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He closes the book, eyes searching mine. “What are you saying, Birdie?”

I blow out a long breath. “What we did the other night was great, but I know I need more with you, Bo. I need all of you. I want it. And so, this is my way of offering all of me on Birdie-friendly terms. It’s 99 percent effective when followed correctly at preventing pregnancy, and I just thought if you wanted, we could, you know, doit.”

I squeeze my eyes shut before looking at him. Every morning when I take my temperature and record it, I’ve wondered how this conversation was going to go if the time ever came to have it. Now it’s happening, and I sound like a moron.

“‘Do it?’” he scrubs a hand across his face, failing to hide his laugh.

“That’s not what you’re supposed to focus on,” I huff. “What I mean is, if you want to have sex, I have a notebook with data-driven dates that I would be comfortabledoing it. With protection. At least at first. Until I’m less anxious about it.” I pause, then, “If you want.”

I pull at a thread of my shirt like it’s a lifeline, my heart galloping through my chest like a herd of elephants.

Bo reaches across me to put the notebook on the nightstand. When the bare skin of his chest rubs against that of my arm, a tense kind of awareness envelops me.

“Is one of those acceptable dates tonight?” he asks, kissing a trail across my jaw until he reaches my earlobe where he stills, taking it in his mouth, sucking it with a gentle scraping of his teeth.

I shift in my seat, trying to hide how amazing I apparently find having my earlobe sucked on to be. “Umm,” I say, voice pinched, him working his mouth on the newly discovered g-spot that’s surprisingly attached to my face. “I think so, yes. I mean, sure. Yes.” I clear my throat, closing my eyes, adding, “Tonight is a yes. And tomorrow. Not that I’m assuming I’ll be here tomorrow. AndSunday…”

He makes some kind of moaning growl with my turned-on ear in his mouth as his hand slides up my thigh and stops, fingers digging into the skin. Close, but not close enough.

He pulls his mouth away from my ear—which, I can be honest with myself, is disappointing.

“Do you want this?” he asks. “You don’t have to do this for me, I need you to know that.”

He’s so serious, so sincere, I want to cry from the gravity of it.

“Bo, I want you. And this. Am I terrified? Yes. But I still want to do it. Scared. With you.”

I swallow down the ball of terror in my throat as he smiles.

Before he puts his lips on me again, it’s a mumbled, “Thank God.”

Thirty-four

The night I metBo, I was fueled by defiance. The stress intimacy usually causes me didn’t exist because it was a planned anomaly. A small wrinkle in the otherwise smooth fabric of my life that I would iron out later.

Tonight, as Bo lifts my shirt over my head in the candlelight of his bedroom, there’s no defiance. This isn’t an anomaly. I know saying yes to this, with my notebook filled with temperatures and notes, means I’m not saying yes to once. I’m just saying yes.

I’ll still never have kids. I won’t stop avoiding chemicals and living by my lists. But now, someone on this planet wants to be part of it—me. Entirely. Without changing.

The way he looks at me is the way he kisses me: tender. Like he sees me. Like he loves me.

My hands trace the lines of his chest, down his hard stomach, and unbutton his jeans, sliding them down his legs.

There are countless things I’d like Bo to do to me, but right now, all I do is stare. This man, this beautiful man, is looking at me and my scarred, ink-covered chest, like I’m perfect. It’s a truth that I would never have known to believe in if not for him.

He follows my lead. Rough palms on my hips, slipping under the hem of my underwear. As he starts to slide them down my legs, his kiss moves from my mouth to my throat.

To my chest.

To my belly.

Lower.

He slides my last item of clothing down my legs, grips my hips, and pulls me down to sit on the bed as he drops to his knees in front of me. There, he drags me forward until I’m on the edge of the mattress, naked, him kneeling between my legs on the floor.

Our gazes collide, and I know something transcendent is about to happen. Like whatever he’s about to do to my body will leave it forever changed. As ruined as one of Mabel’s heroines.

“I want to learn every part of you,” he says, voice like gravel. He lifts my leg slightly and his mouth finds the inside of my knee.