Lake.” With the emotion in his voice, in his face, I started to understand what this was all about—why people confused love and sex. The urgency of his kiss, the sudden build of pleasure, the slapping of skin on skin. If my life were a song, this was the crescendo. I hadn’t truly known what it’d meant to love anyone, even Manning, until now. “When I think about you between my legs back then, about all the times I wanted to say fuck it and steal you away . . .”
As he took me back years, the present came into focus. The climax building inside me was almost painful, the way everything up until now had been. “It’s too much,” I panted.
“Then let go,” he said. “Let it take over.”