Page 54 of Smoke and Roses

“Yes. God. Yes.”

They go on the floor with everything else.

I take my time with her. She’s warm and wet, and she tastes like her, and she says my name in husky, broken whispers.

Her heels push into my back. Her hand is in my hair, then on the quilt, then in my hair again as she gasps.

I hold her down so she can’t get away from it, and I don’t stop until she comes against my mouth, shaking, with her other hand clamped over her own face.

When I rise up, she’s staring at her grandmother’s ceiling.

“Give me a minute. I lost count,” she wheezes with a soft laugh.

“Twelve,” I say, and kiss her belly.

I get the condom out of the wallet. She takes it out of my hands and does it herself, like she did the first time, and it nearly finishes me before we’ve started.

God, I need her. When I lower myself on my forearms, she’s looking up at me with her hair all over the pillow and her cheeks red. Waiting on me.

“Okay?” I ask.

She puts her hand on my jaw. “I’m your business,” she says.

“Yeah, you are.”

I push into her, and we both stop breathing for a long second.

She feels like home. I don’t have a better word. I’ve slept in a lot of places. Tents, barracks, my truck. None of it was home until a woman who sings and looks at me like I’m sunshine let me into her grandmother’s bed.

With a thrust of my thighs, I move. She meets me. The springs complain louder.

At first she laughs, then she pants, moans, whimpers hotly. Her nails are in my shoulders. Her legs wrap around the backs of my thighs and pull me in deeper, and she’s saying “yes” and “there” and “Travis” until it all runs together.

She’s gorgeous. Hot as fuck. Mine.

I hold out as long as I can. I want to watch her. When she goes over again, she grabs my face in both hands, keeps her eyes on mine.

“I’m yours,” she breathes.