I’D NEVER THOUGHT tears were beautiful. Until now. Until I was the one who’d caused them, until I saw how they released her from a prison of sadness. And then I was addicted to them, just like that. I wanted to free her. I wanted to be the guy who told her all the things that nobody had ever said to her. And I wanted to do it because she deserved it, but also because I knew what it was like to be unloved, unwanted. Until my foster parents, I hadn’t known love.

Only rejection.

We lay on the bed, and she pressed her head against my chest. “Tell me something sad.”

I exhaled while she ran her hand up and down my shirt as if I wasn’t already struggling to keep my self-control in check. We were different. One conversation, and we were different, and I was done letting things stand in the way of us.

The way we were always supposed to be before life rose up against us.

“I hate Disney Channel.”

She laughed. “How can you hate Disney Channel?”

I shrugged. “When you’re a little boy with no parents, or at least parents who don’t want you, and you’re put in front of Disney Channel as a way of babysitting, you learn to hate it. You hate the love you see between the families. You hate the perfection. You resent the lives you see played out in front of you. It’s like this huge tease. ‘This is what everyone else has, Marlo, but you’ll never have it. Nobody will ever love you enough to give it to you.’”

She sucked in a harsh breath and then leaned up on her elbow, her eyes searching mine. “You don’t still think that, do you?”

I smiled sadly. “Not usually, but sometimes my six-year-old self reminds me of my roots, and I default to a complete asshole who shuts out the world out of fear, fear that one day I’m going to be happy, then someone’s going to pull the rug out from underneath me.”

“You deserve to be happy. You’re good. Plus, you’re only an asshole ninety percent of the time.”

“I pour my heart out to you, and you still call me an asshole?” I asked, smiling hard enough to crack my own face.

She reached for my shirt and tugged it up over my head.

I let her. Because it was a game, wasn’t it? And in the morning, all of our clothes would be back on, our secrets locked back down.

I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them just in time to see her pull off her own shirt. We’d already dealt with socks, shoes, hats… All we had left were our jeans and shirts. She’d already unhooked her bra and dropped it in my lap an hour ago.

And like an idiot, I’d stared at it a bit too long, earning a shove from her as if I was back in high school seeing my first Victoria Secret tag.

“I’m just preparing to answer my next question.” And she was topless. No bra, no shirt, just topless with her platinum hair hanging over her tan shoulders, and she was staring at me.

And I was…

What the hell am I doing? Going into a fucking coma?

I licked my lips and reached for her, gripping her hips between my palms as I asked the next question. “No backing out.”

“‘Kay.” Her voice wavered.

“Will you dance with me?”

Her eyes widened. “You want me to dance? Naked?”

“Right. Don’t freak out… but I want you to dance naked.”

“In front of the chicken?”

I frowned. “It’s not like we fed him KFC. He’ll be fine. Besides, the moonlight looks perfect on you, and I think… I think you may just surprise yourself.”

“And if I don’t?”

“How about you just trust me?”

“Easier said than done.”

I sighed. “I believe in you.”

She gasped as if nobody had ever said those words to her.

And I hated…

I raged…

At anyone and everyone in her life that had been put on this damn earth to love her — and hadn’t.

And I hated myself the most.

Because I’d selfishly thrown that love back in her face to protect myself. That was what monsters did.

Not men.

“Please?” I stood and held out my hand.

She gave me a small nod, one that could have been mistaken for a flinch, and I was off my bed, turning on the first music I could find.

Black Sea.

She twirled in front of me, the cadence a lot of stop go, stop go, which made the song extremely hard to dance to, but if anyone could do it…

She could.

She put her hands over her head and then twirled into my arms, eyes closed, and then she was dipping forward, and I was going with her on the journey of whatever story she wanted to tell me.

She rose onto her tiptoes as I turned her on one foot, grabbing her leg and snaking it backward around me.

She jerked away and turned.

I nearly bit off my tongue when she did a body roll and jumped in the air, just trusting me to catch her, and then she slid down my body, moving her hips against mine in a way that set every part of me on fire, my blood roaring. Moving perfectly with the beat, she bent completely backward, her hands following her as she arched at the most elegant angle and then thrust forward, throwing herself against me.

I repeated the movement, and when she came toward me again, I twisted her in my arms and flipped her over my back in the air, letting her slide behind me. Her palms ran down my face as she used her hands to move my head around with the music, and then she splayed them across my chest.

I gripped her by the wrists, the music completely forgotten as we played off one another. I pulled her to her feet and pushed her boundaries, asked for complete surrender from her body, fucking demanded she dance her truth for me, for us.

Tears streamed down her face, and it felt like more than dancing, as if we were living our love, our hate, and everything in between as we pushed at one another then pulled, only to dance as one and repeat the process.

She turned again. I tugged her against my chest and locked my arms around her waist as we swayed in sync, eyes penetrating, breathing labored.

“I figured it out,” she whispered.

“What did you figure out?” I smiled down at her excited expression, expecting her to say something about finding herself through dancing, through letting go.

“I couldn’t let go…” She was up on her tiptoes, gripping my face as if she had something important to say. “…because I was always meant to dance with you.”

Her mouth opened to say something else.

I devoured her next word with my tongue and swore I would never look back. She wrapped her arms around my neck as I lifted her off the ground and carried her over to the bed.

She fisted the front of my jeans with her hand while I pressed into her, my erection straining against her. She trembled and arched toward me for more.

I kissed down her tear-stained cheeks.

It had never been infatuation with her.

Never.

It had been a lot of things.

Hate. Love.

Love will always win out, won’t it? Despite the hate I had thrown her way… love had always won.

I stopped kissing her tan skin. The smell of sunscreen brought on a smile. She was a Ray of sunshine and didn’t even know it.

“No revenge,” I murmured tenderly.

Her smile was dazzling as she looked up at me. “No revenge.”

I leaned over and kissed her forehead then reached for her jeans and unbuttoned them slowly, savoring every movement as if it was my last. I unzipped and tugged.

She wiggled out of them, and I tossed them to the floor and braced my hands on either side of her hips. And then I hooked my fingers into her lacy underwear and slid them down her thighs, fascinated with the violet color of them against her skin, obsessed with the way her hips lifted like she was giving me permission to love her.

The ethereal look of her hair spread across my pillow, on my bed, was something I knew I would never forget, the way she reached for me once she was naked, as if she couldn’t wait one more minute to touch me again, to kiss me.

Our mouths fused. She tasted like my sunshine, like light. She tasted like she was finally free. My head swam with possibilities while my heart pounded against my chest.

Finally.

Fucking… finally.

I pinned her hands above her head and pressed a teasing kiss on her neck — one, two kisses, three, four. My tongue met the sweetest skin, and I inhaled deeply, wanting it to last forever.

“My turn.” She hooked her feet around me. I let her press me onto my back as she took over. I was one-part insecurity and helplessness and one-part completely turned on that she was taking the lead, that the spoiled princess who I’d wanted to both kiss and make cry, was straddling me as if I was hers.

Dear God, please let me have her forever.

“You’re smiling?” I cupped her breasts because I could and because the view from flat on my back was the best I’d ever seen. Mouthwatering, forbidden, shameless.

“Well…” She rocked her hips against me, against my straining cock and jeans. The friction was almost painful. “…I was thinking…” She was officially Wonder Woman in another life as my jeans all but disappeared along with my briefs, leaving me vulnerable and naked in front of the only woman capable of breaking me.

She could ridicule.

She could run away.

She could tell me this was all in my head.

She had the power to reach inside and laugh the foster kid out of the room.

I didn’t realize how much my insecurity was still there until I let out a relieved breath as she crawled back up the bed and lay against me, skin on skin, and pressed her cheek against my chest.

I played with her hair. “So, now we’re sleeping?”

She yawned.

I pinched her ass.

Dying.

I was dying.

“I just wanted to feel you, Marlo.”

“You are feeling me.”

“I wanted to hear your heart too.”

“Why?”

“So, I could remember the way it raced when I told you… I love you.”

I exhaled a shaky breath.

“There it is.” She sighed happily. “So…” She gazed up at me with a drugged look on her face, her eyes shining with unshed tears, with happiness I’d like to think I had put there. “…that’s what love sounds like?”

I nodded, afraid to trust my voice, then pulled her down so I could kiss her and whispered against her lips. “Now let me show you what it feels like.”