“I’ve missed you.”

“Me, too.”

“It’s only been two days. I was between your legs on the plane. I can still taste you, Shannon, but it’s not enough.” He lifts my hair from my neck, letting a warm breeze stroke the back of my neck before moving the strands back, opening the lines of my throat for a kiss.

“I want you everywhere,” I whisper back as he licks the hollow, hands roaming, finding ways to claim me.

“Everywhere,” he echoes, until my heated pulse finds its home where he needs to be, and I’m on the bed, Declan between my legs, hands under my hips, lifting me up for the perfect angle.

And I disappear into this haven we create whenever we’re alone, together, and truly present. He is superb, his mouth finding me where I ache, and it doesn’t take long. Knowing my pleasure, my release, is his singular focus as I thread my fingers in his hair, feel his shoulders with the backs of my thighs, appreciate the fine mastery of hands that want to touch and tease and connect for the pure sake of knowing me fully—I shatter.

I shatter, and let him see me in pieces. Let him feel my body clench and release, pulse and collapse, moan and cry out with the sensitive nakedness of wearing yourself inside out.

And trusting the other person with your exposed, beating heart, offered like a sacrifice.

His breath against my inner thigh makes me hold mine, letting aftershocks run through me, his palm reaching up, up my torso, snaking across my belly and ribs, up to find and cup a breast, his fingertips knowing my body so well.

Yet always a student.

“This is why I married you,” I tell him, looking down, unashamed as his face comes into full view below the curve of my belly, a wicked grin on those exquisite lips.

“For my tongue? Not my net worth?”

“As far as I’m concerned, your tongue is your net worth.”

He prowls up, erection dragging along my thighs, teasing at my V, then coming up my navel, brushing against my ribs as he bends on knees and kisses me, a lush connection without self-consciousness, without rules. He’s dark. I’m fairer. He’s bold. I’m contemplative. He’s self-assured. I’m still finding my way.

And yet we fit.

A small smile plays on my lips as he kisses me, the movement enough to make him break away and look at me. These green eyes are fully present, the flecks of color spectacular, like a miniature fireworks display in an iris. Declan searches my face, saying nothing.

We don’t need words right now.

Minutes pass. Perhaps hours—who knows? Where we are, together, has no clock. Marking time isn’t a ritual in this space between us.

Measuring love is, though.

Potentiating love. Making love grow.

Without asking, without needing permission, without conscious thought, I rest back and pull him to me, my thighs slick with my own response to him, with his ministrations, and in the moment he enters me, the space extends. Expands. My arms wrap around him as he fills me, a powerful urge building, a healing impulse that sets a charge between us.

“I never knew I could feel this,” he says, eyes locked on mine, moving above me. The interplay between our constant visual connection and his movements fuels so much more.

“Neither did I.”

“No, Shannon. I mean I had no idea—” He stops, closing his eyes, rolling his hips, the sound of his restrained inhale making my blood tingle. “No idea this was here, with you, waiting to be found.”

“I feel like all the years before I met you were just practice for living my real life, Declan.”

“And I feel like I find the missing pieces of myself I didn’t know were out there whenever we’re together, Shannon.”

“No one tells you,” I say, tightening my legs around him. “You have to find it for yourself. This kind of love.”

“How can we know there’s love like this if no one ever tells us?”

Tears fill my eyes, the emotion too much, too sweet, too sudden. “What if they don’t know? You’re so special, Declan.”

I swear his eyes start to shine.

“We’re special,” he says, his voice low as he moves inside me again, deeper now, my hips opening, as if there’s an inner sanctum in this space we forge, one that can only be found if he goes deep enough. “What we have, together. I don’t know what to call this. Love isn’t enough.”

I reach up and stroke his lip, my fingertip lifting up at the bow, moving down his jaw line, memorizing his face in this moment, when we’re as close as can be.

“I want to cry,” I confess. “For knowing how close I came to never meeting you. Never knowing you.” I cling to him, my kiss frantic, as if he’s about to disappear. The feeling makes no sense, and yet he meets me with a mouth as heated and desperate as mine, his hips pulling out, arms on either side of me. I’m caged by him, body and soul.

“You do know me. And this is just the beginning.”

We stop talking, emotion too much, letting our bodies say what our mouths cannot, and in the end we cry out, gratitude filling the space, mixing with love to create an intoxicating spell, a chant I feel in my bones.

And then we sleep, curled into each other like lovers who know nothing else.

* * *

I wake up to morning wood, pressed against my tailbone, its owner blissfully unaware of the rather impolite positioning of his wand. Cuddling and spooning is wonderful, on paper.

The actual contortionism involved in being affectionate while sleeping is significantly less appealing.

Slipping away from his grasp, I peer at the curtains over our window. Daylight peeks in. There are no clocks here, but I suspect we’re in the wee hours of the morning. Yesterday, we made love three times, pausing only for food, water, and that one time when Declan pleaded for a “chafing break.”

Sexual inertia is no joke. A body at rest stays at rest.

A woman’s body in motion stays in motion and no, sir, nineteen orgasms isn’t enough, for the record. This body needs to stay in motion for as long as possible.

Isn’t that the very definition of a honeymoon?

Crawling under the covers, I find his glorious shaft resting against his abs, the tip against his navel. I don’t touch it. Declan doesn’t know this, but sometimes, when he sleeps, I go on Penis Watch. The damn thing is fascinating. It’s like a curiosity attached to him, a museum piece you can’t stop looking at.