I can see in my peripheral vision that she’s watching my face while I coax the water through her hair, rinsing away the suds, but instead of meeting her eyes, I focus on my hands.

“Logan?”

She smiles. “Yeah?”

“Why did you come over here again?” I ask her quietly.

She reaches for the soap and I shiver when her hands press to my stomach and slide up over my chest. “I’m not sure.” She meets my eyes and gives me a sweet, tiny grin. “Sorry I was rude.”

“You were taking your self-loathing out on me, I think. But then, you didn’t have to come over here.”

Her grin turns into a wide, dimpled smile. “You’re not going to goad me into becoming one of the girls in your phone who insist they never do this kind of thing.”

“I’m not trying to goad you. It’s just that in your case, it seems to be true. Even if you hadn’t told me our first night together, I would bet you never do this kind of thing. Not that there would be anything wrong if you did.”

She nods, and watches her hands as she lathers up my chest, my shoulders. I can barely hear her answer over the pounding water: “The sex was good. And I figured you were the kind of guy who can keep it just about sex, which is all I want right now.”

“I can.”

I think.

I mean, it’s never been a problem before, but I’m troubled by how much I want her to like me. “I’m going to be honest, though. You sort of suck at it.” Her mouth drops open when I say this, and I quickly add, “Not the sex part—you’re very good at that part, if memory serves—but the part where it’s just about having fun sex together.”

Her blue eyes flash up to mine. “What do you mean? I’m not getting emotional on you.”

I laugh at her quick defense, tickling her sides. “I mean, you’re sort of a jerk to me.”

She giggles. “I’m sorry! I swear I’m not a jerk. I just . . . I don’t want to date, and the kind of guy I would date anyway is nothing like you, but here I am . . . for sex. So yeah, maybe some self-loathing . . . which makes me into a jerk.”

I’m trying to ignore the insult in there. “What kind of guy do you date?”

She looks up at me quizzically. “I don’t.”

I sigh in exasperation, squeezing conditioner into my palm while she washes my arms. I slide my fingers into her hair, saying, “I mean, you’re saying I’m not your type. What is your type?”

“Bearded. Laid-back. Tattoos.”

“Mustard yellow cord-wearing craft brewer?” I ask, and she laughs. “The kind of man who is heavily invested in his mustache wax, so he can get the upturned points just right?”

“Something like that.” Her hands move back to my chest, down my stomach again. With her eyes on my face, she reaches lower, sliding a soapy hand down my cock.

Her cheeks flush and I shiver, eyes rolling closed as I jump in her palm. I want to tell her it feels good, I want to kiss her, but I’m immediately so consumed by the feel of her touching me that I’m stuck in place, water running down my face.

She lets out a little moan when her hand slides over the head of my cock.

“Not your type at all,” I tease.

Her mouth presses to my collarbone. “Nope, not even a little.”

She works her hand over me, slowly squeezing, and then stretches to kiss up my neck.

I cup her face, tilting her to look up at me. “We don’t have to do this.”

London stares at me, breathing in, breathing out. “We don’t?”

What? “Of course not.”

But she’s teasing me. With a little smile, her lips part as she presses her mouth to mine, tongue sliding inside, warm and slick. Everything in me unravels. I find her breasts with my hands, press her to the tile and deepen the kiss, groaning into her mouth as I make tiny circles over her nipples with my thumbs. When I reach between her legs with one hand, finding her already silky with need, she pulls back from my mouth, letting her head fall back against the tile. I watch her—eyes closed, mouth soft and open, pulse thrumming in her throat—as my fingers move around, around, down, around. Fuck, she’s sexy, and it’s easy to figure out how to make her feel good: she likes being touched on the outside, quick and hard. I bend, sucking the water from her chin, her lips.

Her body slides against mine and I chase her mouth when she pulls back, giving me a tiny brow raise before whispering, “Condom?”

I lean out of the shower, fumbling in a cabinet drawer for one, and somehow manage to stand back up and hand it over without slipping.

She curls it in her fist and reaches for me with her free hand, stroking me, stretching on her toes for a kiss. My mind goes warm and shapeless when I return my fingers to her, and hear her relieved little gasp.

London tears the packet open with her teeth while my fingers stroke and stroke and stroke. I can feel how close she is in the tension in her thighs, so I don’t need her to tell me “I’m close,” but hearing it anyway pushes an electric charge into my blood.

It goes off like a bomb inside my chest when she adds: “I want to come with you inside.”

London looks up into my eyes, smiling almost apologetically for asking for that sort of physical connection with me. “Is that okay?”

I nod, unable to reply aloud because

something

is breaking

wide-open in me.

I rub her bottom lip with the pad of my thumb, nodding again and again.

We’re no longer headed toward a fun fuck, the rutting, confident sex I’ve been enjoying for years. I suddenly can’t muster the out-of-focus tenderness I give so easily. This isn’t even like the other night with her—two people experiencing something completely different, together.

Here, I’m peeled bare.

I want to make love to this sweet, distrustful girl.

It’s confusing to need the reassurance of her mouth on mine, but I bend, taking her lips, sucking and pulling and opening her so I can taste her tongue and draw out those tight, hungry sounds.

She pulls away to focus, and I can feel her breath on my neck and the weight of her attention where her hands work the condom down my cock. Sounds seem to fall away one by one; even with the pounding of the water we’re in a silent room, breathing in, breathing out. She reaches lower, cupping me, and at the sharp grate of my grunt I feel her eyes turn up to my face, taking stock of every detail of my reaction.

You’re so hard. I don’t hear her say this, but I see her mouth form the words, and stare at the water running down her face, tripping from her top lip.

I imagine what she sees: the tightness in my brow, my jaw. I swallow before trying—and failing—to form words. I don’t even know what I would say right now, and everything rising up in me feels too intense to voice anyway. Her blond hair is plastered to her cheeks and down her neck. Her eyes are these enormous circles of turquoise lined with dark blue, lashes clumped together. Impossibly red, her lips are swollen from me. But it’s the way that the caution has melted from her expression that makes something inside me ache.

She’s making me want something I haven’t considered in so long. Connection, stability, something familiar and just ours.

“I like this,” she says quietly, and the way her eyes linger on mine, I know she’s saying more. She’s admitting she likes me.

I groan, knowing there’s no filter remaining in my eyes, nothing hiding the way I’m impatient and needy, breathing so hard I’m panting. I reach for her thighs, pulling her legs up and around my waist and it’s so easy to slide into her, wet like this, soft for me. I could slam deep with one push, fuck us both to satisfaction in a few sharp jabs, but it’s an inch at a time that I want.