“We’re just going to park for a few minutes until this rain stops.”

Kase pulls the truck into an empty lot at the head of one of the many hiking trails. There’s nothing but trees and gravel around us. Nothing but the sound of the rain falling in heavy sheets and the hum of the engine.

I’m grateful for a minute to collect myself, even though I’m certain he must think I’m crazy. Between my earlier comments and now my weather anxiety, he’s likely wondering why he invited a lunatic into his life.

“I’m sorry,” I finally say. “My mom died in a car accident.”

He squeezes my hand gently. “I know.”

I press my eyes closed. “When the weather’s bad, I can’t help but think about it when I’m on the road. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“I’m sure I more than deserved it.”

I laugh softly. “You did. Just not for that.” I shake my head. “I guess it’s starting to make sense why I never left Falls Edge. I can’t even handle a little rain. You must think I’m—”

“You’re human. And you don’t entirely trust me yet. It’s fine. We all have our hang-ups.”

I draw my free hand into my lap. “What are yours, Kase?”

He pauses. “I don’t know. I guess I have a few.”

“Priscilla seems to think so.” I pray he doesn’t hate me for bringing this up, but I have to know more.

He sighs. “Gotta love small towns.”

“Why did she tell me to be careful of you?”

He stares blankly ahead. “Because when she’s not sneaking shots behind the bar, she’s spreading mindless gossip.”

“What happened between you?”

“We’re not talking about this.”

I rip my hand out of his grasp. “Yes, we are.”

“Damn it, June.” He shoves his hands through his damp hair. “Let’s just say we weren’t compatible. We both had a few too many at Mackie’s one night and ended up at her place. We started messing around, I misread the signals, and realized too late that she didn’t enjoy my flavor of kink. I don’t think it traumatized her too much, though, because she hasn’t stopped texting me wanting round two since I got back into town.”

My jaw falls but I snap it back shut. I’m still upset with both of them. Priscilla just slid into first place, but knowing that Kase took her to bed has me feeling suddenly sick.

“You left Falls Edge making me believe you cared about me. Hell, you told me you cared about me today. How am I supposed to believe any of it when you came home and slept with someone like her?”

“June, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Not a goddamn clue. Let’s just go home.”

He reaches for the gear shift, but I stop him, taking his hand in mine again.

“Tell me why I wasn’t good enough. Just tell me.”

“You were too good, okay?” The intensity burning behind his eyes steals my next breath. “And for the record, I didn’t sleep with Priscilla that night. We didn’t get that far. But if she hadn’t wigged out I would have, because I was at a point in my life where I didn’t give a damn about anything. Wasting the night with her would have been just the thing to make me forget about shit I didn’t want to think about. For four years, I chased every impulse and fed every fucked-up desire. I poured gasoline on a mountain of pain you’ll never understand and gambled on there being something worth living for in the ashes.”

I caress my fingertips against his, silently hoping he knows that under all the frustration and my own hurt, I care. Even if I don’t understand who or what could have hurt him so badly.

“I wasn’t going to bring you into that mess, June,” he says, his tone softer. “And if I’d even considered it, your father would have cut it off before we ever began. You know that as well as I do.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. He’s not wrong. Daddy was never especially strict with me growing up. I had more freedom than most. But when it came to the McCaskers, he would have made a relationship with Kase damn near impossible.

Things are different now though. I’m a grown woman.

I slide closer, reach up to touch his face, and guide his attention back to me, away from whatever troubled memories have darkened his thoughts.

“What changed? Why now?”

He looks into my eyes before lowering his gaze to my mouth. He leans in and brushes his lips sweetly against mine. “I found you in the ashes,” he whispers against me.

My heart beats fast against my ribs. I don’t speak. I answer with a kiss filled with all the things I’m not sure how to say. All the nights I’d wanted him. All the affection that grew around his absence. And now a piece of my heart wants to mend the pain in his. He circles his arm around me, bringing our torsos flush. With that single act, I feel us launched back to where we were in the kitchen hours ago. So lost in the moment that we could barely stop ourselves.

“Kase… You can’t wind me up and leave me hanging like that again. I can’t take it.”

He answers by lifting me so I’m straddling him, my bare calves resting on the outsides of his thighs. “How about I don’t leave you hanging this time?”

In that instant, I don’t care that we’re in the cab of his truck. I just need to feel him. Need to show him with my body what I can’t tell him with words. I sift my fingers through his hair and bring our mouths together. As we kiss, he feverishly works the buttons on my shirt and pushes it over my shoulders. My bra is loosened a second later. When he breaks the kiss, the lacy garment falls away and my breasts fall gently against my chest.

The air seems supercharged. Anticipation. Heat. Desire so potent it’s almost painful, saturating the space between us and all around us. My skin is pebbled with goosebumps. My nipples ache to be touched. I swivel my hips in his lap, needing to know that he’s affected too. Without a doubt, he is.

Before I can touch him there, he pushes me back and grazes his palms up my sides until they’re covering my breasts. I arch into his touch, needing more than a gentle caress.

“You’re perfect.” The raw appreciation in his voice reaches deeper than his words.

I bite my lip and shift my hips again, a frustrated moan crawling up my throat. He grasps my breasts and brings his mouth to them, one by one, flicking his tongue against the hardened tips before sucking hard and peppering the skin around each nipple with tiny bites.

I hold him against me, fisting my hands in his hair. He feasts on my breasts for what seems like forever, until my skin is dark pink and raw from his tongue and teeth. The mild pain is like a scratch on the itch of my desire, only heightening my need for more. I’m past wound up. Past modesty and good reason. Before I can beg him to take the rest of me, he flips me so my back hits the seat.

His lips are parted, his breathing as ragged as mine, as he unbuttons my shorts and drags them down my thighs, taking my panties with them.

Only then does panic hit me. I’m stark naked. In Kase’s truck. Only the persistent rain and the condensation building up on the windows from the heat of our bodies gives us privacy from anyone who would happen upon us. I reach to cover myself, but Kase grabs my wrists and lifts my hands away.

“Too late for modesty, June.” He takes my foot and guides it to his other side so his body takes the space between my legs.

Heat rushes to my cheeks and radiates down every limb at being so exposed. “What if someone catches us out here?”

He lowers his head and sinks his teeth into the inside of my thigh. I jerk and try to draw my thighs closer, but he holds me open, his grasp firm. “Not sure I’ll care. I’ve waited too long to taste you.”

He continues his assault on my flesh, licking and nibbling up my thighs until he’s got nowhere else to go.

“Kase…”

He hushes me. But the second his tongue hits my clit, I suck in a sharp breath. I push his shoulder and try to scoot away. He catches my wrist and yanks my hips down so my sex is an inch from his lips.

“Where do you think you’re going?” His eyes are dark, molten with lust.

“Nowhere. I’m just… I don’t know. I’m nervous. No one’s ever done that.”

“I’m glad. But you’d better wrap your head around it quick because we’re not leaving here until I hear you screaming my name.” He rotates my wrist and plants a kiss on my palm. “And if you don’t learn how to control your hands, I’m going to find a way to tie them up.”

Good God.

He drags his fingertips up and down my slit, parting my folds and blowing a puff of air on my sensitive flesh. I nearly cry out again. I clench my hands into fists.

When he licks me again, his gaze fixes on mine, a tractor beam of intimacy. “Does that scare you?”

I shake my head. Hell if it doesn’t turn me on even more.

“Good,” he murmurs, his breath tantalizing my skin there.

The sensation compounds with the others. His lips, his fingers, his tongue. Heaven help me, his tongue. I lift my arm and curl my fingers around the door handle. My eyes roll back, and I lift my hips against his mouth. This has to be what heaven feels like. Pure surrender.

My body climbs, like a taut wire coiling deep inside me, one perfect turn after the next. When his teeth nudge where his tongue and fingertips have teased me to a near breaking point, I cry out loudly and jolt hard.

I can’t hold back anymore. I let my hand tangle in his golden locks.

“That’s it, beautiful. Hold on,” he rasps against my flesh.

When his finger slips inside me with less care than before, the sudden pang shocks me momentarily out of my blissful climb.

My eyes flash open and lock with his. “What are you doing?”

“You’re going to let me make love to you, right?”

I blink. “Yes.”

He twists inside me gently. The sensation isn’t unpleasant.

“Okay, then I’m getting us halfway there. Just relax and let me make you feel good.”

“But…”

Ignoring me, he resumes, licking me enough to scatter my thoughts again.

“June, I would never hurt you.”

With heavy-lidded eyes, I drag my fingertips across his scalp. “I trust you.”

With that, he closes his eyes and latches on to me with more pressure and mind-bending teeth-tongue combination moves that have me this close to screaming his name in rapture. Every shallow dive inside my tight channel makes me want more of him there, all of him, as deep as he can go. I need to make him feel as incredible as he’s making me feel right now. He adds another finger to his efforts. I’m too close to coming to care about the pain that knocks a little harder with each stroke.

“God. Oh God… Kase…”

“That’s it, baby. You’re going to come for me.”

“Stop talking, Kase. Just… Ah!”

I scream when he clamps his teeth around my clit and lashes his tongue against me unmercifully. My hips buck wildly until he pins them down firmly with his forearm. I’m right on the edge. Barely breathing. Clawing at the door and the leather. Tugging at the beautiful head between my thighs. Then everything tilts.

I drag in a ragged breath only to have Kase’s name tear from my lips with a feral groan. Like a sweeping wildfire, the orgasm rips through me and consumes everything. Every layer of my being. From my scorching skin to my tortured core as his fingers plunge deeper. Past the sharp stab of pain and straight into the deep, drowning pleasure that’s owning me, bringing every fantasy I’d ever entertained about this moment to life in the most satisfying way possible.

I’m pretty sure even the sweat clinging to me is currently residing in a state of weightless bliss when Kase slips out of me. I’m barely conscious when he pulls my panties and shorts on. I open my eyes and he takes my hand, lifting me to a seated position beside him.

His eyes glitter with warmth, and his glistening smile is the definition of smug. When he pulls me in for a kiss, I moan into him. He’s warm velvet. My arousal lingers on his tongue. He caresses every inch of my exposed skin as if he can’t stop. Hell, I don’t ever want him to stop. Never going to leave this cloud. Never leaving Kase. Never leaving this damn truck…

“Woohoo!”

We break away and look out the front window. The rain has stopped, and the condensation is sparse enough in one spot to clear our view of two teenagers at the head of the trail, pointing and laughing. No doubt about it. We’ve been caught.

“Shit!” I scramble for my clothes.

My bra is somewhere on Kase’s side, but my shirt is crumpled on the floor near my feet. As soon as I get my hands on it, Kase throws the truck into reverse and tears out of the lot.