The laughter fills my mind but never makes it to my lips before I see a flash of his cocky grin and then his mouth is on mine again. But this time as his kiss claims mine, his hips begin to move, hands begin to guide, and his cock begins to stroke over every attuned inch within my nerve-laden walls. He is in complete control of our movements, our motions, our escalation of sensations.

I lift my head up from its leaning position against the door and take in the sight of him. His own eyes are closed, lips slightly parted, hair mussed from my hands, and shoulder muscles rippling as he moves us in rhythmic motion.

My broken man is now in pure dominant mode, and every nerve in my body screams to be taken. To be made his. To be the one he proves his virility to.

“Fuuuccckkk you feel good,” he tells me as he pushes me up and then plunges back into me as my muscles clench and nerves are paid the attention they most definitely have been craving.

“Colton,” I pant, my fingers digging into the tops of his shoulders as he drives me higher and higher. Sensation spirals—little shock waves of pleasure preparing me for him to shake the earth beneath my feet—and warmth starts to spread like a wildfire through my core. He drives back in again as my thighs tighten around him, my fingernails score lines, and my mouth seeks his with a frenzied need.

It only takes a few more seconds before the pleasure ratchets into an explosion of white in the abyss of darkness that has consumed me. And I am instantly lost to a world beyond our connection. It’s just him and me—sensation overwhelming and breath robbed— as I drown in the liquid heat and lose myself to the feeling, his name a repeated pant from my lips.

Within moments, Colton’s cry breaks through my pleasure induced coma at the same time his hips convulse wildly beneath mine, finding his own release. He rocks back and forth in me a few times trying to draw out the moment, his breath ragged and chest gleaming with our combined sweat.

His body sags against mine as he buries his face into the crook of my neck. My arms wrap around him from my position atop his pelvis and pressed against the door. I absorb the moment—the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the warmth of his breath against my neck, the unmistakable scent of sex—and understand without a doubt that I’d move Heaven and earth for this man without a second thought.

Colton adjusts his grip on my hips, and I slowly lower my feet to the ground; although my head is still figuratively in the clouds. He slips out of me and yet our connection is not lost because he gathers me in his arms, skin to skin, as if he doesn’t want to let me go just yet.

And I’m okay with that because I don’t think I’ll ever be able to let him go either.

“Fuck, I needed that,” he sighs with a slight chuckle and all I can give him is a noncommittal answer because frankly I’m still riding my own high.

We fall silent for a few moments, lost in the moment, enjoying the comforting feel of just being together.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” he says, breaking the silence and shakes his head back and forth before pulling back so he can look at the questioning look on my face.

“Tell you?” I’m confused.

A ghost of a smirk graces his mouth as he brings one hand up to cup the side of my face, his thumb brushing ever so softly over my lips still swollen from his kisses. “What I said to you before I got in the car ...”

My inhaling breath dies and my heart skips a beat, lodging itself in my throat from the words on his lips and the emotion in his eyes. I want to ask him to say it, to tell me the words himself, because hell yes I know what he said, but I want to hear that he remembers those words and still feels the meaning behind them.

I try to control the hitch in my breath and wavering in my voice but I have to ask. “What do you mean?” I’m a horrible liar and I know he can see right through my feigned confusion.

He chuckles a quiet laugh and leans in to brush a tender kiss against my lips and then the tip of my nose before leaning back so he can look into my eyes. He darts his tongue out to wet his lips and says, “I race you, Ryles.”

My heart melts and my soul sighs at hearing him repeat those words I’ve used like glue to bind the broken pieces the crash created. Even though the words bring me peace, I can hear nerves shake his voice, can sense the anxiety in the bottom lip he worries between his teeth. And now I’m starting to get nervous. Did he say the words and now doesn’t feel the same way he did then? I know it’s a ridiculous thought, considering what happened between us moments ago, but the one thing I’ve learned about Colton is that he is anything but predictable.

“Yeah,” I sigh, meeting the temerity in his eyes. “Those words … are you saying them now because you’ve reclaimed the memory or because you still mean them?” There. I’ve laid it out on the table, given him the option to say it’s the former and not the latter—an out in case he no longer races me. In case the accident has changed how he feels and this—us, me and him—have reverted back to a just casual status.

Colton angles his head and studies me a moment, eyes beseeching but lips motionless. The silence stretches as I wait for the answer, as I wait to see if he’ll rip me apart or be the soothing balm to my healing heart.

“Ry … don’t you know I never forget a single moment when I race … on or off the track?” It takes a moment for the words to register, for the words and what they mean to sink in. That he remembers and that he still feels the same way. And the funny thing is now that I know—now that all of this worry can go away and we can move forward—I’m frozen in place.

We’re naked, leaning against a door that a hundred or so reporters are on the other side of, the man I race has just told me that he races me back, and yet all I can do is stare at him as my soul realizes the hope filling it, is finding its permanent home.

Colton leans in so his mouth is a whisper from mine, hands framing my face as he looks into the depths of my soul. “I race you, Rylee,” he says to me, mistaking my silence as not understanding his prior statement. Little does he realize I’m so head over heels in love with him, right here, right now—body naked and heart bared—that I’m robbed of the ability to speak. So instead I accept the brush of his lips over mine in a kiss that’s soft and reverent before he rests his forehead against mine. “Don’t you know?” he asks. “You’re my motherfucking checkered flag.”

I can feel his lips curve up in a smile as they brush against mine, and I let the laughter that bubbles up fall free. It feels so good to suddenly have that thorn removed from my side.

To know the man I love, loves me in return.

To know he’s caught my free-falling heart.

Colton’s hands start the descent back down the line of my spine—the tremor of his right hand so slight now I barely notice it—and then back up as I feel him start to harden again against my lower belly.

“I take it you’ve been cleared from the doc?” I ask, my sated body already thrumming with newfound desire.

“Yeah I did, but after my day,” he says, kissing my forehead and pulling me back into the comfort of his arms, “it didn’t fucking matter if I got the okay or not, I was taking what was mine.”

“What was yours, huh?” I tease him despite the words warming my heart.

“Yep.”

And then the words he said before register and have me pulling back to search for an answer. “What was wrong with your day?”

I see something cloud his eyes momentarily before he pushes it away. “Don’t worry about me,” he says, and I’m immediately concerned.

“What else happened, Colton? Was there something you remembered—something that—”

“No,” he says, quieting me with a press of his lips against mine. “I only remembered what was important. Some voids are still there.” Ever the master of deflection, he continues, “It seems I’ve been neglecting you as of late.”

So whatever is bugging him, he doesn’t want to talk about. Okay … well, then on the heels of the past twenty minutes, I will most definitely give him the unasked for space and not push. “Neglecting me?”

“Yes, not treating you properly,” he says as he slaps my butt; the sting it leaves has nothing on the shock waves that ripple through the hypersensitive flesh between my thighs. “You’ve been taking care of me—of everyone else but yourself as usual—and I haven’t properly taken care of you.”

“I do believe you did just take care of me … and quite properly,” I tease, wiggling my naked body up against his and earning the hum that comes from deep within his throat. “If that’s considered not taking care of me—neglecting me—Ace, then please...” I nip at the skin on the underside of his jaw “...neglect me some more.”

“My God, woman, you test a man’s restraint,” he groans as his hands run down my spine and clasp together against my lower back. “But, that was just a minor sidetrack to—”

“Minor is not what I’d call it,” I quip with a raise of my eyes and another wiggle of my hips that causes him to laugh out loud. “I’ll take one of your sidetracks any day.”

“Bet your ass you will,” he teases with a quick squeeze of my hips, “but as I was saying, it’s time I treated you to a proper night out rather than gross hospital food and keeping me occupied while I lie in bed.” When I just quirk a suggestive eyebrow at the occupy in bed part, he just shakes his head at me and that grin I love lights up his face. He leans in and kisses me softly, murmuring his next words against my own lips. “There’ll be plenty of time for you to occupy me in bed later because right now—tonight—I’m taking you to a movie premier.”

His words catch me by complete surprise. “Wh-what?” I look at him with incredulity on my face and lips parted in shock. He just grins at me with a cat-that-ate-the-canary look because he’s surprised me.

A little thrill of excitement shoots through me at the thought of experiencing something new with Colton—making new memories—but at the same time that means I’ll have to share him with them. The paparazzi who sit outside the gate and will no doubt be at the event with their intrusive questions and in-your-face cameras. And it also means we have to step outside of this world, away from our cozy little realm where we can make sweet, lazy love whenever and wherever we want.

I know which one I prefer.

His sarcastic comment to Becks from days earlier chooses right now to hit my ears and take hold. The words are out of my mouth before I can filter them. “I thought once you got the okay, nothing was going to come between you and me but a change of sheets for a long, fucking time.” I repeat his own words back to him.

Colton’s eyes instantly darken with lust and spark with mischief as his mouth twists, his mind figuring out which option he’d prefer. “Well,” he says with a laugh, “I did in fact say that.” He traces a finger lazily down my cheek, to my neckline, and then down between my breasts. I can’t help the breath I suck in, the pebbling of my nipples, or the swelling of my heart. “And you know me, Ryles, always a man of my word … so how exactly am I going to keep you naked with the exception of a sheet and at the same time attend a premier I’ve already committed to? Hmm … decisions,” he whispers as he leans down and traces the curve of my neck with the tip of his tongue. “What shall we do?”

I open my mouth to answer but all I can do is try and breathe when his teeth tug playfully on my earlobe. “I guess the world’s about to learn how damn sexy you look wrapped in a sheet.”

My eyes snap open to meet his as shock kicks my libido down a notch. Within a second Colton and his devilish grin have picked my naked self up and placed me over his shoulder.

“No!” I shriek as he starts toward the stairs. “Put me down!”

“The media’s going to have a field day with this one,” he taunts as I swat his ass, but he carries on. “Well one way to look at it, it’s not going to take you long to pick out what to wear.”

“You’ve lost your marbles!” I shout, my comment earning me another smack on my bare ass perched so seamlessly over his shoulder.

“My loss is your gain, sweetheart!” He chuckles as he climbs the last step up the stairs.

“Gain, my ass!” I mutter under my breath, and he belts out another laugh.

“Oh really,” he says, angling his head to the side and placing a chaste kiss on my hip beside his face. “I didn’t know you liked to play that way, but I’m sure we could explore that avenue when the time’s right.”