Page 107 of Give & Take

“Is this okay?” he asks. He knows it’s not enough. He can feel me clutching at him. Begging with my hands and legs curled around his legs.

“No,” I say. “It’s not okay. Fucking fuck me, right fucking now!”

Raph laughs—a low rumble—and then he’s up and over me, his necklace dangling over my throat just the way I pictured.

When he presses in just a little, my vision bends. Itfeels so,sogood and he’s not even a fraction of the way in yet. He closes his eyes, his smile gone as his jaw pulses. He’s holding back.

I don’t want him to hold back. I grasp his ass harder, tilting my pelvis up, greedily pulling him toward me. “More,” I say. “More now please.”

“Fuck, Sunshine. You feel incredible.”

“You’re barely inside of me!”

“I’m savoring you.” His eyes go soft on mine. “My sweet Sunshine.”

His tone is so tender, so soft compared to the hardness of him—in his arms, flexed next to me, the plane of his stomach, the length of him poised at my entrance.

But his words—I’m savoring you—does that mean this is a one-time thing? Is this all he wanted, to catch this prize and be done?

“No.” Raph shakes his head, seeing me begin to spiral. “Don’t do that.” He grips my jaw with exquisite tenderness. “I’m savoring you because we can only have one first. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be the best. Or the last. Or the only. It’s just the first, okay?”

“Okay,” I whisper.

He’s still not quite there.

“Breathe, baby. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

How did he know that? How did he uncover that little shard inside of me, the one that festers and throbs and warns me away from getting too close? The one that has me keep my cool so I’m always prepared. The one that saysnobody stays for you.They come and they go but no one stays.

“None of that is going to happen, Sunshine.”

“None of what?”

“None of those thoughts you’re trying on. Nothing’s going to change. Except maybe me being more crazy about you.”

He lowers himself down on his elbows so he’s even closer to me. Rather than kiss my neck, or do some other sex-move thing, he kisses his thumb and presses it over my sternum. Right where my rapidly beating heart sits.

“I’m not going anywhere, Lana. Whether we do this or you tell me to stop. I’m right there.”

I know he means right now. Because he is in fact going somewhere, at the end of the summer. As he should.

Unless he doesn’t.

I pretend he means forever, because in this moment, where I’m not being rational, where I can only speak what my newly kissed heart wants, I want him forever.

“Be with me,” I whisper, lacing my fingers over his back. I tug at him, encouraging him to do what we came here to do.

And as he acquiesces, as the pendulum swings between us—he gives and I take and I take and he gives—he enters me, soft and slow and tender.

When he does, I swear I hear him breathe a single word.

But by then I’m too stunned by the sensation going through me. The fullness of Raph sinking into me as deep as he’ll go has my eyes and mouth going wide.

Raph’s eyes have darkened, his brows furrowed together. “Jesus, Lana. Do you feel that?”

All I can do is nod as I cling to him, feeling the most staggering collection of emotions and sensations all at once. Like this connection we have is so powerful it’s overwhelming my mainframe.

As he bends a knee and tips it under me, bringing one of my legs up to go even deeper, I cry out. It’s pleasure, yes, but it’s also this otherworldly kind of joy—something pure and perfect—like fulfilling a promise I didn’t know I’d made.

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