“It’s a yes, but not yet.”

“Tell me what you want for your birthday. Tell me what I can give you.”

My heart drums against my chest. It’s too big for my body. It occupies too much space. At last, I say words that I’ve held tight inside me for years. Words that I shoved down and vanquished.

I cup her cheeks. “Give me you.”

She trembles. “You can have me.”

I savor the way those words sound. How they imprint on the air. At last, the hurricane of Lulu has made landfall, and I want to be in its eye.

But even though I want her more than the world right now, last night weighs on me. I don’t want her to enter this—whatever it is—reluctantly.

“You’re sure you’re not worried anymore about us working together, about your focus, about anything at all?”

She presses her hands to my chest, and I sizzle from her touch. The more she touches me, the less I’ll be able to think logically. “I’m more worried about you walking out the door when I tell you I want to climb you like a tree.”

Laughing, I clasp her hands and squeeze. “There will be no walking out.”

She squeezes back, sealing a new promise—one between the two of us. “So can you handle it? That I want you? After all we’ve been through together? You can handle the fact that, somehow, we’re here now and all of sudden we have these crazy feelings for each other that can’t be denied?”

I wince privately at those words—there is nothing sudden about my feelings for her. But she doesn’t need to know that. Come to think of it, I don’t think she wants to know that. I run the backs of my fingers over her jawline. “I’m pretty sure I can handle both the tree climbing and the way we want each other.”

I reach for her hair, threading a hand through it, amazed at the softness of her curls, astonished that after all these years, I’m touching her the way I’ve longed to. I dip my head to her neck, inhaling her coconut scent, her sugar skin, her sweetness. I pull back to look her in her gloriously mismatched eyes. “But can you handle that I want you? That I feel this way for you? That I can’t stop thinking of you?”

There. I don’t have to unpack a trunkful of old feelings. I can share the new ones and be just as truthful, if not more.

She laughs. “Not only can I handle it, I want it.”

I try to capture a mental snapshot of this moment, to record it for my own personal time capsule, because it’s shocking when all your darkest, dirtiest, most powerful dreams come true. It’s too much and it’s not enough at the same time.

I hold her face. “I’ve been thinking all day about kissing you.”

“Kiss me all night.”

With that, I crush my lips to hers.

Our kiss yesterday was an exploration. It was a curiosity, a test. This kiss is a declaration. It’s a written record of what’s in my heart. I’m kissing the woman I’ve been in love with for years, and who I’m falling in love with all over again.

Only it feels like it’s the first time, because this time around, she’s mine.

I kiss her hard, pouring all of those feelings into the way my lips consume hers. She kisses me back as if she’s falling in love with me too, and it is the most wondrous thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.

I lift her up, wrap her legs around my hips, and bring her to the wall, pressing my body against her.

I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of her lips. I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of her. I’m making up for so much lost time.

Her tongue sweeps into my mouth, and her hands grab at my back and my shirt, untucking it from my jeans. “I want to touch you.”

I’m lit up. “That can be arranged.”

I set her down, and she runs her hands over my shirt, making quick work of the buttons, spreading open the fabric. She presses her hands against my chest.

I hiss from pleasure as my brain crackles like an old radio tuning in signals from space. I groan from the stark and wonderful reality of Lulu touching me.

I unzip the back of her dress, letting the little straps fall down her shoulders, exposing her pale skin and the freckles on her shoulder. Those coppery freckles—I’ve studied them surreptitiously. Every time she wore a strapless dress to a club, a bikini on the beach, or a top that sloped down.

So often I’ve wanted to map them with my lips. Now I have the chance, so I do, savoring every moment of my lips on her skin, tracing her collarbone, traveling to the hollow of her throat, then blazing a path of kisses up her neck.

Lulu moans and groans, stretching like a cat as I kiss her skin. This is new data that I file away. It belongs to me, how Lulu responds as I kiss her. How she sways and murmurs. How she trembles and shudders.

Every move she makes unlocks me more. Makes me want to say something. To say everything.

I’m in love with you, I want to tell her.

I’m in love with you so much it’s absurd, but let’s be absurd together and kiss and fuck and love each other like it’s finally our time.

I’m in love with you again, the second time around, and it’s like a tsunami. It’s pulling me under. Pulling me closer to you.

I cup her jaw, bring her lips to mine, and kiss her because kissing her makes me shut up. It helps me swallow down those dangerous words. There’s no way I can tell her I was in love with her before.

Focus.

Focus on the here and now.

I do that, kissing her as our hands feverishly explore each other. I tug down the top of her dress, exposing her bra then unhooking it, letting it fall to the floor of her chocolate shop.

Breasts.

Glorious, fantastic breasts.

Breasts that I can touch and squeeze and knead.

I take them in my hands, savoring the view of Lulu stretching her neck as she seems to revel in the sensation.

“Take my dress off now, Leo.”

Somebody bring me some water. I’m going to burn this chocolate shop down with the fire roaring in my body.

I slide her dress down farther, until it’s an emerald linen heap. She’s wearing zebra panties, and they are the cutest, unsexiest panties I’ve ever seen. Laughter bursts from my throat as I stare at the striped horse on her crotch.

“Is that a zebra or are you just happy to see me?”

“Why don’t you find out how happy I am?”

I run my hand over the fabric. “Zebra panties are officially the best thing ever.”

“Wait till you see my dolphin undies.”