“Holy shit,” I ground out as she pulled my boxers down my thighs, and then not one coherent word left my mouth.

I paid no heed to the urge to guide her because she didn’t need any goddamn directions. My fingers sank into the silky, dark waves of her hair and I just held on, watching as the sway of her head followed the warm stroke of her tongue and the constriction of her throat. Three seconds from exploding, I tugged at a handful of her hair, almost relenting when she shook her head no. “Next time,” I panted, half-sure I would drown her with the force of my release because my body wasn’t used to the amount of self-denial I’d been requiring of it lately.

The suctioned pop as her lips left that swollen, greedy head was my breaking point. I fell to my knees and turned her onto her hands and knees, yanking her shorts over her hips and pulling her bare backside into the saddle of my lap while choking out, “Okay?”

“Yes,” she groaned and I plunged deep, one hand braced on the floor, my opposite arm locked around her middle, palm pressed to her belly and fingers slanting low to stroke her as we shuddered into waves of climax from that solitary thrust.

Nuzzling her hair aside, I kissed the back of her neck, tongue lapping down the soft arc of her salty skin, and she trembled and convulsed again with a soft moan. I hummed my approval, placing soft, sucking kisses across the beautiful jut of her shoulder blade and still shaking from the intensity of my release—I’d never experienced anything like it. I’d never come that close to losing control.

Oh. Shit. No condom. No condom. Fuck. My grip around her slackened, but I didn’t release her because her arms were quivering visibly. I was still supporting most of her weight.

“Oh…,” she said, angling away from my lap and tucking her chin to glance at me over her shoulder. “We forgot—”

“I’ve never had sex without a condom, and I’ve never had any, um… infection issues.”

She slipped her shorts back up and I did the same, processing the fact that in a decade of sex with too many girls and women to recall, this was the first time I’d outright fucking forgotten to grab a rubber first.

“I… I had my yearly check after… I’m clean, too. But…” But pregnancy, she didn’t say aloud.

I heard it anyway.

My dumbass brain went straight for a vision of Pearl pregnant with my child, and God help me, I wanted it. Wanted it so bad I had a hankering to pick her up, carry her the ten steps across the room to my bed and fuck her again to double my chances. What in hell was wrong with me?

“I’m sorry, Pearl—I was so—” Distracted by lust. Out of my mind. Crazy for you. My head thumped back against the door. I was so fucked.

“I was too.” She turned and sat on the floor in front of me, her eyes heavy-lidded, watching me, probing desolate corners of my heart that never saw the light of day. I dipped my head to kiss her sweet lips, dumbstruck—always dumbstruck by her, top to bottom and back again. We sank toward each other, kissing until we were both breathless. “I’m tired.” She sighed, eyes blinking open. “Will you lie down with me? We need to talk.”

We got up and moved to the bed, stripped the covers back, and lay down facing each other.

“I went to see my mother this afternoon, before work. She’s retracted all her med-school demands.” She laid her palm over mine, and I closed my fingers over the back of her hand, but I could barely feel her touch because I knew what she was about to say. “I want to thank you for giving me a place to live and the ability to stand on my own—or as close to it as I’ve ever come. I’m keeping my job. No more allowance or credit card, though they offered the return of both. But I’m going to move home. Especially with your mother here—it’s the right thing for both of us.”

Every cell in my body argued that letting her leave was the farthest thing from right—for me. But this decision wasn’t about me. It never had been. “When?”

“Tomorrow.”

I reached to trace the soft skin at her hairline. “Your birthday,” I said, sliding a strand of hair behind her ear and following the curve behind her earlobe. I settled my hand on her neck, fingers massaging the back of it, palm absorbing her fluttering pulse.

“Yes.” Her voice shook and her dark eyes each reflected the square of moonlit window. A tear streamed from the corner of her eye into her hair. “I’ll miss living with you, Boyce.”

My name in her mouth just then pierced right through me. Thompson once told me that he’d gotten stabbed by a guy in prison. “You’d reckon it’d be a sharp pain,” he’d said. “But it’s not. It’s like getting punched really fucking hard. So hard that it bruises down deep inside. At first your innards are all surprised—like How did something hit me there? I didn’t even know I’d been shanked till I saw that dickhole standing there all crazypants, holding a fucking shiv with my blood on it. Creepiest damned thing ever happened to me—looking at him and thinking, That motherfucker just killed me.”

Thompson was lucky—the homemade blade missed everything vital. He recovered.

The knowledge that Pearl was moving out—that I’d pulled her so close just to lose her forever—was a deep punch to the gut. A punch that in reality was a stab wound I might never recover from.

“Jesus, Pearl,” I whispered, more worship than curse.

When I angled above her, she drew me down for a long, deep kiss, her body growing restless as my hand slid from her neck to her chest, palming those perfect tits and tugging her nipples gently through the barely there tank I’d not had time to remove the first time. “Won’t be needing this tonight,” I said, lifting it over her head and tossing it to the floor. “These neither.” I drew the shorts down silky-smooth legs that would shortly be spread wide and then locked around me.

I paused to stare at the tempting little road to hell lying there in my bed for the two beats it took to ditch my own shorts and no longer. If loving her was gonna be the death of me, I saw no reason to dawdle.

Pearl

When I woke this morning, everything was the same—at first. I leaned to turn off my phone alarm, bleary-eyed. The bedroom door was shut and I was alone. I was also butt-naked.

As I pulled on the tank and shorts I’d worn for about ten minutes before Boyce stripped them off, the night came flooding back, not that it had far to go since it hadn’t ended until early morning. A shiver went through me at the thought, and my body temperature must have spiked several degrees because holy cow, that room was suddenly an oven.