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“So we’re good? You’re clean, I’m clean? You’re on birth control?”

“Yes to everything.”

“Thank you, Pixie Dust.”

“What for?”

“For giving me the chance to help you change your mind.”

“If anyone could, it’d be you.”

And those words, they hit me hard.

“Ready to feel good again, baby?”

With a big smile on her face, she stretches her arms above her head. “Ready, big guy.”

This girl . . . She will be the death of me with her beauty and sexiness.

I slide inside her. Move in and out in this languid pace. We’re not in a hurry to go anywhere. We have all day. I make love to her nice and slow. She comes with a soft sigh. I follow, coming so hard, I see stars in the back of my eyes.

After we clean up our mess, I pull her to me and kiss the top of her head. With my finger under her cute chin, I tip her face up and brush my mouth over her lips. They’re swollen from my hard kisses, and I let her know I’m okay with it if she calls it an afternoon.

“Uh-uh. I have stamina, Taron Vaughn. Want me to show you?”

Mischievous gleam in her eyes, and I am falling hard for her. Will she fall for me too? Does it matter? Eventually, someone will be leaving Dumas, and it won’t be Syn.

Dumas is her home. Her newfound friends are her life’s blood. I am not a part of her life or this town. I’m the outsider looking in. Felt the same at Stanford. I never belonged. No one understood the pressure put on me by my dad, the team, the college. Everyone was after me for something. Social status. Money. My body.

Syn is different. She knew me before I got good at playing ball. Stuck with me through my bad temper. Put up with me during those dark days of being beat almost unconscious. Syn never asked how I got the bruises or why I let a guy twice my size beat me to a pulp. What she gave me is worth more than money or a chance at playing ball professionally.

Syn gave me her strength as I cried on her shoulder through the godawful pain wracking my body from those hard punches a girl’s stepbrother doled out. My pain paid off. Blaze left Sydney the hell alone.

Shit, what will happen when my two worlds collide?

Syn’s lips graze my skin at the curve where my neck and shoulder meet, and all thoughts of Sydney and her mean-as-fuck stepbrother fade from my mind.

I will deal with telling my truths and my secrets later.

23

Syn

“How do I look?” I spin around with my fingers pointed at the ceiling.

I have paired a blood-red vintage sequin tube top with a flared red skirt and beige half-boots.

Taron circles his arms around my waist and leans into me, his chest pressing into my back and his breath warm on my flesh when he drags his nose down the side of my neck.

“Smoking hot. You sure we can’t go with the cover of me as your bodyguard and you a sexy princess from some far-off land?”

“Ha-ha. Not.” I reach back and swipe the side of his face with my hand. “Remember, you’ll be watching from a distance. Let me get a feel for what these guys are up to, and if they’re forward, you’ll have to be okay with it.”

“Your word?”

“I would never go back on it.” I turn and set my palm on the spot over his heart. “I’m yours. We are exclusive.”

“What you did with Grady—”