Author: Tiffany Reisz

He released both the breath and his fears. A deep and abiding calm settled into his being. This was Nora, his Nora. The woman he loved, yes. But more than that, she was his best friend. He trusted her even though he couldn’t say why. And no one in the world made him feel more comfortable with himself. He’d waited long enough. They both had.

Wesley dropped his mouth to hers, and she lifted her lips to his. Warm…her mouth was so warm... He loved the heat of her body. Once, she’d claimed to be a medical anomaly. Her natural body temperature even when healthy was ninety-nine-point-five, not the typical ninety-eight-point-six. She’d said this was proof she was hotter than other women—literally. But it was no joke. Her skin burned to the touch. And tonight, he wanted to be consumed by the fire of her.

Her tongue pushed into his mouth, but Wesley pushed back, not wanting to rush the moment. He’d loved Nora for three years now, lived for her. And now he was going to lose his virginity to her. No, not lose…give.

“Are you sure?” she whispered into his ear as he backed her into the table at the center of the gazebo, candles still burning all around them.

“More sure than I’ve ever been in my life.”

Nora wrapped her arms around his back and held him close. Yes, that’s what he needed more than anything. The reassurance of her arms.

“Good. I’m here, Wes. I’m not going anywhere.”

He nodded, bereft of the words he needed to tell her how her words made him feel. He wished he had her talent for words. When he’d have papers due in class, he’d always go to her for help. “I want to say this but don’t know how…” he’d say to her, and she’d take his fumbling attempts at coherence and spin them into beautiful sentences, brief and powerful. Right now he needed her to help him tell her how much he wanted her, but not just in a sexual way. And how he loved her, but not just in some stupid greeting-card way. And he wanted to tell her he didn’t ever want to hurt her—not the way Søren did. Not the way anyone did.

“It’s okay, Wes. Don’t be afraid.” Nora ran her hands up his arms. “Just talk to me and keep talking.”

“Tell me what to do,” he said as Nora started to unbutton his shirt.

“Anything you want.” She smiled up at him. A dozen spotlights ringed the dock and gazebo, and cast soft white light onto the pond. And in that light Wesley could see the happiness shining in Nora’s eyes. Happiness…not guilt, not fear, not shame and not Søren.

“I need a little more than that. I’m…”

“Nervous?”

“Oh, hell yes,” he said, and laughed. God, she felt so good in his arms. So soft and warm and real. Real and solid. Her breasts pressed against his chest. Her fingers dug into his shirt. Her fingernails bit lightly into the sensitive skin of his upper arm where he shot himself with his insulin on occasion. She must have noticed the slight wince because she immediately moved her hands to his shoulders.

“Okay. We can do this. No nervousness necessary. You sure you want to do this here?” She glanced around the gazebo. They were exposed. Anyone who walked down to the pond could see them.

“Yeah. No way would I make it back to the house. And everyone’s in bed by now. Mom and Dad at least. We’re okay.” He tried to sound more confident than he felt.

“Good. Relief.” Nora laughed and he heard the slightest hint of nervousness in her voice. Instead of worrying him, it gave him comfort to know the one and only Nora Sutherlin got nervous around him. “Let’s see…first time. We better keep it simple. Table?”

“Table.” Wesley slid his hands down her back and wrapped both palms around the back of her soft thighs. She clung to his shoulders as he lifted her up and set her on the edge. Already he burned to bury himself inside her. “Do we need—”

“Nope.” She shook her head. “I’ve been tested. Totally clean. Good on the birth control. And you’re a virgin. Right?”

Wesley grinned. “Not for long…I hope.”

“No. Not for long.” She started in on his shirt again, reaching the bottom and attempting to yank the fabric from his pants. A button got stuck on his waistband and Nora groaned with frustration.

“This never happens in my books,” she said, tugging more gently on Wesley’s shirt to free it. “Nobody’s shirt ever gets stuck in their pants. And nobody has to worry about their damn parents walking in on them. And you never have the guy raising up his head and saying, ‘Um, I think you’re getting a yeast infection.’”

Wesley almost collapsed with a mix of disgust and laughter.

“What? You’re telling me romance novels and erotica novels aren’t one hundred percent realistic with the sex scenes? I’m shocked.”

He rested his head on her shoulder and she dug her fingers into his hair.

“Afraid not, kid. Nobody ever has morning breath. No one ever gets a cramp. The guys can always go forever. There’s never any ED scenes.”

“ED?”

“Erectile dysfunction.”

“Well, I can’t imagine you’ve dealt with much of that in real life. Except maybe morning breath,” he teased. He’d lived with Nora for a year and a half. He’d seen her at her absolute worst—straight out of bed, hair gone crazy, morning breath, the works. She looked even more gorgeous just crawling out of bed than most women looked after two hours primping.

“Oh, I’ve had it all. Had a charley horse once during sex with Kingsley. Screamed so loud his secretary called an ambulance.”

“ED?”

“Not much of that. Unless you count Søren.”

Wesley watched Nora’s smile fall from her face.

“Søren?”

Biting her bottom lip, she nodded. “Unless he hurts me…or someone, he can’t…perform.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t. He. Can. Not.” Nora gave a wan smile. “He doesn’t hurt me just for fun, you know. It’s foreplay. I told you that.”

Wesley remembered that conversation. He hadn’t even moved in with Nora yet. Barely eighteen years old and a freshman at Yorke…December…almost Christmas break. And he couldn’t bear the thought of life without Nora at his school next semester. But she’d been brought in to teach only that one class. Spring semester would come and she’d be gone.

He’d fibbed a little and said his parents might take him out of the very expensive liberal arts college. Nora hadn’t missed a beat. Immediately, she told him he could move in with her, as room and board were at least half of what students paid at Yorke. But, she warned him, she wasn’t just a writer. She worked as a Dominatrix, as well. The look she took as shock had been merely confusion. He’d never heard of a “Dominatrix” in his life.

Then she’d told him about Søren, her complicated relationship with him, how he was both in her past and yet…and yet...and Wesley recalled the surge of testosterone he’d felt at the very idea of a man raising his hand to Nora, the woman he loved with a passion so furious he could barely breathe when around her.

“Just don’t let him around me,” he’d said, almost puffing his chest out. Even now he couldn’t think about that moment without blushing. He’d been so cocky, such a teenager. And he’d had no idea how truly intimidating Søren could be.

“What? You think you can take on Søren?” And then Nora had laughed. Laughed. It would have hurt his feelings less had she patted him on top of his head. “Wesley…never fuck with a sadist. For Søren, torture’s just foreplay.”

And Nora’s eyes had gone black as a starless night then, and something burned in them and turned in them and scared the shit out of him. That’s when he realized he no more knew Nora Sutherlin than he knew the number of stars in the sky.

“Why did you stay with him?” He’d asked the question in a whisper, as a whisper was all he could manage.

Nora had smiled, a smile that took over her face and her eyes, and all he could do was stare into that smile like he sometimes stared into the crescent moon.

“I like foreplay.”

“You said you liked it, when he hit you,” Wesley said now, running his hands up and down her legs. With every pass his fingers inched higher.

“I did like it. I do. But sometimes it’s exhausting. Pain hurts, and to have sex with Søren means submitting to pain. Sometimes I had to wonder what it would be like to have sex and not have to be subjected to ten kinds of agony first.”

Wesley didn’t say anything. He only cupped Nora’s face with both his hands and rubbed the arch of her cheekbones. She wrinkled her nose and he laughed.

“What’s that face for?”

“Your hands smell like catfish food.”

Wesley pulled his hands away from Nora’s face and, more importantly, from her nose.

“Sorry. Maybe you’re right. We should do this back at the house. I can take a shower first.”

“No, no, no. We’re doing this. Absolutely. Just catfish food hands…yet another thing that doesn’t happen during sex scenes in romance novels.” Nora reached out and dug her fingers into his belt loops to pull him closer. “Or this. Goddammit.”

“What?”

Nora raised her hand up into the light. “Just chipped the hell out of my manicure. This is hopeless. We’re hopeless, Wes.”

Laughing, she leaned her head against the center of his chest and exhaled. Wesley sighed and rested his chin on top of it.

“I have hope for us,” he whispered. “We might get the sex wrong, but I think we get everything else right. In romance novels, the woman is flawlessly beautiful, right? You’ve got that part down.”

Nora turned her exquisite face up to him and smiled in the moonlight. A lightning bug flashed its light by her eyes and Wesley’s stomach clenched.

“Definitely got that,” he repeated.

Nora reached up and pushed his shirt open and started to slowly slide it off his shoulders.

“Men in romance novels always have perfect bodies. Big broad shoulders with sexy definition, flat, hard stomach, those good veins in the forearms...” As she dragged his shirt off him, she touched every inch of his chest—his shoulders, his stomach, his forearms. “You’ve got the perfect male body down. Definitely. We’re almost there.”

“What are we missing?” Wesley gently pulled the clip out of Nora’s hair, freeing the black waves to fall down her back. She raised her arms and he pulled her shirt off, leaving her in only her black bra and skirt.

“We have to make love now. Not fucking. Not sex. Making love. They never call it fucking in romance novels. Oh, unless it’s between the villain and his mistress. They’re allowed to fuck. The hero has to make love to the heroine. Gently at first, until the passion overcomes him and he’s lost in the blah-blah…all that garbage.”

“Make love to you. I can do that. I think.”

Nora grinned. “None of that. Can’t have any honest self-doubt. Gotta be kind of an asshole if you’re going to be a romance-novel hero. Only Alphas, no Betas. Sorry.” She wagged her finger at him before laying her hand on his stomach and tracing the line of his hips with her fingertips.

“Then I don’t want to be a romance-novel hero. I just want to be me with you. And I’ve got nothing but self-doubt right now. Nora…what the hell do I do?”

She slid both hands up to his chest and rested them right under his collarbone.

“It’s me. You can do anything you want.”

Wesley nodded and took one more deep breath. He held her by the nape of the neck and brought his lips to her mouth in a kiss more ferocious than he ever dreamed he’d be capable of. Nora moaned softly in the back of her throat as she leaned into the kiss.