Virginia was staring at me expectantly, a shiver dancing across her silky smooth skin as I pushed the sleeves of her black leather jacket off of her slender arms.

Bathed in dim honeyed light emanating from the lamps stationed on the end tables, Virginia Bruins was a vision, with lush pink swollen lips and wide brown eyes gazing at me with her lashes damn near to her brow bone, soft specks of shimmer radiating against her skin as her face moved through the light.

The soft notes of her perfume, sweet as cotton candy and grounded with vanilla pouring from her body enticing and drawing me in, turning my thoughts to putty just as I fell prey to her and everything that she was giving me.

Had she not forgiven me or understood my position when it came to Matthew, I didn't know what I would've done. In the short time that I've come to know her, she had very quickly dominated most of my thoughts, like nothing else belonged in my mind besides her and her soft dark brown curls, the color so vivid it held almost a blue tint to it in the grainy hotel room light.

Lingering and slow, my hands traced a pattern down her arms as our mouths moved together in a synchronization I'd never felt before in my life with anyone else. It was like she anticipated my every move before I acted, but she didn't see it coming when I pulled my mouth from hers and pushed her body onto the bed, hovering over her as my fingers pulled the hem of her tank top over her head and returning my mouth to her skin, only this time, I focused my efforts elsewhere.

Her bra was front enclosure, and I would've unclasped the damn thing with my teeth if it meant getting to her quicker, but the determined and rapturous look in her eyes was enough to force myself to slow down. This would (hopefully) be our first time, and I was going to do it right if it killed me.

Measured, calculated, my fingers deftly undid her bra and I sucked in a breath, even though I'd seen her bare chest before.

Tanned, caramel skin met my eyes, as did the rosy pink flesh of her puckered nipples that I immediately wanted to enclose my lips over and suck until she made that noise that caused my dick to twitch in my jeans, and so I did.

I pulled back to admire her, the gentle dips and swells of her curves, the flare of her hips before her skin disappeared into jeans of her own.

There was a distinctive freckle underneath her left breast, a brown birthmark above her right hip, shaped like a water splatter about the size of a quarter.

Her breathing was sharp and shallow, the taut lines of her stomach pulling in and leveling out the lines of her abs. She had an outie belly button.

I memorized every aspect of her skin, like it would be the very last time I'd ever be able to do so.

Suddenly, she lurched up and grabbed me around the waist, hands reaching frantically for my own shirt to be pulled off my body and I obliged, helping her chilled fingers ease the fabric over my head.

She left chills in her wake.

Dark curls tumbling over naked shoulders, she was everything I had ever dreamed of and more.

"Fucking perfect," I mumbled, staring at her with what I hoped was the love that I so clearly already felt for her, and I wondered if she could feel it, too, the emotion damn near spilling out of my mouth before I was ready to tell her.

And then she was scooting up towards the headboard, kicking off her heels as she did so and fixing me a stare that was half confident sly sex goddess, the other half innocent and shy novice in the bedroom, and the combination was damn near staggering.

Her teeth ensnared her bottom lip, though, and watching her roll it between them almost absentmindedly while she raked her eyes up and down my shirtless form like she couldn't wait to get me between her legs was almost my undoing.

Letting out a hum of approval as she smiled coyly at the action of taking my shoes off at the foot of the bed, her eyes grew into those adorable doe eyes that I had come to love and I crawled towards her like a predator to his prey, though she was much more than that.

She was everything I had been looking for- someone who could understand me and the inner workings of my mind, someone that could empathize with what I'd been through in my trauma and childhood.

Someone who understood my own aspirations and realized and supported my need for them. Someone who could listen to me and know exactly what to say to make me feel better instantly, no matter what mood I was in.

Someone who accepted who I was and who I could become, all in the same breath, like she'd known me for my entire life. Someone who wouldn't judge me for the things I had done in the past, for the things I would do in the future, because she was my future. She was what I had been looking for, this whole time.

Not acclaim and power from basketball, because I was only doing it for the sentimentality of my father at that point. I had, at some point along the way, gotten over my obsessive need to over practice in the gym to get my anger out of my system at Jay, because slowly but surely it had dissipated.

Of course, I was going to hate him for what he did to me, but I didn't hold that hate so close to my heart anymore, because Virginia had filled almost ever single inch of it with her light, her beauty, her kindness, her acceptance, her love.

She sighed out as my lips reached her neck, and that sound was like music to my fucking ears.

My hands traveled south, and soon my fingers found the button on her jeans. As if impatient, she reached between us and flicked the button open herself and I couldn't help but laugh out against her neck as she shimmied her perfect ass out of the skin tight denim, and I helped pull the material the rest of the way off her long legs.

Long, tanned, and silky smooth, her legs were soft as butter and my mouth began to water as my eyes trailed up further, to the black lace outline of her panties which had already done wicked things to my brain by the time my hands caught up to the line of thoughts my mind had been cranking out steadily, to the sharp slam of my heartbeat against my ribs.

My mouth started at her thighs, the path carved until her back arched off the bed and my fingers hooked in that black lace and pulled it down her skin and her mouth opened, slack jawed, beautiful curses and soft moans of pleasure spilling from it while I pumped one finger, then two, inside of her, my tongue reaching the apex of her thighs and tugging, sucking and swirling as she writhed around on the bed in pleasurable torture.

Her hands came to rest in my hair, tugging the strands as I hit a particularly sweet spot and she lifted her hips up off of the mattress, riding out wave after wave until finally sated, she laid boneless against the bed, staring first at the ceiling and finally reaching my own.

But I wasn't done with her, not yet.

She beat me to that sentiment first, however, because as I began to rise from between her legs, she pulled me up by my shoulders, an erotic force inside of her that gave a fierceness to her expression, like she couldn't wait a single more moment without me inside of her, and my mind echoed that immediately.

Lips and limbs tangled together, her hands tore at my jeans, and I deftly plucked a condom from my back pocket before I helped her shrug them down my legs, smiling against her as she felt the full length of me against her, as this was the farthest we'd gone so far.

I hadn't wanted to rush her, but I still needed to make sure this was what she wanted, even as she was panting and half desperate for what I could give her.

"This is what you want?"

I nipped her bottom lip as I pushed my hips into her, the soft and guttural moan dripping from her lips a sure sign that it was exactly what she wanted, but I needed to hear the words.

She began to tear blindly at the seam of my underwear but my hands captured hers almost out of instinct and pinned them above her head to the feather down pillows, white wisps escaping the pillow case and fluttering into her dark as night hair sprawled out behind her like a painting I would commit to memory and revisit until the end of my days.

Her lashes fluttered as her eyes reached upward, closing of their own accord as I rolled my hips against her once more, the only barrier between us my underwear, but I wasn't going to go any further until I heard the words spill from those soft and swollen pink lips.

"Eli," she groaned out, but still I continued holding her there, lips sinking down to her neck and nibbling at the sensitive skin, teeth grazing over her pulse point that was hammering to a faster beat than even my own.

"You want this?"

I situated the tip of me at her entrance, and as my underwear became saturated by the proof of how ready she was, something snapped inside of her, and she tugged her hands free of my capture, reaching out to grasp be on my shoulders and her eyes flew open, like I had driven her wild with my teasing, but she knew then what I wanted.

"Yes, please. I want you," she breathed out, and the husky but soft tremor of her voice was enough to make me rip off my boxers in record time, and it wasn't long after that I had the condom slipped onto me.

We locked eyes as I sunk into her, and goddamn, it was everything I had been waiting for and more.

She never once looked away, not even as I sank deeper and deeper until I stretched her full and to her limits, her breaths shallow and eyes clouding over in a lust that took over every single thing.

And, my god, was it exquisite in the pleasurable torture. I had always equated sex to something as perfect and normal as breathing, but with her, it was something completely and totally different.

With each thrust that she met me with as her hips reached up to try and force me to go harder, I realized that sex was never something to take advantage of, and with V, I would never take it for granted.

As her naked body writhed beneath my touch and my palm reached up, thumb at the hollow of her throat and fingers snaking around her neck, she finally closed her eyes as if lost in pure ecstasy, and the moans that left her uncontrolled was proof enough.

I pulled out when the sensation became too much, and I knew that I would blow it too soon before she had her moment, so I gripped her hips and she got the idea that I wanted her to flip over on her stomach.

There, legs closed together and perfect ass on full display to me, I straddled her hips and entered once more, but with this new position, V jerked and gasped, like it was something she'd never experienced before.

She reached behind her and crossed her hands on the small of her back, and I enclosed my own hand over both wrists, pushing her down into the bed as I went slow, slamming directly into the spot that had her begging me to go faster, harder.

I only obliged when she asked me to make it rough, because I could tell that she was nearing her own climax, as was I.

Hand keeping hers locked behind her, the other gently wrapped in her hair and tugging the strands lightly against her scalp, I pushed my hips against her over and over, until she was shaking and almost unable to take it anymore.

Then at the last moment, I reached around her hips with the hand that had been in her hair and stroked the sensitive spot in between her legs, and it was the last bit of encouragement that she needed before she exploded around me in a scream, sensual but desperate, and the contractions of her muscles around me almost sent me over the edge.

A few more rolling thrusts, slower and more deliberate, drawing out her orgasm, I could feel my own building and about to take over.

When it became too much for her to take, my release pounded through my body and I lowered my mouth to her shoulder, biting into her skin gently as I cut a curse through the air and then I collapsed to her side, tugging her to my side and kneading my fingers into the skin of her hips, lips on her neck and the other brushing her hair from her forehead as I tried to capture her eyes with my own.

Her breathing unsteady and heartbeat stuttering over itself, I could already feeling myself growing hard again, even as I shucked off the soiled condom and threw it somewhere on the ground.

She turned against me and the tenderness that I knew I held in my gaze was reflected back to me in her depths.

Something so complete and absolute had changed between the two of us, like we had known each other all of our lives, had always been in sync, had always made love like it was the last time we'd ever get the chance.

It had always felt like I'd known her, almost like in another life, but after sharing with her my body and her doing the same, it only amplified the feeling, the emotion buried deep inside of me.

I loved her. Fuck, I loved her so much, I would do anything she asked. All she had to do was speak the words, and it would be done.

If anyone tried to hurt her? They'd never get the fucking chance, because I'd be there in a heartbeat. I never wanted to leave her side. I would protect her from her father, the sick bastard and the disgusting excuse that she had for a family, not including her grandmother and her mother's side of the family, except that damn aunt and her useless fucking cousin.

I would support her and I would be her shoulder to lean on, to cry on, if she needed it.

Her hopes and dreams? They were mine now. Maybe it was the same for her, too? Only way to find out was to say the words.

"I love you, Virginia."

One heartbeat, then two. Her face softened, and then it was like a switch had flipped in her. She crumpled, but not in the heartbroken way. A tear slid down her cheek, then with a gravelly voice, she finally spoke the words that would be my undoing.

"I've loved you for a while, Eli." Her hand captured my face, thin fingers brushing across my skin and my stubble and the action sent excited and nervous twitches in my stomach.

"I don't know how long, but it's been there. I love you, probably more than I should so early on, but-"

"V."

"Yeah?"

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, eyes unguarded and vulnerable, and so, so wide when they flicked up and caught my own staring back at her. The deep brown softened in the dim light and they shone back at me with a golden honey haze in them.

"Don't overthink it."

And then I caught that swollen lip between my own teeth, and I spent the rest of the night showing her just how much I loved her.