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No one had come and found me in the dark before, in the year I’d been suffering every day. I’d pushed most of them away, and then moved to California to avoid Winter, the only person who’d cared enough to try.

But this man, unexpected, unwanted, undeniable, had just pushed right in.

“Trent was the last person to—he’s the last person who was… inside me,” I admitted haltingly. That should be the most embarrassing, disgusting, and shameful thing I’d ever said, and yet, as soon as I said it, I realized how much it bothered me.

That knowledge was always there, in the back of my mind. It made me feel like a small part of my body still belonged to Trent. I hadn’t been able to take it back yet. I couldn’t do it on my own. Brody stroked the bandage over my cut, so tender.

Suddenly, without even thinking about it, I was moving. I pushed myself across Brody’s body, and he sat back and let me straddle him.

His arms went around my waist, and he looked up at me. His eyes were wet. I brushed the back of my hand across his eyelashes and found the tears caught there. Tears for me.

“I don’t want him to be the last person to have been inside me. I want to choose. I want to be the one to decide,” I whispered and slowly, purposefully rolled my hips.

He hardened quickly beneath my weight but made no move to advance things.

“Unless you don’t want to? I understand if you don’t—” I started.

Brody’s finger touched my lips, silencing me.

“Before you say something that breaks my fucking heart, just know that when it comes to you, my answer is yes.”

I put my hands to his face, cupping his cheeks. “Still?”

“Still,” he said. No hesitation. “If I ever neglect to make that clear, check for a pulse. It’s always yes?—”

I cut off his words with a kiss. Holding his face captive, I leaned in and kissed him with everything I had.

Brody

I carriedher to my bedroom and laid her carefully down. She rose on her knees and kept kissing me.

She kissed me so sweetly, the fury inside me quieted a notch or two. It couldn’t go out completely. It never would, after that story she’d just told me, but her sweet, unyielding strength distracted me, for now.

I cupped her face, rubbing my thumbs over the apples of her cheeks.

“I’m on birth control,” she reminded me.

I don’t care.That was the honest truth. Even if she wasn’t, I’d still be about to fuck her. She trembled.

“Am I making you nervous?” I wondered.

She shook her head. “No. Just talking about everything, it feels… I am nervous, but you’re not making me nervous, if that makes sense.”

I nodded, forcing my mind to be practical and logical and not just swept away with emotions. If she was nervous, I could make her less nervous.

I sat and picked my feet up, lying down with my head on the pillow. Then I wrapped my hands around the posts of the headboard.

“What about now? Less nervous now?”

She’d turned to me, and now, she considered my pose.

“Maybe a little,” she confessed. “It helps to be in control.”

“Then be in control, sweetheart. Use me to your heart’s content.”

She scoffed softly. “Mr. Controlling himself is going to let me do what I want?”

I nodded. I was outside my comfort zone, but Selena was outside hers, too. It was only fair.