“Wait, what?” I’m dazed and sated and still, somehow, horny as hell and I clutch at him, try to hold him to me.
He just laughs and says, “I’m not going anywhere, baby. Just give me a second.”
Then he’s yanking my pants off and tossing them over his shoulder. Fumbling a condom out of his pocket. Opening his jeans and shoving them down his hips.
And fuck. My knees go weak all over again at the sight of his long, beautiful cock. I reach forward, wrap a hand around him and stroke. Once, twice—he stops me with a groan.
“If you keep doing that, this is going to be over before it starts.”
I think about it—I love watching him come, love seeing the way he gives every part of himself over to me. But it feels like it’s been forever since he’s been inside of me and I want that right now. I need it.
I let go with another low whimper and he laughs, deep and dark and just a little bit dangerous. Then he’s sliding the condom on, sliding his hands underneath my hips, sliding me up the wall until we line up perfectly. And then he’s sliding inside of me.
“Oh God.” My head falls back against the wall, my eyes close and my whole body goes tight.
But Shawn’s having none of it, one of his hands coming up to grab my chin. “Look at me,” he demands and I do, because right here, right now, there’s nothing he could ask of me that I wouldn’t give.
“I love you,” he tells me. “I love you, Sage.”
“I love you, too, Shawn.”
Those black magic eyes of his turn molten and just that easily, he slips the leash, pounding into me again and again and again. It’s rough and fast and I love every second of it. Love the way he’s taking me, love even more that I can feel him claiming me with each thrust of his body inside of mine.
It doesn’t take long before I’m on the edge of orgasm again, and this time Shawn is right there with me. I can see it in his tight jaw and liquid eyes, can feel it in his tight muscles and the urgent way he’s pounding into me. And I love this too, love that he needs me as much as I need him.
“Come for me,” he demands, right before he lowers his mouth to mine and nips at my lip.
The demand, paired with the little shock of pain, is all it takes to send me careening into ecstasy, my whole body going up in flames.
“Fuck, yeah,” he says and then he’s coming too, his body jerking against mine as he empties himself inside of me.
When it’s over, we stay like that for long seconds—minutes—both of us trying to wrap our heads around what just happened. Even after I come back down, my heart continues to pound and my brain keeps spitting the same words at me over and over again. He’s here. He’s really here. Even after I was so cruel to him in that parking lot, he didn’t let me ruin it. He didn’t just walk away. I’m so relieved I can barely breathe, even as I hold him as tightly as I can.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him when he finally steps back and refastens his jeans.
“What are you sorry for?” he asks as he finds my shirt and hands it to me. “I’m the idiot who thought free diving without giving you any warning would be fun.”
“Yeah, that was a dumb move,” I agree as I pull him toward the couch. “But I should have talked to you, s
hould have tried to explain instead of just walking away. That’s on me.”
He takes a deep breath, blows it out slowly. Then pulls me back into his arms. I go—of course I go—because it’s Shawn. He smells so good, feels so good. More, even after everything—or maybe because of it—he feels safe, which is everything to me. The rest, we’ll find a way to work out.
I’ve spent the last twelve hours thinking about my mom’s words, wondering if she’s right. Wondering if all that time I thought I was making a safe place for myself, I was just running in a different way than she had. Wondering if all I did was build myself a prison instead of a fortress.
I want the answer to be no, want to think I’m smarter than that. But it’s hard to argue when I walked away from Shawn without even having a discussion, so determined to preserve my own sense of security that I was willing to blow up the only romantic relationship I’ve ever had that means a damn to me.
This time I’m the one to pull away first. I pick up the flowers on the way to the couch—I must have dropped them in that first rush of need—and put them on the coffee table. Then I curl up on his lap because the other end of the couch feels way too far away from him.
He pulls me close, cradles the back of my head in his hand. I rest my head on his shoulder and finally—finally—feel like I can breathe. That’s when the words start tumbling out. “I always told myself I hated being a yoga instructor because of all the hippie-dippie trappings that come along with it. But the truth is, I hated it because I never had a choice. Yoga has always been my mom’s thing, and my whole life I’ve been dragged along in the wake of it, moving every few months, running off to India at the drop of a hat—where I was exposed to tuberculosis when I was twelve, by the way, and had to take an antibiotic for six months to get rid of the latent virus in my lungs—moving from commune to farm to yoga studio to another commune. I never knew if the place I woke up was going to be the place I went to bed that night, and I never knew if I was going to be safe there if it was.”
He looks stricken. “Jesus. Sage—”
I press gentle fingers to his lips. “Let me finish, please. I don’t know if I can get this out again. I’ve spent my adult life trying to make sure that never happens to me again. I have rules for everything, things I let myself do, things I don’t, how much money I need to save every month, how much extra I need to pay on my mortgage every month so no one can ever take my home from me.”
“I’ll buy you the damn townhouse. And a yoga studio that you can run into the ground if that’s what you need to do. And whatever else you want—”
He looks so fierce I can’t help laughing. “I can buy my own townhouse. And my mom and I had a talk about the yoga studio last night. It turns out, it’s not yoga I hate. In fact, I love therapeutic yoga, love helping people get strength and range of motion back after injuries. I learned that—or relearned it—when I was working with you. It was rewarding to help get your shoulder back to where it was, and I think it will continue to be rewarding for me for a long time. It’s the uncertainty that comes with all the shit my mom pulls that makes me freak out all the time, not yoga. Which is why we came to an arrangement last night that I think will work for both of us.