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The shower was scalding, the steam so thick it felt like breathing soup, but it still wasn’t hot enough to scald her out of me.

I braced one forearm against the wall as the water hammered the back of my neck, and I let my other hand drop to my cock. It was already aching, already leaking, like it had been since the second the Ferris wheel car rocked to a stop at the top, and Sienna’s breath caught against my mouth.

I’d only brushed her lips. Just enough to taste the cherry from her lip gloss and feel the tiny hitch in her inhale when my thumb stroked the corner of her mouth. But it had still been the equivalent of getting my first hit of something I already knew I’d never quit.

I thumbed the volume on my phone, turning up the listening device in her room. The feed was quiet except for the soft rustle of sheets…then the catch of her breathing. My name, broken and needy, slipped out of her throat like she couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Sterling…”

Fuck.

My grip tightened, a slow, punishing drag from base to tip, twisting over the head of my cock…exactly the way I’d wanted to drive my tongue between her teeth when the lights of the fair spun slow beneath us. I pictured her thighs parting, pictured her own fingers sliding down, circling, slick and desperate, her hips rolling because she couldn’t stop chasing the same thing I was.

Another moan leaked through the speaker, thick with need and perfect.

I groaned into the steam, dropping my forehead to my arm. Water sluiced down my back and over my fist as I started to move in earnest. Every stroke was her mouth, her breath, the way she’d looked at me like she was starving to touch. I could still feel the tremor in her lower lip when I’d pulled back just enough to watch her lean in for more.

“Sterling—please⁠—”

That word broke me.

Pleasure snapped up my spine. I pictured her exactly as she had to be right then: back bowed off the mattress, throat exposed, teeth sunk into that swollen bottom lip to keep from crying out loud enough for the inn to hear. Fingers buried deep, thighs shaking, my name spilling over and over like she was praying to the wrong god.

I came hard, my vision whiting out, thick pulses hitting the tile and spiraling down the drain while her voice trembled in my ear. My knees nearly went, and my chest was heaving like I’d run ten miles instead of just fucked my own hand to the sound of her falling apart.

I turned the temperature down and forced myself to stay under the spray, my cock twitching half hard again already as the water cooled my skin.

She was going to stay.

I’d make damn sure of it.

And the next time she begged my name like that, it would be against my tongue, with my hand around her throat and my cock so deep inside her she’d forget any life that didn’t start and end with me.

CHAPTER 19

SIENNA

Iwoke up with a cowboy in my brain.

Not literally, of course. My bloodstream remained cowboy-free, and my bed held no suspicious traces of rural activity. But my mind?

Sterling Hayes had pitched a tent and was charging rent.

He’d certainly charged rent last night. I tried to scrub my brain from the way I’d gotten off thinking of him.

I lay on my back in the bed, staring at the ceiling while my mind played a highlight reel of yesterday like it had been nominated for an award.

Sterling’s bare chest and those abs.

Sterling’s mouth as he’d sucked on his cherry-covered finger.

Sterling on the bull, his hips rolling like he was riding something else.

Sterling in the arena, looking up and finding me in the crowd like there was no one else there.

Sterling in the Ferris wheel car, his thigh pressed to mine as I confessed how thoroughly my marriage had wrecked me.

I’m going to convince you to stay.