Her lips find my cheek, pressing against the top of my beard and the rough skin.

“Here’s the deal. We’re going to wait for each other. One year. With as many visits as we canbothmanage. And then, we’ll take the next year as it comes too. Together. Okay?”

I crush her to me, taking her mouth in a desperate meeting of lips and tongues. She groans and I swallow the sound.

“Together,” I say against her lips. “Yes. Please.”

Vera pushes back from me, and I almost reach for her again, but she’s smiling, even as her hands fiddle with the bottom of her shirt.

“You know,” she says, carefully looking anywhere but at me. “I used to have fantasies about this porch swing.”

My brain short-circuits. I’m sure smoke must be pouring out of my ears and gaping mouth.

“At first, it was innocent. After you gave me my first kiss in my backyard, I started thinking about ways I could catch you again. Out here.”

She pulls her shirt over her head, dropping it to the ground, and I swallow my tongue. Was I paying attention when she got dressed this morning? Did I know she was walking around, tits out under her top? Nope. I couldn’t have known. I would have never let her out of my sight. I’d have bent her over the hood of my car and fucked her in the parking lot.

“If you’re not interested…” she leans over as if to grab her shirt and my control snaps as I lunge for her. I pull her in to my chest as the swing screeches in protest. We both ignore it. Ichance a glance out into the yard, making sure we aren’t visible to any peeping neighbors, but the hedges and privacy fence keep us nicely shielded.

“I’m interested,” I say against her mouth, devouring her lips in a bruising kiss. “If I’m ever not interested, I want you to brain me with my hockey stick and garrote me with my laces.”

She laughs against my throat and I’m instantly harder than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

“Charmer,” she says. I shudder.

“Truther.”

I cup a breast in my palm, rubbing the calloused pad of my thumb over her distended nipple. Her breath turns to pants, her fingers dipping under my shirt to tease the front of my sweatpants. Never have I ever been more grateful for the athlete wardrobe of easy-access clothes.

“Off,” she says, tugging at my shirt, and I kiss her again, gripping the material behind my neck in a tight fist. I leave her mouth, only to pull it over my head. Then I push up between her shoulder blades and take her whole tit into my mouth, sucking hard.

I can see her eyes roll back into her head, and her legs squeeze together. I make some kind of animal sound against her skin as I graze her nipple with my teeth. I push her back—gently—to the seat of the swing, pulling her legs up around my hips. It’s instinct to grind my erection against the sweet spot at the juncture of her thighs. We both moan.

“God, Vera,” I say, nibbling at the skin of her stomach, watching her muscles contract and relax under my touch. “I love you so fucking much.”

“I love you too, Robbie, but less talking, more kissing.” She laces her fingers in my hair and tries to tug me up her body, but I push back and down, dragging her shorts with me.

I can only manage this if my knees brace on the ground, my upper body covering hers, but I don’t care. I’d kneel on a bed of nails for the chance to eat her out. To trace up her opening, to circle her clit with my tongue. I push my face into her pussy, giving her something to buck up into. The friction is heaven and I drop a hand to palm my erection, even as I use two fingers to push inside her wet heat.

I pull the pads of my fingertips along the front wall of her core, feeling the fluttering squeeze tighten around me. I want to feel her on my cock, but not yet. First my tongue and my fingers. Then impaled on me. That’s how sex will go from now on. No one comes until Vera does. Never.

She cants her hips and something clicks because she’s keening out into the night air. I let go of my dick to press my hand to her mouth, and she suckles on my fingers until I see white-hot lights exploding at the corners of my vision.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she pants as her hips writhe on the old swing, and I get it now. The fantasy. God, I’d pictured doing this with her almost everywhere. The grocery store, the back of the bus, in her parents’ hedges. Down at the creek and the reservoir. Why didn’t I ever think of the swing?

“Robbie…” my name comes out of her mouth on a whine, and I twist my fingers inside her as I find her clit again, sucking the sweet tang of her into my mouth. “I’m gonna…”

“Come, Vera,” I say and slide a third finger into her tight, wet, heat.

She fractures. Clamping down hard enough to break a lesser man. My hips jerk of their own volition and I barely hold back my orgasm.

She’s pulling at my shoulders, my neck, under my armpits, anything she can reach to drag me back up and over her. I move as if on autopilot. My body knowing exactly where to go. She hooks her feet into the waistband of my pants and underwear,shoving both down, almost unmanning me as the fabric gets caught on my dick. I don’t care. Her desperation is a turn on.

She wriggles under me until the head of my shaft is wedged at her entrance. She’s soaked. It’ll take nothing to push into her supernova heat. I thrust my hips forward, then stop, collapsing onto my forearms as they brace me above her.

“Fuck, Vera. Condom. I don’t have one.”

She shifts again and this time I sink in a full inch, my eyes rolling back. She’s so fucking warm and slick. I want to stay right here forever.