“Cool. I’ll meet you downstairs,” he said, his footsteps retreating.

“Shit, your skirt . . .” I stepped back, scrambling to get dressed quickly, but Hanna hadn’t moved.

“Will,” she whispered, and I saw the familiar hunger darken her eyes.

“Fuck.” That was too f**king close. The door wasn’t even locked. “I don’t . . .”

But she leaned back, pulling me over her. She was so completely unconcerned about her brother walking in, seeing us. And he had left, hadn’t he?

This girl made me insane.

My heart still racing, I bent down, pressing two fingers inside her and sliding my tongue over her pu**y as she let her eyes fall closed. Her hands went in my hair, her hips rocked up to my mouth, and within only seconds, she started to come, lips parted in a silent cry. Beneath my touch, she shook, hips rising from the bed, fingers pulling my hair tight.

As her orgasm subsided, I continued slowly moving my fingers inside her, but kissed a gentle path from her clit, to her inner thigh, to her hip. Finally, I rested my forehead against her navel, still struggling to catch my breath.

“Oh God,” she whispered once her hands had eased their grip on my hair, and she slid them up and over her br**sts. “You make me feel crazy.”

I pulled my fingers from her and reached to kiss the back of her hand, inhaling the scent of her skin. “I know.”

Hanna remained still on the bed for a quiet minute and then opened her eyes, gazing up at me as if she’d just come back to her senses. “Whoa. That was close.”

Laughing, I agreed, “Very close. We should probably get changed and head downstairs.” I nodded to her skirt. “Sorry about that.”

“I’ll just wipe it off.”

“Hanna,” I said, stifling a frustrated laugh. “You can’t go downstairs with a giant jizz stain on your skirt.”

She considered this and gave me a goofy smile. “You’re right. I just . . . I kind of like it there.”

“Such a twisted girl.”

She sat up straight as I pulled my pants up, and she kissed my stomach through my shirt. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, holding her to me, and just reveling in the feel of her.

I was so lost in love with this girl.

After a few seconds, the sun passed behind a cloud outside, dimming everything a little, beautifully, and her voice rose out of the quiet: “Have you ever been in love?”

I stilled, wondering if I’d said it out loud. But when I looked down at her, she was only glancing up in open curiosity, eyes calm. If any other woman had said this to me after we just had a quickie, I would have felt the hot flush of panic and the itching need to extract myself from the situation immediately.

But with Hanna, the question seemed somehow appropriate for the moment, especially given how reckless we’d just been. In the past several years I’d grown, if anything, overly cautious about when and where I had sex, and—Jensen’s wedding aside—rarely put myself in situations that would ever require a quick exit or explaining. But lately, being with Hanna made me feel slightly panicked, as if there were a limited number of times I would be able to feel her like this. The thought of having to give her up made me nauseous.

There were only two other lovers in my life for whom I’d ever felt something deeper than fondness, but I’d never told a woman I loved her before. It was weird, and at thirty-one I knew this omission made me weird, but I’d never felt the weight of that strangeness until just this moment.

I grew hyperaware of every blasé comment I’d made to Max and Bennett about love, and commitment. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in them; I just had never been able to relate, exactly. Love was always something I’d find at some vague point in the future, when I was somehow more settled or less adventurous. The image of me as a player was very much like the deposit of minerals on glass over time; I hadn’t bothered to care it was forming until it was hard to see past it.

“I’m guessing not,” she whispered, smiling.

I shook my head. “I’ve never said ‘I love you’ before, if that’s what you mean.”

Though Hanna would have no way of knowing I said it to her, silently, nearly every time we touched.

“But have you ever felt it?”

I smiled. “Have you?”

She shrugged, and then nodded to the door to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom that I was pretty sure adjoined Eric’s bedroom. “I’m going to go clean up.”

I nodded, closing my eyes, and slumping down after she left. I thanked every lucky power in the universe that Jensen hadn’t just walked in. That would have been a disaster. Unless we wanted her family to know what was happening—and I was pretty sure that since Hanna still wanted this to remain friends-with-benefits—we would have to be way more careful.