Ash

A few weeks later as we lay on the couch reading together before bed, Jesse"s fingers idly playing with my hair, he broke the comfortable silence with a subject we'd both been avoiding. "I graduate in six weeks, you know."

I stretched against him sensually. "Mmm. I know."

"I start at the hospital two weeks after that." he continued.

"I know. I know. Guess we'd better start looking soon, huh?"

"Do you want me to stay?" he asked.

I flipped in his arms, confused by the question. "Stay?"

He nodded. "I'll keep working for you."

"You just spent your family's savings and eightyears of your life working toward your dream and you're going to give it up to be a consort"s assistant?" It was laughable.

He just nodded, looking far too serious for my liking.

The concern that had lingered at the back of my mind since the incident finally found its way out. "Is this because of what happened?"

His golden eyes darkened to the color of the whiskey I'd tried to drown in the night I'd left him.

"Of course it is. What if I hadn"t been there?"

I shook my head. "That's not what I mean. Is part of what's been bothering you the fact that you saw me with someone else? Do you feel differently about us now; about what I do?"

He looked dumbfounded and his lips were on mine before I realized he'd closed the distance between us, his kiss hard and demanding. When he pulled away, I was gasping for breath. His eyes held mine. "It is only, ONLY, because it scared me. Understood?"

I brushed my lips across his once more. "Understood." I was deeply relieved. I wouldn't have known how to respond if he'd said yes.

"I don't want you to keep working for me." I continued now that my concerns had been put to rest. "I'll miss you at the office, but I'll get to see you living your dream!"

His gentle smile melted me in a way nothing else ever had, just as it always did.

"You"lllive here with me, we'll keep building a life together, and we"llfind me a new crappy assistant."

"Agreed." he nodded. "But a big one. One that I trust to help you in my place. I can't lose you, Ash."

I settled closer to his chest as our lips met in a desperate, lingering kiss. Each of us telling the other everything we couldn't put into words. My thumb stayed to trace along his cheekbone when I finally pulled back and tucked my face into the bend of his neck.

"You didn't lose me. I'm not going anywhere."

Jesse's fingers twisted through my hair.

"I was so scared, Ash. I'm still scared. Everyday I'm scared."

My fingers slid down to map his collar bone.

"I know you are. I see the way you watch when I leave the room. The way you hold me a bit tighter and a bit longer like you're always afraid it will be the last time. I know you're scared to lose me. I'm scared to lose you too. But hun…that's no way to live."

I let the warmth of my breath and my words crawl along the skin of his neck.

"I love you. I love my life with you, and I want to enjoy every moment we can, not waste them wondering what might happen in the future. I want you to have that too. What can I do to help you, Jess?"

He sniffed quietly and silence held us for a long moment before he spoke.

"When do you want to get married?"

My head jolted back up as a grin spread across my face.

"Soon."

"Me too. How would you feel about six weeks then, just after I graduate but before I start work? I'll finish school, we can find you a new assistant, and then maybe you can take some time off. We can get married and have two weeks with nothing to do other than each other."

I didn't bother to speak my answer as I set my book on the floor and shifted to straddle his hips, pressing him back against the couch as our lips met. It didn't seem to matter how often we touched; the electricity I felt never faded.

We parted only to remove our clothing, the feel of his warm skin and sinewy muscle generating waves of pleasure as we came together, nothing but skin and soul. It still shocked me how different it wasthan with clients. I"d never known sex could feel like this.

I knelt, straddling his lap, his hard cock standing at attention, pressed tightly against my own between our bellies as I rolled my body against his.

Our gaze held; bright gold locked to deep emerald as I ran my palms down his arms to interlace my fingers with his. We slid further down the couch, our bodies moving as one, without thought. I parted his knees with mine and raised our intertwined hands to rest beside his head. Settling my hips between his, I shifted forward, my weight resting on our hands.

Without hesitation, my cock found his tight opening as his thighs clutched my hips, his calves pulling against my ass, urging my body closer. As I pushed into him slowly, he openedwithout resistance. I was welcome there, as I had never been anywhere else.

Those beautiful golden eyes fell shut in ecstasy and his fingers tightened around mine until our knuckles whitened. We moved togethersensually andtenderly, as if each brush of the skin was our first, or our last. Our bodies knew one another as if they had been created for no other purpose.

He rose up, fingers slipping from mine as he curled around me. He encompassed my senses so completely that it was no longer possible for me to exist without his touch. Our hips rocked together, slow and deliberate as I slipped in and out of his warmth and the world fell away as we rose through a swirling abyss of pleasure.

His arms tightened around my back as I buried my face in the bend of his neck. He smelled of sandalwood and my mint shampoo and something so distinctly him that it could never be recreated.

I held deep inside of him as we trembled, moving as one entity. As I pressed harder and he spasmed around me, existence fell away as my body tensed, finding release deep inside the only home I"d ever known. A sudden heat spread across my belly as he joined me in oblivion. There was nothing else. There never had been, and there never would be.