Once I’ve divested him of the shirt and pants, he stands in only briefs.

I’ve seen his dick. Held it. Choked on it, but he’s never been inside me. I don’t ask myself any of that silly nonsense about will he fit. Of course he’ll fit. It might be tight and I might feel like I’m going to burst with that big dick stretching me open, but he’ll fit. I’ll mold my body around him until the fit is so perfect, no woman after me will feel right again. I already suspect that after him, no one else will do.

“Have I told you that you’re a beautiful man, Mr. Ross?” I ask, running my eyes over the expertly-hewn ridges of his impressive body.

“Maybe.” He shrugs one heavily-muscled shoulder. “I can’t really think straight right now to remember. Not with this in front of me.”

He brushes his thumb over my pierced nipple, sending an electric charge from the sensitive tip to a pulsing spot between my legs. I draw a shaky breath. His thumb continues its descent, tracing the quivering muscles in my stomach, outlining the flower inked around my belly button, and gliding between my thighs. With our eyes locked, he pushes his thumb between the folds of my pussy and rubs my clit over and over in a seductive rhythm that literally buckles my knees. He loops an arm around my back to keep me upright, but his thumb never lets up on the sensual torture. When I’m sure I can’t take another second, he slides his thumb down and hooks it inside me.

“Shit,” I hiss. His thumb is like three of my fingers, and he doesn’t hold back, thrusting aggressively. “Kenan.”

His name stutters out on a needy breath. He walks me back the few steps to the bed and lays me down, hovering over me, bending to work first my pierced nipple between his lips and teeth, and then the other. He shifts, his thumb rubbing my clit again and three huge fingers inside me, stretching me, readying me. Tremors start at my toes, rip over my thighs and back, and explode when his hands bring me to orgasm with tender intent.

I’m sure my eyes roll back in my head. Color splashes across the backs of my eyelids—a kaleidoscope of bright lights with every wave of sensation. I can’t see a thing; the pleasure is so overwhelming. I blindly reach between us and take his dick in my hands.

“Lotus,” he chokes out. “Baby, wait.”

“I’m ready.” Lust-dazed, I open my eyes to meet his. “I’ve waited, we’ve waited so long. Please, Kenan.”

He reaches into the drawer beside his bed. Before he can put it on, I take the condom. The heat we’ve checked since our first touch melds our glances together. Hell, since the first time we saw each other, my body, my heart has wanted this. I wrest control, hovering over him, and slide the condom on, taking my time, lingering. Anticipation. Hunger. Frustration. I relish every emotion sketched on his handsome features.

“Lotus, come on,” he pants.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” I tease, grinning down at him.

Answering humor darkens his eyes. He pulls me over him, guides my hips into position. Our laughter dissolves, melted by the heat between our bodies. And then he’s inside of me, an astonishing initiation. A christening. At once a seal broken, even as we’re sealed together.

“Don’t move,” he rasps, gripping my hips and holding me in place, swallowing and closing his eyes. “Let me feel you for a second.”

I know what he means, why he says it. I savor my body’s first taste of him—a communion of flesh and bone and heart and soul. I’m perfectly still, but something I’ve never felt shakes me to the foundation. It’s invisible and undeniable. He reaches up and brushes my hair back from my face, a gesture so familiar now, so tender that tears prick my eyes. We haven’t exchanged the words. They’re the last frontier, but in my heart, I know. And his eyes echo the same.

The first undulation of my hips draws a gasp from us both.

“Jesus, babe,” Kenan says, shifting his hands from my hips to my back. “Do that again.”

I laugh down at him, and move again, a slow, deliberate roll of my hips. I clench my pussy around him.

Mine.

Let another woman even try.

I lift my chin, tighten my thighs at his hips, and roll again. Clench tighter, introducing his cock to its new mistress. I will possess this warrior under me. The man they call Gladiator taken captive by a girl half his size and a decade younger. I’m a girl he could crush, but everything in the way he looks at me says cherish. Says treasure. Says protect.

Says I’m his, too.

Mine, his eyes answer.

That look, this feeling, it’s a lasso, slithering over my shoulders, past my arms, squeezing me, keeping me in place. I’m not going anywhere.

I ride him so long, so hard the muscles of my legs and belly ache and tremble from the torque force twisting us together. And still he demands more, thrusting up hard, his hands reaching for my breasts, squeezing, pinching, rolling the nipples. His is a merciless sensual assault that I can’t withstand much longer.

“I want you to come again,” he says from beneath me. “Touch yourself.”

With his thumbs flicking my nipples to stiff peaks, I reach between us to find my clit. My head falls back, and my pussy clenches like a fist around his cock.

“That’s it,” he whispers.

I’m on the verge of tears. The pleasure is so thick, so much richer than anything I’ve known. He slips a finger between my legs, gathering the wetness and then reaching behind me.

“I’m going to put my finger in your ass,” he rasps. “Is that okay with you?”

Just the thought . . .

“Yes, please,” I gasp.

He does it. His thumb, slick with my juices, slides inside my tight hole, and it’s too much. His hand tweaking my nipple. My finger rubbing my clit. His thumb in my ass. His dick a swollen, rigid column inside me. My hips undertake a jerky, frantic rhythm, riding him like I’m being chased. My mouth opens on a silent scream.

“Fuck” he says, pounding up into me, unrelenting.

We ride it out together, the tempest that sweeps us along. I collapse onto his chest with him still inside me, a sweaty, spent, content mess. He drags his open palms over my back, caressing me, touching me, feeling me. I loop my arms around him and bury my face in his neck. He jerks away, takes my chin, and searches my face.

“You’re crying,” he says, his frown comprised of concern and self-castigation. “Baby, I am so sorry. Dammit, I wanted it to be perfect. I should have—”

“It was,” I cut in, only now aware of my tears, but it’s not what he thinks. There’s no emptiness. I’m full. There’s no bleakness. I feel joy.

“Kenan, it was perfect.”

His shoulders drop. His eyes close on a sharp exhale before he looks at me.

“I thought I hurt you,” he says, pushing his nose into my neck, cupping my head, plunging his fingers into the untamed nest of hair.

“No, you didn’t hurt me,” I promise, kissing his throat, his shoulder, his face—any part of him I can reach. “You healed me.”

I know it was the support group. It was taking a break from sex—dismantling my emotional detachment. It was Marsha and the counsel she gave me every step of the way. It was all those things that brought me to this place, to this point when I was ready to receive the man I’ve come to love.

But it was Kenan, too. His patience. His kindness. His trust. He fed me my first taste of true intimacy between a man and a woman, not just for the last few minutes, but for the last few months. It was first with our hearts, with our souls, with our minds, in the words we exchanged and the notes he sent and the time we shared. This came slowly for us, at the pace of melting ice. What we just did in this bed was a sacrament—an outward sign of a promise we’ve negotiated, drafted, pledged since our very first kiss. It was spiritual, this act, and the implication of it hums between us like a sacred tune.

He sits up, still inside me, the muscles in his stomach flexing beneath the taut, bronze skin. He repositions me on his lap, shifting my bottom on his powerful thighs. My warrior wearing no armor. Guard gone. Vulnerable to me. The look in his eyes is like nothing I’ve seen before. It’s a balm over every rejection—a shelter from every storm that’s ever chased me. A defender from the demons haunting me.

He swallows deeply, staring at me in silence for long seconds and brushing away my tears with his thumbs. And when he speaks, the words he says are as perfect as every moment has been since our bodies joined. The words are from the Song of Solomon, but the truth of them, it’s his. It’s mine, too.

“I have found the one whom my soul loves,” he quotes.

More tears rain over my cheeks; a release years overdue. I weep for every time I’ve felt unloved, unwanted, unnecessary, and imperfect. It’s all there in the look he settles on me. To him, I’m more than enough. I’m all that he wants.

“Kenan,” I hiccup through tears and bracket his high cheekbones with trembling hands, pressing our foreheads together. “I said I didn’t belong to you.”

He nods, his expression braced against the violence of his own emotion, his eyes raking possessively over my face.

“I was wrong.” I shake my head against his. “So wrong.”

I pull back to look into his eyes and give him the passage I’ve hoarded in my heart and never thought I would say to a man.

“My beloved is mine and I am his,” I quote the song over a salty trail of tears, brokenly, truthfully. “Kenan, I’m yours.”

He swells and hardens inside me at the passionate words I pour over him like oil anointing the head of a king. His hands drift down my back and settle on my hips, gripping in confident possession.

“And I,” he says, his words kissing my lips even before he does, “I am yours.”

33

Kenan

“For a man who never wanted to go to New York,” August says, dribbling two balls, one with his left hand and one with his right, “you suuuuuuure seem to be missing it. Moping around practice like somebody stole your bike.”