“That’s what you said,” I shot back, even though we both knew it wasn’t.
Not exactly.
“I said,” she corrected, voice firming, “that you deserve to know your body isn’t broken. That you’re allowed to want things. That a bad thing happened to you, and it does not get to take this too.” Her jaw set. “If I can help you remember what it feels like to want something without panicking, then ... yeah. I want to do that.”
My heart hammered so hard it hurt. My eyes narrowed. “What’s in it for you?”
Her eyes flicked to my rock-hard dick and up again as she bit back a smile. “I think we both know the answer to that.”
Cocky bravado filled my chest. At least that small part of me wasn’t completely dead. I cleared my throat. “You realize this isn’t going to be tidy. This doesn’t stay in some neat ‘lesson’ box once we cross that line.”
“I’m a grown woman, Wes.” Her eyes flashed. “I know how sex works. I also know how not having it fucks with people’s heads. We could set parameters. Rules. No falling in love. No grand gestures. No getting weird if we’re in the same room as my family.”
The laugh that tore out of me was closer to a choke. “You think it’s that simple?”
She hesitated, just for a second, then lifted her chin. “I think you need a win. I think I can give you one. I think we’re both adults who are attracted to each other, and pretending we’re not is getting ridiculous.”
The honesty of it hit me harder than any tease she could have thrown.
She was right. She was wrong. She was everything in between.
No falling in love.
My gaze slid over her without my permission—the stubborn line of her jaw, the spark in her eyes, the mouth I already knew tasted like cinnamon and trouble when I let myself have it. My chest ached, a deep, slow throb that had nothing to do with lust.
“You’re asking me,” I said quietly, “to take the one person in this town I have absolutely no business touching and make her the solution to every nightmare my brain has about my body.”
Her voice softened. “I’m asking you to let me help you remember you’re stillyou.”
Something in my chest cracked.
Phantom pain flared low and mean, the nerves in my thigh spitting static into nothing. My hand twitched against my knee. Panic flickered at the edges—images of losing balance, of my leg giving out mid-thrust, of lying there humiliated, of her seeing all of it, not the fantasy but the failure.
My dick did not care about any of that. It was already at full attention, heavy and aching against my zipper, screaming its own answer.
“Wes,” she said, barely above a whisper now. “Say something.”
I looked at her. Really looked.
Flushed from cold and dancing, hair a little wild, vulnerability written in the tight set of her mouth. Every inch of her alive, right here in my living room, offering herself up like she didn’t know what that did to me.
My tongue felt thick. My thoughts tangled on themselves.
Yesburned on the back of my teeth.
Nosat there, too, heavy with every reason I didn’t deserve this.
The book slid out of my hand and thudded softly onto the cushion beside me.
I still hadn’t answered.
“No.”
The word scraped out of me, heavy and rough. Her face flickered, like someone had cut the power for half a second.
“I mean—” My throat worked, useless. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
There it was. Clean. Cowardly.