Bryan hesitated, his eyes dropping to my chest and then back to my eyes. “Am I . . .?”

“Are you . . .?” I tugged off my pants, removing my earrings and placing them in a dish on top of my jewelry box.

“Am I spending the night?” he asked, still looking confused.

“Of course,” I grinned, but then paused, “Unless you don’t want to sp—”

I didn’t get to finish, because Bryan was up and on, his mouth crashing onto mine, his hands roaming over my body. I trembled at the feel of his rough palms against my bare skin. How I’d yearned for these hands. Thinking I might never feel his touch ever again had been agony.

“Christ, I’ve missed you.” He pulled away just long enough to say, “I’ve missed you so fucking much.”

I tilted my head to the side, offering him more of my neck as he trailed biting, hungry kisses from my jaw to my shoulder. The sensation of his stubbly jaw and hot, wet mouth moving over my skin sent pinpricks of awareness racing in every direction.

But mostly south.

“Forking,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“You’ll get used to saying forking instead of fucking.”

“I don’t care what you call it—forking, sporking, ducking, fucking—as long as we’re doing it.”

A laugh bubbled up from my chest, which he cut off with another searing kiss, his fingers sliding down my ribcage and into my panties.

I gasped.

“I need you, Eilish.” His voice was rough, his strokes were skilled. Perfect. “Let me make love to you.”

“Yes,” I answered on a sigh, my nails digging into his shoulders.

He bent as though he were going to pick me up, and I stilled his movements, holding him in place. “No, not on the bed.”

His eyebrows jumped. “Not the bed?”

I shook my head, grinning, then turned, facing the dresser and bracing my hands on it. I found his eyes in the reflection of my mirror and grinned.

“Well then,” he also grinned, removing his belt, his gaze blazing a trail over my body, “let’s give ourselves a show.”

***

Later, much later, after we’d spent some measure of our exuberance at being reunited, Bryan and I lay in bed wrapped around each other. He was trailing his fingertips along my arm, up to my shoulder, then down my back, raising goose pimples wherever he touched.

“You know,” he said, his voice roughened and sleepy, “this is the first time we’ve been able to lay together, afterward.”

I snuggled against his chest, enjoying the feel of his legs—his luscious legs—tangled with mine.

“We’ve cuddled before,” I said absentmindedly, too relaxed to think better of my words.

“We have?”

“Yes. The first time.”

His movements stilled and he stiffened. And that’s when I realized what I’d said.

I lifted my head and gave him a bracing look. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“No. No more apologies.” He rolled me to my back and hovered over me, stealing a kiss, then running his nose along mine. “You should be able to speak about it without feeling guilty, and I should be able to hear about it without feeling guilty. I want to know, and I want you to tell me.”

I smiled at that, warmth suffusing my chest paired with a sense of weightlessness, like a burden had been taken from me, one I didn’t know I’d been carrying. I lifted my hand and tousled his dark hair.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being wonderful.”

A grin bloomed on his face and he wagged his eyebrows. “Wonderful? Or impressive?”

“Both,” I laughed lightly, tilting my head to the side. “I want to talk about it, I want to tell you. Because—for me—it was an amazing night. You were wonderful, and impressive,” I quickly added, causing his smile to widen further, “and I’ve always treasured the memory of it, even though I had a hard time separating the guilt. But I’ve always felt . . .”

“Go on,” he encouraged, rapt with interest.

“Like my treasuring it, my wanting to remember and think fondly of that night, made me a weak person. Or a daft person. One or the other.”

He was shaking his head before I’d finished. “No. Absolutely not. I am so jealous of your memory.” His eyes drifted over my lips, nose, and forehead. “I wish I could remember. But I guess I’ll have to settle for listening to you tell me instead.”

“Are you sure you want to hear about it? I was pretty naïve.”

“Yes,” he replied firmly, shifting to his side and propping his elbow against the mattress, his head in his hand. “Start at the beginning and leave nothing out.”

Seeing he was serious, I tried to recall the evening, the night I’d thought about so many times and, just as many times, tried to bury. Tried to hide from myself.

“We danced.”

“I remember a bit of that. What happened after?”

“You took me to the garden and kissed me.”

“That sounds good.”

“It was.” I grinned at the memory.

“What happened next?” Bryan palmed my breast, rubbing a light circle around the peak with his thumb.

“You said I was beautiful, and then . . .”

“And then?”

I looked at Bryan, studied the image of him next to me, right then, as we were in that moment, and I realized the story I was about to tell him was more fantasy than reality.