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His brow furrows. “The water?”

“Your first time, smartass.”

Understanding warms his expression immediately. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” I shift against him, feeling strangely shy. “You’ve spent the last couple of months interrogating me about what I like. My turn now. Was it what you expected? Better? Weird? Any favorite parts?”

“Hmm…” He tips his head up, eyes closing. “Maybe when I spanked you with the side of my longblade. Or when I took your ass while fucking you with the scythe handle.”

Yeah. My cunt and ass are filing for work-woman’s comp and taking the rest of the week off.

“You?”

The silly smile on my face only grows. “The mud fight.”

After he’d fucked me on every surface in the murder bunker, we went outside. And with the rain pouring down, we had the most X-rated mud fight of the century, then fucked every which way until we were covered head to toe in the wet dirt.

Kind of like the first night we met. Except with fucking this time. And Gage actually got down and dirty with me. Oh, and no corpse. Though I’m pretty certain I died and came back to life quite a few times. I am not about to tell Gage about his resurrection powers. Too dangerous.

He brushes his knuckles along my cheek. “I spent years assuming the act itself was the part people made too important. I still think that.” His other thumb moves across my knuckles. “What mattered most was that it was you.”

Well. Fuck him for making my chest hurt when the rest of me already does. “So, no buyer’s remorse?”

“Princess, I would like to remind you that I’m the one who spent months making you wait.”

“Which was deeply annoying.”

“You survived.”

“Barely.”

His lips touch my head. “No regrets.”

That settles somewhere inside me, warm and fulfilled like a little sun. But we still have a cloud to deal with. “Tomorrow we have to talk about my dad,” I tell him.

His body stills behind me. “Yeah.”

“And Joshua.”

“Definitely Joshua.”

“Will you tell me how you came to be a serial killer vigilante?”

“Soon.”

I squeeze his hand. “But not tonight.” I snuggle closer, staring up at him. “Tonight I want one night to know exactly one thing.”

“What’s that?”

I lift a finger to tap his jaw. “You love me.”

“Incandescently.”

I close my eyes, but I’m about to say something very corny.

“So…the princess fell in love with the serial killer.”

He chuckles. “Good thing he fell harder while they were burying a body together.”