He situated himself between my raised legs, sitting on his knees, and deposited three pumps worth of the clear liquid into his palm before chucking the glass bottle onto the sheets. “Doesn’t matter.” He smeared it across his length before coating my entrance. I twitched again as his fingers dipped inside of me once, twice, and a third time for good measure. “Do you have toys this size?”

I gulped as I glanced back down at his cock. “No.”

“Then it might hurt a little. And as much as you’d like to believe I’m an asshole,” he started, withdrawing his fingers, “I’d rather keep that pain to a minimum.”

The tip of him slid across my clit, and oh God, he was warm. Every toy I’d ever used was cold, rigid, and lifeless in comparison to the way his cock felt against me.

He slipped it lower.

And lower.

It caught against the bottom of my entrance, his mouth parting on a little grunt, and it was as if reality came screeching back in.

Don’t.

Stop.

You’ll regret this.

You hardly know him.

You’re only married on paper.

My chest rose and fell erratically as we both hesitated. He didn’t move a muscle, and all I could do was bring my gaze up to his, hoping that maybe, just maybe, I’d find the confidence in him that I was suddenly lacking.

Every hard line that made up his facial features had softened.

“You can say no,” he offered.

I gulped. I didn’t want to say no. I didn’t want to keep fighting the side of myself that thought I needed to hold myself back. I was twenty-four, for God’s sake.

And, technically, he was my husband.

I reached up to him, wrapping my hand around the back of his neck, and pulled him down closer to me. For a moment, we stayed there, breathing the same air, looking for confirmation that evaded us both. He held my gaze, and in the steadiness of the silence, both unmoving and searching for answers in the other, I could feel myself breaking down again, could feel each wall I’d hastily assembled crumbling.

“Please,” I breathed.

It was everything we’d been waiting for.

The sharp sensation of my entrance stretching hit me first. My mouth parted with a gasp, but he covered it with his lips, kissing me as he slowly began to slide in inch by aching inch. I tried my best to relax, but oh my God, he was girthy, and the sting made it hard to focus, made it hard to want this.

He paused, halfway in and halfway out, as if he could tell how it felt. As if he knew his own destruction.

One hand slid across my skin, down the center of my stomach, and dipped between my thighs. A simple touch, just his fingers grazing across my clit, made a world of difference in my level of anxiety. The pleasure made the pain fade enough, and my muscles relaxed.

“That’s it,” he mumbled against my lips, sliding himself in just a little further. “Good fucking girl.”

The sensation as he bottomed out and held himself there was unlike anything I’d felt before. I’d never been so full, so whole, so innately satisfied. We paused again as he gave me time to grow accustomed to it, but I wasn’t sure I ever could entirely. I understood, now, why he’d been so drunkenly desperate that night in Vegas.

But I understood even more the second he began to move.

I was convinced I’d lost my mind before, convinced I’d gone blank and had nothing but a deep want left in my head when he’d started touching me. I’d thought it again when he’d removed his boxers, when I’d touched him without being under the influence. But this — this wasn’t on the same level. There was nothing left. No worries, no concern over who I was or what I wanted, no hesitation or fear or self-consciousness.

I thought it was meant to hurt the entirety of your first time. But dear God, I was so, so wrong.

My fingernails dug into his skin as his mouth broke from mine, a sound I’d never heard myself make dragging from my throat. He took his time, moving slowly, letting me feel every inch of him as he pulled himself nearly all the way out before sinking back in as far as he could. But I needed more.

“More,” I begged, the word coming out whimpered, broken, needy.