I’m almost too warm, and feel the prickle of sweat at the back of my neck as Lola leans in, lips brushing over the shell of my ear. “Do you have a condom in here?”

“Yeah. Middle top desk drawer. Brought some in today.”

She gives me a triumphant you’re-a-genius grin and then lies back, stretching an arm over her head to reach to the other side of the desk and open the drawer. It would be easier for me to do this, but there’s no fucking way I’m missing the chance to look at her stretched out and almost naked on my desk.

When she sits up, I step forward, taking her face in my hands to press my mouth to hers.

“I want you to put it on,” she says against my lips.

“Yeah?”

“Watching you roll that thing on in the middle of the night might have been one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen.”

With my cock in one hand and the condom in the other, I pause with the latex poised just over the tip, and look up to make sure she’s watching.

She is. In fact, I’m not sure she blinks or even breathes the entire time, her eyes glued to me while I slowly roll it down. I love the way she looks at my cock: eyes a little wide, lips parted.

I reach up, cupping her breast. “You look surprised.”

“I think I’ll be surprised every time you take your pants off,” she says absently. “Your cock is unreal.”

Hearing Lola say my cock is unreal will never get old. Never.

She slides her fingers between her legs, slipping them back and forth along either side of her clit. I both see and hear what this does to her, in the way the muscles of her stomach flex and her thighs squeeze my hips, in the soft sounds she makes.

“Wet enough for me?”

Lola nods, bringing her hands from between her legs to my mouth, where she slips them between my lips. I can feel for myself how wet she is, can taste it. My eyes nearly roll out of my head with how good this is, how dirty I want to be with her and all the things I want us to do. I moan and Lola pulls her fingers away with a quiet pop, staring up at me with a hunger I’ve never seen in her before.

I wish I could pinpoint why her expression tugs at a tender part of me, what feels off.

It isn’t the way our hands trip over each other in their quest to touch every inch of skin, or the way she digs her fingers into my hair, exhaling in relief when she feels me slip barely inside her. It isn’t the way her head falls back, the way she pushes her breast into my hand, or how her legs spread wide to take more.

But maybe it is in the way she won’t let her eyes hold mine for too long, the way it feels like she’s holding her breath. It’s the same thing I do before I tilt my bike over a steep hill and barrel down.

I ease into her—in, out, in deeper, out a bit more—and she’s with me, fuck I know she is, I can feel it in the rocking of her hips, the curl of her fists in my hair—but the hot film of protectiveness won’t leave me. Every move she makes screams that she’s new to this, that this type of intimacy is different, blissful, and terrifying.

I’ve had sex with many women, and have had loving, intimate sex with some of them, but I’ve never felt for them what I feel for Lola. Still, the depth of the emotion is a relief, not at all disorienting. Last night was the perfect combination of making love and fucking, but here I wouldn’t dare be so rough with her as I’d been. She feels like blown glass in my hands, looking up at me almost as if she needs to know what to do.

So I give her a task. My lips press to her cheek, teeth bared. “Don’t make a sound.”

I feel her exhale in relief against me, and she nods, turning, seeking my mouth, but I pull away.

“Stay quiet, be good, and I’ll kiss you.”

She nods again, quickly, urgently, and it can’t be that simple, but it is. The drifting tension in her eyes is replaced by focus. But now that I’ve said it, there isn’t a thing on this planet or any other I want as much as I want her mouth, open and wet against mine while we fuck.

I fill my hands with her tits, suck at her neck, and grind my body into hers until I feel her sweat under my lips, and she’s tight everywhere.

Growing tighter, still quiet, breaths shallow and sharp.

“That’s it,” I tell her. “I can’t hear you. I can only hear the fucking.”

I love her sounds, but right now her silence means so much more. Her silence and the begging in her eyes is the admission that she needs me to ground her, to help her focus down on this and only this. Not L.A. Not the book she needs to write. I always suspected she looked to me to center her, but to know it so surely right now, when we’re making love, pulls at a tight band in my chest.

Lola’s skin is creamy and pale, even paler against the dark of her hair. Her ponytail has come undone and now strands fall forward over her shoulders, brushing along her nipples, the ends curling over her breasts. A sheen of sweat breaks out on her chest, her upper lip, and around me her cunt squeezes tight . . . she’s close. Her breaths come quicker when I thrust up with just a little more force and I bare my teeth on her jaw, feeling my own control fraying, growling, “Not a sound. Not one fucking sound.”

I find her wrists, draw them behind her back, and plunge so deep, grinding where she likes it. Her mouth goes wide, expression nearly pained, and then it’s like tapping the first domino down and watching in wonder: She squeezes her eyes closed, head back and teeth clenched with the effort it takes to hold in her cries. Around me, her body comes with a series of wild, tight spasms. Lola flushes red and her pulse is a wild animal in her throat—but my girl doesn’t even let free a tiny gasp of air.