His laughter rumbled against me, and I squeezed my eyes closed because the sound elicited so much more than sexual desire.

“Open your eyes.”

I did.

Satisfied, he dipped his head again, licking, teasing, and torturing my other nipple now. I felt the coil of tension tighten in my lower belly.

“Aidan,” I panted hard, clutching his head in my hands as he circled his tongue around my areola. “I need you.”

He moved, sliding down my body, his lips trailing open-mouthed kisses down my stomach as his hands cupped and shaped my breasts on his descent. I shivered at the touch of his tongue across my navel and sighed happily as he pressed my thighs open.

Aidan settled between my legs, and his calloused, beautiful hand glided along the inside of my thigh until I felt his fingers slide inside me.

“Oh God …” I threw my head back at the sensation, never having reacted to this act quite so explosively before. It felt like I was already seconds from coming.

How could that be?

My reaction brought Aidan’s eyes up to my face. They were intense, the mischief gone and replaced by ferocious sexual intent. His fingers slipped out of me and then back in. My hips pushed against them, trying to catch rhythm.

“You’re soaked, Pixie,” he said, his voice thick, guttural. “Drenched. Are you always like this? Or is this just for me?”

“Just for you,” I bit out, truthfully. “Only you do this to me.”

He bared his teeth, satisfaction slicing harshly across his face, and I swear the potent masculinity of him made my belly squeeze deep and low, giving him more of my wet.

Aidan dipped his head again. His fingers slipped out of me but before I could bemoan the loss, he parted my labia and my hips nearly came off the bed at the feel of his tongue on me.

Finally.

He circled my clit, teasing it, pressing it … and then he sucked it.

I cried out, unable to control how loud my response was, reeling as my orgasm started building in me. My thighs automatically closed on him, wanting to draw his mouth deeper into me, and at the scratch of his stubble against my skin, lust took over entirely. My hips surged against him, trying to ride his mouth as he thrust his tongue into my channel before licking it back up to my clit. Then he sucked.

The tension inside of me burst apart so hard, my head slammed back on the mattress and my eyes rolled. I also screamed.

I’d never screamed during climax.

But there was no holding it back as my inner muscles pulsed in hard wave after hard wave. And still he continued to lick me through it until I was writhing against his mouth, my fingers curled into the bedding beneath me.

It faded into aftershocks and my limbs grew so heavy, my legs collapsed against his side as he drew himself up to stare down at me.

I didn’t know why he was looking at me in wonder.

I was the one in awe.

When he pulled back and got off the bed, I whined—actually whined!—“Where are you going?”

Aidan didn’t say anything. I heard some rustling, and then he was back, crawling

up my body. He straddled me, his impressive erection standing to attention, and he watched me watch him as he ripped the condom wrapper with his teeth and rolled it onto his dick.

His big hand coasted up my torso and despite the fact that I’d been drained of energy seconds ago, I arched my back into his touch. Heat shot through me from the inside out as he squeezed my right breast with one hand while his other hand slid between my legs. I jolted, my clit overly sensitive.

Aidan groaned. “I need you.”

“Then take me.”

Features strained with the barely there hold he had on his control, he nudged my legs apart further and braced himself over me. And then he pushed inside of me. His eyes closed as if he was in pain as he pressed through the tight resistance of my body, my muscles squeezing around him. I stifled a whimper. It burned. A pleasure pain like last time. He was so goddamn big and I was so goddamn tiny. Aidan panted, and his arms shook a little.

“Aidan?” I lifted my hips, trying to get him to sink in deeper.

“You’re tight and swollen.” His eyes flew open, and the fire in them made my inner muscles squeeze around his dick. “Ah, fuck,” he breathed in reaction.

I caressed his back, pressing my nails so they scratched lightly over his skin. “Stop being gentle,” I taunted.

He glared at me. “I wasn’t gentle last time.”

“And it was wonderful.” My hips lifted, asking him to thrust and Aidan practically snarled, pulling back out of me. And then he drove back in. My head flew back and I grinned.

“Animal,” he teased, grunting out a laugh.

“Look who’s talking.”

He smirked at me, his eyes drifting down over my face, my lips, down my breasts, and then to where he was inside me. He began to move. Aidan watched himself sliding back and forth out of me, and his chest moved up and down in shallow breaths as his excitement increased.

His gaze flew to mine and I nodded at the silent question in his eyes.

And just like that, Aidan began to power in and out of me with hard, deep thrusts that dragged across my clit and stirred me again.

“Come all over me, Pixie,” he demanded, fucking me harder, his teeth gritted together as he held off his orgasm. “Let me feel it around my cock this time.” His words triggered his climax and seeing him fall apart for me was the last thrust against the growing tension inside of me.

I blew apart, gripping him in voluptuous tugs that made Aidan’s eyes widen ever so slightly. “Fuck,” he bit out and then grew still for a second before his hips shuddered against me. His cock pulsed and throbbed inside me as he came gratifyingly long and hard.

Collapsing in an astounded grunt, Aidan crushed me into the mattress with his weight, his lips pressed against my neck.

I laughed breathlessly and nudged him. He rolled off me, muttering a drowsy apology. Grinning at the absolute slack, relaxed expression on his face as he lay on his back, his leg still tangled with mine, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt like this.

So happy, I could float up off the bed and dance across the ceiling.

Then Aidan opened those beautiful eyes and said, “I’m not letting you go now, Pixie.”

And I came crashing back down to the bed with a bump called reality.

I had to understand why Aidan was so determined to have me.

I considered it, listing the reasons in my head as we stood in his apartment staring at one another. After his declaration, I’d shot out of his bed, grabbing the shirt he’d been wearing, throwing it on, and hauling ass into the front of the apartment, hoping I’d be safer from my lust there.

Aidan, of course, followed.

Annoyed.

And now here I was. Thinking of the reasons he wanted me to be with him. The relationship we’d shared during our time with Sylvie was molded by circumstance. We were brought together by a shared feeling of being haunted by the ghosts of our pasts. We got each other. We made each other feel less alone. And the three of us were like a little family unit for a while. That created a feeling of extreme closeness between Aidan and me.

Then there was the fact that we’d never had much of a physical relationship during that time. Lots of heat and sexual chemistry—a ton of pent-up sexual frustration—so that tension had kept us drawn together like the proverbial moth to a flame.

Which led me to the sex in the dressing room at the theater, and then the sex we’d just had.

The sex in the dressing room … I felt hot all over thinking about it again. That was a sexual fantasy come to life. It was passionate and rough and epic. All that anger and bitterness and desire collided in an orgasmic explosion that I was never going to forget.

And the sex just now had been born of that same frustration and longing.

However, that did not mean that sex would be like that between us all the time! Those moments were a huge, almost two-year build-up. Of course sex was going to be off the charts AMAZING between us at first.

Which meant it was part of a fantasy.

It wasn’t real.

Just like who we were back then with Sylvie was no longer real. Those people were gone. I knew I’d changed.

Yet these were all the reasons Aidan wanted us to try again. He was clinging to something that no longer existed.