She’s quiet for a minute, and I’m thinking about how right I feel with her and how I’ve never had this with anyone else. Never let any girl this close.

I’m glad it’s the same for her. I know that makes me a jerk, because it means everything that happened to her with Nate had to be kind of shitty in order for her to come to me and think what we’ve got is anything different—anything special at all.

But I’m glad anyway.

I want everything with Caroline to be special.

After a while, her hand starts meandering down my stomach, and she unbuttons my slacks and lowers the zipper. I lift my hips to help her peel them off. She slips the pad of one finger underneath the waistband of my briefs and follows it across my stomach, which makes me suck in a breath.

I could go again. Soon.

“Take these off,” I say, grabbing a fistful of her pajama pants.

She does, while I take off my briefs. She’s a little shy about it, and she leaves her panties on. They’re purple, with dark purple lace at the top.

“Nice,” I tell her.

That makes her smile. She shoots a nervous look at my crotch and starts to maneuver her way down there, but I grab hold of her armpit and haul her back up so I can kiss her. She’s pressed against me, skin to skin, nothing but a tiny scrap of panties separating us. I kiss her slow and lazy, knowing how lucky I am and wanting to soak in it for a good long time.

When she finally pulls her mouth away, I’m hard again, and she’s squirmy, pressing herself into me.

She starts to kiss her way down my chest.

“Let me get you off,” I say.

“I promised.”

I can only see the top of her head, and I can’t tell if she means that funny or serious.

“You don’t have to,” I remind her.

“Shh.” She takes her time getting down there, and the way she does it … Jesus. All those shy glances, somehow I got thinking she didn’t know what she was doing, but by the time she puts her tongue on my cock, one quick swirl around the head, I’m already half dead.

“Tease,” I choke out.

She grins. Sticks out that pointed pink tongue of hers. Licks me clean.

I keep my hands fisted in the blankets so I won’t put them in her hair. Caroline and me have messed around a lot, but tonight’s different, and I don’t want to fuck it up. Traumatize her or whatever. She can do whatever she wants to me, but I’m not going to push her.

It’s fucking hard, though. To keep still. To keep from showing her exactly what I want her to do to me. She wraps her fingers around the base of my cock, and there’s this spot where she could put pressure and doesn’t. She licks and sucks the underside where I’m so sensitive, but she flicks right over the place beneath the head that makes me insane.

I give up on the blankets and rub my hands over her shoulders, up her neck, into her hair. Not clutching at her, though it takes a monumental effort not to. Just touching her.

She cups my balls, but her fingers are so gentle, her mouth so … polite. It’s nice.

It’s good.

She lifts up her head. Crawls up until she’s a couple of inches from my face. “Hey.”

“What?”

“You don’t come with a guidebook. Tell me what you want.”

“You’re doing great.”

I jerk off the bed before I understand why. She pinched my nipple, twisted it. Not in a cute way.

“The fuck? That hurt!”

“Tell me what you want.”

Her eyes are intent, her mouth set in this no-nonsense line. She looks like classroom Caroline, sure of herself, ticked at me for keeping her from completing this lesson to her satisfaction.

I love her like this.

“Suck me,” I say. “Hard.”

She smiles this little smile. Totally satisfied with herself. “Thank you.” Her head drops down again. “Now, keep talking to me, or I’m going to drive home and you’ll be all alone with your right hand. Or is it your left, since you’re left-handed?”

I don’t think I’m supposed to answer the question. Not when she’s crawling down my body, ass in the air. I want my hands on that ass. Get her turned around, pussy in my face, dripping all over me while she sucks me off.

I’ve said shit like that to her on the phone, when I was too far gone to stop myself, safe because I was a couple thousand miles from her. But it’s different to think about saying it to her face. Does she like that, or does she just put up with it? Where do girls like Caroline draw the line?

When she wraps her hand around me, I reach down, show her where to pull the skin tight. “Here.”

She takes over. Then she’s licking me again, flicking her tongue over the head, sucking me into her mouth. Sucking hard.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

She pops me out of her mouth long enough to say, “That’s more like it.”

There are no girls like Caroline. Just Caroline.

She’s more than enough.

She sucks me, licks me, tongues me in the spot I show her until I’m lifting off the bed, my legs stiff, my dick so hard I can’t possibly last. When she goes for my balls this time, I show her where to stroke behind them, where to press—oh, fuck, she’s a quick study.

“Turn around,” I say, but I’m not sure she understands me. Not sure I can make words that actually come out sounding like English.

“Caroline. I—can you—gnuh.”

“Eh?” she teases.

I sit up, grab under her arms, haul her up my body. Her lips are shining, wet, and I kiss her, get my tongue inside her, get my hand in her panties and my fingers into her slickness. She’s slippery, soaking. God damn.

She moans into my mouth. “West.”

“Turn around,” I tell her.

“What?”

“Turn around. Get your hips up here”—I tug her toward my face—“and your mouth back down there.”

“That’s … Can’t we just have sex now?”

For a second I’m dumbfounded. When I manage to gather a few brain cells together, I say, “Honey, we are having sex.”

Her cheeks are already pink, but now they turn red. Which is hilarious. I mean, I’ve got my fingers inside her, she’s riding my hand, still moving in this soft up-and-down even as we’re talking, hair all loose around her shoulders, fucking beautiful—and now she’s going to get shy on me?

“What did you think this was?” I ask.

“I know. I mean, yes, I’ve heard Quinn’s sex-doesn’t-have-to-include-a-dick lecture, too. But I meant, you know, were we going to have sex sex. Penis-in-vagina sex. Sex.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Penis-in-vagina sex?”

“Shut up.”

“No, I mean, that’s romantic. That’s probably the most romantic proposition I’ve ever heard.”

She’s laughing. “Shut up.”

I move my fingers and push her onto her back. Look deep into her eyes. Say, real serious, “Caro, I would love to have penis-in-vagina sex with you.”

She smacks my arm, and then I kiss her, and then … damn. It’s like we’ve been playing around and now we’re not. At all. The kiss gets intense, fast, her hands are everywhere, grabbing at me, positioning my hips where she wants me, where I’m grinding against her. Her panties are in my way, and I’ve had enough of that. I yank them down, pull them off her ankles, push her knees apart and lick between her legs until she’s making these quiet, helpless sounds that I fucking love.

“West,” she says.

Yeah. I know. She wants me inside her, and if I don’t get there in the next thirty seconds, the world might as well end.

“Hold on. Don’t move. Not one inch.”

I get up, grab a condom from the desk, rip it open, and roll it on with my eyes on Caroline on my bed, legs spread open, wet and ready, her body, her mouth, her smile, her eyes.

“I’m getting cold.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Then I’m back over her, my dick sliding over her warm, soft pussy, our mouths meeting, her arms around me. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

I reach down. Find the right spot, the right angle.

I ease into her. Inch by inch. Slow, because I don’t want to hurt her, because it’s been a while for both of us, because I don’t want to embarrass myself and come before we’re even hardly started.

Slow, because I want to watch her face, and, fuck, it is romantic. It is special.

It’s Caroline.

When I’m all the way in, her knees spread wide, her eyes right with me, I kiss her. I just stay there, not moving, because I’ve wanted to be here, with her, for so long, but I didn’t think I ever would.

It’s torture. The worst best torture of my life.

This is what deeper feels like.

This is what sex feels like, if you’re doing it right.

If you’re in love.

It’s incredible.

I frame her face between my palms, smooth her hair off her forehead. “You okay?”

I thought this couldn’t get better, but it does when she smiles. And when she moves, rocking her hips experimentally into me, then back away—Christ Jesus. I suck in a breath and close my eyes.

“I’m great.”

“Good.”

I’m not ready to move yet. I’ve been told I have amazing stamina, but it’s obvious now that this is only true when I don’t give a shit. With Caroline, I’m going to have to work hard just to not be the king of the premature ejaculators.

“West?”

She rocks again.

“Hunh?”

“Are you going to fuck me or what?”

“I ever tell you I don’t like bossy women?”

She slithers away beneath me, then thrusts up. Her mouth falls open in a soft O. Then she smiles and looks at me, like, I’m such a genius.