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He waits until she falls asleep.

Only then does he whisper it out loud.

“Sneaking out?”

Pausing my jeans halfway up my thighs, I flick my wet hair away from my face. “Not really sneaking if it’s my own room.”

Finn laughs through a yawn as he pushes upright. Slouching against the headboard with both hands folded behind his head, he watches me finish getting dressed. “What time is it?”

Splitting my hair into two quick braids, I rummage around in my old bedside table in search of a couple of hair ties. “Early.”

Too early, considering the birds were chirping by the time I finally fell asleep—by the time Finn let me fall asleep.

Oh, who am I kidding? By the time I let Finn fall asleep.

Turns out, I’m a big fan of sex that lasts longer than a few minutes of furious rutting.

Sex where I come more than once—where he does too.

Sex that I don’t regret before it even happens, that I savor while it is.

Slow, sweet sex with eye-contact and kissing and lovely words like beautiful and perfect and mine .

Was it a lot for me? Was it slightly terrifying?

Did I stare into the abyss for a long, long time before sleep finally took me, desperately trying to put a name to the emotion throbbing behind my ribcage that wasn’t the one I suspected, that wasn’t the one I’m trying to very hard to pretend I didn’t hear him say?

Yes, yes, and yes.

But I fell asleep smiling with him still inside of me, his arms wrapped tightly around me, and I liked it. And I woke up liking it. I almost woke him up too, this insatiable, greedy thing in the pit of my belly crying out in protest, keening for more, when I slipped out of bed instead.

It keens for more. Present tense—in every tense, I suspect. And I need to get the hell out of this room because the longer I stare at the naked man in my bed, the more I want to rejoin him.

A shared sentiment, apparently. I sit down to pull on a pair of socks and within a millisecond, I’m in a very familiar position, straddling a very familiar body, with a very, very familiar cock slotted between my thighs.

I don’t know if I’m grateful for the denim barrier preventing round… God, I don’t even know, or if I want to burn my favorite Levis immediately.

Warm hands find my waist, slip beneath my tank top, graze my ribcage—warm eyes find mine, slip inside my brain, graze the innermost crevices. “Feeling okay?”

“Pretty sure some of my organs are in the wrong place.”

Finn chuckles, squeezing my sides gently. “Sore?”

“Nah,” I lie because Finn is a fusser and I have a feeling he’d be upset at the thought of causing me pain even though I’m pretty sure riding a cock the size of my forearm—of his fucking forearm—is inevitably going to cause a little bit of a sting, no matter what.

Plus, I’m not that sore. I’m not really sore at all.

I’m more just… spent. Tired. A little achy.

I was a lot more achy before I took a long shower, followed by an even longer soak in the tub, and the hot water did more than just wash away the physical evidence of last night.

Lots and lots of physical evidence .

“You?” I flip the question back on him, making a face as I trace some more evidence, evidence I left. Scratches and half-moon fingernail indents and, Jesus Christ, teeth marks on both of his traps. “Did I hurt you?”

“Yes,” the bastard drawls sarcastically, and any trace of guilt I might feel vanishes. “ Ouch . Kiss it better?”

“Dick.”

“That too.”

I pinch a perfectly developed pec. “We have work.”

Finn hums, agreeing, but that doesn’t stop him from dropping a kiss to my chin.

“You need to shower. You smell like sex.”

He nuzzles my neck. “I smell like you.”

“You look like sex.”

“Funny, that.”

His lips find the sensitive, thin skin above my pulse, but before he can render me thoughtless, useless , I plant my hands on his chest and push him away. “You look thoroughly fucked, Finn.”

He flashes a lazy, sated smile. “I feel it.”

I sigh, trying not to smile myself, trying not to squirm as I silently acknowledge how thoroughly fucked I feel too. “You can’t go downstairs looking like that.”

“You’re so right. Let’s stay up here.”

“I’m all ridden out, cowboy.”

“I’ll do all the work.”

Fucking hell. And I thought I was insatiable.

For once in my life, I take the mature, sensible path. I scramble off of Finn, my feet barely hitting the floor before he catches me, drags me down for another kiss. “We need to talk, Lot.”

I stiffen. An abrupt image of his face last night, of that look , flashes through my mind.

Panic rushes through the rest of me, and Finn sees it. He softens. Tenderly strokes my cheek, just as gently requests, “Can I make you dinner later?”

“I don’t know,” I tease because teasing is safe , teasing is easy . “Can you?”

For the briefest of seconds, frustrations hardens that handsome face. And then it’s gone, then he pushes me away, hissing playfully as he smacks my ass. “Get away from me before I try to fuck the smartass out of you.”

Now that, I like the sound of.

“Hm.” I stoop, curling a hand around the back of his neck, nudging my nose against his, our lips brushing. “Let’s do that instead of dinner.”

Finn groans against my mouth. The next thing I know, I’m on my damn back again, all two-hundred-ish pounds of him pressing me into the mattress, and this joyous, ridiculous laugh leaves me that I don’t even fucking recognize the sound of. “Fuck it. I want breakfast instead.”

A knock on the door makes us both jump.

“Conjugal visit’s over,” Lux yells, and I think my boyfriend dies, just a little. “Downstairs in ten minutes or I’m whipping out the hose.”

Surprisingly, Lux more or less ignores me when I stroll into the kitchen less than a minute after her summons, having left an uncharacteristically bashful Finn scrambling to shower.

I guess she has bigger things on her mind than a boy spending the night in my bed—actually, she definitely does. That much is clear by the state of the kitchen table, covered in various sheets of paper and thick files and God knows what else that she rifles through chaotically.

“I have to meet the window guy at the A-frame ten minutes ago,” she tells me without looking up, adjusting the wire-frame glasses she only wears when shit is really about to hit the fan.

“And then I gotta go to the bank, and pick Alex up from a play-date, and call those construction people about Ruin’s new paddock. ”

“So…” I lean against the doorframe, fingering the wooden four-leaf clover that Finn pressed into my palm a few nights ago, that lives in my pocket now. “Not a good time to talk?”

Part of me hopes she’ll say no. That I won’t have to tell her where I went last night, to confess what I did, or at least not now. Even though a different part, a bigger part, knows that if I don’t get it out right this second, I never will.

Pausing her frantic rummaging, Lux eyes me over the rim of her glasses. “Is this about wherever you snuck off to last night?”

Fucking hell. Why am I even surprised? “Maybe.”

“Tell me later.” Slinging her purse over her shoulder, she gathers the rest of the shit strewn across the table in her arms. “Tell me about your date too.”

“It wasn’t a date.” I move to the front door, pulling it open for her and kicking the screen door open too. “We went to the rodeo. The other hands were there too.”

One foot out the door, Lux pauses. “The rodeo?”

“Yup” I follow her out onto the front porch, stacking my forearms against the railing as she slowly starts down the steps, frowny and distant all of a sudden. “Y’know. Broncos and bull-riding. That Everett guy was there.”

Lux swears as she misses the bottom step, stumbling and dropping half her loot on the grass. She doesn’t pick any of it up. she just stares at it, swallows loud enough for me to hear. “Everett James?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“He hit on me.”

Lux whirls around so fast, she nearly topples over. “ What? ”

“He asked if we’d met before. Said I look really familiar. Shit line, right?”

She doesn’t say anything, and now I’m frowning, I’m staring at her hands—her shaking hands—as they quickly collect her dropped items. Straightening, she hauls ass to her truck and tosses everything in the backseat before throwing herself in the front.

Through the windshield, I watch my big sister look so very small as she clutches the steering wheel, her white knuckles visible even from a distance. She starts the car, and I almost think she’s going to disappear without another word until she rolls down the window.

When she leans out, the color has returned to her face. She’s smiling again. She’s completely, bafflingly normal as she tells me, “The girl and I are staying at Jackson’s tonight.”

“Okay.”

“So you have the place to yourself.”

“Okay.”

“Please don’t screw your boyfriend on any surfaces my son might touch.”

“ Lux .”

“And for future reference,” she adds because… because she hates me, I decide, right before I decide I hate her too, “put a pillow between the headboard and the wall.”

He’s cheating on me.

Right before my very eyes, my brooding, beloved guy is cheating on me.

With my boyfriend.

“Ruin,” I screech as much as one dares to screech at a semi-feral stallion in need of some deeply intrusive therapy. “What are you doing?”

Lifting his head as if it wasn’t just buried in Finn’s neck, Ruin cocks it at me. None of your business, bitch.

Just about resisting the urge to stick my tongue out at a fucking horse, I swing my gaze on Finn instead. “Are you poaching my horse?”

My heart does something so despicably silly when he cracks the widest, prettiest smile. “We’re in love.”

“Fuck off.” Fuck that word. Fuck how it makes me shiver and cower, gaze low and avoidant as I saunter over with a haughty sniff, and another when Ruin trots to my side as if he wasn’t just laying it on thick with the very man he’s tried to maim on multiple occasions.

“Did you lobotomize him when I wasn’t looking? ”