“I’ve been too weak to fight it,” I confessed. No more.

“Be weak. Be strong,” he implored, as if asking me to have those emotional states right here, right now, an urgency in his voice and body that made me lean in. “Each of us should be able to be both whenever we need to be. The problem is that you don’t get to pick and choose when you get to be weak or strong. Life doesn’t work that way. It’s unfair and cruel and the best you can do is to recognize that fact and shore yourself up. Where it gets hard is when you need to be weak and can’t. Then it’s brutal. You go into a core inside yourself where you build walls and feel like telling the world to fuck off because you don’t get what you desperately need.”

He sighed, ran his shaking hand through his hair and looked at me with eyes like a caged animal’s, practically begging for release. I felt so helpless. All I could do was listen. That had to be enough.

“Vulnerability,” he continued. “Weakness. It’s not a sin to be weak. It’s the opposite, in fact: it’s a black mark on society that we live in a system that disparages the very essence of what makes us human.” His intensity tapped into something deep in me.

The only way to keep him here seemed to be with a kiss, one that could pin him in place.

Forever.

Or, at least, tonight.

As our mouths met, my hands slipped under his shirt, needing to touch his warmth, his skin, burning to connect on some other level. As his lips caught mine, tongue gentle and then more urgent, I wanted to make the past few days disappear, to have Sam bury himself in me, to wind myself around him and be driven into, made whole through a communing of flesh and soul far greater than anything words could ever express.

He took my boldness as permission, his own hands under my cotton shirt, and then he stopped, the kisses fading in frequency, the urgency dialed down to mere affection.

“What?” I murmured, confused.

“Is this what you want, Amy?” His hand caressed my jaw, the daylight showing in stark relief how strong and mature he’d become. A man’s full beard could grow on that face, a woman could see true love in those eyes, and a lover could know she was the center of his universe if she would let him.

“Ye—yes.” He caught the hitch in my throat.

“Not like this,” he declared, pulling me in for an embrace. My cheek pressed against the well-worn cotton shirt he wore, hip against his taut abs, his shoulder a place for my head to rest.

Sniff. “I do want you,” I insisted. “But you’re right. Not now. Not like this.” Plus, my vagina just went through something no AppleCare plan covers. I was still sore.

“I wouldn’t want anything more than you want to give. Ever. And I want to be together for the right reasons. Not out of sorrow or sadness. I’m not that guy.”

Liam.

Was Liam that guy?

No. Just no.

The conversation had drifted without Sam’s knowledge into very dangerous territory. How vulnerable could I really be with Sam? How much truth could one relationship handle?

It was more than being taken advantage of, because I wanted what Liam gave. That had been entirely different, a cleansing of sorts, like being baptized and reborn.

Sam must have felt me stiffen, because he pulled back and looked at me, the question in his eyes. “Did I say the wrong thing?”

Sigh. “How honest are we being?”

“Is this twenty questions?”

“You only need to ask me two questions.” Would he take the hint?

Puzzled, he opened his mouth to ask, then got it. “Ah. Then you need to ask me—“he began counting on his fingers “—eight questions.”

“Are the eight anyone I know?” No one likes to play the “what’s your number” game, and yet here we were.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Any of yours?”

Nodding my head slowly, I just stared in his eyes until he got it.

“Liam.” The name came out like a gasp. Then a growl.

Then a whispered roar.

“And it was just like this, Sam. I was crying and sad and he made it—well, I asked him to—” Why was I talking about this? Way to ruin a mood. Open mouth, insert foot.

Or phone. Or whatever.

“Why are you telling me this now?” he asked. Dropping his hands from me, he took a step back, but didn’t seem pissed. Stunned—yes. Disturbed—yes. But angry? No.

“Because you just saved me from myself. Again. It’s not that I didn’t want to sleep with Liam, it’s just that it was Prom night, and—”

“Prom night?” The question was a strangled grunt.

“Yes.”

“I wanted to go so bad,” he mumbled.

What?

“Huh?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

Bzzzzzz.

My phone rang. I ignored it.

“Maybe I should go,” Sam muttered.

“Sam Hinton, if you leave this apartment I will take your favorite drumsticks and hide them where you can never find them.”

“I would do a cavity search,” he said, grinning.

“I’ve had worse things up there.” And I had.

He snorted, relaxing. “Someday I want to hear what happened with Liam. Not—” he looked sick “—the details. Just...what happened.”

“And someday I want to know why you didn’t take me to prom, but wanted to.”

“Should someday be now?”

“Can someday be someday?” The daylight was dimming and a wave of utter exhaustion hit me. “Because what I really want most is to lie in bed with you and fall asleep in your arms.”

“That’s what you really want?”

I nodded. Please don’t leave.

“You’re inviting me to spend the night with you and not have sex.”

Nod.

“You are so weird, Amy.” Crooked grin as he folded himself into me and we stretched out on the bed, the light fading, giving in to the sadness that threatened to sweep me into sleep. Sleeping alone seemed like torture. Sleeping with Sam wasn’t right. Not right now.

Sleeping next to him, though...

“You don’t know the half of it.”

And then we did exactly what we said we would, and I had the best night of sleep I’d had in weeks.

Hot breath tickled that spot between my earlobe and my jaw, the rasp of sandpaper on skin more a sound than a sensation, the scent of him blanketing me before the heat of his body added another layer, all hardness and burn. No moon tonight, leaving the inky darkness of my apartment to turn his face into less a shadow and more a phantom. Kisses turned to demands as his mouth found mine, his sighs and my moans a composition of passion that demanded the finest orchestra to play to its fullest potential.

“Amy,” he whispered, the sound of my name escaping his lips like a thread that tingled from toes to the base of my neck, his palms sliding from behind me to cup warm, swollen breasts, naked and needy. We spooned, his hard erection filling me with want, the press of throbbing granite against my soft skin like something out of a prayer.

Sam pulled back and the withdrawal of his heat made me groan in disappointment, soon dispatched as he loomed over me, face serious, eyes burning with desire. Another kiss combined with hands that slid down my torso like he owned me, his thighs straddling my hips now, hands taking in my body like a man memorizing a sculpture through tactile transgressions.

The air between us, charged with unanswered questions, unquenched need, and unleashed lust, tasted like hope. Sam tasted like man, the fevered focus of his energy straight on my body and what our twinned cores could do together arousing me more than he would ever understand. His fingers tapped out love in Morse code, while my mouth licked his shoulder, then kissed him so fiercely he stopped me, pulling back with a ferocity only a man unable to maintain restraint would ever exhibit.

Good.

“Amy.” This time my name came out like a growl of a man possessed. His hips covered mine, chest broad and textured by muscles, each fitting into a groove with bone, the wide expanse of his shoulder tapering to a flat waist and an exquisite cock that was, alone, a work of art.

The complete picture was a masterpiece.

With one knee he nudged my thighs open, my body complying eagerly, so ready—achingly ready—for him to fill me, for our bodies to join in motion and thrust, to take him in and love him like no one had love him before.

He found me wet and wanting, and as he entered me he murmured words of love so profound that to repeat them aloud would—

Oh.

Oh. Sam rocked his hips and hit a spot in me that made my insides flush with fire and spasms, my legs instinctively wrapping around his pelvis, guiding him deeper. “More, Sam,” I begged, my palms traveling up his chest, over the pecs, and behind him, roaming his back as we rocked together, coaxing me to climax, leading me to a joining of our cores that would liberate what we’d never experienced in unison.

Wet, wild, and in a frantic frenzy as some deep orgasm built layer upon layer inside me, our bodies went slick with sweat and more, throats closed and then open, nerves and pleasure bundling together to make no beginning, no end, no boundaries—

No rules.

Sam’s mouth teased my nipple, nipping hard just as he thrust into me, the rhythm enticing and maddening, making all thought dissipate, driving me to a place where everyone in time and space had once been, a primal energy that I connected with through him, my fingers clawing at his back as the pressure grew within, so sweet and shaky and intense that when it took me—as Sam’s body claimed me—the force of what came as I came made me cry out his name in an endless loop.

Sam. Sam. Sam.

I awoke with a start, my body curled up against someone else, clit throbbing, one hand tucked between my thighs, though over my clothes, as if in sleep I were about to reproduce what my dreams had conjured.

Confused, I sat up and peered over the shoulder that faced me.

Sam.

Duh. Of course it’s Sam. Who else would it be?

I blew out a frustrated puff of air, and as I ran a hand over my face I found it slightly damp, a sheen of sweat on me. That was one fuck of a dream.

The operative word being fuck.

My fingertips grazed the hair on his thick muscled thigh, but it wasn’t a pass. It didn’t have to be—it was the luxurious, languid touch of a lover who knew that she could have it whenever she wanted. This felt so adult. So mature.

That dream. Mine to touch. Mine.

As my heart rate slowed and the very hot reverie faded, much to my chagrin, I found myself in bed with the real thing. Maybe, though, it was just what it meant to be in a true relationship with another person, this layer that you could only know when you got there. No one told you that this was the wonderful secret behind being vulnerable and real, and finding someone else who was willing to be vulnerable and real right with you. This.

Those fingertips of mine that rested on his skin, and traced a line of sunshine that shone against the fine hairs? That was eternity, right there. As long as I knew that he was there unconditionally, and that I could reach out whenever I wanted to, it was like being immortal.