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“Did you put those on just for me?” I got up on my elbows to look at him.

Austin just raised a brow. “What if I did?”

It wasn’t the smart-ass answer I expected, and consequently, I had no answer.

“Paige.” His hand went stroke, stroke, stroke, and I was hypnotized. “Open your legs.”

I did, because I wanted him there. I thought he’d use his hand, but Austin got on his belly on the bed, instead. He wriggled up between my legs before I knew it, his breath hot on my inner thighs and finally, at last, my cunt.

I cried out when he kissed me there, but stifled it with my fist. When he licked me, I drew in a breath that tasted of my own skin. It had been a long time since a man had gone down on me…since the last time I’d been with him, as a matter of fact.

His lips worked my rigid clit as he pushed a finger, then two, then three, inside me. Rough but not harsh. He found my G-spot and I convulsed around his fingers. Pleasure took my voice away.

I pushed my hips upward in lieu of command, and he fucked me with his mouth and hands until I gasped and trembled. Shaking, I looked down at him, nestled between my legs. Passion had hazed my vision, but everything became crystalline when he paused to look up at me.

“Don’t come yet.” Austin’s voice had grown impossibly deeper over the years. Now it went lower still. His breath drifted over my hot, wet flesh and the motion of his lips tantalized me mercilessly.

He moved up my body and captured my wrists with his hands as he pushed mine over my head. My fingers curled around the wooden spindles as I stared him in the eyes. I wasn’t the same girl he hadn’t taken to the prom, and I wasn’t the same girl he’d married. I was a different woman now. But I held the headboard anyway, watching him as he fumbled in his nightstand for the package of condoms and slid one on.

When he moved back over me, one hand on his cock to guide it inside me, I tensed. My eyes closed as he filled me. When he moved, I moved with him. It was easy to remember how.

He fucked into me slowly, then faster. He pushed up onto his hands to drive his cock deeper, and I took the pain of his thrusts and turned it into pleasure. My hands gripped the wood. His eyes never left mine, not even when he slid a hand between us to stroke my clit in time to his thrusts.

“Now,” he grunted from between clenched teeth, “you can come.”

I hadn’t been waiting for his permission, but my body took it anyway.

“Say my name.” His fingers left me and he pushed his face into the side of my neck. “Say it, Paige.”

I tipped into the swirling oblivion of orgasm, and I gave him what he wanted with his name, if he could decipher it from the moan. But I also let go of the headboard. My nails raked his back as I came again, as hard the second time as the first. Harder, maybe, because I was bringing blood and he cried out as he pumped inside me as he came, too.

Austin shuddered. His arms slid beneath me, clutching me tight. He burrowed his face harder into my skin. And he just held me that way for what seemed like a very long time.

I had to unwrap my legs from around his waist after a few minutes to ease the cramp in my hips, but I didn’t unwind my arms from around his back. His weight on me was more comforting than claustrophobic. When he finally pushed himself off me, he only rolled to the side with one arm and leg thrown over my body.

Now he would sleep, I thought.

But he didn’t. Austin moved to get rid of the rubber in a nearby garbage can, then slipped right back to where he’d been. His hand moved lazily up and down my body in smooth, flat strokes.

“Paige.”

“Yes,” I said after a second.

“I thought you liked it when I was a little rough.” His hand centered over my contented cunt, his fingers dipping into my well.

I wasn’t squeamish about post-fucking cuddles or anything leading up to a potential round two, but when Austin stroked my pussy, I put a hand over his to stop the motion. “Is that why you did it?”

He didn’t look at me. His breath puffed hot on my shoulder and he kissed me. His lips pressed my skin. His fingertip settled on my clit and circled lightly. I’d had two orgasms and my body wasn’t ready for another, or so I thought. As his hand moved, tension stirred inside me.

“Is it?” I drew in a breath but kept my voice even. “Austin?”

“Well, shit, Paige. Yeah. Of course.” He sounded insulted.

I put my hand over his again, though what he was doing was starting to work. “Look at me.”

He did. I hadn’t noticed the shadows under his eyes before. Faintly blue, they made him look older. Well, he was. We both were.

“I thought you liked it rough, that’s all.”

“Did it look like I wasn’t enjoying myself?” I didn’t want to defend my orgasms to him. I didn’t want to think he’d done something for my sake that he hadn’t wanted to do for his own.

Pushing him off me, I got out of bed and gathered my clothes. I dialed the cab company and arranged for a ride home. Austin watched me without pulling up the sheets or making a move toward his own clothes. When I looked at him, his expression had gone inscrutable. That was as familiar as everything else had been, and I figured whatever glitch in his operating system had made him ask me those questions had been fixed.

“Why did you come over here?” he asked, loud in the quiet. “Really?”

I stepped into my panties and pulled them up, then zipped my skirt, too. “I came over here to do just what we just did.”

“Just to fuck me?”

“Yes, Austin,” I told him. “What else did you think I wanted?”

“Nothing.” He rolled to grab the remote from the nightstand and I discreetly ogled his ass and the sweet backs of his thighs—places I’d bite, if I had more time. “Forget I asked.”

“Are you getting pissy with me?” I straightened my shirt and ran my fingers through my hair to shake it into some semblance of order. “No, you are not. Are you? Seriously?”

“No.” Austin, his jaw set, kept his gaze on the television. He punched the buttons of the remote so fast I knew he couldn’t possibly be able to see more than a second or two of each program before moving on.

“Because I’ll tell you what, if you’re going to give me an attitude every time I come over here to fuck you, I’m not going to bother anymore.” I stepped into my shoes. “That cake is baked.”

Now he looked at me. “Huh?”

“That cake,” I said carefully, “is baked. Done. Over. Finished.”

“Iced?” One corner of his lips turned up, but only a little.

He was maybe the only person who’d ever really “gotten” me. It was why we fought so hard and fucked so good. He knew every button to push.

“Yeah. Iced.”

He shrugged, looking back at the television, but his mouth still quirked. “If you say so.”

“Austin.” I waited until he looked at me. “Don’t make me regret this, okay? You know what this is.”

He shrugged again, the brief glint of a smile fading. His finger stabbed the remote as he cycled through all bazillion cable stations. I thought about kissing him before I left. I even took a few steps toward the bed, but when he turned to look right at me, I stopped.

“I’ll let myself out. No, no, don’t bother getting out of bed,” I said, though he hadn’t done so much as shift. “I’ll do it.”

I was already out the door and into the hall and at the head of the stairs when he called after me.