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She hadn’t acted this much like a child in more years than she could remember, because she hadn’t been able to take that luxury.

Her father had left when she was fifteen. Her mother had been gone since she was nineteen, abandoning the ranch and her daughters to kind of just deal with it. And even before that, her mother had been gone.

So they’d all had to find some kind of new normal. Some kind of levelheaded in all of that.

Quinn had never been that good at it. Until she had fought herself right to the end of what was reasonable.

Until she had exhausted herself with her outrage and realized it wasn’t leading anywhere. And that was when she had locked it all away. Apparently so many things. Things she hadn’t realized had gone in that big metal box, along with her anger.

All things that Levi had dragged out.

Her desire to hide under the bed when she did something naughty among them.

“Quinn,” he said. “I literally just watched you go under the covers, so you’re not very well hidden.”

“I’m tired,” she said.

“We need to talk.”

Then suddenly it was bright and cold, and she looked up, seeing Levi had stripped the covers from her.

He was looking down at her, all muscular and sexy, and not angry, but not relaxed, either.

She wasn’t quite sure what the expression on his face meant.

“I’m chilly,” she said.

He dropped the blankets back down over her, but beneath her chin, so that he could still look at her.

“You hadn’t had sex before, had you?”

“No.”

He rubbed his hands over his face. “Lord Almighty, girl.”

“What? I was ready. I wanted to.”

“And you didn’t think that I might want to know about all that?”

“I didn’t really see how it was relevant to you.”

“Because it is, Quinn. Because it mattered. Because I wouldn’t have had you up against the wall in the shower, and maybe I wouldn’t have had you at all. Maybe we would’ve had to have a discussion about what sex means to me, and what it can’t. Maybe we would’ve had to have a discussion about—”

“You are really not making me feel all that guilty about it, Levi, because I wanted to have sex with you.” She didn’t like saying it like this. That sounded harsh, and it sounded very much like something clinical, which it had not been. It had been hot, and it had been filled with emotion. She had enjoyed it. And even if she did feel a little bit turned inside out, a little bit rocked, she didn’t see why she needed to be scolded. Why she needed to be told. Yeah, she panicked right at the pivotal moment, but she was over it now. Kind of. She only felt a little bit panicked. A little bit scared, and a little bit...

A tear leaked out the corner of her eye, and she could’ve cursed herself.

“Quinn,” he said, his voice getting soft, and then suddenly she was being lifted from the mattress and pulled into his arms, pulled onto his lap. He reached down and gripped her chin, tilted her face up and looked at her. “I’m not designed to be a woman’s first lover, Quinn. I probably wouldn’t have turned you away, though. But I might’ve been a little more gentle. A little slower. Given you time. I wouldn’t have been that fast.”

“I liked it,” she whispered.

“Yeah, but you might’ve liked it more if you weren’t terrified.”

“I’m not terrified.”

Except her heart was pounding far too hard even now.

“You aren’t?”