Okay, seriously. What the hell was wrong with me?

I was a monogamist. A one-man woman. I’d been that way ever since my first boyfriend in the eighth grade. I was with one guy, usually a serious boyfriend, or no one at all. And I was good with that. It worked for me.

Yes, I’d had the occasional fling. And the very occasional one-nighter.

What I did not have was wild sex with my friends.

Which, somehow, had now become my thing?

First, I bent over for Ash at Jesse’s wedding.

Brilliant.

Now I let Seth get down on his knees, hike up my skirt, and…

Jesus. What the fuck was I doing?

This was Seth. And Seth was not Ash. Ash was a player, but at least I knew that.

Seth was… shit. I still didn’t have the first fucking clue what Seth was.

Seth, who had never had a real relationship with a woman. Seth, who had a fucked-up relationship with Jessa as a junkie teenager, and a bunch of fucked-up relationships with other junkies, and “friends with benefits” on both coasts.

And now, he had me. Naked in bed with him.

And I did not have the first clue how to handle it.

Seth… in my bed, naked and perfect, his lean, tanned body flung across my white sheets. How did I never notice before how fucking perfect he was?

I used to think Jesse Mayes was the most beautiful male specimen that ever existed. And now I could not stop staring at Seth.

There was just something about him. Lean and tight, masculine and graceful. I’d never met a man so comfortable in his own skin… so much so, that that ease rubbed off on you. It was a total fucking aphrodisiac.

And the way he touched me…

I’d never had a guy drop to his knees to worship me like that, right out of the gate.

And now, all I could think about was licking him all over his body, every inch of his beautiful skin. I wanted to make love to him, again and again and again… just stay here forever in this place where we could be together.

But I couldn’t do that.

We couldn’t do that.

Because he had to get up and clear out of here.

I had a life to get back to. A life Seth Brothers did not fit into… despite the fact that I’d done exactly as he’d accused me last night—summoning him here in hopes of something happening between us.

And now, here I sat. Frozen, clutching the sheet around me, just watching him sleep. Not knowing what to do or say when I woke him. How to not make it awkward and awful.

On those few occasions when I’d been horny—or drunk—enough to have a one-nighter with some random fanboy, I’d had my staff brush him off in the morning. I’d head out for breakfast or whatever, before he got up, and by the time I got back to the hotel, he’d be gone. Joanie or Maggie or security would have whisked him away.

Sometimes they left a number in hopes of hearing from me again. Of course, I never called them.

But I couldn’t do that to Seth.

This wasn’t some hotel on tour, and he wasn’t some fanboy.

And this did not feel like a one-nighter.

It felt like something I wanted to do again. And again.

Of course, it was a one-nighter. Because there was no universe that I knew of where Seth and I could be lovers.

If, by some miracle, he ended up with Dirty again, the two of us together was a bad, bad idea. I’d been down that road with Jesse. I wasn’t doing it again.

And even if he didn’t ever play with Dirty again… I wasn’t exactly gonna carry on an affair with him in secret and lie to everyone else I cared about.

And out in the open? A few days in Hawaii were one thing. Those paparazzi photos were suggestive but inconclusive. And we weren’t sleeping together then.

Now, we were. Or at least, we had. Once.

Well… twice.

If I was openly sleeping with Dirty’s ex-guitarist, how the hell would that ever work? What was I gonna do, put him up in a separate hotel when we were on the road, my scorned lover stashed away where he wouldn’t ruffle any feathers?

Not fucking likely.

I just could not see any way that this could play out. That he and I could be together in any sense of the word.

And I did not need this guilt hangover every time I slept with someone.

As I sat here in my guilt, I knew I had to be much smarter than this. When had I started letting my pussy make my decisions for me?

The longer I sat, the more anxious I felt about it all.

I just had so fucking much to lose.

Seth… he had everything to gain. Those photos would do nothing for him but good. The documentary series would do him good. Attaching himself to me, in any way, would only help him.

But those photos opened me up to judgment, criticism, and the possibility of damaging my relationships with my band members, not to mention Brody.

Suddenly, I felt ridiculously vulnerable.

On a whim—a delicious, stupid whim—I’d jeopardized everything. My band, my friendships, my public image. Who knew how this could be twisted, to be used against me?

And yet… I didn’t regret it.

I didn’t feel like this was done. But it had to be.

* * *

In the end, I didn’t wake him. I just sat next to him until he stirred and, maybe sensing that I was awake, he woke up.

He sat up, slowly, blinking in the dull morning light. It was still early, the sun not quite over the horizon; the house wouldn’t have full sun until almost mid-day. I usually loved mornings in this house. Sleepy, slow mornings in the shadow of the mountains, where I could be alone to drink coffee and play my bass or listen to music.

And it struck me; I’d never had a man in this bed before. I’d only bought this house earlier this year, and I’d never brought Ash here.

It felt extra-intimate, sitting here now, with Seth. I had the sheet pulled up around my chest, but he was uncovered. And the first thing he did was lean over, slowly, slip one hand around the back of my head… and kiss me.

I sighed, giving in to it. I dropped the sheet. Heat rose through me fast, an instinctual response, as my body remembered the things we’d done last night. And I felt the same inexplicable, irresistible connection I’d felt then.

When he broke the kiss, his eyes held mine, awake and smoldering with desire. “Do you want me inside you?” he murmured. And I realized I was clutching onto his shoulders, my fingers digging into his muscles.

“Yes.”

He pulled the sheet away, until there was nothing between us. He moved over me as I lay back to take him. Then he rammed inside. I met him with fast, frantic thrusts. We were already fucking before we’d barely gotten into a comfortable position. All I wanted was that connection—hot and fast, that maddening friction, his body possessing mine…

He stiffened, and before I knew what was happening, he pulled out.

“What…?” I panted.

“Condom. Shit. Condom,” he panted back. His eyes were huge. “Sorry… I can’t believe I fucking did that.”

Yeah. I couldn’t either.

I was a little more concerned, though, that I hadn’t even noticed he’d started fucking me without a condom.

“Get one,” I said, gesturing at the bedside table, where we’d left the box from last night.

He leaned in to kiss me, gently, on the mouth. Then he rolled over, got the condom, and rolled it on. When he came back to me, his eyes were still wide. He looked totally freaked out.

“Fuck. I’m sorry, Elle.”

His eyes on mine, so dark and regretful, so full of longing… it felt like he was apologizing for a hell of a lot more than the condom.

“It’s okay, Seth.”

We kind of fell into one another then, kissing and comforting each other. He stroked my hair back from my face as he kissed me. I slipped a hand around his neck and pulled him closer. We pressed together until we were dry-humping and then my legs were wrapped around his waist. Then he was sinking into me, and fire swept through my entire being.

And I felt it, as we came together…

Both of us… aching for connection.

For redemption, of a sort.

We’d both suffered massive rejection. We’d been heartbroken, in our own way. And as we lost ourselves in each other—on the bed, on the edge of the bed, and finally, on the floor—as the day gradually grew brighter… it was cathartic. It was beyond intense.

It felt like he was slowly stripping me down, laying bare all my shattered pieces, flooding my heart with a dangerous longing… thrusting heat and light into all my lonely, broken places.

As Seth fucked me on the furry rug by my bed, his hand braced against the bed frame so he wouldn’t ram me right into it, his smoky eyes locked on mine… I came, hard. So hard.

It was, hands-down, the most intense orgasm I’d ever had. It wasn’t just physical; it was pure emotional ecstasy.

Every part of me was tuned into him, into this.

Because Seth was showing me how to feel whole again.

He was teaching me, with his kisses, with his hands on my body, with the patient insistence of his thrusts, how to put the pieces back together. How to feel good again, from the inside out. Not good the way I’d felt when I slept with Ash; an empty kind of good. This good was all-consuming, and with our bodies entwined, it was a oneness I’d never felt before. A oneness I’d never expected to feel with him.

A oneness that I’d feared, in my darkest moments, I might never feel with any man.

But I already knew this man in a way I’d never known another man.

There was just something here, between us, that I couldn’t begin to explain. A bond. A shared pain, maybe. A shared restlessness. A shared need to heal. Something that maybe only Seth and I would understand, but that was real nonetheless. So true and so powerful, tears shook in my eyes as he came… as he held me down, his hands locked with mine, and stiffened, his breath catching. As his body pulsed heat into mine.

He shuddered and groaned. Then he kissed me. I felt his heartbeat in his lips on mine. His chest rose and fell against me.

I wrapped my legs around his hips, my arms around his back, and held him there. I couldn’t let go.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. I knew that.

And it definitely wasn’t supposed to be this good.

It wasn’t supposed to become something I couldn’t walk away from. Because I had to; I had to walk away from this before it was too late.

Before I was in so deep I couldn’t get out… and it fucked up everything between me and the rest of my band.

* * *

I stood on one side of the bed, dressed in my sundress from yesterday. I was watching Seth, on the other side, looking for his shirt. Somehow, it had ended up under the bed. I watched his body as he fished it out. The way he moved, strong, graceful; the way his muscles flexed under his smooth skin as he pulled the shirt on. But already, I felt detached from it all.

Already, I could feel myself drawing away. Growing cold. Distant.

It was the only way I knew how to handle this.

“I can’t start something with you,” I told him, and he looked at me. He was fully dressed now. “You know that. It was just sex.”

It was more or less the same thing I’d told Ash. But this time, it wasn’t just sex. I wasn’t the world’s biggest fool; I hadn’t just jeopardized everything that mattered to me for sex.

Maybe he knew that, but his shoulders dropped. “If that’s how you want it,” he said.

“That’s how I want it.” I was hugging myself, my toes curled tightly into the furry rug under my feet.

“Can I have your number?” he asked me. “I have Joanie’s. I don’t have yours.”

“No.”

“You don’t want me to call you?”

“No.”

Silence. He stared at me, and for a moment I thought he might fight me on this. Then he said, “You sure about that?”

“I’m sure.”

He didn’t look like he believed me. He looked hurt, kind of. Angry, maybe. But mostly… resigned.

I watched him take his phone out of his jeans pocket and call a taxi. Then he looked at me again, like he was waiting for me to say something else.

I didn’t.

“You make the rules, Elle,” he said softly. “I’ll follow them.” He didn’t make any attempt to come around the bed. He didn’t make a move toward me at all.

I just nodded.

“Joanie has my cell number,” he told me, “if you change your mind.”

Then he left. He walked out of my bedroom and I didn’t follow. I heard him downstairs, walking out the front door. He didn’t exactly slam it, but he didn’t close it softly, either.

I sat down on the bed and stared at the rug at my feet. I was still pulsing, my heart pounding, blood thrumming through my body from the sex we’d just had on that rug. From that feeling—the feeling of coming, of plummeting right over that edge, because he made me come. He made me come while he looked in my eyes. And the feeling of his kisses on my skin… The way his hands moved, so carefully, over my body.

Sometime later, I heard the taxi pull in. And when the car pulled out of the driveway, when Seth was gone, I did something I hadn’t done since Jesse left me.

I cried.