I move behind her, and for several moments we stand there in companionable silence, as the dark of night shifts into the gray of early morning.

“How does it feel?” she asks, turning her head just slightly to the side so I can make out her profile.

Leave it to Olivia to say just the right thing. Anyone else would have given me some sugary garbage, like I knew you could do it! or See? All you needed was to set your mind to it!

And when she asks how it feels, I also know she’s not talking about my leg, which is fine, if a bit stiffer than it used to be before the injury. She’s asking how I feel. How my soul, if you want to get all weird about it, feels about running again.

“Amazing.” I drop my head slightly to plant a kiss on her bare shoulder. She prefers to run in tank tops, which I find kind of hot, if not ridiculous. Then again, I suppose it’s no different than my affinity for running in shorts.

She sucks in a little breath, and I expect her to pull away, making a fuss about being all sweaty or something girly like that, but she tilts her head to the side, her long ponytail swaying slightly.

“It feels unbelievable,” I say, my lips touching her skin again and lingering. “Too good to be true.”

Olivia makes a humming noise.

I step closer to her so my chest is against her back, my hips against her butt. I turn my head slightly, this time kissing the soft part where her shoulder meets her neck, and whisper the truth there. “I don’t know how to live without it.”

I’m no longer talking about running. I’m talking about her. Us. And when she tilts her head back to rest it on my shoulder with a shuddering sigh, I know she knows it.

I wrap a hand gently but firmly around her ponytail, turning her face toward me. I keep thinking that one of these times I’ll be able to touch her, taste her, without being consumed. I’m wrong. The kiss is hot and urgent from the very second our lips touch. I keep one hand in her hair, the other low on her belly, holding her plastered to me as one of her hands comes up to hook around my neck.

It never occurred to me that making out in the woods at dawn, both of us sweaty, could be erotic, but the kiss goes from hot to downright scorching in a matter of seconds, and I nudge her forward just slightly off the path and into the not-quite-secluded privacy of the woods. She tries to turn toward me, but I keep her back to my chest, all but pinning her between me and a tree like a beast that can’t control myself.

I can’t control myself.

I don’t release her hair, refusing to let our mouths break contact, but she doesn’t seem to mind, her tongue reaching for mine, even as her hands have to brace on the tree trunk.

My hand slides under the fabric of her shirt, touching her damp skin, from the hem of her running pants to the tight band of her sports bra, but refusing to touch her br**sts until she begs me to.

It doesn’t take long. She breaks our kiss with a gasp. “Touch me.”

I release her ponytail, letting her head fall back on my shoulder as I slide both hands roughly over her br**sts, massaging her ni**les with my palms through the sports bra until we’re both crazy.

Having watch her wriggle into the sports bra, I already know I won’t have the patience to get it off her, so when I can’t go any longer without touching her skin, I jerk the tight band around her rib cage upward, my fingers finding her tight little ni**les and rolling them.

Our harsh breathing grows loaded in the early morning silence. It’s unlikely that anyone would come this way, but knowing that they could only makes it hotter.

I slide my hand into her shorts, fully intending to content myself by teasing her through the fabric of the pale green panties I know she’s wearing. That plan goes out the window when I feel her dampness even through the fabric, and I manage only a few teasing strokes before my fingers slide under the lace, my fingers dipping into her slippery wetness.

Olivia makes soft mewling noises I haven’t heard out of her yet, and I find myself smiling despite the fact that my boner feels ready to tear through the fabric of my shorts. I love that she gets off from being fingered outside, up against a tree. In every other way, Olivia is a textbook good girl, but not like this, not with my fingers on her clit and my c**k pressed against her ass.

I love that about her. Shit. I seem to love everything about her.

Her breath starts to get faster, but she grips my wrist. “I want you inside me.”

I groan. “No condom.”

She shakes her head. “I’m on the pill.”

I hear the question in her voice. She’s asking if there are other things we have to worry about. Questions we couldn’t seem to think to ask last night.

In response, I rip her shorts and panties down, doing the same with my own shorts, and I hesitate, wanting to give her more than f**king her against the tree with our workout clothes around our ankles, but then she leans forward, palms against the tree, back arched, and she gives me a hooded, sex-starved look over her shoulder. She wants this. And I want her so damned much.

I grab her hips, plunging inside her with so much force she gasps. Then she readjusts her grip on that damn tree and pushes back at me as I take her again and again, my hands running over her hips, her ass, and up to her br**sts before finally sliding back down and petting her in the way I know makes her crazy.

I want it to last forever, but we’re too far gone, and the second she cries out, I’m right there with her, exploding harder than I ever have before as she clenches around me.

Holy.

Fuck.