There it is.

I tear my eyes from his and look down at my bare feet on the floor, letting the heavy drumming of my heart take over my senses for a beat. I’m relieved, terrified . . . but mostly I’m euphoric. He told me he couldn’t play the other night if I said it out loud, and maybe it’s the same fear again, that we can’t keep it light, can’t let it go in a few weeks if one of us says love.

“Do you think you could ever,” he starts after a few beats of silence, his lips pulled up to one side in a smile, “like me?”

My chest squeezes at the earnest vulnerability in his expression. I nod, swallowing what feels like a bowling ball in my throat before saying, “I’m already in like with you.”

His eyes flame with relief, and the words tumble out in a long, jumbled string. “I’ll get you a new ring. We’ll do it all over again. We can find a new flat with memories that are only ours . . .”

I laugh through an unexpected sob. “I like this flat. I like my gold band. I like my fractured memories of our wedding. I don’t need anything new.”

He tilts his head and smiles at me, dimple flirting shamelessly, and it’s all I can take. Reaching out, I hook a finger through a belt loop on his pants and tug. “Come here.”

Ansel takes the two steps to me, pressing the length of his body so closely to mine I need to tilt my chin to look up at him.

“Done talking, then?” he asks, hands slipping around my waist, bracketing me.

“Yeah.”

“What do you feel like doing now?” His eyes manage to look both amused and ravenous.

I slip a hand between us and palm him through his jeans, wanting to feel him come to life under my touch.

But he’s already hard, and grunts when I press into him, his eyes falling closed. His hands slide up my over my chest, around my shoulders and higher, cupping my neck.

The sweep of his thumb across my bottom lip is like a trigger: a warmth spreads through me and it turns nearly immediately to a hunger so hot, my legs grow weak. I open my mouth, lick the pad of his thumb until he slides it inside and, with dark eyes, watches me suck. In my palm, he lengthens further, twitching.

He steers me to my right, walking me backward out of the kitchen, but stops after only a few steps, cupping my face to kiss me. “Say it again?”

I search his eyes for his meaning before I understand. “That I like you?”

He nods and smiles, eyes closing as he bends to lick the tip of his tongue across my lips. “That you like me.” Ansel looks down at me from under the heavy fall of his hair over his brow, tilting my head back with his hand on my jaw. “Let me see your neck. Show me all of that gorgeous skin.”

I arch my neck and his fingertips skim along my collarbone, strong but gentle.

He undresses me first, in no particular hurry. But once my skin is exposed to the cool air in the flat and the heat of his attention, I pull at his shirt, fumble with his belt. I want my hands on every inch of him at once, but they always gravitate to the smooth expanse of his chest. Everything in the world I find sexy, I find there: The firm, warm skin. The heavy drum of his heart. The sharp spasms of his abdomen when I scratch my short nails over his ribs. The line of soft hair that always tempts my hands lower.

Even in the small flat, the bedroom feels too far away. His fingers drift down my chest, breezing past my br**sts as if it isn’t where they intend to be. Over my stomach and lower, past where I expect him to slide two fingers and play with me. Instead, his hand smooths down my thigh, his eyes watching my face as his fingertips linger on my scar, on skin that’s not quite sensitive, not quite numb.

“It’s weird, maybe, that I love your scar as much as I do.”

I have to remind myself to breathe.

“You thought it was the first thing I noticed, but it wasn’t. I didn’t even pay attention to it until the middle of the night, when you finally lay down on the bed and I kissed from your toe to your hip. Maybe you hate it, but I don’t. You earned it. I’m in awe of you.”

He pushes away from me slightly so he can kneel down and his fingers are replaced by his lips and tongue, hot and wet against my skin. I let my mouth fall open and my eyes flutter closed. Without this scar, I’d never be here. Maybe I’d never have met Ansel.

His voice is raspy against my thigh. “To me, you’re perfect.”

He pulls me with him to the floor, my back to his front, my legs straddling his. Across the living room, I can see our reflections in the dark window, can see the way I look spread around his thighs.

He pets me, fingers sliding up and down the crease of my sex, teasing at penetrating me. On my neck, his mouth sucks and licks until he’s at my jaw and I turn my head so he can kiss my lips, his tongue slipping inside and curling over mine. Ansel pushes his middle finger inside me and I cry out, but he continues stroking slowly as if he’s feeling every inch of me.

Releasing my lip from between his teeth, he asks, “Est-ce bon?”

Is it good? Such diluted words for something I’m sure I need. The word good feels so empty, so plain, like color bleached from paper.

Before I even know I’ve answered, my voice fills the room. “More. Please.”

He slides his other hand up my body to my mouth, pushing two fingers inside against my tongue and pulling them out, wet. Ansel glides them across my nipple, circling in the same rhythm as his other hand between my legs. The world narrows to these two points of sensation—on the peak of my breast and his fingers on my clit—and then shrinks further until all I feel is circles and wet and warm and the vibration of his words on my skin. “Oh, Mia.”