“Aaron …” I trailed off, everything inside of my chest, my head, my memory stirring into a loud and raging thunderstorm. “All this time.”

“I know.”

I watched his jaw twitch, his features hardening impossibly.

“You let me antagonize you. All this time, you sat there and let me do that.” My voice shook with emotion. With the loss of a time that we could have had. But it also shook with the lie that hid in my own words.

Had I really hated him at all? It didn’t seem possible at this point. Hadn’t I done the same and convinced myself of that because he had hurt me?

“Why?” The question left my lips in a whisper, for him but also for myself.

“Because it was all you were willing to give me. And I’d rather have you hating me than not have you at all.”

My body trembled; it shuddered under the weight of his words. With the truth underneath the ones rising to my lips.

Love. It had to be love—the uproar causing havoc in my chest. Realization grew in me as quickly as lightning hit the ground.

“I didn’t hate you,” I breathed. “As much as I wanted to, I don’t think I ever did. I was just … hurt. Perhaps because I had always wanted you to like me, and you made me believe you didn’t.”

Something flashed across Aaron’s face. The space between our mouths crackling with electricity and an emotion I had never, ever felt before.

“I want your heart, Catalina.” Both of his hands rose to my shoulders, trailing up my neck and cupping my face. “I want it for myself, just how I have given you mine.”

It’s yours, you beautiful and blind man, I wanted to tell him. Take it. I don’t want it anymore, I wanted to scream at him and anyone that would listen.

But I didn’t. I didn’t think one could be petrified by pure, sheer joy. It never seemed a possibility. Yet there I was, standing in front of him, just as he laid his heart in my hands, and all I could do was stare at him with a thousand unsaid words waiting on the tip of my tongue.

So, I showed him. My hands reached for his face, just as he had been doing, and I brought him to my lips. I told him with a kiss that I was his. Gave myself to him with those lips that didn’t seem capable of articulating any words.

Aaron lifted me off the floor and took me in his arms with a tenderness, a reverence that left me breathless, just how I imagined him doing with my heart. My legs went around his hips as his lips parted mine, his tongue taking, governing mine.

With long strides, he crossed the open space in his loft, carrying me in his arms as neither of us came out to breathe. He placed me on the countertop of the kitchen. The cool granite caressing the part of the backs of my thighs that weren’t covered by my shorts.

Aaron’s mouth dragged down my neck, his teeth scraping my skin, finally catching on the neckline of my tank top and pulling it down until revealing my bra. He grunted, and I felt the noise reverberate against my skin.

Hands on my hips shoved me against him with roughness, leaving me right on the edge of the counter. God, he was unleashed. My man was ravenous as he pulled at my top, briskly tugging it down to my waist, and then popped open my shorts, almost bursting the zipper. He didn’t care, didn’t seem to realize he had come undone.

I did that. I cracked him open at the seams.

The same kind of urgency hummed under my skin, under my fingertips, as I pulled at his T-shirt. In a swift motion, it lay on the floor. The warm, sizzling skin of his bare chest came against mine, his hips nestling between my legs, as those strong arms fused me against him, merged me with him.

I whimpered, the rest of my sanity leaving me with the sound.

Wanting the rest of his clothes gone, I tugged at his jeans. Desperately. Just as I arched my back, looking for the friction I ached—no, died—for, Aaron pushed his hardness into me, pleasure shooting through my body, even with the barrier of our pants and underwear.

I felt him hot and thick as he rocked against my center, and that alone made my eyelids flutter, my toes curl, and my world explode. He moved again, creating more friction between us, and I saw myself coming if he did that one more time.

“Again,” I told him, begged him.

Aaron’s hands palmed my ass, thrusting me against him. Then pushing into me harder, ripping a chain of moans out of me. Hustling me closer to the edge.

“God, I haven’t even touched you, baby,” he rasped into my mouth. Then, he took my lower lip between his teeth as he kept moving against me. “Haven’t even been inside you yet.”

His hands took control of my useless body, mercilessly rocking me against him, and my head fell back, a prayer on my lips.

“Come,” he grunted into my ear, our hips moving against each other’s. Fucking each other with our jeans still on. “Come, so I can fuck you better.”

That—that—toppled me over. No, it bulldozed into me. My mind left my body, leaving me behind as I burst into pure, boundless sensation. Not even Aaron’s name left my lips even if I wanted to scream it until my voice grew raw. I was spent, rendered empty. Weightless.

His arms went around my back, and in a heartbeat, I was standing on wobbly legs. My back came against his front, immediately feeling him hot and throbbing with need. The sensation—the knowledge of having the power to do that to him—bringing me back to life.

In another heartbeat, he brought my shorts and underwear down my legs, helping me step out and shoving them aside.

I felt the warmth of his chest on my back, and then his fingers closed around my wrists. “Hands on the counter,” he demanded, guiding my palms to the surface. Then, he widened my stance with his knee, right as he brushed openmouthed kisses down my spine. His hands grabbed on to my hips, one of them trailing down my bare backside. “I should take you to my bed.” He kneaded my ass, and then his palm traveled to my thigh. “I should lay you there and fuck you deep and slow.”

Whimpering, I pushed into his hips. He grunted and then reared back. I heard him unzip his pants. Then, I felt his hard length against my ass. He moved up and down, and I could tell he had just pulled himself out of his jeans, hadn’t even bothered to push them down or take them off.

Madness. It drove me fucking crazy.

“You know the times I have jerked off to the thought of you on your hands? On your elbows?” He passed his shaft along my ass, making me moan in need. “Or bent over my knee after getting all mouthy with me?”

Another moan, this one soaked with agony. Just like I was at the image of bringing his words to life.

“Oh,” he whispered. Then, his voice lowered. “Sounds like you’d love that as much as me.”

One of the drawers opened and closed, and then a foil was ripped open. “This time, I’m prepared. Have a whole box right there. It has been there for months.”

“Aaron,” I begged him. I wanted him now, or I would combust into a cloud of dust. “I need you.” I looked over my shoulder, eyes ablaze. And saw a feral expression on his face. “Now.” It was my turn to grunt.

The back of his hand delicately caressed my jaw, and then his palm fell on my back. He pushed me onto the counter. “Grab on to the edge,” he growled. “I’m going to take you fast and hard, baby.”

With a deep thrust, he was seated inside of me. I whimpered, feeling wonderfully, heavenly full, and before I could ask for more, for all that he had promised, Aaron pushed out and thrust in again. We both moaned.

One of his hands came around me and landed on the counter, the other one fisting my hair. I’d dissolve. If I didn’t come soon, I’d disappear under his weight, under the rippling pleasure pooling down my belly.

“More,” I managed to say.

And the rhythm of his thrusts increased, pushing me into the granite surface, his grunts falling into my neck.