Owen kept a firm grip on Cate’s hand and made a break for the greenhouse even though he knew it was fucking useless. The sky had torn open, the rain not so much falling as crashing into them like a tidal wave from above. In less than three strides, he was completely soaked. The proximity of that last lightning strike warned him not to slow down, though, and even though he knew it would do nothing to keep him dry, he ran the rest of the way to the greenhouse with Cate in tow.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed from the doorway they’d just banged through, turning to look at the storm from the safety of the covered threshold. “That came out of nowhere.”

Owen tugged a hand through his hair, but he knew a lost cause when he felt one. His chest rose and fell rapidly from both the sprint and the jolt of adrenaline from the storm, and he took a second to catch his breath before answering.

“The storms have been like this all day. I should’ve known better. Or, at the very least, been paying better attention.”

Guilt pinpricked his gut. Of course, he and Cate were fine, but Mother Nature wasn’t to be messed with. He’d gotten so caught up in the conversation, in the ease and shocking goodness with which his words had slid out, that he hadn’t even noticed his surroundings.

He noticed them now. Specifically, the soaked and still-beautiful woman standing directly in front of him.

“Jesus. You’re drenched,” Owen said, running his palms over the tops of her arms to slick off some of the rain.

Cate’s throaty laugh went directly to his cock. “I’m hardly going to melt,” she pointed out, but not even her no-nonsense moxie could trump his manners.

“Come on. I keep some towels in here for cleaning up. Let’s get you dry.”

Grabbing hold of her fingers again, he closed the greenhouse door with his free hand, making sure to firmly secure the latch. The last thing he needed was for a gust of wind to blow the thing in and smash one of the panels, or worse. The rain—which seemed to be growing even stronger, although Owen had no clue how—rattled over the glass above them, sluicing down the walls and thoroughly blurring any view in or out.

The air in the greenhouse was still despite the noise, slightly humid and full of comfort. The smell of humus and earth filled his senses as he inhaled, and he moved easily through the rows of produce growing from various planter boxes, emerald-colored leaves sprouting so thickly in some places, seeing past them was nearly impossible. Owen would know where he was going in the dark, though—this greenhouse was his refuge, with its pathways of plants and its wooden work tables built in along the perimeter on three sides of the rectangular structure. He knew each variety of every plant, where their planter boxes stood and how they’d been cultivated, watered, and maintained. Not just because he and his brother and old man kept detailed records of that, because, of course, they did. But he knew because he’d tended to all of them personally, watching their growth and marveling at how something as natural as a seed becoming a fat, juicy tomato or a perfectly rounded bell pepper could be so simple, yet so full of complex, mysterious twists and turns that even a slight variation in the process could drastically change the outcome. Yet, still, these plants defied the odds and not only grew, but thrived. He made sure of it.

He felt the prickle of Cate’s stare a half-second before he caught it out of the corner of his eye, heat covering the back of his neck despite the fact that his skin was covered in chilly rain. “What?”

“You look at home here.”

Owen’s boots clattered to a stop by the spot where the far wall joined the shorter side of the greenhouse in a corner workbench. He grabbed one of the towels stacked beside some empty wooden crates, turning toward her briskly.

“I work here every day,” he pointed out, running the towel over her bare, rain-streaked arms.

She slipped his grasp, her fingers stilling his movements. “I know, but you’re right. The farm, this greenhouse. It fits you.”

Damn it. He should have known better than to open his yap and let any old thing fly right out. But he’d felt so at ease walking side by side with Cate on the path here that he’d done exactly that, complete with the confession that it was his mother who had really crystallized his love for Cross Creek. Yeah, it was true. But he’d still never told anyone that before. And now here they were, soaking wet in the greenhouse with Cate looking at him like she could see right through him, and shit, he should feel vulnerable as hell.

Yet, somehow, Owen didn’t move. Instead, he stood perfectly still in front of her on the hard packed earth and let her look her fill. His heart slammed in his chest as the rain did its best to match the sensation on the slanted glass roof overhead. The clouds had darkened the space around them, yet even in the shadows, Owen felt the familiar comfort on all sides. Cate took the towel from his fingers, and his heartbeat shifted into a different sort of rhythm at the look in her eyes. Her hair had fallen loose from its twist, hanging around her shoulders and face in dark, wet waves. The rain had turned to a sheen on her face, beading softly on the curve of her cheekbone and in the indent above her upper lip, making her skin almost glow. The pale green fabric of her sundress was—ah, fuck—plastered to her body, clinging to every outline and curve as if they were lifelines. Her chest rose and fell against the row of tiny buttons down the front, her nipples pressing against the soaked material in shadowy peaks, and Owen’s cock jerked beneath the wet denim around his hips.

She was, by far, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“Cate.” Christ, even her name felt right in his mouth, sexy and essential all at once. He reached for the towel—he’d promised to dry her off, after all—but she dodged him with a deft shift of her weight that brought their bodies even closer together.

“You don’t have to take care of me all the time.” She slid a finger over his mouth, leaving it to linger on his bottom lip long enough to quell his protest and make his pulse spark faster from the contact. “I know you want to, and, believe me, it feels good when you do. But I like it when you let me do things for you, too.”

There was no mistaking the suggestion hanging in her murmur, and Owen cut out an exhale, quick and hot. “We’re in the middle of the greenhouse.”

Cate nodded, pressing up to her toes until her mouth was just below his ear. “Is anyone going to come out here in this weather?”

As if to bolster her question, thunder rolled loudly from the other side of the panels, the wind and rain both competing to see which could make more noise.

Owen’s pulse put them both to fucking shame. “No.”

Between their location in the far corner and the height and density of the plants in here, nobody would see him and Cate even on the off-off chance they did wander out here in the middle of this monsoon. Not from the door, anyway.

“Mmm.” Her lips curved against his skin, her smile making his dick impossibly hard even though he couldn’t even see her face. “Are you okay with me seducing you in the middle of your greenhouse, then?”

“Hell yes.”

Cate pulled back, her eyes wide with surprise, and Owen faked enough nonchalance to raise a brow and slap together a half-smile. “I just wanted to be sure you knew what you were getting yourself into, is all.”

She laughed, the full-bodied, unfettered sound echoing through the warm air around them. “I think we’ve already established that I’m not shy. Now, put your hands right here, on the work table.”

Cate took a little sidestep, angling his back to the corner workbench and tilting her head at the wooden boards running the length of the room.

“Really?” he asked, his lips parting in surprise. “I don’t even get to use my hands?”

She shook her head, staring at the workbench on either side of his hips so pointedly that Owen had no choice but to put his hands on either side of him.

“My seduction. My rules.” She took the towel in one hand, running the soft cotton over his forearms. She didn’t get far before she realized his T-shirt was part of the problem, though, and, before he could blink, Cate’s fingers were beneath the hem and on his skin.

“Do you know what I thought when I saw you standing outside the main house on my very first day at Cross Creek?”

The wet cotton cooperated with her touch shockingly well, moving up and over his head with only a few well-placed tugs.

“No,” he said, his knuckles tightening as he replaced his hands on the workbench. Jesus, this was going to be an exercise in restraint.

“I wanted to touch your biceps. Actually, no”—Cate moved the towel over his shoulders, then his arms, trading it for her fingers a second later—“I wanted to bite them.”

He barked out a laugh, unable to help it. “That’s a little filthy.”

“You were a little filthy,” she reminded him, and the provocative smile on her mouth made his balls ache. Stepping in closer, she kissed his neck, her mouth warm and wet on his skin. “God, I wanted you.”

“Cate.” His fingers dug into the edges of the workbench, desperate with the need to touch her. She must have heard it in his voice, because she placed her hands over his, anchoring him into place as she trailed a line of kisses over his shoulder.

“I wanted to touch you.” Her tongue slid hotly over the top of his arm, making his breath grow shallow, then catch in his chest. “I wanted to taste you.” Her mouth traveled lower, her teeth scraping over his bicep in a move that was surprisingly sexy.

The laugh that came up from the back of her throat pushed the limits of Owen’s already thin resolve. “So, now I’m going to make up for lost time and do both,” she said. Kissing her way back up to his shoulder, Cate repeated her ministrations on the other side of his body. Every glide of her mouth made his skin prickle with awareness and want, and by the time she’d returned to his neck again, his desire to touch her had become a full-blown, screaming need.

But she didn’t move her hands from his. Instead, she lowered her chin, kissing a path down the center of his chest.

Owen realized her intended destination a second later, and even though his cock jerked eagerly at the mere thought of her mouth heading closer, he had to make her stop.

“Owen. Please,” she whispered, and only then did it register that she’d paused just above his navel. “Please, let me do this. Let me make you feel the way you make me feel.”

She’d let go of his hands to gather her skirt between her fingers, lifting it around her knees as she’d kissed her way down his body. Her damp hair was wild around her face, her cheeks flushed with obvious desire. Her eyes were what wrecked him, though, pleading in that bold way that could only belong to her, and fuck, he wanted to give her everything she’d wanted on that first day, standing out in front of the main house.

He wanted to give her everything, period.

Afraid to trust his voice with anything other than a moan, Owen nodded. He helped Cate wrestle with his jeans and boxers—not nearly as accommodating as a flimsy T-shirt when wet, as it turned out—and they got things shoved down to his knees until they realized that was as good as it would get. She grabbed the towel from the workbench, dropping it to the ground and kneeling between his legs.

“Oh.”

All the air abandoned his lungs on a grunt as her exhale moved over his cock, her mouth tantalizingly close. She brushed her fingers up his length, and sweet Christ, he couldn’t tell if he was in heaven from the pleasure or hell from the dark, greedy need pumping through his veins. But then Cate let her tongue dart out to trace a light, long line from root to tip, and that was when Owen knew the truth.

It didn’t matter if he was in heaven or hell or any point in between, just as long as she didn’t stop what she was doing.

Cate reached out, her touch soft as she explored his hips, the tops of his legs, the sensitive skin on the inside of his thighs. The friction from her fingertips sent sparks of pleasure through his blood, pulsing along with his heartbeat as she swept and stroked. She pressed her mouth over the midline of his cock, her lips parting just slightly in a wet up-and-down slide, and it took everything Owen had not to thrust blindly into her touch.

She had asked him to let her do this, and, by God, he would stand by his word and give her what she wanted.

Shifting forward on her knees, Cate wrapped her fingers around him, brushing a feather-light kiss over the crown of his cock before parting her lips to go farther. The heat of her mouth made his vision slip, but the sight of her nestled between his legs was too pretty, too provocative not to watch. Her hands gripping his hips and pumping the base of his shaft as she sucked, her tongue swirling harder on every upward glide—Owen shamelessly watched it all. He kept his eyes fixed on her, hypnotized as she tasted and gave and took.

She angled her head slightly to one side, and the change in sensation made his balls tighten with undiluted pleasure. A tingle of warning unraveled at the base of his spine, strong enough for him to unlatch a hand from the workbench and place it on Cate’s shoulder.

“Come here,” he said, his voice so guttural and rough, he barely recognized it as his own.

She lifted her head to pin him with a glittering stare. “I don’t have to stop.”

Just like that, his instincts overrode his control, snapping his composure in half and stomping it into dust. “You misunderstand. I don’t want you to stop.”

Reaching down to hook his hands under her arms, Owen hauled her to her feet. He yanked the hem of her dress up over her thighs, cupping his palms over the swell of her ass and pulling her off the ground in the same swift movement, turning to place her firmly on the workbench. Somehow, a scrap of decorum made it past all the carnal now-right-now controlling his thoughts, and he grabbed another clean towel from the nearby stack. He maneuvered it beneath Cate’s body at the same time he pulled her panties from her hips.

“I want you to keep going, sweetheart,” he said, tugging her shoes off and grabbing a condom from his wallet. “In fact, I want every single thing about you. I want you to sigh.” He ran a finger over her slippery entrance, then did it again and again until a heavy exhale unspooled past her lips. Yes.

“I want you to scream.” Owen’s touch drifted up, finding the tight knot of her clit at the apex of her thighs. Cate arched into the contact, her thighs falling wide, and he made fast work of the condom. Notching himself firmly between her legs, he pressed the head of his cock just deep enough to feel the promise of full penetration, and she let out a sound that was half-cry, half-moan.

Good enough for now. “I want you to come so hard you can’t stand or see or think. So, no, I don’t want you to stop. But I do want all that to happen with my cock inside you. Please.”

“Oh.” For a stop-time second, nothing existed but the two of them, right on the edge of something Owen couldn’t explain but really fucking wanted. Then Cate’s hands found his shoulders, gripping tight as a seductive smile took shape on her lips.

“Well, if you insist. Take me, Owen. Any way you want.”

With that, he was lost to all rational thought. He wrapped his hands over the back of her hips, tilting forward to fill her, inch by inch. Her inner muscles squeezed his cock so hard he nearly lost his breath, and he had to pull back a few times, easing his way inside so he didn’t lose his goddamned mind, until, finally, he was snugly seated all the way inside of her.

“Oh, God, that’s…”

Cate didn’t finish her sentence. Instead, she moved, throwing her head back and thrusting her hips upward even though their bodies were already completely joined, and Owen didn’t hesitate to do exactly as she’d asked. Keeping his grasp on her ass, he angled himself over her, withdrawing an inch, then reclaiming the spot deep inside her sex.

“Good. So good.”

Her words were so honeyed Owen could practically taste them. Cate’s pleasure made his that much more demanding, and he buried his cock over and over in long, hard strokes. “Take it, sweetheart. Tell me how good you feel.”

The pleasure/pain of her nails curving against his shoulders was her first reply. She knotted her legs around his waist, taking him even more deeply than before, the pressure of her inner muscles growing stronger and sweeter with every rock forward and back. Owen dropped a hand to the slight, hot space between their bodies and slipped his thumb over her clit. There, there it was, that bowstring tension in her body that he craved, the promise he wanted more than his own release. He circled his thumb above in time to the rhythm of his thrusts below, both becoming more purposeful, until Cate’s mouth opened on a soundless gasp.

“Yes. Oh, God, please—”

She broke off with a ragged cry. Her whole body trembled in release, her sex pulsing around his cock. But, oh, he was far from done. He worked her through every breath, then began softening his touch and expecting her movements to slow.

Only, they didn’t.

“Owen,” she said, quickly rebuilding the intense rhythm that had just sent her over the edge. She pushed her hips back up, reaching for his waist to set the pace, and there was no way in hell he could deny her.

“Ah, God, Cate.” He thrust deep into her sex with ease, not losing any of the pleasure that had unfolded deep in his belly as he’d made her come.

“Don’t stop.” She looked up at him, her whiskey-warm stare seeming to see how close he was, how much he felt. Everything. “Please. I don’t want to stop, either. Take me. Come for me.”

Digging his fingers into her hips, Owen held her steady on the workbench, his thrusts quickening. Cate met each one with a push of her hips, locking her legs around him to hold him all the way inside her body. Release coiled in the lowest part of his belly, winding tighter and burning brighter. His orgasm slammed up his spine, pushing the breath from his lungs with a shout.

For some amount of time he couldn’t measure, he stood there, his chest on Cate’s chest, their bodies spilled together. Eventually, they began to unwind from each other, righting their clothing to the soundtrack of the rain now falling softly on the roof above them. She gave him the same sassy-sweet smile as always, brushing a kiss over his mouth like she’d done dozens of times before.

But as he took her hand and led her out of the greenhouse, Owen couldn’t shake the feeling that nothing was like it had been before. Because Cate had seen him. Really seen him.

And he had let her.