I wake up to streams of sunlight coming through the parted curtains in the pool house. For a long, pleasant moment, I just squint at that bright light, bleary-eyed and dazed. My body aches in places I didn’t even know existed, but it’s a pleasant ache. It’s bone-deep and makes me want to curl up in this bed forever.

My pussy throbs—after our shower, after Killian ate me out until I’d come so many times I could hardly stand—he wound up working himself into a fever again. This time, we didn’t bother with the bed. He just pushed me up against the glass side of the pool house, our bodies pressed against it in a fleshy tableau, and fucked me from behind, hard and fast and rough again. But the whole time, he kept saying my name, kept leaning in to whisper against the nape of my neck how sexy I looked, how much he adored me.

It was like he couldn’t get enough of me. Like everything I did or said made him wild with lust.

I have to admit, it was pretty fucking hot. Even if it did leave me sore enough that I’m going to be walking bow-legged all day. I reach down to touch my swollen pussy, and inhale sharply, a not-altogether-unpleasant throb pulsing through my nerves from that touch alone.

My muscles feel loose and thoroughly used, everything from my thighs where they gripped Killian’s waist to my ass where I struggled to hold myself standing in the shower and against that glass wall. Even my arms and my shoulder muscles are sore, and I wonder from what, until I remember how hard I was gripping Killian as he rode me the first time, and how tightly I held his head against my pussy in the shower.

Who knew fucking could be such a workout?

Careful not to wake Killian, I gently disentangle his arm from around my waist, and slide toward the edge of the bed. To judge by the weak morning sunlight filtering in, it’s still early. Early enough that Killian’s alarm hasn’t gone off yet, warning him that he needs to head inside and start waking up Lina for school.

Trying not to make a sound, I pad into the bathroom and consider myself in the still-steamy mirror. I look like a mess. My hair is wild around my head, my body is covered in red spots, especially around my hips and ass, where Killian was holding me. And there are bags under my eyes from how late we stayed up. But I don’t care.

There’s also a glow to my skin, a brightness in my face. That just-fucked look you can never really hide, especially when you’ve had so many orgasms you can still feel the aftershock vibrations in your fingertips and toes.

I grin at myself, and Mirror Me smiles back, thoroughly pleased with her life decisions right about now. I use the bathroom, then wash my hands, still eying my mirrored self, and tiptoe back into the bedroom, hoping I’m being stealthy.

But as soon as I reach the room again, I spot Killian, wide awake and propped up on one elbow, staring out the crack we left in the curtains. It’s narrow, but through it you can see a slice of his backyard—the corner of the pool, and beyond it, the wooden playground set he built for Lina years ago. The spot where we first connected, back when I was just the Party Princess he’d hired for his daughter’s birthday party, and he was just the nice, accommodating dad who agreed to play one last game of tag with his daughter before I packed up the party and headed home.

I follow his gaze, then look back at him, and approach the bed slowly. He doesn’t look at me, but he shifts over a little, making more room on my side of the mattress. I slide back under the thin sheet beside him, and he shuffles back into my side, draping his arm around my waist to spoon me. I curl into him like a smaller question mark, and savor the feeling of his warm breath against my shoulder, tickling the tiny hairs at the nape of my neck, as he continues to gaze over me, out the window at the sunlit grass, the scene growing ever brighter as the sun creeps higher in the sky.

“Penny for your thoughts?” I whisper after a moment of listening to him breathe softly beside me, feeling his chest rise and fall against my back. Accompanied by the steady thud of his heart, it’s a rhythm I’ve gotten used to over the past couple of weeks. So accustomed, in fact, that it’s difficult for me to fall asleep at my own house sometimes. I keep waking up and gazing around my bedroom, confused, like I’m missing another heartbeat, another whisper of breath beside me.

“Just enjoying the feeling of you in my arms,” he replies, before he softly kisses the spot where my neck meets my shoulders. A shiver runs through me, but it’s a pleasant one.

I shift in his arms, roll over until we’re face to face, and study those stormy gray eyes of his. In the dawn light, they look paler than usual, the gold flecks standing out more sharply against the darker background of his irises. “What did you mean last night?” I murmur quietly.

He arches a single eyebrow, smiling playfully. “You mean when I told you how fucking gorgeous you looked, or when I said how great your pussy felt around me?” He slides his hand down my hip, toward the space between my legs. As his fingertips stretch across my mound, I moan and arch into his touch a little, twisting toward him, as unable to resist as a moth circling a candle.

He strokes me faster, dips a finger between my legs to find my pussy already wet with want, even though it makes a wild, sharp ache shoot through my nerves when he dips a single finger inside me to circle his index finger through my juices.

I inhale sharp enough that he grins, knowing.

“We were a little rough last night, weren’t we?” he concedes, as he starts to stroke me faster.

I spread my legs a little, buck against him, my eyes fluttering shut as he starts to distract me, the way he’s always so damn good at doing. Before I realize it, I’m rocking my hips back and forth, thrusting in time to the slow, sticky slide of his fingertip between my slit and up to my clit, then back again. But as the pressure starts to build in my pussy, in the aching pulse of my clit and the light that sparks behind my eyes, I remember what it was we were talking about. What I wanted to ask him, before he went and distracted me like he always does, damn him.

It takes a colossal effort, but I force myself to still my hips and reach up to catch his wrist, gently prying his fingertip away from me. He flattens his palm over my belly instead, a little crease appearing between his brows. He tilts his head in a question. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I lie. “Just a little sore.” I force a grin. “We did go hard last night.”

He grins back and leans in to kiss me, and it’s still echoing through my mind. What he said last night.

I clear my throat and try again for casual. “But, the other thing you said… When you said you refused to lose me. What was that about?” The moment I say it, something flashes across his expression. Regret, maybe, or fear? I lift an eyebrow and shuffle closer, reaching up to cup his cheek. The way he leans into my touch, his stubble sharp against my palm, drives me as wild as anything else he does.

“I…” He swallows hard. Glances at the window, as though it can save him, and then back at me. “Yesterday, I had a phone call. From my ex.”

Now it’s my turn to crease my brow. I lean back, away from him, my mind already racing. His ex. The woman he has a child with. I know he’s divorced, but I don’t know what happened, just that he said he doesn’t really have much contact with her anymore. Still, she’s the mother of his child. If something’s starting up between them again… “What about?” I manage, in what I hope sounds like a nonchalant tone. To judge by the way his face falls, though, I sound anything but casual.

He takes a deep breath. “Well. It turns out you know her too, actually.”

I blink, confused. “What?”

“Listen, Tilly, I don’t speak to her much, I have no idea what’s going on in her day-to-day life. I didn’t even realize she’d started a company until she called me up yesterday. I didn’t know she was your boss, that she founded Party Princesses…”

My stomach hits the floor. Sinks through it. “Hold on.” I sit straight up in bed, the covers falling off me. “Your ex-wife is Tricia Connery?”

He grimaces. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

I shake my head, ears ringing. “But…” And then it hits me. Yesterday. “Oh god. I told her about us. I thought, because we were getting serious, and because we met on the job and she’s so big on proper behavior and sticking to all these etiquette rules she sets for us, that it was a good idea—”

“I know,” he cuts me off with a grimace. He reaches for my hand, catches it and squeezes my fingertips so hard it almost hurts. “Believe me, Tilly. I know better than anyone how she can be. Fuck, for all I know, she sent you on purpose because she knew you’d be just my type.” He shuts his eyes, jaw clenched, and shakes his head. “This is on Tricia; she should have told me when I called to hire you in the first place, whenever she saw my name on the client list. I talked to some front desk woman about the booking, but surely she saw it come across her desk…”

But my mind is racing in another direction. “But she seemed okay with it. When I talked to her. She just said as long as we both felt the same way and I wasn’t going to do something like this again…”

When he opens his eyes again, the pain in them hits me like a punch to the gut. “Tilly, she called me yesterday to demand I break it off with you. She threatened to fire you if I don’t.”

I pull away from him, fling back the covers and shove out of bed. I start to pace back and forth across the floor, barely even noticing what I’m doing.

“Tilly?” Killian ventures, after a long pause during which I haven’t said a thing.

“What do you want?” I ask, my voice raising a notch. “I mean, if this is just a, just a casual thing, then maybe…”

“Tilly.” He’s out of the bed now, standing in front of me. He catches me mid-pace and stills me with a single caress of his hands, up and down my arms, as he catches my eye. “Tilly, I want you. I’m not going to break up with you over some threat from my bitter ex.” He shakes his head. “You don’t need that job anyway. You want to work on your books—that’s what you should be doing now. I can take care of you.”

My eyes widen. “What?” I step backwards, brush his hands off my shoulders. “What are you talking about? Do you think I’m some helpless child out here looking for a sugar daddy to take care of me?”

“No, of course not—”

“We’ve only been dating for a few weeks!” My voice raises an octave. “And yes, it’s been amazing, and I love being with you, Killian, but I’m not about to give up my entire career, my only income right now, for… I mean just to… I’m not your pet!” I shout, even though I know, deep down, that it’s not him I’m angry with. He’s not the one forcing me into this position.

But the idea of relying on him for everything, of giving up the only secure, reliable way I have to pay my bills right now… it’s terrifying. Even if there’s a tiny part of me that’s whispering about how it would give me a chance to really focus, to get back to my writing, to aim for the dreams I really want, instead of wasting my time playing princess dress-up…

But I need Ms. Connery for that too. I’m depending on her introducing me to her friend, the accomplished illustrator who already saw and liked my sample pages. An introduction like that, if it winds up working out as a partnership, could be the difference between achieving my dreams and playing princess forever.

I need her on my good side. I need this job. I need so many things that are now standing directly in the way of this man in front of me. A man I’d been starting to think I might need, too.

I shake my head, and force out those thoughts.

“Tilly, I’m sorry,” he’s saying, trying to reach for me again, trying to catch my eye. “I don’t think you’re helpless, and I don’t want to make you feel like a kept woman or a pet or anything. I respect the hell out of you, Tilly. I just…” He runs a hand through his hair, then clenches a fist in it. He tugs so hard I worry that a few hairs will pull out when he finally yanks his hand away. “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want this to end.” He steps in front of me, and I finally lift my eyes to his again, meet his gaze head on.

That’s when he says it. His whole body stills, his eyes go darker and more serious than ever. “I love you, Tilly,” he says.

Something inside me snaps. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, barely able to force the words out. I reach down to gather up my dress. I feel ridiculous, so I slide into the bathroom to tie myself back into it. And then, without another word or a glance to him, despite the way he says my name over and over as though it’s breaking his heart, I brush past him on my way out of the pool house.

“I have some thinking to do,” I say, once I’m safely outside on the lawn, where the early morning air, sharp in my lungs, helps to clear my head a little. I breathe it in deep, hold it a couple seconds, let it out in a slow, steady breath. “I need to sort out my priorities, get my head on straight. Okay?”

“Of course.” He’s nodding, but I can’t stand the look on his face. The hopeful, hungry one that tells me without any words at all just how badly he doesn’t want me to walk away right now.

And I don’t want to walk away either. I want to stay here with him. I want to rewind time to just an hour ago, when I was curled up comfortably in his arms, oblivious to all of this. Unaware of the fact that our relationship and my career and life goals stand in direct opposition to one another.

“I’ll… I’ll call you once I…” I shake my head, at a loss for words. “Once I figure this out.”

But I can’t imagine, even as I stride away from him, what there is left to figure out. Tears blur in my eyes, making it difficult to see my way across the bright green lawn, past the white steps that lead away to the pool, around the hedges toward the front driveway, where my car is parked and waiting. I unlock the doors, and only once I’m inside do I allow a few of those tears to fall. I wipe at my cheeks with the back of my hand, angry at Tricia for being so fucking controlling and vindictive, angry at Killian for being so impossible to resist, but above all…

Angry at myself. Angry that I let myself get into a situation like this. I’ve always prided myself on putting my career first. I know what I want from life, and I go after it, without hesitation. That’s who I’ve always been. So how could I have let myself get so off-course? Especially when I’m finally so close to a real break. So close to finding an illustrator who gets me, to partnering with someone who knows the industry in and out, and whose art I admire, and whose style I think would jive perfectly with the stories I want to tell.

Tricia was going to give me that opportunity, that introduction I so desperately need. Plus, she also provides me with my paycheck. The job that keeps food in my fridge and an roof with functioning power over my head, and even leaves me with enough extra to pay off my student loans. I can’t afford to walk away from that.

No matter what else—who else, it means walking away from.

But the thought of just throwing away everything Killian and I have, the thought of abandoning this thing between us just when it’s starting to blossom… That feels impossible, too.

I love you, he said, with those sincere gray eyes locked on me. And I believe him. And I want to turn right back around and run into his arms and hear him say it over and over again. I want to look him in the eyes and tell him that I think I might love him too, or at least be starting to. I want to fall back into bed, where everything felt safe and simple and easy.

Instead, I put the car into reverse. It’s only when I look in the rearview that I notice Killian standing on his lawn, hands in the pockets of his jeans, shirt off, watching me go with a forlorn expression on his face.