I’ve never been more nervous than I am right now.

Never.

Not before my basketball championship game senior year of high school, not before I got up to read the eulogy at Lizzy’s funeral, not before my interview with Valdman. Not even during that terrible doctor’s appointment after Mom’s first scan when they said here’s how bad it is, here are the few options we’ve got left.

Even though I usually keep my kitchen stocked with efficient and nutrition-dense options, I don’t want to serve Zenny grilled, skinless chicken breast and chard. I want to give her something stylish, something good, something that says you thought Sean Bell was awesome before, well, look at him smoldering at you over the fancy dinner he just made.

Yes, I said made. Because even though I don’t do relationships and never really have, I know enough from my mom and Tyler talking about Poppy to know that ladies like it when you cook for them.

Plus, given the topic of our discussion, I figure it’s best if we avoid a restaurant tonight. I want Zenny to be comfortable. I want to comfortable. And I could order something in, yes, but like I alluded to earlier, I want to impress her. All that trust and affection that she has for me that I don’t deserve? I want to start deserving it.

The only problem? I don’t really cook. Like ever.

But I’ve got two things going for me:

One—I know my way around a kitchen decently well after years of sous-chef-ing for Mom. So even though I may not have a cooking instinct, per se, I know how everything works.

Two—I watch a lot of GBBO (that’s The Great British Bake Off for you uninitiated) and by now I can recite the ingredients for most different kinds of pastry, bread, and biscuit by heart.

So to that end, I decide on a curried chicken pot pie topped with homemade puff pastry and some expensive cheese imported from somewhere. I’ll serve with a couple craft beers, since she’s probably sick of wine, and voila.

Cue impressed admiration.

Except when Zenny knocks on the door at seven o’clock, there’s nothing to be impressed about. I’m covered in flour, my vegetables refuse to brown up in the roasting tray like Alton Brown said they would, and I’ve forgotten how many times I’ve folded the puff pastry. I think it’s only two—Mary Berry says in her cookbook that I at least need three folds—but I drank a couple of the craft beers in nervous desperation before Zenny could get here, and now time and previous pastry-folding events are all fuzzy.

What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m worth twenty million dollars! I’ve snapped companies in half like kindling over my knee, and yet I can’t even be cool for one dinner? For long enough to make a fucking pot pie?

But when I open the door and Zenny catches sight of the flour dusting my Hugo Boss suit pants and the steaming wreckage that is my kitchen, she laughs so hard she has to slump against the doorframe, and that laugh makes it all worth it. Her laughter is light, happy, still the tiniest bit girlish, and her smile is like a shot of sunshine right to the heart.

I start laughing too.

“What happened?” she finally manages to ask, her eyes roving over me again. Except this time they linger not on the dusty smears of flour, but on the tapered lines of my waist. On the places where my sleeves are rolled into crisp, straight rolls, showing off the forearms I pay an ungodly trainer’s fee for.

Watching her drink in my body is headier than any eight-point-five percent beer, and I have to remind myself to focus.

Dinner. Pastry folds. Right.

“I’m cooking,” I say with dignity, closing the door behind her. “And it’s going very well.”

“I can see that,” she says, and when I turn, she lifts her eyes to my face very quickly as she blushes.

She was just checking out my ass.

The knowledge sends hot blood south, and my fingers are burning with the need to touch her, hold her, yank her into a kiss.

I walk toward the kitchen as quickly as I can…away from her and her sweetly roving eyes. “Would you like something to drink while I finish up?”

“A sparkling water would be nice.”

She comes to sit at the large island in the middle of my kitchen, pulling up a tall chair and sitting across the work surface from me as I hand her a LaCroix and go back to rolling out my piecrust. I’m giving myself a silent pep talk, trying to run through all the decisions and phrases that I’ve decided on in the last twenty-four hours, when she breaks the quiet with one of her determined yet vulnerable questions.

“So are you going to do it?” she asks.

I pause the motions of the rolling pin, looking up at her. She’s in jeans and a worn St. Teresa’s Academy T-shirt; no headband or scarf today, just curls everywhere. She looks like a college student. She looks young. And the expression on her face—hopeful and nervous and filled with shy attraction—it’s not doing anything to help either my conscience or my stiffening cock.

“Do you mean, am I going to have sex with you, Zenny?” And once I say it, I hear it—the voice thing she mentioned in her message. My words have gone all husky and a little dangerous. “Am I going to fuck you like you asked me to?”

Her tongue peeps out to lick her lower lip, pink and wet, and she breathes hard. “Yes,” she whispers. “That’s what I mean.”

And here we come to it, the thing, the reason she’s here tonight and the reason I couldn’t sleep after Family Dinner and the reason I spent today punishing myself in the gym and later in the office.

I don’t know what a good man would do in my shoes.

I can only guess at what an unafraid one might do.

I walk around the island to her, taking the back of her chair and turning it so that she’s facing me. I brush the curls away from one side of her face so that I can cup her cheek and lean close. “Yes,” I breathe against her lips.

“Yes?” she repeats in a trembling voice, as if she doesn’t quite believe me. She pulls back the tiniest bit to search my eyes. “Really? Yes?”

“Yes. For the next month, my body is yours.”

“Oh, Sean,” she murmurs, throwing her arms around my neck. Her lips are against my cheek now, impossibly soft, impossibly tempting, and my cock surges against my pants, reminding me that I’m only a half-step away from being able to grind against her inner thigh. Against the place where the denim seams meet right in front of her precious pussy.

“Thank you,” she says, kissing my cheek. “Thank you, thank you.” And then she turns her head and finds my mouth with her own, and my world catches fire and burns into a shrinking nothing; her mouth is all that’s left, her yielding lips, her searching tongue, her sweet taste.

It’s so very, very cliché, but kissing Zenny makes me feel younger, reminds me of the incendiary kisses one gets as a teenager, when every touch, every lick and caress is so fucking charged with excitement. As an adult, kissing can fade into something perfunctory, the prologue, the necessary foreplay to get a woman wet and squirming for what I really want—but as a teenager, I lived to kiss. Lived to make out. Even came in my pants once making out in a movie theater with a girl named Giana Saviano.

I’d forgotten how fucking incredible just kissing is.

God. I want to scoop her up and carry her to my room and kiss her there forever. With her body nestled against mine and my arms around her and our legs tangling. Just kiss and kiss and kiss—

My cock is not getting the just kissing memo, though, nudging against my pants and aching with the need for attention, and if I keep kissing her, I’m worried I’ll push us too far too fast, that I’ll spread her out on top of all this flour and fuck my fist while I eat her pussy and then we’ll have jumped right into this without doing what needs to be done first.

Which is talk.

Reluctantly, I pull back, surprised at how hard and fast my pulse beats through me. Zenny’s body makes my own feel like it’s running a race, all hot and breathless and ready to sweat.

“What is it?” she asks, her nervousness creeping back in. “Do you not want to…you know, is kissing not on the menu of things we can do?”

“It’s on the menu,” I growl. “Everything’s on the fucking menu.”

She visibly relaxes.

I touch her lower lip with my thumb, then move to trace that slightly plumper upper lip. “This mouth. I want to eat it and fuck it and worship it and abuse it.” I let my hand slide down, brushing my fingertips over the pebbled stiffness of her nipples. She’s wearing some kind of flimsy bra that allows me to pluck at the sweet furls. “In fact, that’s how I feel about all of you.”

Her lips are parted now and she’s not looking at me, she’s looking at my fingers teasing idly at her nipples through her T-shirt, as if she’s never imagined such a thing, as if she’s never known the sight of a man’s hand big and knowledgeable against her body.

“But,” I say, dropping my hand and nearly losing my load at the sound of her disappointed whimper, “we have to talk first.”

“Talk?”

I step back. I step back again. Each step away from her perky tits with their firm little nipples is killing me, but it has to be done. “Talk,” I confirm. “I almost said no, Zenny, and the only reason I can say yes is because I promised myself I’d do this right. So please let me do this right.”

She nods. I don’t miss the little squirm she makes in her chair though, like she’s trying to relieve an ache between her thighs, and I almost run back over there and relieve it for her. Just two fingers would be all I need, right down the front of her jeans. Two fingers and two minutes, and I’d make her feel so much better.

Bad Sean. Focus.

Pastry folds and conversation.

“So is this going to be like a business negotiation?” Zenny asks. “We hammer out the fine print?”

I pick up the rolling pin again, mostly to give my hands something to do other than rub Zenny’s cunt until she gasps out my name (although I do distantly remember that dinner is still in various, messy stages around my kitchen). “A business negotiation was my first thought,” I admit to her, rolling the piecrust dough. The way her eyes watch my forearms as I work the rolling pin and the dough is not helping my self-control at all. “But the thing is that business negotiations are kind of shitty, when you think about it. It’s all about what you can get from the other person while keeping what you want to keep. And that’s not how I want this to go between us.”

That seems to touch something inside her thoughts, because she looks up at me and there’s trust shimmering in her eyes while the rest of her face goes slightly guarded. Her contradictions—trust and armor, bold and shy—they’re like catnip to me, yanking at parts of my mind that I didn’t even know I had. Pulling at something in my chest that I can’t identify.

She fucking fascinates me.

“So not a business meeting,” she says.

“No.” I roll the piecrust over the rolling pin and it promptly tears in half, which makes Zenny laugh. I give her a playful glare as I try to arrange the dough pieces in a casserole dish. “No business meeting. How about a palliative care appointment instead?”

She tilts her head a little, waiting for me to elaborate, which I do.

“Obviously, we’re not here because we’re dying, but when my mom went to visit her doctor, the way they talked really stuck with me.” Vegetables finally roasted, I set the dough-lined casserole aside and start mixing together the filling. “I thought Mom would go in and they’d have this transaction about pain levels and side effects and stuff like that, but instead, they talked about Mom’s goals and priorities. What was important to her in her last days. How she imagined her death.”

I pour the filling into the casserole, top it with the maybe-underfolded puff pastry, and slide it into the oven. Then I face Zenny, who is watching me attentively.

“Was it hard for you to listen to?” she asks. “Your mom talking about her death?”

I can still remember the doctor’s office—not an appointment room, but a true office, lined with books and pictures of his family. I just don’t want to be in pain, Mom had said, her voice cracking as my father put his face in his hands. That’s all.

“Yes,” I answer. “It was hard. But worthwhile. And I promise I didn’t mean to derail the conversation into sad cancer talk, because this is about us and much more fun things.”

“So which one of us is the doctor and which one of us is the patient?”

I start cleaning off my counter as I talk. “I think we’re each both. Both things at once. We need to figure out what’s important to each of us, what our priorities are. And also we need to talk about boundaries—what we won’t do and we won’t give up—and also all the practical stuff, mechanics and schedules—all of it. It’s going to be awkward and feel kind of intimate for two people who don’t know each other very well, just like with the palliative doctor and his patient, but that way we start out with all the important information on the table.”

“Okay.” She gives a nod of approval, which is belied by how hard she’s chewing on the inside of her cheek. “You go first.”

“Me first. Okay.” I look at her, my hands still scrubbing at the counter. “Keeping you safe is the most important thing to me,” I say. “I promised your brother I would, and beyond that, I…I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you. I can’t deny that I want this—and I want you—but it can’t come at any price that you have to pay.”

A pause. Her eyes glued to mine, her pulse jumping in her neck.

“Okay,” she finally whispers.

“Zenny, I need to know as we move forward…are you a virgin?”

She blinks up at the ceiling. “Sort of?”

I finish cleaning, toss the sponge into the sink and lean forward onto the granite, bracing myself on my elbows. “Explain sort of.”

“Well, I do feel like I should mention that I think virginity in general is an arbitrary construct designed by men as a system of control and fear. And it’s heteronormative. And limiting, because why do certain sexual acts preserve virginity and some destroy it? What if I fucked a dildo every night, but I hadn’t fucked a man? Why doesn’t anal sex count? And what if I was with someone and penetration wasn’t an option, for any number of biological or emotional or identity reasons—would that make our sex less somehow? I’d be a virgin forever?”

I open and close my mouth, completely at a loss for an answer and feeling a little ashamed that I’d actually never even considered the concept of virginity that deeply.

“But for the purposes of our conversation, it means that I had a boyfriend in high school, and I decided to try intercourse with him. I changed my mind in the middle of the act, he stopped, and that was it.”

I don’t miss how easily she can toss around words like fuck when she’s talking in hypotheticals, but when she’s talking about herself, about real life, it becomes intercourse and the act. I mentally file that away as I say, “Was it consensual?”

I don’t like the way she hesitates before she nods, but she does nod. Slowly.

“Can we talk about it more? I won’t push if you’d rather keep it in the past, but for the purposes of your ‘exploration,’ it could be helpful to know what’s new or what has a negative association for you.” My words go up at the end, lilting like a question, because I really don’t want to push her. But I also want to take care of her and I want to show her all the delicious things she’s been missing—which means it would help to know what’s in her past.

Zenny blows out a breath, but she looks determined, not troubled. “Yes, we can talk about it more. It’s just awkward, like you said.”

“I want to hold and touch you while we talk about it. Is that okay?”

She bites her lip, suppressing the flicker of pleasure that moved across her face. “Yes,” she says quietly. “That would be okay.”

I come around the island and step between her legs again, but this time I don’t stay there. I scoop her up by her thighs and carry her with her legs wrapped around my waist to one of the sofas.

She squeals in surprise when I do it, but her legs tighten around my waist and her hands lace around my neck, and suddenly, I want very much to keep holding her forever, just like this. With her thighs bracketing my torso and her face slightly above mine, laughing down at me.

I arrange us on the couch so that she’s on my lap but perched far enough back that I’m not nudging her with my erection. And I do it so that we’re close, in something that could be called a cuddle, where I can hold her and speak to her and support her, but she’s above me and she can easily change position. Easily gain space.

“Is this how couples talk?” she whispers, gazing down at me with the laughter still fading from her face. “Is this how you talk to all your women?”

I reach up and run a finger along her jaw. “I don’t know if this is how couples talk,” I say. “I’ve never been in a couple. And no, I never talk to women like this.”

One of those film-star eyebrows again. “Is that because you don’t talk to women period?”

“Smartass,” I say, giving her bottom a teasing pinch, and the breathless giggle she gives has me regretting not peeling off her jeans before parking her on my lap. I could make her smile so much more if I didn’t have all this denim in the way. “I talk to plenty of women. I even talk to the women I fuck. Although generally if I’ve got a woman in my lap, she’s doing something else instead of talking.”

“Something el—” Zenny catches herself.

I grin up at her. “I’ll be happy to show you all the things other than talking you can do in my lap, sweet girl.”

SEAN BELL. FOCUS.

“But first,” I say. “We talk about the awkward stuff.”

“We talk about the awkward stuff,” she agrees.

“Tell me why you decided to go to bed with this guy in high school,” I gently ask. “Why him? Why then?”

She looks down at her hands, which are now resting atop her thighs and rubbing restlessly at the fabric. She seems to be gathering her thoughts. “On paper, he was the right guy for it, you know? He went to Rockhurst, I went to St. Teresa’s. He had great grades, he was star of the track team, he did all this volunteer work, we were in Jack and Jill together as kids…my parents adored him. And he wanted to have sex. And I wanted to have sex.”

“And what had you done before this? With him or any other person?”

She shakes her head. “Just kissed. I’d kissed a handful of boys by the time I met Isaac. And Isaac and I had made out several times. It never went further than that because we were always in my basement and Isaac was terrified of the Honorable Letitia Iverson coming downstairs and dragging him by the ear to jail or something.”

I have to smile at that; I definitely didn’t make it out of my own childhood unscathed by Mrs. Iverson’s fiercely maternal style of justice. But back to the topic at hand. “So wait, he hadn’t even given you head by this point? What about fingering? Dry humping?”

My frank use of the terms seems to embarrass her a little, but she rallies. “Um, he touched my breasts once while we were kissing, and that was it,” she says. “But he kept asking for more, asking if we could find a place to be alone, if we could just try it—so I said yes. We told our parents we were staying with friends, and then we snuck into the youth center at church because I had a key from volunteering. And like I said, I didn’t like it and I asked him to stop. He did. That’s it.”

There’s something about the way her gaze darts away from mine, about the way her shoulders draw up and her voice goes brittle that makes me think there’s more to the story.

“Did you say yes because you really wanted to? Or because you liked him and you wanted him to keep liking you?”

“I really did want to, Sean, I promise. But I was nervous and I think…I think if he hadn’t kept asking, I would have wanted to wait. But it seemed stupid to keep telling this boy no when there was nothing wrong with him, you know? He was smart and handsome and everyone liked him—why wouldn’t I do it with him? And what if we didn’t do it, and then I regretted it later?”

I’m about to reply when she puts a finger over my lips. “I know now that I didn’t owe him sex,” she says, and I exhale in relief. “And maybe I knew it then too. My reasons for saying yes, while complicated, weren’t coerced.”

“And the sex itself? How did he prepare you?”

Her eyebrows draw together. “Prepare?”

“To get you ready,” I say. “To get you wet.”

She stares down at me, eyebrows still furrowed. “We took off our clothes and he told me to lay down, so I did. Then he put on a condom and put his penis inside of me—what?” she says at my face. “What’s wrong?”

I’m furious as fuck is what’s wrong. “Did it hurt you?”

Her chin dips low and she looks away. “How did you know?”

I rub my hands along Zenny’s arms, trying to find a way to explain. “That would hurt any woman, shoving inside without her being ready, but a virgin? I’m impressed you ever wanted to consider sex again after that.”

“I didn’t know,” she says, her hands fiddling with her jeans again. “And he probably didn’t know either. It just hurt so badly and I started crying, begged him to stop. He did—but there was a moment when I thought he wouldn’t. Just a second, really, and it was nothing he did or said, but it was this moment when I realized that I had nothing but the decency of a now-pissed-off teenage boy protecting me. He did the right thing, but—” her voice catches and she swallows again. “I’m sorry, I’m not that upset, it’s just so embarrassing.”

“Go on.”

“He said it was supposed to hurt the first time, and that it would have felt better if I would have been patient. He broke up with me the next day. Said he wanted to be with a girl who really liked him and wasn’t ‘just pretending.’” Zenny pauses, looking at where my hands have curled into fists in the sleeves of her T-shirt. “Sean?”

“Keep going,” I say, remarkably calmly. “I’m just keeping the lid on some mild rage here.”

A tilted smile. “It’s okay, really. That’s about the worst of it.”

“About the worst of it?”

“Well,” she says, taking a breath. “There was this thing on Twitter for a while. The Rockhurst boys—his friends—all started a hashtag. #ZennytheNun. If they could only see me now, eh?”

“Jesus Christ. Zenny.”

“What?”

“You had the worst first time possible. You were incredibly brave and stood up for what you needed in the moment…then you were dumped and subsequently bullied for it.”

“It’s not—” she stops, thinks, starts again. “It sounds traumatic when I lay it out, and yes, it stings to think about sometimes, but even in the moment, it didn’t gut me. It didn’t wound me. It sucked, but it sucked like a broken toe. It happened, it hurt, but I was fine and I am fine.”

I take her hands in my own, trying to read her expression. If I were going to trust anyone about their emotional inner life, I suppose it would be easiest to trust a nun—and the clear-eyed way Zenny’s looking down at me doesn’t betray any secret pain—but I have to be sure. If I’m going to take her to bed, I have to be able to keep her safe in every way possible.

“Honest girl thing? You really are fine?”

A soft smile. “Yeah.”

I don’t think she’d hold back after I asked for honesty, and so I move on. “And then no sex after that?”

“I kissed a couple more boys after, but it never went further. And by the time I was ready again, it was impossible to find someone, the right person. Until you.”

It’s a lot of pressure. I don’t say it and I don’t show it, but knowing what a shitty experience she had the first time ups the stakes. It transforms this into something more than just a doubt experiment, an exploration, and it makes me feel like I’ve been given some kind of cosmic task to undo the wrongs of someone who came before me. To cherish this woman who deserves to be cherished, who deserves to know what good things a body can feel and do.

Of course, I don’t believe in anything cosmic, so that feeling has to be all in my imagination, right? And the way my skin tightens as I look up at this brave, vulnerable girl and silently vow to give her everything I know how to give. That’s nothing spiritual, it’s just biology…

Right?

“What about you?” she asks, shyly. “What have you done?”

“Just assume I’ve done everything,” I answer.

“Everything?”

“Well, okay, there’s a few categories on Pornhub that I haven’t dabbled in, but for the most part, everything.”

“And girlfriends?”

“I’ve never had a serious girlfriend, and I haven’t even casually dated anyone since college.”

“Why not?” Zenny asks. “Isn’t that normal? To date?”

I shrug. “Don’t have the time, mostly. And well, I’m a little bossy, as you may have noticed. Women like it in bed, but I have trouble turning it off in real life.”

“Bossy how?”

I think for a moment. Then make a decision. “You really want to know?”

I’m not imagining the widening of her pupils as she says, “Yes.”

“If we get through talking over everything, I’ll show you.”

“Like a reward?”

“Yes, darling. Like a reward.”

She tries to hide a smile when I call her darling, and I decide right then and there that I’m going to call her every endearment in the book if it makes her so fetchingly happy.

“Back to the talk,” I say, and there’s a new quickness in my voice because fuck I’m hard. I want to get through this and get to dinner, and then, you know.

Rewards.

“Boundaries,” I say. “I need to know yours.”

This kind of straightforward talk seems to put her back in her comfort zone, and her voice settles back into its usual, clear tones as she rattles off a list of things she’s clearly given thought to. “No spit, blood, or third parties. If we do anything kinky, we have to discuss it first and we both get safe words. And obviously, I can’t risk pregnancy or disease. I’ve been taking birth control to help control migraines for a few years, but I still want to use condoms.”

“Of course.”

She looks surprised that I don’t argue more about the last thing.

“I always use condoms,” I tell her. “You’ve got nothing to worry about there. And everything else we can easily manage.”

“Okay, good,” she says. “And this can’t cut into my studies or my volunteering, so we might have to be creative about scheduling.”

“I can handle that.”

She squeezes my hands. “What are your boundaries?”

I’m glad she asked because I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours trying to find the right limits to this arrangement—any ethical loophole, any technicality that I could hold onto and think to myself, I’m not a bad man, I’m doing this to help her, here’s how I’m keeping her safe while giving us a taste of what we both want.

“I have one boundary and one caveat,” I tell her. “The caveat is that whatever happens with the Keegan property is separate from this. What happens in bed has no impact on me trying to find a new shelter—or on you slandering me to the press, if you wish to continue to do so.”

That makes her eyes sparkle. “Deal.”

“And the boundary—you don’t make me come.”

Record scratch.

Zenny sits up, letting go of my hands to cross her arms across her chest. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

“I want to do this with you…for you…but I don’t want to take advantage and I don’t want to use you. I don’t want there to be any doubt that I’m doing this all for you.”

“So you’re not planning on coming when we’re together at all?”

To be honest, I haven’t really thought that far ahead. I’d only gotten so far as to decide I couldn’t actually, in good conscience, erupt inside a nun’s mouth. “I don’t know. I—”

“Because I don’t accept that,” Zenny interrupts. “You said everything was on the menu, and that’s a part of everything that I refuse to compromise on.” She pauses, and then forges ahead. “I need you to come too. If you don’t, I don’t know, but it makes me feel like I’d be missing something important.”

“It’s not that special, sweetheart. It’s cum.”

She shakes her head, not having it. “It’s special to me. I only get a month of this, and I won’t miss any part of it.”

I rub at my jaw, trying to bring my brain around to find some way to convince her, but my God, all I can think about is how much she wants to see me spill.

“How about,” Zenny says, “you come when we’re together, but I won’t be the one to finish you off? It won’t be my hands or my mouth or—you know.”

“Your pussy?”

“My pussy,” Zenny echoes and we’re staring hard at each other now, thinking of the same thing. Thinking of me coming deep inside her, giving her everything.

“Deal,” I say hoarsely.

She leans down and kisses me—gently at first—then eagerly as I kiss her back, and she scoots forward on my lap so she can rub herself against my angry, needy cock. “Are we done with the talking yet?” she asks against my lips. “Please say yes.”

I smile at her eagerness and shake my head, giving her a final, soft kiss before I say, “One last thing.”

She groans.

But it can’t be ignored and it can’t wait. I take her hands in my mine again and brush my lips across her knuckles. “Zenny, I don’t want to move forward without…I mean, I want to be aware that there’s…”

Dammit. I can’t find the right words. This is just as awkward and intimate as talking about sex, and I’m fumbling around for ways for this to come out right and coming up short.

I start again, peering up at her. “You’re young. You’re so young. Elijah…he asked me to protect you, and I’m pretty sure this is the exact opposite. I’ve never done this before—dating or fucking someone I care about or fucking someone I’m supposed to take care of, and I’m terrified of hurting you. Of getting this wrong.”

Those copper eyes search my own, shimmering and serious and sharp. And then she nods. “Okay,” she says simply.

“Really?” I ask, feeling clumsy and guilty for reasons I don’t entirely understand. “I want you to know that you always have the power between us, Zenny. To say stop or to say go. To tell me what you need from me. To tell me I’m an asshole.”

That last earns me a little smile. “I’ll never be afraid to tell you that,” she says. “And I trust you, Sean. That doesn’t change reality, but I’m willing to navigate it with you.”

The weight of her undeserved trust sits heavy on me, and I shift underneath her, still worried, still guilty.

“And it’s only for a month, remember?” she adds. “It’s not like we have to figure out how to raise children together.”

“Right,” I say, except now I’m suddenly wondering what our children would look like, and I’ve never wanted children, never ever, no sir. But damn. Zenny and I would make cute babies. And I can picture her belly swollen and tight with my child, picture her sitting in a glider in some quiet room, nursing our baby while I sat by her feet and stared up at her adoringly.

Happiness.

That’s the feeling unfurling in my chest right now, fragile and easily blown apart, and the sensation of it is so strange that I’m rendered still, staring at Zenny as if she’s the only thing in the world.

She misinterprets my stillness and laughs. “I was only joking about the children, Sean, don’t panic.”

“I—”

“In fact,” she continues, oblivious to my fantasy and the unfamiliar excitement blooming inside me, “I’m surprised you didn’t give me some speech about how I can’t fall in love with you while we do this.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem for you,” I murmur, kissing her knuckles again so that she can’t see my face. I hadn’t forgotten about the possibility of emotional entanglement—in fact, almost every other book in the Wakefield Saga had a speech to that effect in there somewhere whenever the characters first get together. I’ll pretend to court you for a season, but we mustn’t fall in love, or since I’m a widow, I can teach you how to please a future wife in bed, but of course it will end between us the moment you get engaged. That sort of thing.

But I don’t need it with Zenny. The way she talks, the way she lives her life—I’m never going to be able to compete with her God for love. She’ll fuck me, use me to whatever purpose she needs, and then go back to her church with a deeper faith than ever. I don’t doubt that for a second.

It’s weird though, how quickly that thought wilts my happiness.

“Is that smoke?” Zenny asks, and I turn with some alarm to see a steady white plume coming from my oven.

“Ahhhh shit shit shit.” Zenny slides gracefully onto the sofa and I leap to rescue the pot pie, which I already know Mary Berry would declare “overdone” and our awkward discussion comes to a sudden, smoking stop.