When I roll my hips under him, pulling him even deeper, he stops me with a rough hand on my hip. “Wait. I’m too—”

I still beneath him, except for the slow roaming of my palms up his back when he pushes himself up onto his hands. It’s the most surreal feeling, to feel joined to someone else like this. Not just rutting or moving together but actually connected.

With a slow exhale, he pulls back slightly and pushes in, groaning and giving in to the act as he starts to really move.

And I find I was wrong: slow and deep is just as perfect as Oliver’s frenzied fucking.

I’m amazed how he looks, moving over me. I’ve seen him from every angle a friend could see: standing side by side, seated across a table, in my car or his, on my floor while I’ve sketched him. I’ve even had my head in his lap looking up at him, and seen him roll out from beneath my car after he’s checked a suspicious leak. But I’ve never seen him like this. Naked, damp with sweat, with his hands propped beside my neck as he stares down the length of our bodies, watching himself. Arms flexed, lip snared between his teeth . . . enjoying just looking, feeling as he slides lazily forward and back.

I close my eyes, let out a tight choked breath, and his body snaps forward, so deep.

“Lola. Fuck. I . . .”

My hands find his hips, guiding him when he falters and I want him closer, want all of that skin on mine, sliding up and over and all around in me. One hand trails up his side, to his shoulder and around to his neck, pulling, urging him lower.

Oliver bends, his hair brushing my forehead. “I can’t. I can’t believe it. I can’t stop looking at you.”

He’s so hard inside, stilling as he catches his breath, and I know it’s more from emotion that he’s lost it in the first place. This time certainly isn’t rigorous sex. It’s so slow it’s almost embarrassingly intimate.

Still, I would have expected to feel self-conscious to look him in the eye while he’s inside me. He seems even more naked without his glasses. But it’s not weird, not even a little, and in an explosive burst of emotion I adore him so acutely it’s nearly painful. This is the man I’ve spent nearly every day with, joking, talking, unloading my triumphs and fears. Without warning, my body clutches him, needing, and he groans, finally bending his elbows and carefully lowering his chest to mine.

“Did you know how long I wanted this?” he asks.

I smile into his neck, before sucking it gently. “No. Harlow says I’m so oblivious it’s painful.”

He laughs, and when I laugh, too, he gasps and pulls his hips back, nearly leaving my body before he slides back in. So deep.

“I didn’t think you were interested,” I admit. “I asked you to sleep with me that night, you know.”

He stills, kissing my shoulder. “When I met you, I didn’t think you were the kind of girl I’d fall for, because of the Vegas situation. Then you were the kind of girl I’d fall for.” His mouth makes its way up my neck, to my ear. “And then you were the girl I was falling for. I didn’t want our story to start in some cheesy-ass Vegas bullshit. I didn’t want to fuck you that night in some crusty hotel room. That’s the quickest way to ruin something, by rushing in like that.”

“Not for our gang.”

He growls out a little laugh. “True.”

I kiss his neck, sucking. He tastes so good, he’s firm and warm and I imagine biting down onto the smooth, strong skin.

“I’ve loved you for a while now,” he says. So simply. God, it’s so bare and straightforward and it makes me want to be brave.

I’m terrified of loving him.

I don’t know how to keep it from happening, though.

“You don’t have to say it back,” he adds in a whisper before kissing the corner of my mouth, and I can tell he’s sincere.

“I’ve had feelings for a while, too,” I say, and it sounds like a lame admission but it feels big. I love him for so many reasons, I’m not sure my heart is ready for that kind of love yet. The biggest kind of love.

“Have you ever been in love before?” he asks.

I swallow thickly before admitting, “No.”

He hums into my neck, sucking. I want him to move, but I also don’t. I’ve never had a conversation like this at a café or in a car, let alone while someone was over me, inside me, moving in a way that makes me want to beg.

“Can I make you come again?” he murmurs, sliding closer to kiss me, and I hear his smile in the words. His mouth moves from mine and down, sucking at my jaw. “And then we can talk some more?”

I nod and he shifts over me, back and in, kissing my chin, my cheek, and then my mouth, his hand sliding into my hair and the other at my hip to hold me in place as he begins to move harder, in earnest. I’m seeing this side of him that feels dirty and secretive: his firm hands, the deep shove of his body in mine, his unapologetically wild mouth. Someday we’ll sit with all of our friends and talk about mundane everyday things while the entire time I’ll remember the way he tilts my hips, greedily thrusting into me, fingers slipping between us to rub me, his rasping voice, accent thicker with pleasure when he tells me to keep fucking up into him, that it feels so good he might keep me spread under him all night.

He talks about how soft my thighs are, how warm and slippery I feel.

He rolls to his side, fucking me hard with my leg over his hip, and he grunts hoarsely with every deep, hard shove. Biting my neck, he wonders absently how it’s even possible my cunt feels better than it tastes.