“What are you doing?”

I turned to see Cai standing behind me, holding two mugs of something with steam curling up into the cool air. He held one out to me, and I saw, with some surprise, that it was cocoa.

“Thank you,” I said before answering his question. “I was taking pictures.”

“Of what?” he asked as he sat down on his couch.

“The snow. My older sister, Lottie, won’t believe that this little bit of snow could cause an entire city to shut down.” I sat on the other side of the couch, but it was small enough that there were only a few inches between us.

“Does – did she live close to you?” He sipped some of the cocoa, licking his top lip to catch some of the extra foam that was stuck there.

I nodded and tried to pretend that I wasn’t distracted by his mouth. “She and her family live just a few blocks over from our parents. Simon has a place in Minneapolis that’s close to his son. Gene and his girlfriend got a place a few months back that’s on the other side of town.”

I took a drink of the cocoa and swallowed a moan. It tasted that good. “Was it weird for you, going from having three brothers around all the time to it being only you?”

He looked away from me, a distant expression on his face. “I’m grateful to my grandparents for what they did, taking my brothers and me, and I loved them, don’t get me wrong, but I lost my family more than twenty years ago.”

I reached over the small distance between us and put my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”

“Like I said, it was more than twenty years ago.”

I leaned toward him, waiting until he looked at me before I spoke, “That doesn’t mean you can’t still be grieving for them.”

He put his hand over mine. “Thank you.”

I leaned back, taking my hand with me. I picked up the mug again and busied myself with drinking it before it got cold.

After a minute or so of us drinking in silence, he broke it. “May I ask you something that’s a bit personal?”

I smiled. “After everything that’s happened between us, I think pretty much nothing you ask will be too personal.”

“Good point.” He turned so that he was angled toward me. “Why did you decide to lose your virginity to a stranger at a club?”

I shifted in my seat, wondering what had prompted him to ask that now. “I wanted something uncomplicated. No romantic entanglements. No fumbling or apologies. Codie’s suggestion promised all that. It seemed like a good way to get it taken care of before it became overly awkward.”

“Overly awkward?” he echoed.

“Going through high school as a virgin wasn’t a big deal. And for a woman, being a virgin in college wasn’t really that strange, especially since I was working on a Ph.D. People tend to accept academics as a legitimate reason for not having sex. But there seems to be an unspoken rule regarding virginity and age. For men, it’s younger than women, but it exists for us too.” I put down my now-empty mug. “A woman in her early to mid-twenties who has a religious reason for waiting to have sex – or something similar, anyway – is maybe eccentric, but it’s acceptable. Someone who isn’t waiting for marriage or true love, when she hits that mid-twenties mark, if she’s still a virgin, it becomes all about being an ice queen. Or a lesbian – don’t even get me started on that one. Or she’s stuck up and doesn’t think any man’s good enough for her.”

“People are idiots,” Cai said.

I laughed. “That is definitely true. But I didn’t do it for people. I didn’t want it hanging over my head. And it just felt like it was time.”

I was telling the truth, but I realized just then that I did care what Cai thought. And I didn’t want him to think less of me.

“I did it for myself, not anyone else. It’s what I wanted to do, and how I wanted to do it.”

Cai reached out and took my hand, threading his fingers through mine. “You don’t need to convince me. I believe you.”

He was still holding my hand, his thumb moving over my knuckles in an almost absent manner. Little sparks of electricity danced across my skin, and the warmth that spread through my body had little to do with the cocoa and everything to do with his touch.

“Is it my turn to ask something a little personal?”

“I’m an open book,” he said with a smile.

“You told me how you got involved in BDSM,” I said, looking down at our linked hands. “Now, I’d like to know more about that world. I’ve seen some, and I know a little, but I’d like to know more.”

He hooked a finger under my chin and lifted my head until our eyes met. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, but I’d like to know why.”

I reminded myself that I didn’t need to be embarrassed with Cai. He’d seen me at some of the most vulnerable times of my life. “What we’ve done together, I know it’s probably vanilla compared to what you normally do, but I liked it. A lot. And I’m wondering if it may be something I’ll want to explore more.”