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  gasping breaths that I'm okay.

  Except I'm more than okay. He rocks inside me, his cock pressing against the most sensitive places until I'm nearly breathless, my fingernails digging into his back, my moans louder as I start to lose myself in him.

  It's not painful anymore. It's all exquisite pleasure and I let go. There's nothing else in that moment except Colton.

  Colton's cock inside me, bringing me higher and higher.

  Colton's mouth on my lips and my neck.

  Colton's fingers interlaced with mine as he brings my hands above my head, my fingers pressing into the back of his palms as he fucks me into oblivion.

  He doesn't say anything, no dirty talk about my wet pussy or his hard cock. I think I lose my ability to formulate simple words and the only word left on my lips is yes.

  Yes as he thrusts inside me, looking into my eyes as I hurtle closer to the edge.

  Yes when he whispers my name over and over as he drives into me.

  Yes, yes, yes as I feel myself explode, the blinding white-hot intensity of my orgasm eclipsing everything else except the two of us. I hear Colton cry out my name, and then feel a flood of warmth as he comes inside me.

  I lie there, my breath coming in short gasps, with Colton still inside, unmoving. Neither of us speak for a long time.

  Colton brings his lips down to mine, kissing me softly. "That was…"

  "Yeah," I agree.

  Afterward, I lie on my back with my head on Colton's stomach and my feet propped up on the side of the truck bed, looking up at the stars. He's quiet for so long I think he might have fallen asleep.

  "Why are you a virgin?" he asks. "I mean, you're obviously hot. And you're funny as hell. And you're smart, and –"

  "Keep going," I say. "You forgot witty and charming."

  "Why me?"

  "You wore me down," I joke.

  "Damn, I knew that was a good plan." His finger traces imaginary designs across my chest and over the tops of my breasts.

  He doesn't push the whole why-are-you-a-virgin thing, but I want to answer anyway. "Five older brothers and a father who was a Boston cop – not just a cop, a Captain. Oh, and my parents are Catholic. I went to an all girls' Catholic high school. I didn't even have a boyfriend in high school."

  "You were a Catholic schoolgirl?" Colton asks, pulling me tightly against him. "You're about to get some again. Do you still have the uniform?"

  I laugh and slap him playfully on the arm. "I take that back. I did go out on a date in high school. Once. It was disastrous."

  "Why?"

  "I think I was in tenth grade," I recount. "It was my first date, so we were just going to the movies. He was from the boys' counterpart to our school. I thought he was really into me, but he sat with an empty seat between us the whole time, acted like he was going to shit his pants when he drove up to my house to drop me off. Turns out my brothers had put the fear of God into him before he took me out. He was terrified to lay a finger on me. Mom yelled at them because she'd promised that dad wouldn't scare the poor boy – and of course my dad didn't. But he put my brothers up to it."

  Colton laughs. "That's terrible."

  "Says the guy who punched someone for talking about wanting to nail me."

  "I didn't like it," Colton defends himself, his voice intense. "Still don't."

  "I had a boyfriend when I was a freshman in college," I say. "But, I don't know what happened. He wasn't super interested in it, I guess."

  Colton runs his hand over my breast. "What kind of guy wouldn't be interested in having sex with you?"

  I shrug. "Anyway, it never happened, and then it was just like this big thing. Like, the longer I waited to lose it, the more monumental it became."

  "So once you saw me naked on the roof at my house, you decided you had to get all up in this."

  "Yeah, it went exactly like that," I say, rolling my eyes.

  We lie there and he doesn't say anything for a while. When he speaks, his voice is soft.

  "I come up here sometimes to think," he says. "Found this place once when I was driving up in the hills. It didn't have any property marking and no one's ever been out here."

  "It's pretty," I say. That's a massive understatement. Out here under the stars in the middle of the country, it's more than pretty. It's peaceful, like we're so far removed from everything else that none of it matters.

  "It's quiet," he murmurs. "I used to go out in the fields on the farm when I was a kid. You stand out in the corn and it's ten feet tall. You can get lost in that shit forever. Coming up here is a little bit of a reminder of being back on the farm. I used to drive out here a lot last fall."

  "During football season?"

  "Yeah. When things would get crazy," he says. "It's hard to get any space, you know? You're pulled in a hundred different directions and everyone wants a piece of you. I know that sounds dumb, but –"

  "It doesn't sound dumb at all," I say. "It was loud and crazy all the time when I was growing up. I liked to read more than anything, and it was impossible when my brothers were perpetually horsing around or stealing the heads from my Barbie dolls to use as ammo for their slingshots. There was this place I found when I was ten, following the creek down behind my house – you couldn't see it, this little rock formation, until you were right up on top of it. I never told my brothers about it because I didn't want it to become a boy fort. I'd go there a lot, even when I was a teenager, any time I wanted space to think."

  "Hanging out with you has been a lot like that, you know," Colton admits, exhaling heavily. "The calm before the storm."

  "Before football season?"

  "Before everything," he says. "This year is going to get crazy. Once the season starts, it'll take on a life of its own."

  I don't know what it's like, I realize. I don't know at all.

  I think it's his way of warning me.

  27

  Colton

  "There's a swimming hole down here." The next morning, I pull her by the hand down a mostly-overgrown trail that winds down the side of the hill.

  "Is this your thing?" she asks, her voice light. "You bring girls up here — 'Ooh, look at the lights over the city. Oh, hey, there's a swimming hole down here'?"

  "I haven't brought anyone up here," I say, smacking her on the ass. "This place is all mine. Just like your ass."

  "Are we going to get eaten by bears?"

  "Aw, that's an adorable question."

  "Snakes, then?" she asks. "I really don't like snakes."

  "You picked the wrong state to go to school in if you don't like snakes," I say.

  Cassie clutches at my arm. "Seriously. Are there snakes in the water?"

  "Maybe."

  She slaps me hard. "That's not funny."

  "I'll protect you, little lady," I drawl in my best imitation of a cowboy in an old western. I pull her into me and place her hand against my cock. "That's the only one you have to worry about."

  "Oh, so just a little garden snake, then."

  "That's not what you called it last night."

  She pulls away laughing, and I chase her down the trail until we reach the swimming hole, complete with an overhanging tree branch and a rope dangling from it that looks like it hasn't been used in years.

  "Cool," she says, lifting up her t-shirt and tossing it on the ground without a second's hesitation. "No one knows about this place?"

  Her panties drop to the ground and she steps out of them, turning around to look at me, grinning broadly with her hands on her hips. She turns her face up to the sky, the early morning sunlight bathing her in a warm glow, and closes her eyes.

  And I just stand there watching her, not getting undressed, because I can't stop looking at her.

  She opens her eyes. "Why do you still have clothes on?"

  I shrug. "Just enjoying the view."

  She doesn't even blush. She grins. "Have you gone swimming in here?"

  "Yep. It's deep."

  She peers into the water a