“I don’t?” Why am I disappointed?

“No, sweetheart. Your sisters are up there, and when I’m finally inside you, I want to hear you scream.”

My knees turn to jelly, and I sink onto the bed.

“The lock is so you won’t be interrupted while I’m listening to you touch yourself.”

“William.” His name comes off my lips like a plea.

“I left you something on the dresser.”

“Wine,” I whisper, standing to pour myself a glass.

“Strawberry wine,” he corrects. “I sprung for the kind with the screw-off cap.”

“Classy.” I giggle and take a sip. The taste and the smell work together to snare my senses and carry me back in time. The dock behind the old warehouse on Main. The moonlight reflecting off the water. William’s tongue circling my navel….

“Are you nude?”

His words pair with my anticipation and send a thrill up my spine. “I have a robe on. I believe it’s the one your ‘friend’ Meredith was wearing the other day.”

“Jealous much?”

“Maybe a little.” I smile. “Maybe I should send you more dirty texts. I can’t have your phone thinking she’s better at that than me.”

“Maybe you should.”

I could. I like the idea of sending him a dirty message while he’s teaching.

“What are we doing?”

I’m talking about this, about us, but he says, “I’m not sure, but let’s start with that robe and see what happens.” His voice has gone deep, gravelly. “Untie it for me, Cally.”

My hands shake slightly as I obey. I let the ties fall to the side and slide my hand down the flat of my belly. “What about you? What do you have on?”

“Boxers.”

I lick my lips. I’d tell him to take them off, but I like the image of him in nothing but boxers. “Since I started staying here, I’ve been wondering how you sleep,” I confess.

“Honestly, I haven’t done much sleeping at all. I think about you sliding between those sheets, your body laid out on the same bed I used to touch you on.”

My breath hitches. “How am I supposed to resist you when you talk to me like this?”

“You’re not.”

“There are so many reasons we shouldn’t do this.” But I already know we will. I surrendered the moment I locked the door. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you again.”

He hesitates a beat. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take, Cal. Let me make that choice, okay?” Then, before I can reply: “Are you nude under the robe?”

“Yes.”

He groans. “You’ve got the upper hand here.”

“How so?”

“You saw me na**d in the shower. It’s been too damn long since I’ve seen your bare body. I want to see those curves I felt at the restaurant.”

I shift back on the bed and fan my fingers over my belly.

“Touch your br**sts for me. Touch them like I would. Let me hear you as you play with your nipples.”

Desire ripples through me as I lift one hand to my breasts, cupping them, teasing my ni**les with my fingers.

“God,” he groans. “I love hearing you breathe when you’re aroused. You’re so damn responsive. It is such a turn-on.”

“It’s not….” I hesitate, embarrassed to say it but needing him to know, to understand. “I’m not always like this. It’s you. No one else does this to me. No one else could ever turn me on this fast.”

“How aroused are you? Slide your hand between your legs and tell me.”

My breath comes faster as I trace my hand down my body to the needy spot between my thighs. My body is humming with arousal. Greedy with desire. When my fingers find the slickness between my legs, I whimper because my hand is a sorry substitute for his, the quiet of this empty room a poor consolation prize when I crave the weight of his body on me, his breath in my ear. “I can’t,” I whisper. “I want you.”

He moans softly. “It’s good to hear you say it.”

I shake my head and remove my hand. This is too much. And I’ve reached my breaking point. “Will, I have to go.”

Then I hang up the phone.

What the hell just happened?

I blink at my phone, try to make sense of the words telling me the call ended. Fuck.

I squeeze my eyes shut and throw my head back on my pillow.

Not that I’ll be sleeping much tonight. Not with Cally in my head. Not with the image of her just upstairs, parting her legs at my command. Not while I’m remembering the soft, barely audible almost-purr that she makes when she’s close to coming. I keep thinking of how soft her lips look before I kiss them. How swollen they are after.

At the first knock on my bedroom door, I think I’m imagining things. But it sounds again, and then someone whispers my name quietly. “William?”

After I pull open the door, I have to blink a few times to be sure my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me. Cally’s standing there in nothing but a white terry cloth robe.

“Cally.”

She just looks at me with those big brown doe eyes. Then her hands are in my hair and her mouth is on mine. And holy hell, her lips are so damn soft, her taste so damn sweet that I’m lost.

Cupping her face in my hands, I kiss her back without hesitation. I pull her bottom lip between my teeth, and she lets out this little kitten mewl that makes me crazy. My thumb skips down her jaw until she opens under my mouth, because I have to get inside. I need to taste her, to explore her.

Mine.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“I promise to be quiet.” She rubs a thumb over my lips, and I have to resist the instinct to pull it between my teeth and suck, to watch those expressive eyes of hers flare with desire. “Please,” she says softly. “Please, William. I need this. I need someone good to touch me. Please.”

I drop my hands to her waist and tug her close. The slide of my hand in her robe and I’m skating my thumb across her navel. “I’m not good, Cally. I’ve screwed up so many times.”

“You are,” she breathes. “So good you can’t even see it.”

I yank her robe open and crush my mouth down on hers. I mean it to be a warning—because I’m not letting her go without a fight this time. But she doesn’t withdraw. She moans and rocks her hips. She meets my brutal desire with her own, tugging at my hair, biting my lip.

I kick the door closed and back her against it, as if a solid surface might contain this wild and dangerous hunger pumping through me. When I move to her neck and suck that tender skin, she gasps and presses harder into me.

Another wave of lust slams through me, and suddenly I need to see her eyes, to see the pleasure on her face as I touch her.

When I pull back, she’s watching me. Her lips are red and swollen, her lids heavy with desire.

I move my hand up her torso. As I brush the underside of her breasts, her eyes float closed and she arches into my hand.

“God, you’re beautiful.” My words are thick with arousal, gritty with the desperation I’ve felt since she watched me stroke myself in the shower. Fuck. I’m lost.

I dip my head to her breast, wetting it with my tongue. Cupping her in my hand, I draw her nipple into my mouth. She cries out against my neck and digs her nails into my shoulder blades as I suck and bite, rough and soft by turns. Maybe too rough, but I can’t help it because she’s moaning and I am desperate to claim her, to brand her.

She rocks into my thigh. I run my hands down her legs and draw her knees up, lifting her between me and the door until my c**k is nestled right between her legs, only the thin fabric of my boxers between us. She wraps her legs around me and squeezes me tight.

“Goddammit, Cally.” My eyes close, and I have to grit my teeth. “You’re so wet I can feel it, and I haven’t even taken off my shorts yet.”

“What are you waiting for?” She slides her fingers into my hair and tugs my mouth down to hers.

I growl against her and curl my fingers into her hips. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve thought about this sweet body of yours? Do you have any idea how crazy it made me to have you sleeping upstairs, so f**king close but off limits?”

I peel the robe from her shoulders and let it drop to the floor. “You are so insanely beautiful.” I drop my head to open my mouth against her breasts. One at a time, I draw the taut peaks into my mouth, between my teeth, until she cries out and arches closer.

“William,” she whimpers. “Please.”

I lift my head, my fingers picking up where my mouth left off and rolling a perfect pink nipple between my fingers. “What, baby? Please what?”

She shudders and presses her breast further into my hand. “Please, can you?”

I need to hear her say it, to hear the words from her lips, but I can’t resist another taste and have to lower my head to her br**sts again and roll a nipple against my tongue.

“God, you taste good.”

Her hands thread through my hair and tug, and when I close my mouth over her and suck, the cry that rips through her is almost enough to make me go off in my shorts.

“William,” she whimpers, and I love the way she says my full name. “Inside me. Please.”

My breath leaves me in a rush. There they are. The words I’ve been waiting for. But I’m not ready.

Sliding my hands under her ass to support her, I swing around and take four long strides to the bed. I slowly slide her down my body until she’s sitting on the bed. Grabbing her hips, I tug her forward until she’s leaning back on her elbows and her h*ps are at the edge of the bed. Then I kiss my way down her body—across her collarbone, between her breasts, down her belly.

I scrape my teeth over one hip then trail my mouth across her stomach. Stopping at her navel, I circle the little jeweled piercing with my tongue before opening my mouth against the soft flesh and sucking.

She bucks her hips, and I cup her, hot and wet, between her legs.

“God, you’re amazing,” I murmur. She gasps at the touch of my hand.

I position her feet back on the bed so her knees are bent and she’s open to me. Then I sink to my haunches and look at her.

She reaches for me. “What are you doing?”

A smile curls my lips, and I press lightly against her inner thighs until her legs fall open and she’s completely exposed to my gaze.

“William,” she whimpers as I trace my finger down her swollen, sensitive sex.

Her legs come together, and I press them open again and lower my head and taste her. She arches against me, crying out again until the sound of her moans, the feel of her fingers tangling in my hair, and the taste of her against my tongue has my c**k aching impatiently in my shorts.

But I won’t be rushed. I circle her cl*twith my tongue, and she trembles under me.

Lifting my head, I lock my eyes with hers. “Don’t hold back, Cally. Let me make you come.”

I sink two fingers inside her. She pulses around me. So damn close. Taking her cl*tbetween my lips, I suck the same moment I cover her mouth with my free hand. She trembles under my mouth, until she’s pulsing around my fingers and her cry is muffled against my hand.

“GOD, YOU’RE beautiful when you come.” His eyes are hot on mine as he works his way back up my body, one hand still cupping me between my legs. My limbs are limp, my body relaxed, but just the heat in his eyes reignites something in me.

Just like that, I need more.

William climbs on top of me, and I wrap my legs around his hips. I’m greeted with the long, thick shaft of his c**k pressing against my cl*tthrough his cotton shorts. Just that contact and I’m whimpering—with that dangerous cocktail of pleasure, need, and nostalgia.

“I made so many damn mistakes when you were out of my life. When I you left, I lost more than my girlfriend. I lost myself.” He traces my lips with his thumb, and the tenderness in his eyes nearly undoes me. “Be with me, Cally. You’re my compass. My north star.”

My throat is thick, and his words have tears pushing at the back of my eyes.

“I love you,” he murmurs. He kisses the corner of my mouth, my ear, then my cheeks, where his lips press the wet heat of my tears into my skin. “I’ve always loved you.”

I shake my head, needing him to understand. “You don’t love me. You love the girl I used to be.”

“Do you have any idea how amazing you are now?” His eyes lock with mine as he whispers the words. “Everything you’ve done for the girls and your father…the way you just picked up and left your old life? Not many people your age would do that. You work nonstop, and you’re always doing for them. I don’t need my memories to be head over heels in love with you, Cally. All I have to do is know you.”

My heart is full and broken all at once, and I can’t allow myself to return his words. I’ve said I love you so many times since leaving William, and every time it was a lie. I won’t let the words be tainted by my lips. “Make love to me, William.”

Something flashes over his face. My choice of words doesn’t escape his notice. But that’s what this is. That’s what it will be between Will and me. Some people have sex or intercourse. Some people fuck. But with Will, no matter how fast or slow, tender or rough, after all these years of waiting, I know it will be making love. And that’s what I need now. More than anything.

In seconds, he’s off me, standing beside the bed and shucking his shorts. He slides on a condom from his end table, and I swallow hard at the sight of him—long and thick, and a little intimidating.