The Rival

Chapter Seventeen

ITWASGETTINGDARK, more and more stars peppering the sky as it turned from blush pink to purple to midnight blue.

And Quinn just sat there in her car, in the middle of the dirt road that was supposed to take her back home to Sullivan’s Point.

Because she didn’t know how she was going to face Fia and Rory. Because she was sure that she looked changed. She felt changed.

It was a kiss. Just a kiss, but she had gotten the easement. And whether or not it was because of the kiss, she couldn’t rightly say.

She had been kissed.

Her first kiss.

By Levi Granger, the object of her fantasies since she was fourteen. The man she would’ve said that she didn’t like, except after tonight she felt like maybe she did.

And that was confusing and upsetting, and made her want to scream and shout.

Because she didn’t want to care about him.

She didn’t want to be entangled with him in any regard.

He was far too...too him.

He was...

He scares you.

Lord, how he did. Because he was unearthing old Quinn. Not angry Quinn, though he’d done that, too. But Quinn who felt it all. Who wanted it all.

She didn’t want to be involved with anybody.

But she was getting to know him, and she had whispered one of the more vulnerable things that she had never told anybody to him, just this morning. Had it been just this morning?

That he had taken her to his parents’ graves, that he had come to get her at her house.

That they’d had pizza and conversation, and another fight, and a kiss that had scorched her soul.

She let out a slow breath, jagged and shaky.

She was going back tomorrow.

Camilla would be gone.

Did he want...?

Did she?

She drove on toward the house, finally ready, because she at least got to tell them that she had secured the easement.

Now she just had to not screw it up. She didn’t worry, not even for a moment, that he was holding sex hostage for the easement. That just wasn’t him. He was hardheaded, and he was stubborn, proud.

But he would never manipulate her.

He was way too straightforward for that. It was why he had thrown her in a pond, and yelled at her when he had thought she interpreted his dyslexia as stupidity.

He was a man of deep feelings, and they were real.

He was not the kind of man who would hold something over a woman in exchange for sex.

And anyway, it wasn’t like she was so sexually appealing that a guy would do that just to get with her.

Here she was, thinking about sex again, after something that might well not actually connect up to sex.

It stood to reason. She was, after all, a twenty-five-year-old virgin, which was pretty old, but it was intentional on her part. Not out of morals or anything like that, just because she had been focused.

And afraid.

If she were very honest.

Because how could you ever forget the feeling of gravel cutting into your feet, the hot tears streaming down your face and the unending ache in your chest, as you chased your dad’s car down the drive, begging him not to leave.

You didn’t.

She’d never wanted to chase a man again.

She got out of the car and turned the engine off. The headlights had obviously alerted Fia to her appearance, and the porch light flicked on, and the door opened.

And there her sister was, looking hard out into the darkness.

She got out of the car.

“Good news,” she said. “The easement is ours.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. I went and helped him with his paperwork, and after he saw how good of a job I did, he agreed. He will be happy to work with us.”

“Is that it?”

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s it.”

“Are you okay?”

How was she going to encapsulate everything that was Levi Granger and what had happened with him today? It was a full emotional roller coaster. She felt like she had lived three lives in the last four days, and she didn’t know how to communicate that to Fia. Most especially not without exposing him, and suddenly she felt as if she would protect those things that were harmful to him with her life.

Because he had told her. He had told her about himself, and the way that teachers had made him feel, the way that he had felt about himself, and the way that he been taken advantage of. He had told her about it, and she couldn’t violate that. She wouldn’t.

“I’m going back over there tomorrow to do a little bit more admin. The easement is contingent on that.”

She walked up the front porch and into the house. “And then we really will be on our way to getting the store open.”

That was why she was doing this. And somehow, it all kind of felt lost. Lost in the happenings of the last few days. Lost in everything. But, of course, this was about Sullivan’s Point. It was about the farm store. It was about proving...

Proving herself.

Proving herself to...just herself.

Because she wasn’t a kid anymore.

And she knew better than to blame herself for her dad leaving. She did.

But still, her stomach felt like acid when she thought about it.

“Are you okay, Quinn?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You look upset.”

Upsetreally wasn’t the right word. She was stirred up. She was something new. Something different. Something she had never fully experienced before.

But she wasn’t hurt or angry.

He had kissed her. And it had been amazing.

She was attracted to him.

Her chest felt a little bit cracked.

She felt sensitive and fragile, and like she didn’t know whether she wanted to go to her room and cry, or get in the shower and relieve the sexual tension that had built up in her body.

Her older sister looked at her in the glow cast by the porch light, her eyes filled with concern. “Something happened with him, didn’t it?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, first of all, because you didn’t deny it with your first breath.”

“Something’s happened with him every day,” said Quinn. “Something that turns into a fight or ends up with me being thrown into a pond...”

“You care about him, don’t you?”

“No,” she said too quickly. “No. It’s not like that. Isn’t... It’s not. Okay? I don’t have any desire whatsoever to get involved with a man. There is too much to do here on the ranch, and there is too much to do in my life, and there is...”

“You’re lying to me.”

“Fia, why do you think you get to know about my personal life? You won’t even tell anybody what happened between you and Landry King, while the two of you hiss and spit at each other like cats every time you’re in the same room. You have never once confided in me about that.”

Fia’s face went cold. “And I won’t. It isn’t what you think, I’ll tell you that.”

“Why won’t you tell me...?”

“No. What’s between Landry and me is between us. Okay?”

“And what’s between Levi and me is between us.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” said Fia. “I don’t. I don’t trust random men. I just... He’s not one of us. And even though... Our dad was one of us, Quinn, and he still hurt us. And... You just cannot always trust people.”

“I don’t trust him,” she said. Except it was a lie. She did trust him. She trusted him not to hurt her on purpose. She trusted him not to take advantage of her.

She trusted that he was a man of his word.

She trusted a whole lot of things about him that she would’ve said that she didn’t just a little bit before, but she did now. She did.

“Just trust me. I’ve got the easement. The rest of it... It’s my business.”

She walked into the house, past her sister, letting the screen door slam behind her.

And there was Rory, standing at the base of the stairs, her red hair already piled in a bun on her head, her white nightgown more suited to that of a Victorian orphan than a grown woman.

“What was that about?”

“Our sister being overly protective.”

“Do you need protecting?” Rory asked.

“No, Rory. I don’t. I do not need to be protected. Not from him, not from myself. I don’t need to be protected from anyone. Least of all Levi Granger. Or my own self. Because that’s what it comes down to. Fia doesn’t trust me. And she doesn’t have the balls to say that, so she’s acting like she’s worried about him.”

She stomped up the stairs, past Rory, who followed her up. “Did you kiss him?”

She turned to look at her sister, who was overly romantic always.

“No,” she lied. “I didn’t.”

She didn’t know why she wasn’t telling either of them.

You know why. You don’t want them to tell you to rethink it.

You don’t want them to tell you to stop.

True. Because she wanted to go over there tomorrow. She wanted to go over there tomorrow, and with all the freedom that she possessed, she wanted to make whatever decision she did about him. Without them hovering in the background, worried about her. Without them acting like they knew best.

So there.

So she went up to her room and closed the door behind her, and she didn’t even take her clothes off. Instead, she just fell into bed.

She didn’t sleep for a long time, and she just replayed the kiss. Over and over again.

THENEXTMORNINGshe left the house early enough that she didn’t encounter anyone, and she was grateful.

She wore a dress and her white shoes and socks, and she didn’t bring coffee, just like he’d said.

And when she arrived at the house, he wasn’t holding a thermos, but a mug.

“Come on in.”

It was weird. It felt like the dawning of a new day in so many ways.

He was greeting her differently. Treating her entirely differently.

“Good morning.”

“Come on. Sit down with me.”

“Is Camilla...?”

“She’s gonna leave in a couple of hours. She is not up yet.”

They went and sat down at the kitchen table. She held her mug between her hands and let it warm her palms. She looked up and met his gaze. There was a fire in his blue eyes that resonated inside her.

“So I’ll be working in the office today. I’m going to do a little bit of research on some systems I might be able to put in place for you, but you know, I think you just might want to hire somebody to do a lot of this. To make it kind of automated. I think it would be best, and I’m going to go through your financials and tell you where I think you can spare some expense. Okay?”

He nodded. “Okay. I don’t take being told what to do all that well.”

She laughed. Because she couldn’t help it. Because obviously.

“I hadn’t guessed that.”

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Well.”

“Don’t think of it as being told what to do. You already know that sometimes it’s good to take... Not help.Sometimes it’s good to get someone else involved in doing the parts of the job that don’t come as easily to you. It makes sense.”

“That’s why I’m having you do it,” he said.

“And I can help for a while. But once we get the store up and running, then... We’re going to be busy with that.”

He looked at her hard for a moment, and she realized that she had just turned on a ticking clock.

It was good. It was for the best.

Because she was tangled up in him already just after a few days, and that wasn’t going to work.

It wasn’t sustainable.

“So, Camilla is going back to school, and then you’re back to the empty-nest life.”

He nodded. “Yep. And in two years, I’ll be done paying for school, and... Well. Really, the freedom is almost unimaginable.”

He took a sip of his coffee and she watched him. The way his hands gripped the cup handle, the way his throat worked as he swallowed.

And then he looked at her, and she felt...caught. And pinned to the spot.

It was weird to sit here and have a conversation with him. One that wasn’t so tinged with hostility. But it was like when their lips had touched he had taken away her anger, and she had taken away some of his.

It was like they were transforming each other, even if just a bit.

And now she was sitting there staring at his Adam’s apple. And his chin, his lips, back up to his eyes.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he said.

“Why? How?”

Both valid questions, though she hadn’t really meant to ask the last one.

“Because it’s dangerous.”

“You already threw me in a pond. What else can you do to me?”

“Not the best question. I have work to do.” He drained the last of his coffee. “But this time when you go up in my office, you are welcome to look at whatever you want. I eagerly await your report.”

“I get the feeling that it’s not exactly all that eager.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe I oversold it a little bit.”

“Right. Well. I’ll see you when you get back.”

She stayed firmly rooted in the office, even when she heard Camilla walking around in the hall, getting ready to leave. She just didn’t have it in her to face the other woman after she had... After she had kissed Levi.

And especially not when the sound of Camilla’s departure amped up the excitement, the desire that was burning through her.

Yeah, especially because of that.

She shifted and continued to pore through all of his records. In truth, there was a meticulousness to the way he did things. She could see where he got behind, and then got overwhelmed, but when he was keeping up, everything was perfect. Probably because he did have to work so hard to make sure that it was right. It was apparent, the amount of work he put into that.

The biggest thing was looking at his budget, and at what he had coming in.

He was making a ton of money, which of course he must know. He was paying tuition every quarter, and seemed to be doing it without any real hardship. But he had more than enough money to make sure that he never had to do any of the invoicing. But she knew the key would be to find somebody that he felt comfortable with. That he trusted.

The same would be true if they started doing the Christmas trees. She would not be looking for a leasing situation. And not just because she didn’t want to get thrown in the pond again.

Because now she understood. What drove him. What made him such a stubborn cuss.

And she couldn’t help but respect it.

She settled into daydreaming just a bit while she thought of the way he looked at her this morning over coffee.

When he came back, would he kiss her? Would she let him? There would be no reason to stop.

And maybe this was the real life lesson for her. That she couldn’t plan everything.

That she couldn’t control everything.

Levi made her lose her temper in a way she hadn’t since she was a kid.

And he made her lose her head in a way she never had.

She wanted him.

She wanted to explore desire with him.

That was normal. And it didn’t have to be a huge deal. They had a working relationship, and they had already gone through being bitter and toxic at each other. So she wasn’t even really afraid of that.

They hadn’t even liked each other yesterday morning.

So what was there to fear in terms of what would become of them? Nothing, as far as she was concerned.

It was sort of a no-risk thing.

And there was already a deadline.

When the front door opened and closed, she froze. She heard footsteps on the stairs, and her breath caught in her throat. She expected him to open the office door, but he didn’t. Instead, the footsteps went past her down the hall, and she heard a door open and close.

She waited.

Waited, and heard the sound of water running through pipes.

He was taking a shower. She was almost certain of it.

She swallowed hard, and asked herself if she was half as determined that she had always imagined she was.

She was.

She had spent all day thinking about him. Thinking about this.

It was a change. A shift. She hadn’t known it was what she wanted.

But she did now. Quinn had always been book-smart.

But maybe it was time she got a little bit street-smart.

She walked slowly down the hall, and listened for the sound of the water. She could hear it faintly through one of the doors. She opened it, and saw that it was the master bedroom. His room.

And with only a small amount of guilt, she paused at his nightstand and opened a drawer. And breathed out a sigh of relief when she saw a box of condoms there.

She grabbed a packet and took another step. Then she stopped and stared at it.

She’d seen condoms a lot of times. She’d gone to college. They were literally in giant bowls at the health center. They handed out massive bags of them if you went in for a sniffle.

Everybody wanted the college kids to be practicing safe sex. Quinn had been practicing the safest sex of all.

Abstinence.

But she had never announced it. So she had amassed quite the collection of condoms, which she had gladly given to her roommates whenever they had a need.

And when she had lived in a small studio apartment by herself, she had simply donated them back to the condom bowl in the common areas of the school.

She had never once held one and looked at it with the intent of using it.

She had never once thought of them as anything other than an abstract object.

Her breath started coming in short bursts, her heart beating more and more rapidly.

She was doing it.

After all, she was a student of many things, and one of the biggest mistakes she had made when meeting Levi was assuming that he didn’t have anything to teach her. She blinked and headed toward the bathroom.

She pushed the door open, and she could just barely make out the shape of him through the steamed-up glass. Her heart was now beating in triplicate, the pulse at the apex of her thighs fluttering, the nervous energy going through her body enough to make her expire then and there.

They had kissed once. She was making a big leap. A big assumption.

And she wasn’t going to give herself time to think.

She walked toward the shower and pulled the door open. His head jerked up, and steam poured out, slowly revealing his body. Broad shoulders, muscular chest, those washboard abs, and...

Oh, boy.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Was this not an open invitation?”

“It wasn’t.”

“Is it now?” She sounded too hopeful, and for a moment, she knew a moment of real fear that she’d be rejected.

That she wasn’t enough after all.

That fear was mitigated almost immediately.

“Hell yeah.”

He reached out, wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her into the shower fully clothed.

She squeaked as she found herself being trapped between the slippery shower wall and his wet, hard body.

Her dress was saturated quickly, and she was thankful she had at least taken her shoes off, but she still had her socks on, which was a bit distressing.

He pulled back and looked her up and down. “Lord Almighty.”

“Yeah,” she said, because it was the only thing she could say.

Her dress had buttons on it, and he popped the first one open.

“I do not have any other clothes with me,” she said.

“I’m sure my sisters have some things around that you could wear.”

And that was how she found the whole rest of her dress popped open completely. Exposing her white bra and panties.

And he made quick work of the dress, flinging it over the top of the shower door and consigning it to the ground outside.

“The socks,” he growled. “Why are they so fucking hot?”

Right now, her socks were soggy, and she could imagine nothing less sexy, really, except everything felt sexy right now, so it was some kind of sock paradox, and she didn’t know what to do with that.

“I don’t... I don’t know...”

He gripped her hips and held her still as he pressed the hard evidence of his arousal against her body.

She looked down, and she could see him. Hard and so much bigger than she had anticipated. His skin was flushed with desire, and it made her feel powerful.

She had spent years at college ignoring this kind of thing. Ignoring men.

Or maybe she had been ignoring boys, and that was why it had been so easy.

Young and reedy and not this.

He was intense.

And it matched her own intensity.

She’d said, flat out, that he was a hardheaded pig. And that she was, too. And maybe that was how it worked. Hardheadedness saw hardheadedness, and it couldn’t help but want to test itself against it.

In every way that she possibly could.

All she knew was that this was compelling, he was compelling, in a way that she couldn’t turn away from. In a way she didn’t want to turn away from.

He made her feel things, made her want things, that she couldn’t deny. She had never considered herself a person with a lot of self-control. In fact, she had always known that she was impulsive, hotheaded and led by her baser instincts.

That considered, it was somewhat surprising that she had never had sex before.

Except it made sense. Now.

Because this was the first time her blood had ever been heated like this.

This was the first time she had ever wanted, ever needed. And she was jumping in headfirst, because what else was there to do?

She knew the giddy power in surrendering to lost temper.

In letting anger flow through you, control you, dominate you.

But she had never experienced this.

And one thing she knew about giving in to temper was that there was shame waiting on the other side. And maybe there would be shame on the other side of this, too, but for all the times that she had made that bargain with anger and accepted the consequences, she would do the same here, because at least this felt glorious.

And she felt new.

She had been defined, utterly, these last few years by her drive. By her ability to shut out exhaustion when she needed sleep, but there was work to be done. Anger when she wanted to yell, but she had to let cooler heads prevail so that she could negotiate something. To just give in to what she wanted... It was a glorious, headlong trip into the kind of excitement she’d never experienced before, and she wanted it.

She wanted it badly.

To open this door to another part of herself that she had closed down for so long.

And of course it would be him.

Because he was the only person she’d ever met who was as stubborn as she was. The only person she’d ever met who felt about ranching the way that she did.

A man who was holding everything together for the greater good, and she really understood that.

Down to her soul.

He unhooked her bra and sent it sailing the same direction as her dress. And then he kissed her neck, down her collarbone, and excitement built low between her legs, an ache building and building that made her wiggle her hips restlessly, made her cry out in agony. She felt him smile against her skin as he made his way down to her breast and sucked her nipple into his mouth.

All she could do was stare. Watch as his mouth fastened itself over that intimate part of her; it was the most erotic thing she’d ever seen. And more erotic than anything she’d ever imagined, that was for sure.

She didn’t know herself in this moment. She just wanted to surrender. And that really, really wasn’t her, and there was something wondrous about it.

To be lost to this. To be sexual. To be overwhelmed.

She was mesmerized by the feeling of his tongue circling her tightened bud, and by the sight of it, too.

By the way his large hands skimmed over her rib cage, down her waist, to her hips, and she watched as his dark head continued down her body, a trail of hot kisses left in his wake.

She moaned when he kissed just beneath her belly button, when he reached the waistband of her panties.

And then he moved his hands down to her thighs, and back up again, his thumbs going underneath the sodden white fabric as he pulled them down slowly, leaving him eye level with the most intimate part of her.

Her head fell back against the shower wall, and she was breathing hard and fast, embarrassment warring with curiosity to see what he would do next.

She hoped that she knew what he was going to do next.

She was aching for it. Desperate.

And when he leaned in and stroked his tongue over that place that was most needy for him, she grabbed the back of his head with one hand and braced herself against the wall with the other, trying to keep herself from melting into a full-on puddle.

“Levi,” she said, his name coming out a breath she sighed.

He moved his head back and forth, burying his face there between her legs as he began to lick and suck and create a tormenting rhythm that he played like a song through her body. Through her soul.

She was lost in it. She could no longer analyze the moment. She could only feel. It was this. This glorious tipping point that took her over into the land where she was all feeling.

No thinking at all.

Where she was everything she had worked all these last years to not be.

Book-smart. And that was Quinn Sullivan.

She had put away those feverish feelings that often roiled over into overbright tempers, but apparently contained all her passion, as well.

And now... Now it was like she had found it again. Like she had found herself.

In the stroke of his tongue, the tease of his fingers, and then, when he pushed one inside her body and began to move it rhythmically along with his tongue, it was like stars burst behind her eyes.

The climax hit her so hard, so unexpected, that she let out a short, sharp scream, moving her hips helplessly in time with the demands of her body.

“Levi,” she said again.

And then he kissed down her inner thigh, down her leg, and stopped, looking at her socks.

“They just are the cutest thing.”

And he took one sodden sock off, and then another, and looked up at her, the expression on his face dumbfounded. Like he had no idea what he was doing here, either. Or why. Like he didn’t understand this connection between them any more than she did. Or maybe she even understood it more.

Hardheaded seeing hardheaded.

Water seeking its own level.

Because they were the same. They weren’t different. And she had been foolish when she’d said to him that they saw things differently. They didn’t.

They didn’t.

He wrung her socks out, laughing before he threw them over the top of the shower door. She hadn’t known that sex could be funny, but that was pretty funny.

Then he got back to his feet and kissed her. Kissed her deep and hard.

“I brought a condom,” she whimpered against his mouth.

“You really are smart, Quinn,” he said.

He opened up the door and reached out to the counter, where he found the packet.

And then she found herself being kissed again, long and deep, pressed against the wall as he maneuvered around, tearing open the packet and rolling the condom over his length.

He grabbed her thigh and lifted it up over his hip, and she had the dim thought that she should maybe tell him she hadn’t done this before, and that it might hurt, or that she maybe didn’t have the skill level to be taken against the shower wall, but then he was right at the entrance to her body, and she couldn’t think, because she wanted him so badly. Because she needed this so badly. Needed him.

So what was experience?

She knew about sex.

Her sister Rory left her romance novels lying around all the time, and Quinn had read them before.

She had also been around the internet, so she had seen some things. She knew what sex was.

She wouldn’t say she had made a study of it or anything, but she had a fair idea.

She didn’t need to announce her inexperience.

She relaxed, or at least she tried to, taking a deep breath as his eyes met hers. And then she forgot. Everything. Because he was looking at her. Those blue eyes staring straight into hers, but he wasn’t angry, or upset with her. They weren’t sparring outside. He was about to be inside her.

Levi Granger.

This man that she had thought she hated... Was it twenty-four hours ago that she thought she hated him?

This man she’d wanted since she was fourteen and hadn’t fully known what it meant. This man she’d told herself she just liked the look of, not the heart of.

How could she have gotten that so wrong? And right then, just before he thrust inside her, she realized she didn’t know anything. And that felt like a free fall.

And that was when he gripped her hips and thrust deep.

She cried out, the sharp, tearing pain of the invasion a shock she hadn’t seen coming.

She didn’t know anything. She didn’t know a damn thing. She wasn’t ready for this. She wasn’t ready for him.

She thought that grabbing a condom and ambushing him in the shower put her in charge? She wasn’t in charge.

He was huge, and he was inside her, and he was so much bigger than she was, and she had made a mistake.

She froze, because she didn’t know what else to do. Because she had no idea...

And then he was kissing her, slow and tender, and she felt the panic begin to recede.

So her desire began to come back. That ache in her body suddenly recognizing that this was what it had wanted all along. To be filled by him. This was the answer.

She just hadn’t known it.

And maybe it was okay that she didn’t know. Because he did. She looked at him, asking all the questions that she didn’t have a voice for with one look.

But in his eyes, she saw questions, too, and she knew that he was going to ask them when this was over. And it would be over whenever she said—she recognized that, too. She could tell him to stop now. That it hurt too much. That she was too afraid.

And right in that moment, she would never know if she was driven by pride or desire. Because later it would be lost in all that need.

But for now...

“Please,” she whispered. “Show me.”

He let out a long, slow breath that broke right at the end, the only thing that really betrayed how on edge he was.

He drew back, then thrust deep, and she dug her fingernails into his shoulder when he did. Then he pulled out again, thrusting in again. She couldn’t say that it felt great, but it felt right.

But each subsequent thrust changed. Built. Showed her something.

And her body began to move to welcome his. More than just accommodate.

She got wetter when he met up against that sensitized bundle of nerves there, and as she got yet slicker, it felt better and better.

He thrust into her until she was trembling, until they both were.

Until she was on edge.

And then he reached his hand between them and pinched her there, just gently before stroking her. And that sent her right over the edge.

She cried out his name as she clung to him, wave after wave of pleasure rolling through her.

It was different. Different from having an orgasm alone. Different even from the one he’d given her earlier.

She felt exhausted with it. Spent.

But it kept on going. Deeper and deeper into her, and that was when he went over the edge, too. On a growl, he thrust hard inside her twice more and froze, his arousal pulsing inside her. And she turned to look at him, at the vein standing out on his neck, at the tension in his jaw.

She had done that to him.

She had made him come apart the same as he had made her come apart, and that felt right.

Except then... Her eyes filled with tears.

And Quinn Sullivan didn’t cry. Not in front of anybody. Not ever.

But her heart was beating hard, and her body felt boneless, and she was trembling. And she didn’t have any idea how the hell to stop it. Because she didn’t know how to do this, and it had been fine when he was leading the charge, when he was showing her how good it could be.

And now it was just... Now it was just done.

And she’d had sex with him, and he was still inside her, and she felt like maybe she was dying.

“Quinn,” he said, his voice quiet but scolding.

“I...I...”

“Come on.”

The water was still pounding down on them. She’d lost her sense of it at some point, but when he reached down and turned it off, she was unbearably conscious of how quiet it was. How she could hear her heart beating in her own ears, how she could hear their breathing, ragged and far too intimate for her to handle.

“Come on,” he said, picking her up so she didn’t really have a choice and depositing her outside the shower. He grabbed a very large towel and wrapped it around her shoulders, and then he began to dry the water droplets from her body.

It wasn’t wholly dispassionate. There was still some fire in his eyes.

But it was banked. And she could tell that he was exercising control now.

She couldn’t help but watch his body. The play of muscles.

The look of him when he was relaxed, having just been satisfied.

Except he wasn’t totally relaxed; there was tension in his jaw and his shoulders. She could see it.

She was about to ask, and then she found herself being lifted up off the ground again and carried into his bedroom, where she was deposited, still wrapped in the towel, at the center of the bed.

“That was swinging a bit above your pay grade,” he said.

And very suddenly, she decided she couldn’t deal with the conversation, and so she did a very mature thing. She crawled out from beneath the towel and slipped beneath the covers on the bed, all the way under, making sure they were over her head.

She hadn’t acted this much like a child in more years than she could remember, because she hadn’t been able to take that luxury.

Her father had left when she was fifteen. Her mother had been gone since she was nineteen, abandoning the ranch and her daughters to kind of just deal with it. And even before that, her mother had been gone.

So they’d all had to find some kind of new normal. Some kind of levelheaded in all of that.

Quinn had never been that good at it. Until she had fought herself right to the end of what was reasonable.

Until she had exhausted herself with her outrage and realized it wasn’t leading anywhere. And that was when she had locked it all away. Apparently so many things. Things she hadn’t realized had gone in that big metal box, along with her anger.

All things that Levi had dragged out.

Her desire to hide under the bed when she did something naughty among them.

“Quinn,” he said. “I literally just watched you go under the covers, so you’re not very well hidden.”

“I’m tired,” she said.

“We need to talk.”

Then suddenly it was bright and cold, and she looked up, seeing Levi had stripped the covers from her.

He was looking down at her, all muscular and sexy, and not angry, but not relaxed, either.

She wasn’t quite sure what the expression on his face meant.

“I’m chilly,” she said.

He dropped the blankets back down over her, but beneath her chin, so that he could still look at her.

“You hadn’t had sex before, had you?”

“No.”

He rubbed his hands over his face. “Lord Almighty, girl.”

“What? I was ready. I wanted to.”

“And you didn’t think that I might want to know about all that?”

“I didn’t really see how it was relevant to you.”

“Because it is, Quinn. Because it mattered. Because I wouldn’t have had you up against the wall in the shower, and maybe I wouldn’t have had you at all. Maybe we would’ve had to have a discussion about what sex means to me, and what it can’t. Maybe we would’ve had to have a discussion about—”

“You are really not making me feel all that guilty about it, Levi, because I wanted to have sex with you.” She didn’t like saying it like this. That sounded harsh, and it sounded very much like something clinical, which it had not been. It had been hot, and it had been filled with emotion. She had enjoyed it. And even if she did feel a little bit turned inside out, a little bit rocked, she didn’t see why she needed to be scolded. Why she needed to be told. Yeah, she panicked right at the pivotal moment, but she was over it now. Kind of. She only felt a little bit panicked. A little bit scared, and a little bit...

A tear leaked out the corner of her eye, and she could’ve cursed herself.

“Quinn,” he said, his voice getting soft, and then suddenly she was being lifted from the mattress and pulled into his arms, pulled onto his lap. He reached down and gripped her chin, tilted her face up and looked at her. “I’m not designed to be a woman’s first lover, Quinn. I probably wouldn’t have turned you away, though. But I might’ve been a little more gentle. A little slower. Given you time. I wouldn’t have been that fast.”

“I liked it,” she whispered.

“Yeah, but you might’ve liked it more if you weren’t terrified.”

“I’m not terrified.”

Except her heart was pounding far too hard even now.

“You aren’t?”

“Well, I’ve done it now,” she said. “There’s not really any point lecturing me. Not really any point scolding me. I’ve done it now.”

He brushed his thumb over her cheekbone. “Yes, you have. We have. It wasn’t just you. It doesn’t matter that it was your first time and not mine.” He paused. “I’ve never been with a woman in this house.”

“You haven’t?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I have kept sex separate from my life at home. For all these years.” He closed his eyes. “That’s not strictly true. But this house was built long after the only time I ever had an entanglement that felt a little bit personal. So there hasn’t been anyone here.”

“What personal entanglement did you have?” She felt suddenly outraged, wanted to find whoever the woman was and...

What was wrong with her? That sudden rush of possessiveness was not her. Not at all.

It was messed up, that she would be jealous of another woman, angry at her instead of Levi. She would say that she stood against such things. Her father had had an affair, and even her mother had said it was a poor showing of feminism to hate her. And that all the hate should be reserved for their dad. Quinn had happily and easily obliged.

And yet... She certainly wasn’t doing a good job of applying that element of sisterhood to this moment. And whoever the woman was, she hadn’t even betrayed Quinn.

“It’s not a great story. I’m not sure it’s a good time to tell it.”

“I want to hear it.”

“I’ll tell you what. I’m going to find some sweats for you, and then we’re going to go downstairs and have some ice cream. And we’ll talk about it at the kitchen table. But not in my bed.”

“Okay.”