Page 37 of The Rogue (Four Corners Ranch #11)

The water was running, and had been for several minutes before Justice came back into the room.

“You good?” he asked.

She realized she was still lying on the bed like a starfish, breathing heavily. Her heart rate still hadn’t returned to normal.

“I mean, I think you might’ve killed me.”

“Don’t be dead, Rue. I’m not finished with you yet.”

“I know. That’s what scares me.

He came over to the bed, still completely naked, and every last brain cell went dormant as she took in the sight of all that

perfect male flesh.

Then he bent down and scooped her up. “You have to be careful,” she said. “I’m going to get used to this.” She had meant for

it to sound funny and lighthearted, but she was afraid it had sounded a whole lot more loaded. She was afraid that it actually

might be.

He carried her easily into the bathroom, where the tub was three-quarters full. And then he set her down slowly into the warmth.

She sighed, suddenly becoming aware of some muscles that were sore. She had been tensing up more than usual. Then Justice got into the tub with her, and it was just so... strange and terrifying and sort of wonderful, to be naked in a bathtub looking at him.

“Do you still think orgasms are overrated?” he asked, with no small amount of smug amusement in his voice.

“I... I don’t even know how you did that.”

“ You did it.”

“But I...” She scrunched up her face. “It is really silly to be embarrassed after we did all that, isn’t it?”

“Nothing is silly,” he said. “You can feel however you want to feel.”

“Well, I don’t want to feel embarrassed.”

She chose right then to just stop. To stop being embarrassed. There was freedom in this. In being able to actually talk to

him, talk to somebody about the way she felt about all this. She had never been able to talk to Asher about it.

That was a problem.

“I’ve always been afraid to let go. But with you it felt easy. But no one’s ever... no one’s ever actually...”

“He never went down on you.”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t want to ask, because I accepted a long time ago that stuff with sex was my issue. I think right at first when I slept with him I was a little bit frustrated. I wanted something more out of it. Something

different. Well, at first, I was just glad that I felt the same after the first time we slept together.”

“How do you mean?”

“I think part of me was afraid that I would forget who I was. Because it seemed like my parents were possessed. I was kind of afraid I’d lose my head.

But instead, he was this really nice guy, and I liked him.

I dated him for three months, and then we slept together.

It was very planned, very controlled. I felt the same.

When we were done, I felt like myself. I didn’t lose my head.

I didn’t suddenly want to race out and bang somebody else.

I didn’t want to get in a fight over him.

I just felt like me . I didn’t feel it had been turned inside out. ”

She felt a little bit inside out now. But it was Justice. So it had to be okay.

“So... you had sex finally and it was lame.”

She laughed. “I guess.”

“You know, I’ve never thought much about what it means to be a woman trying to navigate this stuff as I have since you told

me about you and Asher. It’s important to me that my partners have a good time, but I know I’m going to have an orgasm. Could be memorable, might not be. But a minimum amount of pleasure is a certainty. That’s why

I do it.”

“I did it because I wanted to be in a relationship. A good one. A healthy one. And to me, that meant needing a nice man and

having a nice house and having nice sex. You know, nice. Companionable. I wanted all these pieces of normal. But I don’t even

really know why I wanted them except to just have the opposite of what I had growing up.”

“Sometimes I think... I was trying to give that poor kid the stuff he didn’t have. We have this version of family that’s

different from anything we had with my parents. I go out when I want, I don’t deny myself anything.”

He believed that; she could see it. But there were actually a lot of things he denied himself.

Because while she had been determined to make herself a family, while she had been dead set on finding a way to normal, finding a way to give herself something that she never had, he avoided it.

Avoided emotional connections as far as romance went.

But then, she could see why. Part of her still believed that the ideal existed. Part of her still believed that there was

something good out there. The kind of good that she might never have experienced, but that she believed, bone deep, had to

be real.

She didn’t know why she believed it.

Her parents hadn’t exemplified it, her grandma had been single since long before Rue was born. She’d never mentioned Rue’s

grandfather, which had made Rue assume it had ended badly. Asher had betrayed Rue.

But she believed that love existed.

Maybe she was the idiot. Maybe she was the one that was wrong.

“Maybe that’s what I’m doing. I’m trying to give that kid who never had a well-ordered life the life that I wanted. And more

than that, the one that I believe my parents could have had if they would’ve cared enough to try. I just knew that I wanted

something more. Something different. But it kind of became its own cage.”

“Are you afraid that you’re going to be like your parents? Because nothing about you is like them,” he said.

“Yeah. I am.” She lifted her hand up out of the water and watched some drops fall back in, leaving ripples on the surface.

“I’ve always been a little bit afraid that I could be.

Because I don’t know what they were like before.

Part of me wondered if they transformed each other.

Into these kinds of uncontrollable monsters they were. ”

“Well, you’re not them. And there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“I don’t think I could’ve had that with him,” she said softly, letting her hand drift down beneath the surface again.

“Because he wouldn’t lick your—”

“ No . Because it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t a matter of trying to stop myself from getting lost. I just was.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

“For giving that to me. All the trust. It’s not a small thing.”

She shifted so that she sank a couple of inches lower in the water, then looked at him. Hard. “What was your first time like?”

He tilted his head, a crease between his eyebrows. “What?”

“I wanted to ask you back when it happened. Kind of. I also didn’t want to think about it, which is why I never asked you.”

“And you want to think about it now?”

“Yes. Because I feel like I finally get to know all of this about you, so I want to know it.”

“Uhhh... I was young. I was horny. I looked at your boobs.”

“You looked at my boobs?”

“Yes. It was summer. You were fifteen, I was sixteen and you had really what was quite a demure swimsuit. But I just looked at them. They were growing, and I was a guy, and I remember thinking your body was so pretty. And then there was Chelsea, and she was seventeen. She was wearing a bikini. She wasn’t younger.

And innocent. I just knew that I didn’t want to screw up what I had with you over that. So... I redirected my focus to her.”

She frowned and looked at the surface of the water, then back up at him. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“You don’t have to. It just is. I met up with her at the bonfire by Sullivan’s Lake that night, we had some beer, her dad

was cleared out of the cabin for the night, she had condoms, we had sex.”

“And did you make her come four times?” She knew she sounded salty. She felt salty.

“No. I didn’t make her come at all. I felt like a dick. I told myself that I needed to figure out what I was doing before

I ever did that again because it didn’t seem right or fair that I got to pump a couple of times and have the best time , when the girl I was with might not. So... There you have it. It was a shitty first time, actually. I wish it would’ve

been with someone that meant something to me. But then, until today, I don’t think I’d ever had sex with someone who meant

something to me. But at least I was better at it.”

Rue shifted in the tub. Their legs tangled. A bolt of arousal hit her between her thighs. “I was so afraid. Not that it would

hurt. That it would be too good.”

He laughed, threw his head back and laughed.

“Yeah. Well. I was naive. It wasn’t. Obviously. But that was actually just right for me. I found my comfort zone. I stayed in it. For eight years. It isn’t just you and your sexuality that I opened the door to, it’s my own. I’m still me. A little bit inside out, but still me.”

She scrunched her eyes, trying to keep the tears at bay.

“All right, chickadee. Let’s get you out of here before you turn into a prune.”

“You’re a lot more solicitous after you’ve had sex with a woman.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

But she was being lifted out of the tub, so her commentary didn’t seem to make much difference.

“Tell me about it.”

“Only that when we were friends—I mean we are friends—but when we were friends who’d never had sex, I don’t think you would

worry about the amount of time I was in the bathtub.”

“Not a fair statement. Because when we hadn’t had sex I wouldn’t have been in the bathtub with you. I wouldn’t have been able

to see these.” He moved his thumb over one of her nipples.

Shock, arousal and embarrassment lanced her. “We just...”

“I want to again.”

“Justice!”

“Come on, Rue, it’s three in the afternoon. It’s the perfect time.”