“I’m just saying that my family’s not perfect. We’re as screwed up as the next family. The only difference is that we have to pretend we’re faultless.” I press a kiss to the side of her neck, then her shoulder. “Take a bath with me?”

Without waiting for her answer, I turn on the tap and set it to fill with warm water. When I offer her my hand, she follows me into the tub, but her body is still tense, her face still guarded.

“Come here, Rowdy.” I open my arms for her, and she surprises me by climbing into them, straddling me, and wrapping her arms behind my neck.

“I would take that night back if I could,” she says. “I hate that it’s between us—that it’ll always keep us apart.”

“Hey.” I take her chin in my hand. “Look at me. You feel this?” I wrap my other arm tightly behind her back. “We’re not apart. We’re together. Right where we should be.”

She kisses me, and there’s so much in that kiss I know she’s not saying. I feel it. Something more than frustration, and even more than regret. It’s long and hungry and terrified—so much like everything I feel for her.

When the kiss turns greedier and she’s rubbing herself against my cock, I bring my hands to her hips to still her movement. “I need you to stop, Rowdy. Much more of that, and I’ll find myself inside you without a condom.”

She lifts her head, finding my eyes. “Would that be so bad?” Then she lifts her hips until the head of my cock is cradled against her entrance.

“I always use protection,” I say on a choppy breath. But the protest is weakened as I lift my hips a fraction, let the head of my cock slide into her. “Are you . . .” God. I need more. I can’t breathe or think. The only thing my body cares about is getting inside her.

“On the pill,” she finishes. “Since I was a teenager.”

“I’m healthy,” I tell her. “I’ve been tested.”

“Me too.” She closes her eyes and parts her lips as she slides herself down my shaft.

“Holy shit.” I hold her hips, keeping her still for a moment as she adjusts to my size and I adjust to the sensations threatening to make me come before I’m ready. “You feel amazing.”

She nuzzles her face in the crook of my neck, and I loosen my grip on her as she slowly starts to rock her hips. I let her ride me like that for a long time, touching her everywhere I can, kissing her everywhere my mouth can reach.

The water swirls around us and the snow falls outside. The only thing that matters is Liz in my arms.

* * *

Liz

I turn in his arms so I can look at his face, but I’m surprised to see he hasn’t fallen asleep. He’s watching me, and he smiles when I look at him—a soft, gentle smile for a man who just used my body.

“When did you lose your virginity?” I ask. We’re in bed in our room upstairs from the gala, still nude, the sheets tangled around our legs and the pillows scattered around us. I’m not ready to think about going back to the real world.

He groans. “You’re not going to do that woman thing, are you?”

I prop myself up on an elbow. “What woman thing?”

“The one where you ask the guy a question and he gives you an honest answer and then you get mad at him for it?”

Giggling, I straddle him so I can watch his face. I rub my hands over his chest as I talk because I really can’t touch this guy enough. “I know there were women before me. I’m just curious who the lucky first was.”

He watches me carefully. “I was seventeen.”

“And her?”

“She was an older woman, a family friend.”

I curl my nose. “Ew, as in the female equivalent of the creepy uncle?”

He runs his hands down my sides then settles them at my hips. “It wasn’t creepy.”

“There’s a not-creepy way to seduce your friends’ teenage son?”

He chuckles and takes my hands in his, lacing our fingers. “Trust me, it was consensual. I spent summers at her pool and she’d catch me watching her.” He shrugs. “Turns out she liked me watching as much as I liked doing it. And then it turned out that she liked to be tied up, and I didn’t mind that either.” He brushes his knuckles across my cheek. “I’m rather partial to women who get off on being bound.”

My whole body warms. No one knows that about me but Sam . . . And River, I suppose. But I wrinkle my nose to hide my reaction. “I still vote icky.”

“Okay, Judgy McJudgerson, we both know I don’t want to hear about your first, so tell me something else.”

“Like what?”

He brings our hands to his mouth and kisses each of my knuckles. “What about your first kiss?”

I give an exaggerated dreamy sigh. “Max Hallowell, behind his grandma’s house. He started to put his hand up my shirt, but I stopped him because I felt super guilty. Hanna liked him and I wasn’t supposed to.”

He growls, then rolls us so he’s on top of me and trapping my hands over my head. “I don’t like thinking of Max kissing you. And I especially don’t like thinking of your sister’s crush being the only reason he didn’t get to go further with you.”

I draw up my knees, groaning happily when the hard length of his arousal settles between my legs. This man is superhuman. It’s really quite remarkable. “You asked.”