Lord Almighty, I think I might need a stretcher. Plus a medic.

I’m not quite sure how I’m waking up with my back on fire, when at first all I’m aware of is that I’m naked and there are multiple parallel lines of burning raked from my shoulder blades all the way down to my ass.

Then I remember me and Skylar up against the door. Then on the floor. Then a twenty-minute break to catch our breath before we finally had a wheezing, hoarse conversation about the fact that she’s on the pill.

Then how my dick came to instant attention again, knowing I could fuck her raw.

Then somehow rolling into bed with her legs still wrapped around me and my cock still pounding inside her and our bodies clinging together with sweat while I moved over her again and again, fucking her like a beast in a rut I just can’t resist.

Holy goddamn.

She’s out cold, too – exhausted – and of course she’s predictably gorgeous.

I push myself up on one elbow and let myself get a good, long look at the body I’ve learned by touch over and over again for the past few hours.

Sky’s taut and compact, well-honed sinew hidden under delicacy and grace, with slim, girlish thighs and a shy little gap between them that drives me crazy. Plus there's those small, high, but still so full tits that felt so firm, yet so yielding and perfect when I gently bit into them just to have their texture, their taste.

They’d made me fucking crazy in her soft, lacy underthings, swelling up out of the taunting cups of her bra and peeking past the scalloped edges until I practically ripped the thing off with my teeth. Too damn eager to taste the luscious pink texture of her nipples.

Except for those soft pink buds and the richer pink of the sweet pussy between her thighs, she’s all shades of earth, from that dark brown hair to the soft sienna California tan of her skin. She's a treasure I want like mad to keep since the second I laid eyes on her full, bare glory. I just want to take root in her and grow deeper and deeper.

I want to fucking own her. Again and again and again.

I want forever.

Fuck me guilty, I’m a sentimental bastard.

A sound from the living room catches my attention, and I realize that’s what’s woken me up. My phone ringing in the jeans I left scattered on the living room floor.

I let it ring a while longer, lingering on Skylar and the peaceful, calm expression on her sleeping face. Don’t know how we ended up like this, how one question about where we stand landed us naked and wild and spent, but I’m not complaining.

I lean down, kiss her shoulder, and taste the salt of sweat on her skin.

Then I make myself let her go and roll carefully out of bed to pad naked into the living room and find my phone.

I’ve got over two dozen missed calls. That’d be alarming as fuck if they weren’t mostly from different numbers – except the half dozen from Landon.

“Shit,” I mutter, settling on the couch to listen to my voicemails.

They're all about Harmon, all of them dead ends, no info, no smoking guns. Everything checks out, and it pisses me off.

Sighing, I tap Landon’s number next, then wait for him to pick up.

“Yo,” he answers gruffly, sounding a little out of breath.

“Hey,” I say. “This a bad time? You don’t sound too good.”

“I’m fine.” That’s when I catch a plaintive mewl on the other side of the line, and my heart melts. I know that sound. “Kenna just dropped a spoiled rotten cat on my stomach, and this little furball’s too big to be used as a cannonball.”

Kenna’s voice drifts over the line. “You love it. Admit it.”

“I’d love it more if you hadn’t dropped him on my bladder,” Landon retorts with a snorting laugh. “Only thing worse is when you do it. You’ve got elbows like knives, woman.” Then he directs his attention back to me. “What can I do for you, Gabe?”

I hesitate. Listening in on his happy life feels awkward.

Hell, even talking to him feels awkward right now, when I’m still stinging over the accusations he made and the strain in our friendship. Accusations that incredibly just became true, dammit.

But we are still friends. He’s doing everything he can to help Sky – and to help me help her.

I find my voice and say, “I got your messages. Just wanted to see if there was anything new since then.”

He sighs. “Not a damn thing.” Then he breaks off with a hiss. “Ow! Mews, claws! What have I told you about them, you sneaky little –”

“Nice try. You don’t mean it,” Kenna says close by, cutting him off. “You treat those cats like they’re your kids, claws and all.”

“Do not,” Landon mumbles sullenly, but there’s a warmth and affection in his voice that tells me it’s a lie, and after a moment, I hear a gentle, loud purr over the line. Landon’s as good to those cats as anyone would be to their kids.

Don't know why but it makes me think of the missing kid.

Fuck, little Joannie deserves a father like that, wherever she is. Not the human scum, Harmon, whose only contributions to her life were a quick spurt and a sneer.

“Anyway, where were we?” Landon asks.

I sigh, rubbing my temples. “Can't rightly say. I don't know, boss. I just don’t want to accept that...fuck, it’s really this hopeless, isn’t it? No leads. And our best suspect ain't the asshole who did it.”

“I wouldn’t say hopeless, but...it’s tough. I’ll keep an ear out, Gabe. But right now, I got nothing. All Ketchum's job contacts check out. His alibis are solid, as incredible as it seems. Police checked the property and found drugs and money, but no sign of the girl.”

“Fuck,” I exhale wearily, running a frustrated palm over my face. “Guess I’ll let you get back to things, then. Call me if you hear anything new?”

“First thing,” he says. “Later, man.”

“Later.”

I hang up the phone and just sit there for a while, thinking, before I get up and put my clothes back on almost as an afterthought. This time, when I sit down to scribble in my book, it’s as much to organize my thoughts as to mark down a memory. I just need to lay everything out clearly. Maybe then I’ll see the clue I missed somewhere.

Maybe.

I go at it hard. No flowery languages or shit I want to burn into my brain.

Just the cold, hard truth about the last time with Harmon. Every word that bastard said. Every lead he gave us, backing up his story.

I’m still writing, scratching things down, when the whisper of Sky’s footsteps alert me that she’s up. I look up to see her leaning in the doorway, dressed in a pair of tiny running shorts and a tank top so small, all they’re doing is teasing me with glimpses of what I can’t see but remember the taste and touch of very well.

She offers me a faint smile, then pads over and drapes on the couch next to me, tucking against my side, hugging my arm to her chest. The little gesture nearly splits my heart in two with how it swells. I’m just opening more and more wounds inside myself, things that let her into my veins like poison.

But if she’s poison, I think I’d gladly die of her. I'd give old Socrates a run for his money, swallowing up every bit of the irresistible hemlock that's Skylar Szabo.

“Hi,” she says simply, and I grin.

“Hiya. Sleep well, Sunbeam?”

“Almost too well. Didn’t want to wake up.” She yawns, rubbing her cheek to my arm. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Phone just woke me up.”

“Anything important?”

“Nah. Just that damn robo-dialer that likes to scream ‘Congratulations!’ and something about a bullshit phantom cruise at the top of her fuckin’ lungs.”

Skylar laughs softly. “Oh, God, I know just the one.” Then she glances down at my lap, and the book. “Okay...so...I gotta ask. You’re always writing in that thing. What’s the deal? Writing the great American novel?”

I laugh sheepishly. “Not quite. It's...kind of a record, I guess?”

“A record of what?”

I hesitate. Can I really tell her this? About my old man and the terror his breakdown left behind?

After that heat and wonderfulness between us, I don’t want to break it with the heaviness inside me and all the dark shit riding my shoulders, especially when she looks so lazy and relaxed right now. Especially when she’s draped against me so trustingly, instead of bristling with all those porcupine spikes and sticking me everywhere.

Fuck.

It's too soon.

Then again, is it so wrong that I ache for this prickly goddamn woman to see me, to know me, to understand me? That faint feeling I got when we first met, that we’re alike...it’s so strong now, and I want that again. I want her to know she's not alone in all her sheltered secrets she's pressed into my hands.

And maybe, deep down, I don't want to be alone either.

Maybe if I open up to her, she’ll open up to me more, and we can be not alone together.

“It’s a record of my life,” I say, fixing my eyes on hers. “Impressions. Important shit. The good, the bad, the ugly. I write so if what happened to my old man ever happens to me, I won’t forget like he did.”

Her brows knit together, puzzled. “Your father forgot? I don't follow. What'd he forget?”

“Me. Mama. Everything. He forgot everything.” I take a deep breath, but it only binds the knot of pain in my chest tighter. “He had Alzheimer’s. And there’s a genetic predisposition for it. I’m worried maybe it’s gonna hit me too one day, so I’m writing down what counts. All the little reminders I can so that when I’m not me anymore, I’m still not completely lost. Long as I can read, I can remember part of who I am.”

“Oh, Gabe.” Her hand is soft on my arm, the warmth and sympathy in her eyes real. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Where is he now?”

“Dead,” I say it bluntly. “Been gone a few years. We didn’t realize how bad off he was till it was too damn late. One day, he just wandered off, and we didn’t find him again for three fucking years. By then, he’d turned into this drunk, fucked up mess, and it killed him a few short months later. Dad fell in with the wrong people because he didn't know no better. Those assholes helped kill him faster.”

Those words scorch my throat, angry and truthful. They still feel like a lie.

I want to say I killed him, because I wasn’t smart enough or good enough or fast enough to save him.

But I know that's a cop out. I know there's no cure for shit that hits the brain, but damn if I don't regret not doing everything to make Dad's last years on earth comfortable, peaceful, at home with Mama and me.

But I can’t get the words out. I've told her enough.

Sensing the same thing, Sky just lays her head on my shoulder without a sound. I’m supposed to be her comfort. Her rock. Her shield.

Except now, she’s comforting me, loaning me her warmth and that wordless empathy that makes her feel everything so strongly, so wildly, wild enough to make her fierce and formidable for the people she cares about.

Will she ever care about me that way?

Maybe it’s that question that makes me say more.

That makes me force the words up, because I want her to know me right here, right now.

Everything I am, everything I’ve been, everything I love and hate about myself.

So I know if I’ve even got a chance when she might find me too repulsive to ever touch again, after she knows who I really am.

“It fucked me up for a while,” I whisper. “I started drinking right out of the Army, taking on some odd jobs, screwing and boozing my woes away. Then I landed a gig with Deep Horizon. You heard of them?”

She sucks in a soft breath, her eyes a wide, pale blue. “Yeah. God. They’re all over the news. Private contractors. Mercenaries with no morals. Some people say they should be tried as war criminals for what they’ve done overseas, while everybody else says they’re war heroes for doing what soldiers wouldn’t.” Her eyes widen. She stares at me. “Gabe, you...?”

I wince. Every word she's saying about that demon outfit is true.

I can’t quite read anything on her face other than shock, and I have to look away.

“Yeah. I worked for 'em. Not much overseas, but their domestic arm...they hired me out on a lot of private jobs, and I didn’t ask questions. They paid me, and I made people disappear. Usually wasn’t my hand on the trigger. It was just my job to deliver people where they were supposed to go. Long as I didn’t know what happened to them, it wasn’t on my conscience.”

Except it was.

This black, horrible stain, sinking deeper and deeper until I can’t ever be clean again.

But Skylar’s not pulling away from me. I don’t understand why, but she’s still warm against me, her hand falling to rest on my chest and curl in my shirt.

“I don’t think you really believe that,” she whispers. “I've heard how good they pay. You'd have never quit if it didn't cut deep.”

“No...no, I don’t,” I answer bitterly. “That’s why I got out. That, and Landon. He knew me then, saw my whole downfall, and maybe that’s why it’s so easy for him to believe I’d go back to those old ways. Even if I couldn’t, not after what happened. Because I started wondering. I started digging. And I turned up an obituary for a kind little old man I’d convinced myself had to be some kind of crook, or they wouldn’t have sent me after him. Maybe he was into some dark shit, money laundering or something, yeah, but there's no justice in him disappearing off the face of the Earth without a proper trial.” My vision blurs red, horror rattling around my head. “He had six grandkids. They all came to his funeral.”

“You didn’t kill him, Gabe.”

“But I’m probably the fuck who gave him to the people who did!” I flare, then force myself to take a deep, wet-tasting breath and shake my head. “I couldn’t do it anymore, Sky. I can’t do it no more. I can’t be that person.”

“Your face, when you took me to Harmon...I get it now,” she says softly. “That’s why you were like that. You were almost back in that place again.”

It catches me off guard, realizing she’d noticed. That she’d been paying that much attention while being face to face with Harmon twisted her up in her own demons.

“Maybe,” I admit reluctantly. “Something like that.”

“You were willing to do that for me? Go there again?”

“For you and for Joannie,” I say, smiling bitterly. I feel so completely torn open right now, but fuck. She’s not rejecting me. “Better reason than any damn paycheck.”

She just looks at me for long, searching moments. Moments that make me feel naked and vulnerable, before her lashes lower as she rests her head back on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Don’t be. Don’t you ever apologize for what I chose to do.” My fingers clench against the book still clutched in my hand. “I ain't stupid. Already knew from the day I first put your name in my book that I was gonna do whatever I could to help you.”

She blinks, tilting her head back to look up at me again. “I’m in there?”

My face burns a little. Like I'd been outside under the summer sun too long. I duck my head. “Well, yeah. Told you, I write down the things I want to remember. And I wanted to get down a few real important things tonight about the girl I've been writing about for weeks.”

She arches a brow. A touch of amusement breaks through the gloom of my goddamned maudlin bullshit, like the sunbeam I know she is. “Weeks, huh? What the hell have you been saying about me?”

“You really wanna know?”

“Yes.” She says so eagerly it's almost comical, trying to hide how bad she wants it. Then she reaches for the book, but I snatch it out of her way.

“Nope,” I say. “Don’t you know you don’t read little boys' diaries without permission?” Grinning, I flip to the first page where I’d penned down the first day I saw her. “I’ll read it to you.”

She pouts, but flumps against me again, all those sleek curves molding just right against my body. “Fine. Read me a story, then.”

I laugh, grateful for the distraction, and start to recite my own words back. “I started this job today. Protection gig. Thought it was gonna be easy, but there’s nothing easy about Skylar Sunbeam Szabo. She’s what they mean when they say dynamite comes in small packages. She’s a hundred pounds soaking wet, if that, and every goddamn pound of that is beautiful and wild. She’s got eyes like blue diamonds, with edges sharp enough to cut. She's got a fire behind them to make me think the pain might be worth it. But when they catch the sun just right, the ice is gone. They’re warm. Warm as sunbeams. She’s a walking, defiant sunbeam, and I think, deep down inside, this week’s gonna be all kinds of interesting.”

I look up and see a Sky I've never seen. The girl’s gone fire engine red, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t tickle the hell out of me.

She growls, burrowing her face into my bicep.

“Ugh. I’m not any of those things except maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet.”

“You asked, darlin', and that’s how I see you,” I say, draping an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to kiss her hair.

She doesn’t pull away, and some of the tension in me unravels.

Whatever this is with us, I haven’t ruined it.

Maybe she does understand me, after all. The same way I wanna understand her.

We sit like that for some time, comfortably nestled together. The windows are cracked open, and the whole room smells like the sea and Skylar.

I recognize that scent now. That scent from home.

She smells like honeysuckles.

Like summer when the honeysuckles are just these full open fronts, delicate and spraying everywhere, dripping their heavy sweet nectar into the air, permeating every breath.

After a while, though, she shifts against me, her eyes slipping open pensively. “Hey, Gabe?”

I pull from my quiet trance and look down at her. “Yeah?”

She bites her ripe, luscious lower lip, then says, “It’s okay.”

It comes out halting, straggling, like somebody’s choking the words out of her, but I’m patient and I wait her out while she continues slowly, “I know what it’s like. It’s...it’s not just you with the bad stuff behind you.”

She's quiet for a long moment. I tighten my grip, tilt her little chin with my hand, and stare into her eyes. “Something you wanna tell me, darlin'?”

“My parents...they died when I was young because my Dad got caught up in too many bad things with some cronies who did the Grizzlies MC wrong. The club was into a lot of bad stuff then, before it got cleaned up years ago. It left me feeling cheated. Pissed off. Full of so much hate for so long. But I guess I grew up, finally. Learned to channel it into learning to be strong enough to protect my grandmother and Monika. But that hate never went away, and when I went into the military...” Her body tightens against me, almost vibrating with tension. “I met a lot of good people there. Learned discipline. But I also learned how to use that hate. How to channel it to kill. That’s...that’s not something that ever leaves you. It changes you. It can fuck you up in a lot of ways.”

Sky finally looks at me then, and I see a crack past the icy layer of those eyes, a crack that seems to lead all the way down to her heart, opening up to let me see.

“It’s okay if it fucked you up,” she whispers. “It fucked me up, too. What matters is finding a way to break free.”

It’s weird to hear myself reflected in the pain in her voice, the bitterness, the brokenness, that lost question of what am I, now? What am I, after the things I’ve done? After the things that made me something I never wanted to be?

Weird, but comforting in a way I never knew I needed till it was mine.

Even if that’s only temporary, when we haven’t said a thing about what we’ve done or where we stand or what this even means after tonight.

I take her hand and lift it to my lips. “You think we’re free of it now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe in this moment, yes. Forever? I really don’t know.” She shakes her head. “I don’t like to think about it.”

I turn her hand, exposing the underside of her wrist, and press my lips to her pulse. “Then let’s not think about it, darlin'. Let's keep our minds on the here and now.”

“Yeah?” she says, a note of hope in her voice, and I smile.

“Hell yeah.”

And then there’s no need for words at all as she stands, and drawing me by the little pixie hand I've captured, leads me into the bedroom with our clothes falling by the wayside with every single step.

It’s strange how in just a few short nights, I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t fall asleep without my hand finding its familiar place in the naked curve of Skylar’s hip.

What started as an impulse has turned into a habit.

A pretty damned terrible one. A fucking glorious habit, too.

I feel like I almost live here now, when I’ve only left to get a few changes of clothes from my AirBnB spot and she’s only left to go to work. Every evening, we spend hours poring over Chinese takeout and all her notes, digging for anything we can to get a lead on Joannie, putting our brains together. We’re smarter together than we are apart, working up a killer game plan with a few promising leads.

Then the late nights come, where it’s just me and her and sweet skin, where she tastes like honey-sweat and moans my name like a dream.

I never met a woman who can take me the way she does. I gotta be careful, most of the time. Don’t want to hurt nobody. I grew up big. Every woman who ever spread her legs for me never knew whether to fall down and thank her lucky stars I'm so well endowed, or to run for the hills.

But little Sky begs for it.

She wants me rough and wild. She takes all of me, every seething inch, and asks for more till I’m so goddamn addicted to her it’s scary. It’s like that fuzzy moment when the alcohol hits my veins and I know I could turn into my Dad too easy, unable to survive without the bottle.

Would it be so bad, though, if I couldn’t survive without her?

I feel like I’m gonna die right now, if I can’t have more of her.

She’s hot underneath me, arching, her breasts flush against my chest, and I’m fucking her as hard and raw as I can.

Because there’s this sound she makes when my cock hits home, when I slam into her just right, and I need to hear it again and again. I need to find the spot inside her that makes her let go. The uncertainty, the pain, every dark thing in this world. It's the place where she gives up and becomes mine, and only mine. Mine in every sheet-clenching, soft cursing, heart-pounding detail.

She’s wet and tight around me, so fucking slick, dripping for me everywhere and making more of those fine scratch lines down my back again. I feel like a beast when I hold her down and take pleasure in making her scream when I angle her hips up so that every time I hit deeper, deeper, harder, drowning myself in her heat.

“Wider, darlin',” I whisper, reaching between her legs as she complies. “Open the hell up so I can frig that clit when I come.”

“Gabe!”

She's already on the edge. If I weren't about to go over it, too, I'd be grinning like a fool.

Instead, it takes all my energy to sink my thumb against her swollen nub. I frig like mad, while her hot little pussy pinches me for all its worth, growling the whole time. Her knees buckle together, the sheer force of the orgasm fury I'm fucking into her bending them together, but I pull them apart again.

Then I use that space to drive us both home.

“Sky, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Fuck yes.

I break down into a jabber of rude words and ruder sensations, ripping through me like a firestorm.

I slam her body into the mattress, still frigging between her legs, coming my goddamn brains out and taking hers with me.

I come like I've found the one sweet thing I've been missing all my lonesome life.

I come like a man, a beast, a demon possessed.

I come like the addict I am, lost in everything big and bold and beautiful about Sky, packed into her tight, sweet body, mind, and soul.

I'm so gone I don't even care.

Because I can’t get enough of her face in the afterglow, after I've left her exhausted, still leaking my seed on the sheets. I love how she glistens with sweat in the early morning light, her hair a damp spilling tangle of wisps clinging to her cheeks, her eyes almost fully closed except for the faintest slip of those gleaming blue slits locked on me.

Because I take her again in record time, pushing into her, getting her little gasp of surrender I love more than life itself.

She’s clutching at me, her head tossed back, her kiss-reddened lips parted and still gasping for mercy, her back arched and thrusting her breasts into my kneading palms till her nipples are hard against my fingertips.

“Gabe, Gabe, Gabe!” My name is a mantra on her lips. A whimper, a prayer, a plea, urging me to drive into her like mad.

I do. Fuck, do I ever.

I'm shaking every bone in her body when her pussy tenses around me, and she goes off again, pure dynamite.

And I feel it coming when she goes tight in her belly and locks around me.

Then, suddenly, I’m being crushed and I can’t move, this heat squeezing me tight like she’s demanding my all.

And I can’t resist. Every boiling drop in my balls belongs to this woman.

I'm roaring when my second orgasm of the day pours out of me.

I lose sight of her in the clouds over my vision as I collapse into an explosion, crumbling down everything inside me. Pleasure pulls from me in sharp jerks that seem like they reach down in that hard hot place just below my cock and behind my balls, drawing everything out from inside me in harsh bursts that leave me panting, spent, wrecked in all the best ways.

“Sky,” I whisper, collapsing on top of her, boneless as a jellyfish. I don’t want to move.

I don't want to breathe. Don't want to do anything that'd take me away from this, away from her, away from the serenity we find fucking like wild animals, and so much more.

So, why the hell's the phone ringing now?

Skylar groans and pushes at me. “That’s mine. Let me up.”

“I don’t wanna.” I grumble and mock-bite at her shoulder. “It’s Saturday. Can’t we just damn well stay in bed?”

She sucks in a breath, one that makes her body clutch in a way that aches around my sore, spent cock. “Oh, crap. Saturday.” She tips her head back, glancing toward the nightstand, then strains one arm out to catch her phone just as the screen goes dark. Not before I catch a glimpse of Ms. Monika’s name and a little thumbnail photo. “Jesus.”

Aw, shit. She actually sounds upset, and I’m quick to move, gently separating us and letting her up before sprawling out next to her. “Sky? What’s wrong?”

“I completely forgot.”

She’s up quick as an arrow, though she’s tottering, wobbling – walking a little bowlegged, as we like to say down South. Like she’s gonna have to ride sidesaddle for a while, and even though I’m worried, I’m a little smug, too. She’s a wobbly girl, but she’s my wobbly, gorgeous girl.

Mine forever, I hope.

My wobbly, beautiful woman darts for her closet, shamelessly naked but dragging down clean clothes. “I promised Grandma and Monika I’d check in today. I do every weekend, and I’m late. With all the crazy stuff these past few months, they’re probably scared as hell that I didn’t show.”

I push myself up, leaning on one arm. “Then call her back and let her know we’re on the way before she sends the cavalry.”

She pauses, giving me a strange look. “We?”

I grin. “If I don’t come, they’re gonna ask you where I am, and then they’re gonna try to interrogate you with all that relationship talk stuff you don't like. If I’m there, they at least won’t do it in front of me.”

“You hope,” she says, and then groans. “Have I mentioned I hate that you have them so figured out?”

“That’s what family’s like. Pain in the ass, but you love 'em.” Laughing, I push to my feet. “So, c'mon, Sunbeam. I’ll come along for a buffer. You just tell me one thing...” I rake my gaze over her, especially that tight, pert little ass. “We showering alone or together?”

She flushes, but there’s a hot light in her eyes. “If we shower together, we’re not getting out of here for hours.”

“Nah. I'll be a good boy. It’s more efficient.” With a smirk, I step back toward the bathroom door. “Tell you what. I’ll be in the shower, and if you happen to join me...”

“Oh, you ass,” she says, laughing and tossing her clothes aside.

Then she practically tackles me into the bathroom.

She tastes even better wet, rainwater that I lick off her skin with her legs spread in front of me and my mouth on her clit and my tongue delving inside her. We fuck slow and smooth up against the shower wall, water glazing us together in a hot, steaming layer.

We’re a few minutes late getting out the door.

I don’t think either of us cares.

It takes everything in me not to look as smug as the cat that got the cream when, as we leave for her Grandma's place, I can see her visibly trying to hide her limp.

Yeah, no.

Sky's stiff lockstep walk ain’t gonna fool no one.

We’re greeted at the door by Grandma Eva and a jumping, overly excited German Shepherd, barking and wiggling all over me till I let him sniff me and scratch his scruff and find out his name is Eber. He’s sweet, licking my hand before nearly tackling Skylar to the ground. She laughs and buries her face in his fur.

“Someone missed me,” she says.

“We all missed you,” Grandma Eva retorts, shooting us both sly looks. Skylar winces dutifully.

I grin. Grandma Eva’s got her grandmotherly guilt trip down pat.

“Sorry,” she says, and urges the dog down as we both step inside fully and close the door. “We lost track of time.”

“I bet you did,” Monika calls from the cozy dining room. We follow her grandma through the house to the open kitchen and dining area, where Monika’s busy making inroads into a loaf of soft, moist brown bread that smells like bananas.

Skylar sniffs, wrinkling her nose.

“Banana bread?” She shoots Grandma Eva a weird look. “You never make banana bread.”

“And I never will, vile concoction that it is,” Eva says, turning her nose up. “Jim made that. He’s worried about Monika not eating, so he thought he could tempt her. The man knows her sweet tooth all too well.”

“Welp, it’s working,” Monika mumbles around a mouthful. “God, can that man bake.”

“And he brought flowers, too!” Eva gestures to an arrangement of tiger lilies on the table, beaming almost proudly. “I wouldn’t know what we’d do without that man around to lift our spirits.”

I frown, tilting my head. “Jim?”

Skylar starts to answer, opening her mouth, but Eva beats her to it, almost gushing. “He’s our neighbor. He’s the most darling man. Shame he's moving soon,” she says quietly.

Skylar drops into a chair next to Monika and steals a slice of the rapidly vanishing banana bread. “And he bakes for us. All the time. It’s always something new, though his apple turnovers are the best. Better than any bakery.”

“He took it up when his daughter died, you know,” Eva says, clucking her tongue sadly. “I think that’s why he cares for us so much. He knows what it’s like to lose someone. She had a heart defect, poor thing. Worse, his marriage just didn’t survive the loss. His wife left, and it’s only him, baking for comfort and looking after us. It’s almost inspiring, the way he perseveres in the face of hardship. Always a smile for anyone, no matter how much pain he’s in. Why, if he was just a few years older...”

“Grandma!” Monika laughs and points her fork at Eva. “Back off, cougar. If he was a few years younger, he’d be mine.”

Eva gives her a half-disgusted, half-amused look. “I am in no way a cougar, young lady.” She tosses her hair. “I like the term 'lynx' better. Much prettier, graceful beasts. And you could learn to mind your elders.”

I can’t help but laugh. The Szabo women are something else.

It’s hard not to be fond of them. Feels like second nature settling into brunch at Eva’s house, and I even find a place helping out in the kitchen.

They treat me like I belong, and I get to see the side of Sky that warms and opens up around her family, laughing, teasing, and comfortable. The only thing missing is the coo and call of a happy baby.

That, plus the subtle secret wish that Skylar wouldn’t tense almost guiltily every time we brush each other in passing or I catch her hand for a little squeeze.

I’m in the living room laying out dishes while Grandma Eva folds linen napkins when that canny old woman drops the bomb on me, though. She glances over, smiling slyly, and says, “So have you been shopping in San Francisco much?”

I glance up, putting another plate down from the stack. “Huh? Nah, haven’t really had time. I know where to get groceries and where to change a flat tire, and that’s about it.”

“Pity.” She clucks her tongue. “Seems as though you should be getting around to the jeweler’s shops soon. I could recommend a few for a nice young man.”

Jeweler's shops? What in the –

I blink blankly – but when it hits, it hits.

Like a goddamn brick to the face.

Even if Sky’s still calling me her friend, even if they don’t know the real reason I’m tailing Skylar like her shadow, we’re not exactly subtle. The looks, the touches, all of it.

Grandma Eva’s convinced we’re really a thing, something real that has more of a future than a few wild nights tearing up the sheets.

And the second Skylar catches the faintest whiff of it, I have a feeling she’s gonna put me out on my ass.

I can’t be rough tonight.

Not when Grandma Eva filled my head with all these tender thoughts.

Not when she made me think about futures I hadn’t even considered as real possibilities before.

Not when she put ideas in my head.

Skylar and I don’t talk about these things. We know to keep it simple. We kiss, we grapple, we fuck, we sleep, and any time we could spend asking each other what this really is gets spent instead with her wrapped around me.

Her tight little bod chases all thoughts beyond the present from my brain when all I can think about is how hot she is inside and that slick, wet clap of my cock slamming against her inner walls.

I want to ask her.

Right here, right now, as I tumble her onto the bed, as I ease her clothes away from her body one piece at a time, revealing every soft, smooth inch of skin I’ve caressed and bitten and tasted again and again. With every brush of my lips over her throat, her shoulders, the soft valley between her tits, the delicate traceries of her ribs, the smooth swell of her stomach, the quiver of her inner thighs...

Fuck me. It all screams forever. I just didn't know how to frame forever into terms my perma-bachelor ass could process till now.

And now, it's all I can damn well think about.

I want to ask Sky if she can be mine. Permanently.

It's hard to find words when there's something on the line that makes me feel like a bashful high school kid again, going in for his first French kiss.

So I only ask her again and again in sweltering silence. I ask her as I worship her body with my mouth, tease the cups of her bra away with my teeth, define the patterns of her tender, pink nipples with my tongue. I taste her like I’m gonna brand her flavor on my tongue.

Her skin is the salt of the sea, and even that taste is the blue I want to remember: bright sky and ocean waves, salt tang and quintessentially Sky with her ice-blue eyes dilated and smoky and dark as she writhes underneath me, melting, whispering my name.

“Gabe.”

Her fingers are in my hair and my heart pounds like mad, because it’s not just her gravity pulling me in. It's not just the sharp riptide current of needing her that took me under till I’m drowning.

It’s her.

It’s her reaching for me, wanting, drawing me close. An unspoken answer to my unspoken question hanging in every move she makes, and I'd be lying to myself if I said it was crystal clear but goddammit let me lie for just one more night.

Let me lie.

When I slide down her body and find her pussy already wet, I seal my mouth over her panties and suck the cloth gently past my lips, drinking in another taste of her and making her gasp, keening, digging her heels into my back.

I taunt her through the fabric, wetting it with every push of my tongue against her heat, teasing her with friction only to nudge it aside and give her what she begs for.

I want to be inside her so fucking bad. It’s teasing us both to mimic what we want with the slow searching caresses of my tongue, parting her open and delving deep inside.

I’m drunk on her. Drugged on the scent flooding my nostrils, rising from the wetness slicking her skin, my lips, my cheeks.

Completely intoxicated on the heady sound of her cries. Hooked on a moment I don’t want to let go of, when I know if I take that leap we’ll go plummeting together, and we can only fall for so long and so hard before we crash and it’s over and my lie is gone.

Then we'll be left with nothing but the reminder this ain’t a bed I belong in for more than a few nights.

There’s something almost fragile about her, as I grip her hips and hold her writhing body still enough that I can press the head of my cock against her warmth. Or maybe that’s what I want to see, when I know how hard she tries to hide the woman under the soldier.

But when she's like this, it's all soft femininity and giving sweetness and pure gorgeous passion, and I want to believe I’m the only one who gets to see her like this. I’m the only one who gets to hear “Gabe, Gabe” on her lips as she curls her fingers against the back of my neck and bites her nails in and draws me down to kiss her while I roll my hips forward to sink inside.

I'm the only one who'll have her sweet cunt again as we’re joined mouth to mouth and body to body, and her heat draws me deep, so deep, fuck to fuck and soul to soul deep.

I take it slow, even though my body howls at me to just rut.

She makes me an animal, desperate for her, but I want this to last and I hold myself back with everything in me. But that’s just as much torture, when drawing out every second stretches every hot rush of friction and tight contraction around my cock; draws out every moment in the bliss on her face, quiet and transfixed.

Draws out damned near everything each time I slip into her welcoming wet fire and find home in that perfect spot where her body locks to mine. If this is Hell, call me a sinner.

‘Cause I’m losing myself in her burn.

I know when it’s coming, too. Not just with how her body tightens, but because I know her. I know her more than she wants me to, and when she’s close she shuts her eyes tight like she’s in pain and turns her face away as if she can hide, as if she can keep it a secret that someone else is making her lose control.

Fuck, darlin', come.

“Come for me, Sky,” I whisper into the darkness, the same thing I've heard in my own head like a steady chant for the last minute.

Struggling to breathe, my cock so fucking hard it’s killing me and her body tense and stroking around me in a way that’s fit to drive me out of my goddamn mind, I brace myself over her, lean down, capture her sweat-misted jaw gently in my fingers, turn her toward me.

“Don’t hide,” I say, barely able to find my cracking, heavy voice. “Don’t hide from me. Just come. Let me have it all.”

Her eyes swell. She clutches at me, fingers on my back, arching, lifting her hips. I taste her mouth one last time, all the sugar and brimstone and the breathlessness of her cries.

Then she crushes down on me, her body a trembling tripwire, a wonderful clenching slickness taking me in deeper still and teaching me exactly how pain becomes pleasure when she crashes down all around me.

I manage to whisper “Sky,” gathering her close against me, before I’m gone.

It’s like a knife-thrust of pleasure through my body as I come, this vicious thing as sharp-edged as the feelings this woman brings out in me.

I come for Skylar Szabo with the same raw need, the same heat, the same roar she gives when she comes for me.