I sat back and admired it.

“Fuck,” he hissed, eyes fixed on that black mark. “That’s probably the hottest thing anyone’s ever done to me, Hanna.”

His words plucked at something raw inside my chest, a resurfacing of the knowledge that there were others: others who had done hot things, others who made him feel good.

I blinked away from his pressing gaze, not wanting him to see the thoughts that simmered steadily in the back of my mind—the nongirlfriend thoughts. Will had been good for me. I felt sexy and fun; I felt wanted. I wouldn’t bog it down with worries of what happened before me, or inevitably, what would happen after. Hell, what probably happened on those days we weren’t together. He’d never said anything about ending things with the other women. I saw him most nights of the week, but not every night. If I knew anything about Will, it was that he valued variety, and was pragmatic enough to always have a backup plan.

Distance, I reminded myself. Secret agent. In and out, unharmed.

Will sat up beneath me, sucking on my neck before moving his mouth to the shell of my ear. “I need to f**k you.”

I let my head fall back. “Didn’t you do that last night?”

“That was hours ago.”

Goose bumps exploded across my body, and my tea was forgotten again.The air was still cool but it was starting to feel like spring. There were leaves and blossoms, birds chattering in trees, and the blue-skied promise of better weather to come. Central Park in the spring always rocked me; it was amazing how a city of such size and industry could hide a jewel of color, water, and wildlife in its very heart.

I wanted to think about what I had to do that day, or the upcoming Easter weekend, but I was sore, and tired, and having Will running beside me was proving only more distracting with time.

The rhythm of his feet on the pavement, the cadence of his breath . . . all I could think about was sex. I could remember the hard bunch of muscle beneath my hands, the quiet teasing way he asked me to bite him, as if he was doing it for me, knowing I needed to tear something loose in him, too, and that maybe I’d find it buried beneath his skin. I could remember how he breathed near my ear in the middle of the night, in a rhythm, holding himself back for what felt like hours as he made me come, and then again, and again.

He lifted his shirt and wiped his forehead as he continued to run, and my mind flashed hot and sharp back to the way his sweat felt on my stomach, his come on my hip at the party.

He dropped his shirt, but I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes from where he’d just exposed his stomach. “Hanna.”

“Hmm?” Finally, I managed to snap my eyes to the trail in front of us.

“What’s up? You have this sort of glazed look on your face.”

I took a gulping breath and squeezed my eyes shut for only a beat. “Nothing.”

His feet stopped, and the cadence of sex and his hips thrusting over and into me halted abruptly. But the tenderness between my legs didn’t go away at all when he bent to meet my gaze. “Don’t do that.”

I filled my lungs, the words escaping with my exhale, “Fine, I was thinking about you.”

Blue eyes scanned my face before taking stock of the rest of me: ni**les pebbled beneath his too-big T-shirt I wore, stomach in tangles, legs on the verge of collapsing and, between them, muscles coiled so tight, I clenched harder just to relieve the ache.

A tiny smile skittered across his face. “Thinking of me how?”

This time, when I closed my eyes, I kept them closed. He said my strength was in my honesty, but it was really in how he made me feel when I told him everything. “I’ve never been distracted by someone like this before.” I’d always only been drive. Right now, I was lust, want, desire, insatiable student.

He was quiet for too long and when I looked again, I found him watching me, considering. I needed him to joke or tease, to say something filthy and bring us back to the baseline of Hanna and Will. “Tell me more,” he whispered, finally.

I opened my eyes, looked up at him. “I’ve never had a hard time focusing before, staying on task. But . . . I think about you—” I stopped abruptly. “Sex with you all the time.”

Never before had my heart felt like such a thick organ, beating with heavy, squeezing pulses. I loved these reminders he gave me that my heart was a muscle and my body was made, in part, for being raw and animalistic, f**king. But not emotions. Definitely not those.

“And?” he pressed.

Fine.

“And it’s scary.”

His lip twitched in a suppressed grin. “Why?”