“Yes, please. But before…can we stop somewhere else?”

“Where?” he asked.

“Anywhere.” I scrunched my nose, my gaze dropping to my thighs. The only excuse for what I had in mind was that I was still a teenager, and Trent was still the hottest man I’d ever seen. His face was casual, his posture blasé. One of his arms was draped against the steering wheel and he looked a lot like a James Dean picture come to life.

“Why?” The laughter in his voice annoyed me, but also made me hotter for him. I rubbed my bare thighs under the summer dress, feeling my cotton panties already damp just from thinking about it. “You know why.”

“You need to refresh my memory. I’m old, and I don’t take all my Omega-3.”

I laughed, wetting my lips as I tilted my body to face him. “Sunday, we were supposed to, um…” I laughed, thinking about how ridiculous it looked and felt.

“That’s not a sentence, Van Der Zee. You will need to finish that.”

Oh, my God. He was going to make me say it. Fine. Whatever. “You were supposed to take me from behind.” I blushed.

The car stopped with a comic screech.

Where were we? I looked outside. A vineyard between Big Heart Village and San Diego. Other than the birds chirping and golden mountains, there was nothing but fat grapes and thin, wiry trees. I wish I could say I wanted him to take me from behind as a reward for how he’d been with my brother. But the truth was, I wanted him desperately. Like you do water in the desert, in desolate sands.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Fucking up a hundred grand car, probably.” He glanced over his shoulder, reversing his car, his arm slung behind my seat, before driving straight into the vineyard. On the sand, and dust, and everything else a Tesla shouldn’t be on.

The car jerked to a stop a few inches from a tree, and he got out, pulling me along with him.

“Where to?” I asked breathlessly, following his footsteps. I could see what he saw in the distance, and sweat dripped down my neck. No way was I going to do this. There was a cabin at the end of the vineyard. Empty, most likely, since the windows were shattered and the door was wide open. It belonged to someone, and that someone wasn’t us. I pulled him toward the car, but instead of fighting, he picked me up and slung me across his shoulder, sauntering confidently toward the hut.

“You’re insane. Someone could be in there. Someone could catch us.” My hair was in my face and my panties were completely exposed, as one of his arms was pressed on my thighs, making my dress ride up. He bit the soft flesh of my ass in warning, his breath hot, his pulse quick under my leg.

“I meant we should do it sometime today, not right this second.” I giggled.

“Your panties say right this second. They’re fucking soaked and you’re rubbing against my shoulder like you’ve never had a cock in your pussy before. But we both know that’s not true, right, Edie?”

“Right,” I lamented, raking my fingernails down his back, feeling his goose bumps even through his shirt. “Bane fucked me, too,” I teased.

To that, he responded as I wanted him to. With a loud smack to my ass. I moaned, feeling the familiar rush only Trent had ever given me, and spread my legs slightly while he continued making his journey to the cabin.

“He never fucked you like I do, and we both know that.”

No truer words were ever spoken, and as he dumped me onto a stack of hay like a rag doll, towering over me, I inwardly prayed he would kiss me again, the way he had at Vicious’. Like there was no one else in the world but us. Reminding me that we were alive and beautiful.

“Kiss me,” I breathed, blinking. Please, my eyes begged. Now, they demanded.

It was stunning, watching the way he undressed from his anger for me, still fully clothed. How his knee bent in front of me, leaned forward, clasped the back of my head, and brought me to his face, pressing his lips sweetly onto mine. Like what we were doing made some sort of sense. Like this wasn’t going to blow up in our faces as soon as he declared war on my father, or my father found out I’d slept with him.

He opened his lips, his tongue pushing in to open my mouth. I tilted my head, giving him access, holding his stubbled cheekbones in my palms, feeling how alive he was under my fingertips. I kissed him deeper, hotter, leaving a piece of soul behind, making sure that it’d seep deeper into him so he’d never forget me.

He encircled his fingers around my sweaty neck, catching some stray locks of blonde hair that stuck to my skin, and squeezed softly as his tongue flicked against mine. He sucked my tongue hungrily. My eyes rolled back, and I clenched from the inside.