“I thought you were holding my hand.”
“Mutual handholding, and staying beside me when my dad was being…”
“A douche?”
“Yeah. That.”
“No place I’d rather be.” He kissed me and tugged at my hair. “Well, perhaps on top of you, or under you.”
“That might be arranged.” I was exhausted, but never too tired for Shane.
“Wait, I have something for you first. Except I need your phone to give it to you.”
“Okay?” I pulled my phone out and handed it over.
Shane tapped, typed, swiped, then held the screen out to me.Planned Parenthood. Final Report.His name appeared at the top. I scrolled through the list of negatives. My breath left my chest in a whoosh. My results had come back negative three days ago, and although we told each other it meant nothing that Shane’s were late, we’d both been bracing for something wrong. But no. Negative, normal. All of them.
I shoved my phone into my pocket and grabbed Shane, whirling him around and kissing him messily. “Best present ever.”
“Thought you’d be pleased,” he mumbled under my mouth. “So. Wanna fuck me bare? Breed my ass?”
Heat roared through me at the idea and yet… “Would you fuck me?”
He pulled back enough to see my eyes. “You really want me to?”
“Yeah.” It’d been a long day, and the thought of lying back and being pinned and smothered and filled with Shane made me ache, wanting him. “Please.”
“Dude. Totally my pleasure. You know, I’ve never topped bare. Bottomed a couple times, yeah, making money. Not topped.”
I’d bottomed bare with Rob. Part of the deal, exclusivity, no condoms. At least, on my part. By the end, I hadn’t been quite sure on his. None of that mattered now. Whatever I’d done before hadn’t been with Shane, here in the house we shared with seven dogs and sometimes a cat, with Shane’s voice in my ears and the smell of his skin that I’d remember forever. “I can’t wait to be your first.”
“We need to walk the damned dog.” Shane kissed me hard. “You go get ready. I’ll run Foxy out.”
By the time he came into the bedroom, I’d stripped naked, washed the stress-sweat off my body, and cleaned up for him. I’d turned the heat higher but the bedroom was still cool, so I’d slipped into one of Shane’s shirts, a worn, long-sleeved flannel he’d left in my closet. Just the shirt, unbuttoned, and when Shane joined me, his eyes lit up.
“You look good like that. Get on the bed.”
I sat on the edge and scrambled backward, leaning on my elbows and letting the shirt fall away from my raised, spread thighs.
“Fuck.” Shane looked down at his fumbling fingers as he tried to get his buttons open. “New shirt. Damned tight buttonholes.” He’d bought the pale-blue striped button-down specially for the council meeting. He managed three, then grabbed the hem and tugged it off over his head. “There.”
I watched without comment as he pulled off jeans, socks, and underwear, revealing his lean body. He’d put on some healthier weight in the last couple of weeks, and his flat belly no longer looked hollow. Every inch of him made my mouth water, especially a hard seven inches. “Come here,” I told him.
He climbed onto the bed at my feet and crawled toward me between my legs. Rising over me, his thighs brushing the insides of mine, he kissed me. I crossed my ankles behind his ass, grabbed his shoulders, and pulled him down to me. He landed hard enough to make me huff a breath, and we both laughed.
“Hello.” He braced himself on his elbows to see me. “There you are.”
“Shane.” I could’ve spent hours just looking at the blue of his eyes and the curve of his lips, at the shape of his jaw and the way the light of the bedside lamp glinted off his stubble.
“What?” he asked after a minute.
“Just… Shane.” I turned my head to kiss his arm by my cheek.
He bent to brush his lips over my jaw, then my chin, my neck. His voice so low I had to strain to hear him, he murmured against my skin, “I thought I could keep my distance from you. I’d go super slow and not be vulnerable and all that shit. But up on the lighthouse, I knew for sure.” He took a breath. “I love you. You kissed me and it was like I could fly.”
Hearing that from Shane was like sunlight flooding the dark places inside me.Shane loves me.I wanted to sing and dance and tell him the thousand ways he was important to me, but I was still wary of coming on too strong and scaring him off. I pressed a kiss to his jaw. “I’m glad you didn’t try to fly,” I teased.
He muffled giggles against my throat, and the tremble of his laugh told me how shaken he was by his own words. “Well, you hadn’t quite driven all the brains out of my skull yet.”
