She collapsed against him as he fell back to the mattress, still holding her tight, still buried inside her, and as she tried to catch her breath, Vivi realized she hadn’t compared this to the other times they’d had sex, not even once.
There had been no memories, no past. Just this. Just the present.
Just him.
Groaning, Rhys tipped her to the side, sliding out of her even as his palm skimmed her thigh, like he couldn’t stop touching her, and Vivi knew it was probably stupid to feel this happy when things were going this wrong, but that was the peril of multiple orgasms.
She laughed a little to herself, staring up at the canopy of Rhys’s truly ridiculous bed, and next to her, he flopped onto his back, turning his head to look at her.
“That giggle had better not be about my prowess,” he said, still out of breath.
“Never,” she assured him with a solid headshake. “It’s all for your furniture.”
“Ah,” he replied, turning his attention back to the canopy. “In that case, have at it. This is a profoundly silly bedroom for a grown man to have.”
“Do all of the bedrooms in your dad’s houses look like this?” Vivi asked, rolling on her side now, and Rhys looked over at her, narrowing his eyes slightly.
“Is this you trying to figure out if I grew up with a canopy bed?”
Vivi held her thumb and finger a tiny distance apart. “Little bit.”
He smiled then, the expression, as always, making him look younger and softer, and Vivi wished she didn’t like him so much, wished nineteen-year-old Vivi hadn’t seen him standing there in that field and given her whole heart away with both hands.
But that wasn’t true.
And she knew it.
Chapter 26
“Is it a little too obvious?”
Rhys twisted around from his spot on Vivienne’s couch to see her standing in the doorway to her bedroom, one hand on her hip. No polka dots or cherries tonight; she was wearing a black dress that emphasized every curve, her purple-and-black-striped tights peeking out from tall black boots and a witch’s hat perched on her hair, which fell loose to her shoulders.
In the past week, Rhys had seen her naked multiple times, had had her over him and under him, in his bed, in hers and, in one very memorable encounter, on the stairs at his house, but he still sucked in a breath looking at her there, so bloody beautiful and, even more deadly, adorable that he was very tempted to suggest they just stay in tonight and not go to the Fall Fair, whatever the fuck that was.
“I think you should wear that every day,” he said now, rising from the couch to stand in front of her, bracing his hands on the doorframe above her head. “Or at least every night.”
“I could maybe be talked into that,” Vivienne replied, lifting her face to kiss him. “What would I get in return?”
“I could give you a preview,” Rhys suggested, letting go of the door and moving his hands to her dress, slowly dragging it up her thighs as she laughed.
“If we’re late to the fair, Gwyn will kill us,” she said, but she was already unbuttoning the top few buttons of his shirt, her nails dragging along the chain he wore around his neck.
“Can you kindly explain yet again what this actually entails? Am I going to have to bob for apples or something?”
“That’s certainly on the agenda,” Vivienne said, “along with drinking cider and helping me and Gwyn sell witchy things at the booth. She and Aunt Elaine make a killing at this thing every year. And we get to eat Mrs. Michaelson’s caramel-apple hand pies, which are so good, I think she might actually be a witch, even though Elaine swears she’s not, and it’s just all the butter she uses, and—oh!”