He kisses me.
It is a reunion kiss, and it tastes like tears and mint mouthwash, which means he rinsed before he opened the door, which means even in the middle of heartbreak Casey Welling thought about the details, and the tenderness of that small, practical act of care nearly undoes me. I kiss him back with everything I have, which is not a speech and not a strategy. It is just me.
And then the kiss changes.
It changes the way a river changes when it reaches the edge of a fall, gradual and then sudden, the gentle current becomingsomething faster, deeper, more urgent. His tongue pushes past my lips, claiming the space, tasting of mint and desperate, overwhelming heat. His hands slide from my face into my hair, pulling, and my hands fist in his T-shirt. The four days of silence and hurt and absence collapse into a single, consuming point of contact, and the contact is not enough, it is nowhere near enough, and we both know it at the same moment.
“I missed you,” he says against my mouth, and his voice is wrecked. “I missed you so much it hurt. I lay in this bed for four days and the only thing I could think about was you.”
“I know.” I pull frantically at the hem of his shirt. “I couldn't stop thinking about you either.”
The T-shirt comes off. I pull it over his head and my hands find the broad, warm, sweat-dampened landscape of his chest. The contact after four days of absence is so acute it is almost painful, a sensory overload that makes my fingers tremble against the heavy muscle of his pectorals. His hands find the buttons of my shirt, undoing them one by one with a deliberate, focused patience that is entirely at odds with the frantic urgency in his breathing. When the shirt falls open and his broad palms press flat against my bare chest, we both go still for a second, just breathing, just feeling the simple, devastating reality of skin searing against skin.
Then the stillness breaks. His mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, the place where the old marks have faded to nothing, and he remakes them with his teeth and his wet tongue, slow and punishingly deliberate, a man rewriting his name on skin that belongs to him. I arch into it, a ragged gasp tearing from my throat. My fingers dig into his shoulders, his back, dragging down the taut muscles of his spine, and the dark, guttural groan he makes against my neck vibrates directly through my bones.
He lifts me. His large hands slide under my thighs and I wrap around him, my legs locking around his waist, my arms around his neck. He carries me to the bed and drops me onto the sheets that smell heavily of him—only him, four days of him. I pull himdown over me because I need his weight, I need the solid, undeniable, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound evidence that he is here, grinding his hips against mine, letting me feel exactly how hard and desperate he is for this.
The rest of our clothes come off in torn, impatient pieces. Track pants and trousers and boxers shoved down legs and kicked to the floor, hands pulling and pushing until nothing separates us. The sudden shock of his naked body against mine is a jolt of pure electricity. We are heavily aroused, bare flesh and slick heat pressing together, our erections sliding flush against each other and sparking a desperation that is entirely different from the first time. The first time was tender, exploratory, two people learning a new language. This is two people who already speak it fluently, who have been starved for four days, and are now speaking all at once, loudly, with unfiltered physical hunger.
He pins my wrists above my head. Gently, with one enormous hand, he secures them against the mattress. He looks down at me, his chest heaving, those blue eyes gone dark, dilated, and heavy with lust. I let him hold me there, completely exposed to him, because surrender to Casey Welling is not weakness. It has never been weakness. It is the bravest thing I know how to do.
“Stay with me,” he says, and his voice is low and rough and wrecked. “Don't go clinical. Don't go behind the walls. Stay right here.”
“I'm here,” I promise, my voice trembling as his hips rock against mine. “I'm right here.”
His mouth moves down my body. Throat. Chest. He laves his tongue over a nipple, sucking hard enough to wring a sharp sound from me, before moving lower. Over the flat plane of my stomach. His free hand releases my wrists and grips my hips instead, his thumbs pressing into the bone hard enough that I will carry the bruises for days—and I want the evidence, I want the physical, aching proof written on my skin that we came back from the wreckage.
Then his mouth takes me in.
I cry out, my hands flying into his blond curls as the hot, slick wetness of his mouth completely swallows me. He works his tongue and lips with a demanding, filthy rhythm that instantly short-circuits my brain. My hips buck off the mattress uncontrollably. Any lingering clinical distance is obliterated by the sheer, grinding, exquisite friction of what he is doing to me.
“Casey—” I gasp, my nails dragging dangerously against his scalp. “Please.”
He pulls back up, his lips slick, his breathing ragged. He shifts his heavy weight onto one forearm, reaching down over the edge of the mattress to blindly rifle through the open zipper of the duffel bag he'd dropped on the floor. His fingers find what they are looking for—a small travel bottle of lube. The fact that he packed it, that he carried it all the way to Jaipur even while his heart was breaking, makes my chest ache with a sudden, fierce rush of affection.
But there is no time to dwell on it. Even his preparation, previously so careful, is frantic. He flips the cap with his thumb, spilling a generous amount of the cool gel into his palm. He presses into me, slicking his fingers before two thick digits slide deep, stretching me open. I groan into the quiet room, my eyes falling shut as he curls his fingers, hitting a sensitive bundle of nerves that makes my entire body bow upward. He adds a third finger, stretching me further with more of the slick gel, opening me for the sheer size of him, and every deliberate stroke turns my blood to fire.
When he finally settles between my legs, he doesn't hesitate. I pull him down to me, wanting his face, wanting to see him as he aligns his thick, heavy length with me and pushes in.
It is a deep, intense stretch. The absolute fullness of him stretching me open makes my breath hitch and my eyes water. I gasp, my nails sinking into the sweat-slicked skin of his broad back as he fully seats himself inside me, burying himself to the hilt. He fills me so completely it feels like I might break, but the pain melts instantly into a heavy, consumingpleasure.
He holds still for just a second, his forehead dropping against mine. Our breathing synchronizes. Then, he begins to move.
He pulls back and drives into me, deep and hard. The wet slap of our skin echoes in the quiet room. I frame his jaw with my hands, holding his gaze as our bodies lock into a pounding, relentless rhythm. He pulls my hips flush against his, using his enormous leverage to angle me exactly where he wants me, driving so deep with every thrust that it forces a loud, embarrassing moan from my throat. I am entirely consumed by the slick friction, by the sweat beading on his forehead, by the solid, heavy power of him pinning me down and taking me apart piece by piece.
“Arjun,” he grunts, his pace quickening, his strokes turning desperate and raw. He reaches down between our bodies, wrapping his large hand around my cock, stroking me slick and fast in perfect time with his punishing thrusts inside me.
It is too much. It is exactly enough. The pleasure sharpens to a blinding point. His hand finds mine, interlacing our fingers tight against the pillow beside my head, anchoring me as the sheer intensity of the sensation shatters my control.
“Casey!” I cry out, my hips snapping up to meet his violent thrusts. My vision whites out. I come incredibly hard, my body going rigid as I spill hot and messy over my own stomach, completely undone.
A second later, Casey stiffens and lets out a rough, broken shout. He grinds his hips down into mine one final, desperate time, as his own climax rips through him, pumping hot and deep inside me. He collapses against me, burying his face in the crook of my neck, his heart hammering a frantic, violent rhythm against my bare chest.
We are not quiet. The hotel walls are thin, the ceiling fan clicks, and somewhere on the ground floor Priya is probably still giving poor Vikram the architectural tour of his life. I do not care, and Casey does not care, because caring requires a level of self-consciousness that neither of us possesses right now, completely emptied out and laid bare.
After, we lie in the wreckage of the hotel sheets, slick with sweat and tangled together in the narrow bed that is too small for two men of our combined size. It is perfect because it forces proximity, our bare skin sticky and pressed flush, and proximity is exactly what we need. My head rests on his heavy, rising chest. His strong arm is wrapped tightly around my waist, keeping me anchored against him. The morning light has moved across the room and is warm on the bed.
“So,” Casey says, and his voice is thick and rough and warm. “What now?”