He didn’t know the reason for her tears. Something bad had happened to her, she’d said, but he had no earthly clue what it was, as wrapped up in his own shitstorm as he’d been. She could be crying about that, or maybe, like him, who she was and the pressure that came with it, had become too much to bear.

His tongue claimed her mouth, stroking against hers as his lips consumed her. She melted into his kiss, her warm, soft body wrapping around him, stripping him of his pain. Stripping him of his failures. Maybe tonight, that’s all he needed to be—a man who needed a woman, this particular woman. Nothing more, nothing less.

He wrenched his mouth away from hers and tore his shirt off, then kicked off his shoes. Given how long and how rigorously he’d been working out when she knocked, he probably stank, but Rachel was already seeing him at his worst in every other way, so he tried not to care. After pulling off his socks, he unceremoniously lowered his shorts and briefs, then removed his watch.

Then he stood before her—a man, and nothing more.

She swallowed hard and reached for him, smoothing a hand up the ridges of his stomach. His muscles contracted under her cool touch, and his breath froze in his lungs when her hand flattened over his heart.

It was a move that proved his undoing.

Covering her hand with his, he gritted his teeth against a welling of love for the woman who accepted him, failures and all. To stand before her, stripped to his most elemental self, and know that it was enough. He wanted the same for her. To free her from the pain of her day, from the pressure of being Rachel Sorentino.

He unhooked the watch from her wrist and set it on the table, then pulled the rubber band from her hair and admired the way her sun-kissed brown locks tumbled around her shoulders.

The bandage on her left arm caught his eye. He peeled an edge of the medical tape away and studied her injury. The jagged-edged, three-inch gash had scabbed, and the bruises on the skin surrounding it were fading.

“It’s better every day,” she said quietly.

“May I take the bandage off?”

When she nodded, he peeled the tape as carefully as he could manage, then dropped it to the table and covered the wound with his hand. Of all the things he reckoned she’d gone through that week, the gunshot injury seemed like the wound to be healing the quickest.

She angled her chin up, inviting him to kiss her. He drew her lower lip into his mouth and suckled it, feeling her reach between them. She took a firm hold of his erection, and he nearly bit her lip, it felt so right. He reached behind her and unclasped her bra. She hunched her shoulders, relinquished her grip on him so he could free her arms from the straps.

Her breasts fit perfectly in his hands. But then, he already knew that. He knew how her nipples beaded when he rolled them between the pads of his thumb and index finger. He knew the weight of them, the silken texture, and the angle of her back arching when he pulled a hardened tip into his mouth.

He ran his hand down the curve of her spine, settling atop her panties.

He dropped to his knees, prostrate before her, and grazed her belly with his nose and lips and cheeks. She was so soft, so exquisite.

The panties were black and stretchy. Sitting back on his heels, he burrowed his face between her thighs. The panties were damp. Jutting between his legs, his cock pulsed and hardened at the proof of her desire. He pulled one edge aside and lapped at her smooth, wet outer folds. She tangled her hands in his hair. After one taste, he stopped. There would be time enough to bring her pleasure that night, but for now, he wanted to finish the job he’d started.

He peeled the damp panties away from her body and helped her step out of them.

Standing, he took her hand in his and led her to the shower. Time to wash it all away—the sweat, the smoke from the cigarettes he’d lit up before deciding that exercise was a more fit punishment for his sins, the dirt of Rachel’s workday. Her tears. The mistakes they’d both made. The carelessness with which they’d treated each other.

He kissed her—slowly, venerably—while the water warmed. When it had, they stepped in, a tangle of limbs. Angling so her wound was out of the stream of water, he held her, rocking her in a slow dance. She rested her head on his shoulder and buried her face in his neck. He washed her back like that, slid his soap-slick hands over her bottom and up her spine.

“Tip your head so I can get your hair.”

All he had was cheap dandruff shampoo. Shaking some into his hand, he remembered how, during their initial affair, she’d stocked girlie shampoo in his shower. After she’d ended things, he’d gone through the house with a trash can, erasing her from the surface of his life. The memory strung him so thin and raw, his eyes watered. He’d fought to forget about her, to make his feelings for her disappear. What a fool he’d been to think that was possible.

He worked his shampoo into her hair. Supporting her with his left arm around her waist, he tipped her back to rise. She took over the rinse job and he held on, his right hand exploring her breasts and ribs, watching the water and soap bubbles cascade over her creamy skin.

With a fresh round of suds on his hands, he reached one around to her backside and the other between her legs. She propped a leg on the edge of the tub and gasped in pleasure when he swirled his finger over her clit. He dipped lower and pushed two fingers inside her as the hand on her ass slid into the cleft, teasing her entrance there until she arched, pressing her hips back until he slipped his finger inside her. With a whimper of ecstasy, she fisted her hands in his hair and brought his lips to hers in a hard, wet kiss that told him exactly how much she loved what his hands were doing.

His cock was right there, so close to her wet heat that he could shove into her if he moved his hand. Arousing, the idea of claiming her body with his in that way, but he respected her too much not to use a condom. The more he thought about what that skin-on-skin friction would feel like, though, the faster his self-control began to fray, until his only choice was to ease his fingers away from her body and give himself the space to regroup.

She made a noise of protest, but took the hint, watching him duck his head under the water with dreamy, half lidded eyes. The next thing he knew, she was behind him, bar of soap in hand. Her mouth kissed along his spine, reaching higher until her teeth clamped onto his shoulder near his neck, a sensation so fantastic that he sucked a gulp of air in through his clenched teeth. Then she reached around to his front and took his cock and balls into her sudsy hands, driving his willpower to the brink of destruction.

All that stopped him from dropping her to the floor and unpacking their orgasms right then and there was the knowledge that in a few minutes—as soon as he wanted—he would have her on her back in his bed. The image gave him enough strength to clamp a trembling hand on her wrist to stop her. “Enough. I want you in my bed, in my mouth—right now.”

He made quick work of drying them both, as quick as he could, given that he couldn’t stop kissing her or watching the wicked fire dancing in her eyes. She must’ve felt the same because she never let go of the hold she had around his shoulders the whole way to his bed. They toppled together onto the duvet.

He spread her knees and dove into her swollen, wet flesh with his lips and tongue. Goddamn, she tasted good. Sweet and thick and uniquely Rachel. He got his fingers working again inside her body and, in no time, found a rhythm that turned her wild, quaking and whimpering and clutching at his ears.

He could’ve touched her like that forever, but she grew still and stroked his hair, whispering in a tremulous voice, “Get up here. I don’t want to come until you’re inside me.”

And damn if he’d ever deny her that.

Levering up on his elbows, he reached across her body into the nightstand for a condom. He was all thumbs trying to manage the rubber, dropping it twice before securing it over his erection. The whirlpool of emotions vying for space inside him made him clumsy and shaky. He tried to fool his mind by telling himself this was just Rachel. He’d fucked her brains out in his bed many times over, and had even made slow, fierce love to her on occasion, but this time with her felt different. Profound in a way that frightened him.

He pressed inside her in a slow drag of flesh-on-flesh that had his whole body tensing with pleasure. A sensation so rapturous, he couldn’t help but whisper her name. His own personal prayer. His everything. She met his gaze, her dark eyes shining as fiercely as his heart screamed. He found her arms behind his neck and brought them over her head, locking their hands together. And then his body took over. His hips surged and retreated as they rocked together in the dance they’d begun in the shower, a fluid union of heat and friction and wetness.

Vaughn had no idea what he was going to do to fix his life. No clue what the future held, but inside Rachel, in that moment, he didn’t feel like a failure. He felt strong and worthy, capable of anything. And when she found her release, holding tight to his hands, her body trembling and her breath a staccato of gasps against his neck, he felt indestructible.

He pushed up and back, kneeling, bringing her hips with him. When he came, he wanted to do so while looking at Rachel’s beautiful, sated body, framed in the glow of the bathroom light. With every thrust, he felt their vivid, eternal connection coursing through him. It shamed him that he’d thought he could break free of the hold she had on his heart, if only he tried hard enough. What a fool.

Taking her backside in his hands, he thrust harder, burying himself deep within her, feeling his balls tighten with impending release. At least tonight he’d cherished her the best he could. He’d been the man she deserved.

A final thrust and he came with a growl, holding fast to the only woman he’d ever loved. There would be no getting over her. He recognized that now. With everything else about his life destroyed, he knew as sure as the cruel sun would rise in the morning that the way he felt about Rachel was the only real part of himself he had left.

* * *

Rachel woke in silent darkness.

She felt Vaughn’s absence before she opened her eyes. It whispered to her like the winter wind through a canyon, hollow and cold. This was the worst part of falling asleep in his bed—waking to the harsh reality that the fantasy of their togetherness was over. The next part was good-bye. A hundred good-byes they’d said to each other over the last sixteen months. A hundred good-byes, and each time, she vowed it would be the last.

Vaughn’s pillow smelled like him, spicy and male. Closing her eyes, she hugged it to her body and inhaled. Why did she keep putting herself through the hurt of having to say good-bye? It didn’t make sense why a woman would torture herself over a man who didn’t love her enough to fight for her.

Maybe because that’s what she’d expected of him. To treat her with as much careless disregard as her father had. She’d loved her dad with her whole heart. Loved Vaughn in a totally different way, but just as ardently. Didn’t seem to matter to men that she gave them the gift of her love. It was clear now that she’d never be anyone’s first priority but her own.

Then again, maybe she wasn’t giving Vaughn enough credit. Making love tonight had felt different than every other time they’d been together. Maybe he’d sensed it too. Even though she’d made terrible choices of whom to trust and what to believe—the fallout of her hopelessly flawed intuition—she owed it to Vaughn not to give up on him without giving him a chance to prove that her assessment of him was wrong.

She threw back the duvet and climbed from the bed.

The nearest fix for her nudity was in his closet. She fumbled with a hanger in the darkness, then pulled a white T-shirt over her head. From a drawer, she pulled on a pair of his boxer briefs. Like the shirt, the underwear was a loose fit, but good enough.

She padded from the room in search of him, following the smell of cigarette smoke toward the dark kitchen. He wasn’t in the kitchen, but the door to his backyard had been left ajar.

Dressed in sweatpants and a black T-shirt, he sat on the steps looking at the darkness, a cigarette between his lips. He didn’t turn to acknowledge her until she stood on the top step, breathing in the dense odor of burning tobacco. She wasn’t a fan of the smell, but it evoked a comforting familiarity she welcomed tonight.