Page 56 of From Air

“This is your fault,” he mumbles, kissing his way down my body, trapping my nipple between his teeth before flicking it with his tongue.

I arch my back. “W-what?” I’m unsure if I heard him correctly because his touch is all consuming and dizzying.

“Touching me all the damn time.” He works his way back up my body.

“Goading me.” He thrusts back into me, and my breath catches in my throat.

“Getting off on me in my truck.” His hands tangle in my hair, and his mouth covers mine again before I can object to the blame he’s placing on me.

My hands wander along his body, because Calvin Fitzgerald has irresistible, finely sculpted muscles that tense and relax under my fingers as he moves with me. And I want to feel every inch of him. I can’t get enough.

After a deep, mind-bending kiss, my head jerks to the side so I can catch my breath for a second. “I’m com ... I’m ...” Each breath chases the next as I come undone beneath him.

“Of course you are,” he says, just as the legs of Melissa’s sofa decide to whine in protest of his vigorous movements.

My mind spins, my thoughts an aura of unhurried bliss. I’m boneless, euphoric, and so damn satisfied by the time he curses my name and stills inside me.

That. Happened.

It takes a moment for it to feel real. I wait for that brain worm of regret to extinguish every last flame of happiness. Except it doesn’t. I don’t regret it. If I could press rewind and do it again, I would.

“What took you so long?” I quip while he nestles his face into my neck, breath erratic, heavy body limp on mine.

“Fuck you.” His body vibrates with his soft chuckle.

“Fitz?”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t breathe.”

He climbs off me, and I give him a shy grin while wrapping the blanket around my body, plucking my shirt and underwear from the floor, and hurrying toward the bathroom.

“Shit,” I mumble to myself, sitting on the toilet, hunched forward, hands fisting my hair. “I had sex with Fitz. That was ...” Stupid? Perhaps. But good.Sogood.

It’s okay,I mouth, flushing the toilet and washing my hands. I give the messy-haired reflection in the mirror a toothy grin. “It was just sex,” I whisper.

My heart laughs—a full-on bent-at-the-waist, gasping-for-its-next-breath sort of laugh.

When I return with the blanket, Fitz is back in his shorts and sitting on the sofa. We share a look. I can’t read his. I’m unsure what mine means, either, so I sit beside him.

An uncomfortable silence settles around us.

“I’m on the pill, in case you were wondering.”

“I’ve had a vasectomy, in caseyouwere wondering.”

My head pivots toward him. “Because you were tired of counting sperm?”

He smirks. “Exactly.”

My lips twist for a few seconds. “But I do have genital herpes.”

“I have crabs,” he says, glancing at me with a serious expression.

I try not to react. If I react, he wins. And it’s been well established that I’m not okay with him winning. Sadly, I can’t hold it in. I snort, covering my mouth and shaking with silent laughter. I feel it in my belly—a deep contentment.

It cracks his stony facade, and he grins, snagging the blanket from my hold. “Go to bed.”

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