I shouldn’t start in the car. I should wait until he’s not driving anymore, but two weeks of silence is enough.

He nods. Of course he knows. “What did you see?”

“What was there to see?” I snap, but then I reel myself in. “I saw you embracing her. I saw her snuggling as tight as she possibly could with no concern for someone else being around, not even someone you had just kissed. And you buried your nose in her hair, and you stroked her back.”

“So you saw me comfort her?”

“Yeah, but...”

He stares.

“You guys were intimate as hell, Ciro! It was so clear you were used to holding her like that. She’d snuggled with you so much before—I could tell, and—”

“And it hurt?”

“Yes!”

“I’m so sorry, Savannah.”

He could have said more. He could have reminded me of the horror of Silk’s situation and how broken she was. He’d be right. I feel bad for her, but above that is a thick layer of thoughts and assumptions and hell-nos. I need to express them now.

“I didn’t know how far you would go. If it were up to Silk, you’d be in bed in seconds. Then, I learned that she stayed at your house, and I never wanted to talk to you again.”

“Why not?”

“Because what stops a porn star from sleeping with another porn star when she’s lonely?”

The waves crash against the sand in chaotic, never-ending clusters. He pulls his fingers through my hair as I lean back. The last month has been doomsday. I’m deep in, at the center of it, but I feel better with my ear over his heart.

When I shiver, he folds his hands over my stomach and pulls me closer.

“We could go to Moonshadows. It’ll be warmer inside a restaurant.”

“No. This is good.”

“Not too cold?”

“Not against you.”

His stomach sinks with relief, a firm surface sliding with me. Gently, he kisses the top of my head. It’s easier to talk when I don’t see his face.

“I’m afraid, Ciro.”

“Tell me what you’re afraid of.”

“I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, and there’s no relief in sight. I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t we have to be brave to win in life?”

“That depends on what’s at stake. Do you think my mom is brave for wanting to pack up the house and check out of reality in search of a fantasy?”

He squeezes me, and I turn so my nose finds the soft fabric of his shirt. I rub against it, closing my eyes.

“No. Your mother should definitely not chase her dreams.”

I let out a quiet laugh. “We’re so fucked up.”

He sits up and turns me toward him, holding my face in his hands. “You’re so unsure of me, Savannah. What we have is not fucked up. It’s beautiful. We just need to sort through this mess until you understand that you can trust me unconditionally.”

He has my attention when he crosses his legs and pulls me down on his lap, straddling him. The moon is so mild above us it’s almost too much.

“Hear me out, because I’m going to tell you a story. Some of it, you know. Other parts are new, and maybe they can help you understand better.”

I’m ready.

“If I ever become a father, I’ll do nothing the way my parents did it. They lived in the dark ages when it came to raising a child and a teenager, and it wasn’t even because they were strict. Their parenting style was like hurling off fistfuls of darts with blindfolds on and never once hitting the target. Obviously, we didn’t understand each other.

“It wasn’t difficult to find excitement and sexual stimuli. I never had a problem finding takers at school or elsewhere. At the country club, the supermarket, the library, the theater. The only thing I did right during that time was to use a whole lot of condoms.”

He finds my lips with a soft kiss that sends tingles down my spine.

“I even slept with the country club manager’s wife. That got complicated. What I regret most is spending the last two years of high school fucking someone, high, or both at once. When I was about to get expelled from school, I seduced the principal.” He shrugs, a small apology. “If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have had a high school diploma.

“I had food and a bed, everything material I needed. Just, I could gobble pills right under their nose at the dinner table. I could have a ‘study date’ in the sunroom and fuck her against the wall without being caught. Once, my father walked in on me with a girl, and all I had to do was tell him I’d spotted a crane by the pond and that was why we were pressed so tightly together by the window.

“Anyway.” He chuckles, stroking hair away from my face. “A few years later, someone told my parents straight up that I was in porn. That’s when I was cut off, and I’ve been dead to them ever since.”

“Have you tried to contact them?”

“No. My parents don’t mess around. They actually took out a restraining order against me. I can’t be within a hundred feet of my mother and father.” He lets out a small snort.

“Jesus Christ. That must have hurt like crazy.”

“Eh, it’s whatever. At least I don’t have to feel guilty for not visiting anymore.”

“No shit.”

“Fast-forward few years, and I’m starting to miss someone in my life. I fall in love a couple of times, start relationships, and that’s when I learn how off-putting it is to women that I’m in the industry.”

“You were surprised by this?”

“To be honest, yes. I guess I hadn’t thought it through. I’d been busy working and staying clean of drugs, and during the first years of paying my own bills, I had people around me night and day. Afterhours, we hung at clubs and bars. I’d go home with young colleagues for a quickie, or I’d have a one-off with some girl from a club. You live so fast it takes a while to notice that you need more. But at a certain point, you notice that it’s there and glaring at you.

“In the beginning, it wasn’t that bad. Mostly, I never got past the dating stage with them, and it was just surprising when they moved on after only a few weeks. I’d hit a home run on the first night, but that was the extent of it. A few weeks of taking them on dates and sleeping together, then bam, as soon as emotions other than desire started up, so did the fights and the breakups.

“By the time I met Silk, I’d tried a dozen times, at least. Lots of great girls, but what does that matter?”

I shake my head. “I’ve said it before, but I can’t believe you keep trying. If I were you, I’d have stopped a long time ago. Or I’d find another job.”

“I don’t give up easily.”

“Oh believe me, I know.” I gasp a laugh as he sucks my lower lip into his mouth, swirling over it with a skilled tongue.

“Silk was a big lesson for me. I worked hard to make our marriage last, but it made her unhappier than she was when I met her. I wanted help her, not make her miserable.

“I took a break after Silk. For almost a year, I didn’t date at all. When I got back on the horse again, it was with even more purpose than before. About thirty girlfriends in, I started becoming methodical about it. I found my type—not adult performers but regular, smart girls. I tested out different ways of telling them about my job.

“When I met you, my fifty-second girlfriend—”

“You really have been counting.”

“Yeah. On a mission and all that.” His arms tighten around me before he relaxes and continues. “By the time I met you, I’d already learned that I didn’t have time for dating. I needed my girl to jump into a real relationship immediately, and I needed a few weeks for her to get to know me and like me before she learned the truth about my job.

“I needed her to trust my feelings for her. I needed to woo her. To make sure she enjoyed every aspect of being with me.”

“You sound so calculated. You’ve been trying to manipulate me this whole time?” The moment I ask, I know it’s not true. It can’t be manipulation when a person tells you what they’re doing from the start.

“Yeah, I’m guilty. I’ve swayed our relationship as much as you allowed. But guys do worse during the dating dance. Like being the best version of five different guys in one, and then once you’re a couple, he’s none of those people. I wanted to skip that part. Be with you and be the best me I have in me with you, always.”

I scoff. “That’s nice, but look at you. A person with as many exes as you can’t possibly feel much for number fifty-two. I’m just another girl you like slightly better than the crowd, a chick from your serial harem, and that’s bullshit.”

“Shh, relax. Please?” His mouth caresses mine. I don’t pull away, but my lips are stiff against his.

“I admit that you started out that way—I had a few walls up to guard myself. You’re so beautiful. Those big innocent eyes made me want to own you and treat you so well you forgot yourself. You’re my type. I’m not going to lie about that.

“But then I did get to own you, and it was staggering. You were there so fully, so in our moment. You let me lead you through your body, and you sensed everything I gave you. You’re a cat, Savannah, arching into my hands, rippling like water that forms around me. You’re addictive.”

My stomach tightens at the memory of how this man guides us to ecstasy. He blinks, savoring gone pleasures too.

“But it wasn’t just that. You and I, we joked. We talked. You entrusted me with your fears and your secrets. You welcomed my help—even with your mother, you did, and that was huge for me. We had so much in the beginning, and it killed me when it disappeared. It was like being expelled from a heaven I hadn’t even known to miss.

“You’ve had names for what we were or weren’t, Savannah, but those names never changed what you were to me. You’ve been my girl the whole time.”

I open my mouth to reply, but Ciro isn’t finished.

“I know what I want, and I don’t mess around. I want you. I want you so badly I’ll do anything to keep you. These ups and downs, the breakup, the distance between us has only solidified the one thing I know for sure, and that is how much I love you. I mean business, Savannah. Long-term business.”

I let out a sob. “Ciro, I… I’m sorry.” I shake my head, forming and letting go of words. “I love you too, but—”

“Good.”

“No, it’s not. You know I’ve had a hard time thinking of you with other women.” He wants to cut in, but I cover his mouth. “It helped to meet Ana and Aaron. I saw how he looked at her, how completely he accepted her other world.”

I exhale. Get ready for the rest of it. “Then you came with me to my mom’s, and again you helped me coax her out of a crisis in the smoothest way possible. I was so full of you after that I believed I could do us.”

I don’t like the tentative smile on his face. It’s like I’m giving something only to snatch it away in the next instant. “For a moment, I thought we could be together. I thought I might not question your loyalty to me. I’d keep to the rules of smart porn-star girlfriends and boyfriends and not visit you at work. I wouldn’t watch gifs you’re tagged in on your social media or read the fans’ comments. I’d do it right.”

“Savannah, baby girl.”

“Ciro, I never told you what I was doing at your house the day Silk was there. I was there to tell you I was ready to be your girlfriend again.”

He groans. Drops his hold on me to scrub a hand over his face. Then he curses under his breath. “She shouldn’t have come.”

“She did because she needed you.”

“I couldn’t shut the door on her! She’s been through so much.”

“I know, and that’s exactly my point.” I draw back to caress him. Watch my own fingers as they trace his temple and run down the hollow of his cheek. Light stubbles. God, I love him. I do love him, and this hurts so much.

“I’d come to terms with living with your job as our shadow. I wasn’t going to let myself freak out over it anymore because you kept telling me, kept showing that you wouldn’t attach your heart and mind to another woman.

“But now...” A lump growing in my throat, and I have to swallow it before I can continue.

“If I not only have to struggle with your job, if I can’t trust that I have your heart— If Silk or another woman can bounce in at any moment, then I’d be a fool to give up Status Quo for you.”

I expect him to rebuke me. Reason with me. Instead I get silence. It stretches on, longer, wider, until my lump is replaced by the threat of tears. I can’t let them leak out right now.

He cradles my head tenderly and pulls me toward him until his face buries in my hair. With his nose, he runs a path down, freeing my throat and my ear of cover and leaving me open to him.

He kisses me there, wordless pecks at first, leaving dampness that cools in the night air. But then he laps, suckles—loves—I’ve bared my grit to him, and this is what he does; he worships me.

The world can’t be this ironic, can it? How can he be how he is? There must be a ruler up there with a magical finger pointing at me, now, saying, “There.” Zap! “Let’s see how she handles this.”

But then that ruler is gone. He’s gone, because Ciro is all there is. A benevolent moon lends shine to his skin. It glows as he lays me down and fans his hands open under my shirt.

Fears have the ability to melt.

I respond. I arch up for more. A thigh presses between my legs, spreading me open and rocking against my core. I moan. I seek his touch. We’re not close enough, not warm enough, and he knows when I can’t wait for him anymore.

He should have let me go, but as he pushes my pants down, as the harsh breeze of the ocean hits me down low, I realize what he’s doing.

Wordlessly, he argues with me in the way he knows best. Wave after wave of pleasure runs through me with the slickness he pulls, with each moan he draws, for each jerk against the sand.

When he presses inside of me, I whimper, and it’s our first time all over again. He’s hard. His width forces me open, demands that I take him, and tonight he doesn’t ask if I’m okay.

Tonight, he anchors my hips when anxiety tenses my muscles. Hotly, he breathes against my throat. He groans and eases inside of me so slowly he trembles.

“I don’t care,” I hiss. “I don’t care if it hurts.”

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t heed me. Slowly, he feeds himself into me until I lift off the ground for more. His stab is deep red desire, heat piercing through my abdomen. I squeal. He doesn’t ask if I’m okay, doesn’t ask, but I am so, so okay.

I’m a quivering mess when he stills over me. My eyes transfix on his face as sure hands move down until they clench around my waist. He holds me in position like he has plans.

My heart kicks into a frenzy. It’s “Flee! Now!,” but I am swollen and drenched with the most primal of urges. We’re joined to his hilt, and I start to contract around him.

Pained, he shuts his eyes. “Can you take more?”

My noise of consent makes me sound wounded. Pleasure and angst-ridden anticipation make me shake.

“Goddamn, you’re delicious,” he whispers.

He pulls out a little. I’m about to complain, but then he drives into me with such force that I rock upward on the sand, head off his jacket and grating against the ground.

I let out a Nngh, lose my breath but don’t have time to gather myself before he repeats it, faster, more, time after time, until that hot stab of pleasure piercing through me becomes a constant way-too-much!

I hold onto him, whining. My arms are around his neck and my legs circle his behind. The new orgasm takes me hard and runs off with me. He doesn’t even acknowledge it as he drives me toward the next without mercy.

“Oh God!”

There are no more words, just gasoline, more and more gasoline. It’s Ciro convincing me that I want this, that I can’t be without him. I drop my arms from around him, and I am alight with his fire.

I’m not sure if I come down all the way because he’s hammering into me, not allowing me to think. I am the flames he builds and builds and builds. I am senses only, and he has done this to me.

Faintly, I notice the sand digging under my nails. I’m clawing, wanting to ground myself. I can’t.

Ah how long can he keep going?

When I think that he slows down, it’s to turn me in his arms. With my back toward him, he lifts my hips enough to ram inside of me again, and I am gasping, pulsating. I am disaster.