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She’d die from this.

She was gripping her headboard so hard, the muscles in her forearm were jumping, just from the feel of his breath on her, from the sound of the moan he made when he dragged her down to his mouth and kissed her there.

His hands were palming her ass, kneading it, and it suggested that she move, and when she tried a small buck, the bristles on his face stung against her just as his tongue met her clit.

Fuck.

She reached down, she couldn’t help it, met his silky hair first, then traced down to where his mouth was against her, it was wet and dirty, and as soon as she circled her own clit, he pressed her forward, tasting her deeply, and she made this sound, like
oh
, but it felt good, loose, in her throat.

She tipped her hips back, experimenting, and he rewarded her, sucking her, so she ground into the sweet pressure of that and then she felt the rest of her self-consciousness slip away like a heavy blanket that had been covering her.

Now she was just a naked, turned-on woman, driven by need, by hands pushing her against her man’s tongue, his chin, by her own hands teasing her breasts.

When she starting circling her hips, he moaned and traced his fingers into her ass, down and down, until he reached up and spread her open, and before, she couldn’t have borne the intimacy of that, how sensitive it made her, but now it was almost not enough. She circled, and then she pressed harder when his tongue found her clit, when he used her wetness to trace back up and press against everything filthy and sensitive.

She closed her eyes; they were in the dark, her thighs were tight and almost shaking, the low muscles of her belly pulling everything into a gathering throb. He pushed her close with his hands, so close she almost worried for him, but then something started up, a hit of mindlessness that sent her head and her arms back, because she almost wanted to get away from this orgasm that was going to stop her heart in the most fucking amazing and shivery way.

Her hands met his thighs, which were clenched hard, and she trailed her fingers to his cock, because it was a cock in this moment, hot and so hard she nearly lost her balance, because he was obviously so turned on, and suddenly she was coming, and her hands had found him wet, and it just felt so good to let go and circle and press and he was right there, pressure where she wanted it, until she was shaking and weak.

He helped her to her side, and she felt almost too limp and so awkward, her feet sore and her hips quivery from straddling him for so long. He was so slow and careful, though, raising up to help her, saying
shh
,
baby, shhh
, like they had ten years to get back under the covers, and then he came for a kiss and the intensity of him, how desperate he was, how he bucked himself against her hip, meant she squeezed her thighs together against another thick and unexpected pulse.

She could taste herself, and their kiss was messy; he brought himself over her, braced on his forearms, and then his kissing tipped her head back, gave her goose bumps, brought her knees up around his hips.

He slid himself through her, slow, soft, whispered, “Just a little, I’ll take it easy,” and after a few long moments, she started to hum and ache again, and wanted to feel him inside.

“I have condoms in the bathroom, in the cabinet.”

He kissed her jaw. “You want to? I’m dying to, but won’t actually die.” His voice was low, his breath coming fast.

“I want to feel you.”

“Where?”

“Here.” She reached down where he was teasing her and pressed him against the mess of herself. He fucked himself between her folds and her hand for a long stroke, another, and then she got really restless, tight. “Sam, baby, please.”

She was cold without him over her, couldn’t stop rubbing her sore feet over the sheet, pressing her thighs together, and he walked in rolling on a condom, and she was just overcome with wanting him in her arms.

“C’m’ere” was what she said, and he came, settling over her again, smoothing her hair out of the way so it didn’t catch under his arms as he gathered her up.

She reached down between them and wrapped her hand around him, rubbed the head over herself, then placed him at the right angle, pushing up her hips.

“Okay, baby?” he whispered, right at her ear, kissing her neck.

“Yeah,” she whispered back, and he stretched her out in two hot pushes that made something way down inside her dissolve.

“Touch yourself,” he said. “Make yourself nice and tight.”

She did, she pressed with every stroke, reaching for another orgasm, feeling looser than she should with someone new.

Except it was Sam.

He kept his eyes on hers, couldn’t seem to decide whether to kiss her or look at her. Every time he slid in, he shuddered, went still, looked at her, held himself up with one arm so he could wrap the other hand around
her face.

He pulled out slowly, the color rising from his neck into his cheeks, then slid in a little ways, making her crazy, making her fingers start to work fast and hard over her clit.

“I can’t,” he said, kissing her forehead hard. “I can’t last, I want to come,
fuck
, Nina.” Then he kissed her neck, still holding back from entering her again, even as she was pushing up, begging for it.

“Fuck me, Sam, please, please come. Come inside me, come all over me, I’m gonna come all over you.”

“Yeah,” he said, or something like that, and filled her fast, thrust hard, pulled back, thrust again, and then, as she had started to come from the excitement of that, of how he was desperate and hard and big and close, he pulled out again and leaned up, stroking off the condom, and came over her belly, her breasts, it felt hot and right, and he was shaking, his hand tight around himself, watching her come with her hand between her legs.

He eased himself down to his side, reached over her to a box of tissues on her nightstand, and cleaned himself off her while she drifted, or watched him, or went from overheated to shivering, she couldn’t put it all together in any kind of order in her head.

But then she felt him take her in his arms, pull her as close to him as he could while she was still on her back, looking into the ceiling dark with summer twilight.

His body was hot, then warm, perfect, and their breathing went back to normal. He moved his hand over her stomach and breasts and thighs and ruffled her pubic hair dry, his hands not exploring but soothing, to her, to himself.

He sank his face into her hair, breathed her in.

She felt like they were almost floating, and she was probably a little asleep, actually. The smell of sex lifted and she could smell the verbena of her soap and the detergent she used for her sheets.

“Nina?”

“Yeah, Sam?”

“You’re the best lay I have ever had.”

She couldn’t tell if she laughed, or laughed in her head, and she almost said,
So are you
, because it was true, but then she felt cold, she wanted to reach for the blanket, as if she had woken up after falling asleep reading a wonderful book, because she suddenly thought of Russ, and how he smiled, and she couldn’t make her mouth say
So are you.

But it was true. She’d never felt like that. She’d never felt any of the things she’d felt with Sam, not exactly.

So she said, “Sam,” and left it at that. Just Sam.

“I think, too, it was the best date I’ve ever had.”

She did laugh then. “No wonder you’re single.”

“No really. I mean, it was terrible. My stupid clothes, and the restaurant. We hardly talked about anything, we were so miserable trying to stay on those stools and I was breaking out in a cold sweat and hives from the food, and you were bleeding all over the floor and flashing everyone at the dance studio, and I think I pulled something carrying you seven blocks.”

“You told me I wasn’t heavy.”

“I was being chivalrous and manly.”

“And now that you’ve got your sugar you’re back to thoughtless asshole?”

He kissed her cheek. “Well yeah.”

She turned her head and kissed him back.

“I’m serious, though. All that, and it was still the best date, because you know what?”

“What?” She finally turned to her side and snuggled closer, and he pulled up the quilt.

“It was
us.
Do you get that? Do you feel it, too? I was physically miserable and didn’t have three words to string together for decent conversation, and looked like a fucking tool, and you couldn’t even fucking walk home at the end, but I didn’t want it to be
over.
Do you know what I mean?”

She did. She really did. She knew. She knew that even irritated and grumpy and uncomfortable, he was still interesting, she still wanted to know what happened next, she just wanted to be around when there was a next. She
knew.

Something in his voice was asking for something else.

For her
permission.

Permission for something she could almost sense the edges of, and it made her heart stop, then start up, fluttery, insufficient for getting the blood all the way through her body.

So she said again, “Sam,” as a warning, as a point where they should stop and catch their breaths and enjoy the view from the cliff, rather than jump off it.

She wasn’t sure if her voice was enough to stop him, so she met his eyes, already looking to catch her gaze, his brows furrowed, and then she kissed him, just a small one, then kissed him again.

Brought her hand to his pretty face and kissed him slower, asked him to kiss her back. He did.

He kissed her back and it didn’t stop her fluttering heart, it didn’t force a slower, more reasonable rhythm so that she could feel her body again; instead his kiss kept asking permission, asking questions, asking, asking, until, just a little, she let her kiss mean …

Yes.

She let herself think about him, how he looked these last few weeks, standing in her field, his hair so red in the sun, his grin easy. She kissed him and thought about how many questions he asked about tomatoes, about
onions. How he shouldered his brother telling a joke, how he had sat in her café after eating two plates of sour cherry pie, and furrowed his brow while he wrote an email to his sister on his phone, using one finger like the out-of-touch old man that he was.

He asked his brother to dress him for their date.

He wanted what his parents had.

He told her about his sister Sarah, and thought she hadn’t noticed that his voice got a frog in it.

Then Nina kissed him softer and wished she could kiss him and hold him and have this for a while and have it mean
No, Sam, just this, just for now, give me a little more time.

How do you say that when you’re kissing a man who worried that he could never, ever do enough for the people he loved? Not if he tried his whole life. Even
as
he tried his whole life. And he would never stop trying. He would do for them in the very best ways he knew how, even as they told him he was fucking up. He would do for them, and he would try not to fuck up the next time.

That’s just who he was.

“Sam,”
she said between their kisses, and she tried not to make it sound like she was ready to hear him speak, but he slowed their kiss down, held her face, played with her hair, did for her, tried for her.

She couldn’t let herself think why.

She couldn’t. He
couldn’t.

“Nina,” he whispered, and she could hear the hope in it, the hope that he was going to do the right thing, and make this happen, and give himself to her and she would take him, she could hear in how he said her name that he wanted her to take him.
Him.
Just him.

He eased back, and the color in his face was rosy, his freckles in relief over his temples, his gray eyes searching hers. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, and the most terrible, for right now, for this season.

Just kiss me again, Sam
, was what she thought, and at the very same time he rubbed his thumbs under her eyes and said, “Marry me, Nina.”

* * *

Sam stared at the wall and listened to Lacey pound on his apartment door.

Her method was to thump three times, and then text him.

It had worked to wake him up, the first time, which was useful for calling off at the hospital urgent care.

These next five times, he figured, were for Lacey, since she seemed pretty into it.

THUMP THUMP THUMP

dingding!

He put his arm over his eyes.

He only remembered that he kept a key duct-taped to the underside of the boot mat when he heard it turning in the lock.

Shit.

But he didn’t move.

“Sam Burnside!”

“Go away,” he said. But to the ceiling. In a whisper.

“I am so totally going to open this door. So get decent. I know you’re alive, because you’ve called off at urgent care the last two days.”

He dragged the quilt over his boxers.

“Oh, Sam.” He could feel Lacey staring at him, and then she was walking around his room, probably stepping around piles of laundry, and opening the blinds. He could see the light edging in under his forearm. He squeezed his eyes tighter.

“What are you doing, Sam?”

“Sleeping.”

“Hiding?”

“How did Tay’s surgery go?”

Lacey was quiet. For a long time. “She’s doing well. Very sore. I came from there a little while ago.”

“That’s good. I called the unit yesterday, when she was still in recovery, and they couldn’t tell me anything.”

“Why not call Nina?”

Sam didn’t answer. Why should he? There was little chance everyone didn’t already know what happened. Even if they didn’t know the specifics, it was a pretty safe bet that Sam had screwed up his big date when he hadn’t left the apartment or answered his phone in three days.