"Oh God," I muttered as his finger down below matched the motion of his tongue up above. The two hot spots were making every coherent part of my body melt away. I probably couldn't have even come up with my own name if someone had been around to ask.

Chuckling again, he peeked up at me with a devilish smile. "No, just me," he whispered. The part of me that could still get embarrassed wanted to smack him, but then he switched to the other breast and my head dropped back, my eyes closing.

"Oh God...yes."

Groaning a bit himself, he left my breast and slid his tongue up my throat. His finger also changed position, sliding inside where I wanted him to be. Working his way up to my ear, he sucked in a quick, erotic breath. "I love it when you say that," he whispered huskily.

I groaned and found his mouth, not even caring anymore that I hadn't brushed my teeth in a while. He didn't either, kissing me back just as fiercely as I kissed him. His finger gently moving into me was joined by another; I moaned, clutching his hair. His thumb joined the action, swirling around the sensitive part on the outside; I cried out again, my hands switching to his shoulders, forcibly trying to move him on top of me.

He resisted, chuckling and groaning almost simultaneously. "I love how much you want me," he muttered, his mouth moving to my jaw.

My body moving in perfect rhythm with his hand, I squirmed and whimpered. I hated how easily he could reduce me to a begging, quivering mass of hormones...and I loved it too. "Yes, I want you...now...please."

I could feel him grinning as he placed kisses along my skin. He did love it when I asked for it. Pressing his body into mine, I could feel how much he wanted me, too. I whimpered as he pulled his hand away from me, but then he settled himself between my legs, the hard length of him resting tantalizingly close, and my complaint shifted to a moan. Then he did...nothing, nothing but continue to kiss me.

It was torture. Pure, blissful torture. Having him so close sent my body into overdrive. I was practically clawing at his back, squirming underneath him, doing anything I could to move him into position. I couldn't, though. He held himself against me, but perfectly out of reach. It drove me crazy.

And my reaction drove him crazy. His breath was fast, his lips frantic. He groaned as his fingers explored my body. He moaned my name as he dropped his head to rest in the crook of my neck. Barely able to stand it another second, my hand trailed down his chest, his abdomen, the deep V that led straight to what I wanted, what I needed. My hand wrapped around him, hard, ready, pulsing under my fingers. A slight wetness coated my thumb as I swirled over the tip of him and he clutched the sheets again, but in a good way this time.

"God, I need you," he breathed in my ear. I started to feel like he meant more than just for a physical release, but he adjusted his h*ps and plunged right into me, and I wondered nothing more about it.

My hand fell away as he sunk in deep. We both made equally passionate groans of relief. Then we started moving together. In-between fast breaths and soft moans of pleasure, our lips searched the other's. He quickly brought me right to the brink, my cries more frantic with each thrust. Then, right as I was about to go over, he stilled his hips, not moving at all. It was an aching torture that made me dig into his backside, trying to get him to keep going.

With a strained voice he whispered, "Just wait, Kiera." I didn't think I could. I felt like I was going to explode. I wanted to whimper, I wanted to cry. Then he moved again.

Holy hell, the fire that surged through my body...I never knew anything could feel that good.

He did it two more times, stopping, then starting; I even begged him to do it on the last time. Then he didn't stop anymore. Then I didn't think he could, even if I asked him to. With his head buried in my shoulder again, he groaned so erotically, I instantly clenched around him, finally having the release that he'd kept from me for so long. It was...glorious.

He cried out as I squeezed around him and I felt him releasing into me. After a few final thrusts, he stopped moving, breathing heavily as he laid on my chest. I was a little surprised to feel that we were both slightly damp from the exertion. You wouldn't think sex could actually be a workout, but if done right...

Feeling lightheaded, I closed my eyes, wrapping my arms around his head. When our breaths had stabilized and our bodies cooled to normal, I looked down at him still resting on top of me. He hadn't moved at all. He was still...a part of me.

Hoping he hadn't fallen back asleep like that, I poked his shoulder. "Are you going to...move?"

He grunted then stretched, still not pulling out. "No, I'm good."

I giggled as I threaded my fingers back through his hair. "You can't stay there, you know." I felt myself flushing horribly and was instantly glad the room was still dark.

He peeked up at me, the moonlight glinting off his mischievous eyes. "I'm just saving us time." He grinned crookedly as he moved his h*ps a little. He was still sort of semi-aroused and the movement sent a shiver though my body. My eyes fluttered before refocusing on his smugly attractive face. He raised an eyebrow. "You know, for when you're ready for round two."

Rolling my eyes, even though a part of me was considering it, I shoved his shoulders off me. He laughed genuinely, finally removing himself and slinking to my side. "I was just being practical," he murmured, nestling into my body and kissing my shoulder.

His eyes closed as peace washed over his face. Sighing, I kissed his forehead, making his smile widen. Curling into him, I thought of his face before that little romp. What he'd done to block out the memory had been pretty spectacular, but now that it was over, I was thinking about it again. I hoped he wasn't thinking about it anymore. I didn't really want to bring it up, but I did want to make sure that he was okay.

"Are you alright?" I asked, running my hands up his chest.

He made a deep, satisfied noise in his throat. "Completely," he murmured, his smile a charmingly crooked one. I smacked his shoulder and he peeked an eye open. Seeing that my face was serious, his smile faded. His finger came out to tuck a damp lock behind my ear. "I'm fine, Kiera," he said, his tone more subdued.

I nodded, burying my head into his shoulder as he put his arm around me.

I kept a close watch on him for the next few nights, but he slept soundly from what I could tell. Only the normal nighttime adjustments that we all made during sleep, not the restless thrashing that came from nightmares. I didn't stay with him every night, but more often than not I fell asleep by his side.

It was comforting for me, having him touching my body as I drifted into dreamland, but I think it was even more of a comfort for him. He would pop into my apartment on nights that he stayed out late, really late, playing other clubs and bars around the Seattle area. He said he didn't like slipping into a cold bed. Well, okay, the way he'd phrased it was, "If I'm going to slip into a bed in the early hours of the morning, I want it to be warmed up by your hot little nak*d body."

I didn't actually sleep nak*d. Not unless he was there to put me to bed that way. Wearing pajamas was a habit that he was constantly trying to get me to break, telling me, "Why do you need clothes if I'm just going to rip them off?" But the gist of his comment was that he wanted to be warm with me, not cold and alone by himself.

But after a few weeks of watching him closely as he cuddled next to me, I stopped worrying about the dreams that sometimes plagued him. Instead, I started worrying about my upcoming reentry into higher learning. My schedule this year was the toughest, and I knew I was going to be studying nearly every waking moment I had. While I was one of those weird people that thrived on the challenge of school, I wasn't looking forward to so much of my free time being absorbed with it. But Kellan was patient, and a pretty good study buddy-when he wasn't trying to distract me with sex-and free for the bulk of the day since he "worked" nights, so I knew I'd still get to spend a lot of time with him.

But I meant what I said when I'd told him that I felt more well-rounded living with my sister, and I tried to hang out with other people besides my boyfriend. In fact, Jenny had decided that she wanted to try her hand at art, and had cajoled Kate and me into taking a class with her. We went every Monday and Wednesday morning, usually stopping for espressos afterwards.

The Monday before my school started up again was my last class. If I'd been getting graded on this course, well...I'd have received my first "F" ever.

"Well, Miss Allen, it's a very nice use of...color."

The kind, older woman who taught the course out of her home, used to teach art at one of the local high schools. She patted me on the back, her lips in a tight smile, as she complimented me on the only positive thing that she could say about my elementary level bowl of tropical fruit. While I'd been working on the thing for three weeks, it looked like something a six-year-old had drawn and colored in one afternoon. Artist, I was not.

As the teacher walked over to commend Kate on her perfectly proportioned apples, I wondered if the retired school teacher had been around when Kellan was in school. Then I wondered if she'd been at his school. Maybe he'd taken her class. Maybe she'd been his teacher, complimenting him on his study of the female form. Instantly I started to think that maybe she'd "taught" Kellan in more ways than one; a scowl formed on my lips.

A light laughter broke my train of thought and I looked over at Jenny watching me. "It's not so bad, Kiera."

With the end of her pencil, she pointed to my pathetic attempt at realism. "It's sort of...Picasso-ish."

I frowned, but then laughed with her. Picasso wasn't really what I'd been going for, but then again, art was subjective. One man's garbage was another man's Monet. Maybe I had a future in it after all. Looking over at Jenny's drawing, I reconsidered. No, out of all of us, Jenny was the one with a future. She'd passed up fruit bowls ages ago, and was on to drawing people. What she'd created with just a pencil blew my mind.

She'd drawn the band...our band. It was a close-up of them on stage-Griffin and Matt on their guitars, jamming away, Evan beaming with joy behind his drums, and Kellan, singing away on his microphone. She'd even managed to capture the devilish curl of a smile that Kellan got when he sang. It was breathtaking, and put my sad little bundle of grapes to shame.

Sighing, I pointed at her drawing. "That's amazing, Jenny. Really, you've got a knack for this."

Her face blossoming into a wide smile, she looked back at her picture. "Thanks." Erasing a minute pencil line on Matt's guitar, she looked back at me. "I was thinking of having Pete put it up at the bar when I was done with it." She shrugged. "You know, as an homage to his boys."

She giggled and I nodded. "No, that's a good idea." Watching her perfect a shadow line across Kellan's jaw, making the masculine right angle stick out even more, I shook my head. "I think they'd really like that, Jenny." She nodded as she went back to work on it, and thinking of the bassist she was working on, I snorted a little. "You should probably draw a flasher in there somewhere for Griffin."

She laughed. "Yeah, definitely." Scrunching her pale brows, she shook her head. "What is up with him and your sister anyway? Are they together or not?"