“And you don’t know how to behave like yourself?”
“What is myself,if not how I behave?” she half-snarled, then cursed. “Forget this.”
He understood. She was too used to sneering. The same way he was too used to wariness.
She twisted away from him, sending up a surge of hot water as she reached for the steps.
He caught her around the waist.
For one breath, they stayed like that—her turned away, water dripping in ravenous waterfalls down the curves of her back, his hand clutched around her waist. His fingers spread as wide, as greedily as hers had been on his chest.
“Don’t go.”
“Why? If beingniceputs you off anyway?” She bared her teeth in a flash of disgust—not at him, but at herself. *What should I do? Talk to you like this and feel you distrust everything I say, or speak out loud and sound like I hate you?*Fire flared in her eyes. *Do you even want to do this?*
“I want you.” He tightened his hold on her, pulling her slowly backwards. Back to the water. Back to him.
“The version of me you hear in your head, or out loud?”
How much had it cost her to admit she barely knew herself beneath the face she showed the world? His heart softened for her, sunlight melting the frozen layers. “You. Every snarling, superior inch of you.”
“What if that’s all I am?”
“We both know it isn’t.” He stood to his full height. She tipped her head back the barest amount necessary to maintain eye contact.
“What if what I really am is worse?” she challenged him.
He ghosted a touch down her side, following the droplets that clung to her skin. “I have met many truly evil people, Francine. None of them doubted what they were. None of them tried to be anything else.”
Something like grief swelled behind her eyes and was gone.
“There’s no one to pretend to here,” he said. “No ulterior motive. No reason to avoid the truth or play-act another version of it. Only us.”
*And I want you,*he added, silently and for her.
One step was all it took to close the distance between them. He couldn’t hide his sigh of relief as she put her arms around him. Or the jutting length of him, pressed against the top of her thighs.
Need was a guilty pulse in his veins, but it was nothing compared to the heat of Francine’s kiss. Her thoughts shiveredagainst his, a bitter curl of doubt, or disbelief—then she pushed it away and pulled them both down into the water.
Steam curled around them, washing away everything that had happened to them over the last few days. The fear. The pain. The hurt of everything that had kept them from being what they were meant to be to one another. Present, and giving, alight with desire and life and sweetness.
Sweetness he still did not think he deserved, but oh, he needed it so much. Needed her. Her hands in his hair and on his skin, her breath fast and hot, her eyes bright with a different sort of hunt.
“Tell me what you like,” she demanded, climbing into his lap.
“Ah—” He avoided the question. “Whatever you like.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That isn’t what I asked.”
“I don’t know!” He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, exasperated with himself. Women disliked male virgins—he knew that much.
But Francine had bared her soul to him. Hiding this part of himself would be a poor way of repaying her vulnerability.
“I do not have the necessary experience to answer your question,” he snapped.
Her eyes burned like lit coals at his tone—and then calmed. She frowned slightly. “None at all?”
“A limited variety of fumbling experiments, none particularly exciting and none … conclusive.”
