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Either path we chose felt like death, but this death was sweeter.

I saw his resolve draining the longer we held.

Reed’s jaw clenched tight, cheeks flickering with suppressed feelings. “I needed to be close to you. Watch you sleep, watch you breathing.”

“Living,” I exhaled.

“That’s right.”

“Life is living.” My voice quaked as I echoed his words to me from that first night at the lake. “If you’re not living exactly the way you want to live, then what’s the point?”

Our foreheads melded together, his mouth a toe-lift away.

Boldness shot through me as I pulled all the way up and flicked my tongue against his bottom lip. “Tell me goodnight, Reed.”

He stared at me, locking on a breath.

The world fell away.

Reason disintegrated.

Longing dominated the raging war. Temptation was a rallying cry, roaring in our ears.

He snapped.

Whatever line he’d drawn in the sand was flushed away by the tide as he pounced on me.

Before I could process anything, his hands were linking both of my thighs around his hips as he hauled me up the door and our mouths collided.

Yes.

A stunned cry caught in my throat as I grabbed his hair, sucked his tongue into my mouth, and jutted against his erection. A groan vibrated through me—his, mine—as he fisted my knotted curls in his hands, while my dressed rode up my thighs and I crossed my ankles at his lower back.

Licking every inch of my mouth, he only pulled away to unzip the back of my dress, tearing it down my body until my breasts were exposed.

My moan echoed through the empty apartment when his mouth clamped around my breast and sucked hard, his teeth nicking my nipple before he dove over to the other. “Reed…oh, God…”

My fingernails clawed the nape of his neck as my body writhed against him, seeking friction. I nearly pulled his hair from the roots when he laved my nipple into a tight bud, groaning hotly as he devoured me. Wetness drenched my thighs, seeping through my lace underwear.

I needed him inside me.

Reed spun me away from the door before carrying me across the living room and dropping me on the blue mat laid out across the carpeting. I shimmied out of my dress and underwear as he whipped his belt from the loops, unzipped his jeans, and shoved the denim and boxers down his hips, kicking them free. He climbed over me, and the moment our mouths fused back together, a cocktail of wet tongues, nips and bites, I reached down between us and fisted his cock.

Huge, rock-hard, pulsing in my hand.

“Fuck,” he cursed through a hoarse moan, his face falling away from my mouth and burrowing against my neck.

I stroked him up and down, the tip sliding against my pussy as he bucked into my palm, his muscle-corded arms caging me in as he kept himself propped up.

Then he shot down my body.

Wrenched my knees apart.

And plunged his tongue between my legs.

My lower body jerked up against his mouth and I let out a high-pitched mewl, while Reed linked his arms under my thighs to hold me steady.

The sounds he made as he ate me—animalistic, hungry, insatiable.