“And then you co-adopted Lollipop with me. And not because you were looking to get something from me, but because you wanted to do the right thing for the dog. That’s when I knew it was more than lust, and I had to walk away and plan my strategy.”

  “Always the venture capitalist?” she murmured.

  “Something like that.” His hands spread wide over her ribs, the tips of his fingers just brushing the undersides of her breasts. “You’re not an easy woman, Sadie.”

  “I am a handful,” she agreed, her pulse kicking into gear. “But that’s why you have two hands.”

  He ignored her attempt to lighten up this conversation. “You’re not easy,” he said again. “You’re something else entirely.” And while she simmered over that, he smiled and kissed her softly. “And I like it,” he said against her mouth. “I like you very much, Sadie Lane.”

  She sighed and tightened her grip on him. “I like you very much too, Caleb Parker. I didn’t want to.”

  “Do tell,” he said, voice amused.

  She rolled her eyes and then got serious, staring up at him. “I mean, I really didn’t want to. But you sneaked in under my defenses when I wasn’t looking. And now I can’t seem to shake you.”

  He smiled, gentle and warm. “I’m very grateful for that.”

  Lollipop was zooming around them like a wild woman, darting here and there and back again, occasionally tripping on her three legs, but getting right back up again, still having zero idea that she was handicapped in any way.

  Sadie had the urge to stand up and run around too. Run around and . . . hide. She was a master at hiding, she’d been doing it all her life, both physically and mentally. But actually, she didn’t want to hide from Caleb. She wanted to stay right here in his arms for as long as she could have him. Craning her neck, she stared up at the night sky. It was a tumultuous one, threatening rain, which she loved. When a few drops began to fall out of the sky, she stuck out her tongue to catch one.

  Caleb watched, his voice husky when he spoke. “If we’d been out here a week ago, we’d have seen a rocket launch sending payloads into space.”

  “Yours?” she asked.

  “Yes. The technology, anyway.”

  His world was so much bigger than hers. She’d known that. But it never failed to astonish her. “You used to travel for work all the time and be mostly gone,” she said. “Before Lollipop.”

  “Not just Lollipop. There’s a lot of reasons why I’m using SF as my home base these days. My family. And friends.” He paused and met her gaze. “You.”

  Her breath caught audibly, and a small smile curved his lips. “I knew the day I met you,” he said. “Which was just under a year ago now.”

  “Knew what?” she whispered.

  “That I was going to fall for you and never recover.”

  Her chest tightened. “I don’t want to ever be the thing that holds someone back.”

  “You don’t hold me back. You make life more.”

  “More what?” she asked.

  “More everything.”

  “Because I sleep with you?” she asked.

  He smiled. “Most definitely.”

  She rolled her eyes and tipped her head up to watch the lazy drops fall out of the sky, but his fingers stroked her jaw and turned her back to him.

  “And also because I am falling for you, Sadie. Falling hard.”

  She put her fingers over his mouth to hold in any more words.

  “That won’t make it untrue,” he said around her fingers.

  “Shh.” She closed her eyes and tried to calm her heart down. “Just shh for a minute.” Her thoughts raced in tune to her impending stroke. It was quiet around them. Lollipop was back at their feet, huffing from her exertion.

  Okay, so Caleb had a lot of pretty words and those words had thrown her. He wasn’t a man to toy with anyone’s feelings, much less someone he cared about. He cared about her. At least he cared about the parts of her she’d allowed him to have.

  But he was definitely missing some. In spite of his sisters looking into her—which they’d either not finished doing so or they hadn’t filled him in on the details yet—Caleb didn’t know her past. Because if he did, he’d be running for the hills. She knew this for sure.

  Very slowly, Caleb slid a hand to the nape of her neck, urging her in for a gentle, tender kiss that turned very ungentle in a matter of seconds, leaving her in the same condition as always when he put his mouth on hers.

  Hungry for him.

  Another few drops of rain hit, and then a few more, feeling amazing against her heated skin as the last of the daylight began to fade away.

  Caleb stood and offered her his hand, pulling both her and Lollipop back beneath an overhang to protect them from the rain. Lollipop climbed into her backpack and yawned.

  Tugging Sadie close, Caleb wrapped his arm around her waist, taking one of her hands in his, pressing it to his chest.

  “What are we doing?” she asked.

  “Dancing in the rain.”

  That he’d even remembered it was a secret little fantasy of hers had her momentarily speechless, but she slid her free hand up his chest and around to the back of his neck, and leaned into his warm hard body, completely swept away by the moment.

  She let him lead, not that they did anything fancier than shuffle their feet and sway gently to the sound of the rain hitting the rocks around them and Lollipop’s gentle snores. Sadie’s head rested against Caleb’s shoulder, her nose up against his throat. Closing her eyes, she breathed in his scent and listened to his heartbeat. “Caleb?” she whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Take me home.”

  His place was the closest. The front door barely shut behind them before he pressed her up against it, kissing her hungrily.

  “Arf!”

  Caleb sighed and pulled free. “Hold that thought.” He then scooped up Lollipop and vanished from the living room. Two minutes later he was back alone. “She’s in my office with a treat. She’s good for now.” He pulled her into him. “Where were we?”

  “Arf!”

  Sadie turned, and sure enough, Lollipop stood in the open doorway, eyes bright, tongue lolling and tail wagging. Leashed to Caleb’s office chair, she’d dragged it down the hall and seemed to be waiting patiently for some attention.

  “Not now,” Caleb murmured against Sadie’s mouth. “Mommy and Daddy need a minute.”

  “Actually,” Sadie said, staring into Caleb’s eyes. “Mommy needs more like fourteen minutes, and that’s only if you’re really, really good.”

  “Oh, I think we both know that I’m better than good.” Eyes lit at the challenge, he nipped her bottom lip. “But I’ll tell you what, you can have as many minutes as you want. You can have the whole night.” He unhooked Lollipop from her leash. “Don’t eat the house,” he said and then took Sadie into the bedroom.

  She reached for the buttons on his jacket and shoved it off his shoulders. It took less than a minute for the rest of his clothes and all of hers to end up on the floor. Eyes dark with intent, Caleb gave her a little nudge. The backs of her knees hit the edge of his mattress. As she fell to his bed, he pinned her down and began to explore every inch of her body with his hands, his tongue, his teeth . . . proving to the both of them that he didn’t need fourteen minutes.

  But he gave them to her anyway. And many more.

  Chapter 23

  #FightDirty

  Caleb opened his eyes a little bit later to find Sadie plastered against him, her hair in his face, an arm and leg thrown over the top of him like she’d claimed him.

  Clearly, her body was on board with what her mind wasn’t.

  They fit like two pieces of a puzzle.

  When his stomach rumbled, he remembered that they’d skipped dinner. Quietly as he could, he slid from her embrace and ended up in the kitchen with Lollipop. He found leftover mac and cheese in the fridge and put it in the microwave. While he was waiting on that to heat, he opened the laptop he always kept on his kitchen table and skimmed his notifications.

  As usual, there were far more than he was willing to deal with at the moment, including the file from Sienne.

  Lollipop was staring at him.

  “Hey,” he said. “I haven’t opened it, have I?”

  There was a text from Kel saying he’d seen in the news that one of Caleb’s companies was going to be sending people into space in the next decade and he expected a free ride. Caleb responded that it was good as done because he wanted to be able to say he hired the first space cowboy. Kel responded with the middle finger emoji.

  When the microwave dinged, he pulled out the container, grabbed a fork and two bottles of water, and headed back to the bedroom. He didn’t expect Sadie to be awake, but she was, lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling pensively.

  Setting everything down on the nightstand, he sat at her hip. “What’s up?”

  She blinked. “Do I smell mac and cheese?”

  He handed the container to her, along with the fork. “Refuel.”

  She smiled. “For round two?”

  He smiled back and opened a bottle of water, handing that over as well. “For me, yes. For you it’ll be round . . . four, or is it five?”

  She snorted and took a long drink from the bottle, but her eyes weren’t quite right. He waited until she’d eaten her fill before setting everything aside, turning off the light again, and slipping back under the covers. Then he drew her into him and held her close, brushing a kiss to her temple.

  She sighed. “You’re good at the silent interrogation. I think it’s because you’re naked. You’re pretty damn distracting naked. Makes me forget myself.”

  “Seems only fair since when you’re naked, I can’t even remember my own name.”

  She smiled but it faded quickly.

  “Talk to me, Sadie.”

  She was quiet a moment, but he waited her out. It was his one superpower, given to him by too many sisters and a strong-as-hell mom.

  “Do you sometimes lay in bed at night and relive every horrible thing you’ve ever said or done?” she asked.

  “All the time. What are you reliving tonight?”

  She sighed. “On the phone today, I let my mom think she was a bad mom.”

  “Was she?” he asked.

  “No. I don’t know.” Sadie paused. “I was a bad kid.”

  “I don’t believe that,” he said. “And moms are resilient.”

  “Really? What’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to your mom?”

  He laughed. “I told her she couldn’t go on a date because she was ugly.”

  She gasped. “You did not!”

  “Hey, I’m not proud of it,” he said, “but in my defense, I was five and I didn’t want her to leave. I wanted her to stay home with me.”

  “Reasonable,” she said.

  “Selfish,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I can’t imagine you being selfish. If you want to hear selfish . . .” She hesitated and then spoke in a soft rush, as if needing to get it all out before losing her nerve. “When I was a teenager, my parents told me they were done with me being sullen and angry and dressing in black from head to toe all the time. They told me I needed to be more like my sister. I was thirteen to Clara’s fifteen and hadn’t really developed yet—much to my annoyance. So I stole one of her bras and stuffed it with those small travel-sized bags of candy I’d had stashed under my bed, and wore it under one of her favorite dresses—also stolen. It was a white sundress and looked great on her and her new curves. Being a jealous little shit, I put a coat over the whole ensemble and sneaked out of the house to go to school. Only I got called up to the front of my English class to read something and I got nervous, which meant I also got sweaty.”

  “The candy fell out of your bra?” he guessed.

  She gave a low rueful laugh. “Yes, but first it melted and leaked through the dress, making me look like a rainbow and smell like chocolate—which was not allowed in class. I got sent to the principal’s office. My parents had to come down and everyone got to take turns telling me what a shit show I was and a huge disappointment. For punishment, when I got home, I was marched to the kitchen sink to scrub the dress clean.”

  Caleb imagined a thirteen-year-old Sadie hunched over the sink in the M&M bra that was too big for her, scrubbing at the material of the white dress, knowing she couldn’t possibly get it clean.

  Or please her family.

  It actually infuriated him, and the power of that took away his ability to speak for a moment.

  “I didn’t try very hard to clean the dress,” she went on, staring at the ceiling again. “I really was a complete over-the-top, dramatic, way-too-sensitive little jerk who refused to understand my family, or the fact that they just wanted me to be more like them.” She shook her head. “But with the dubious passing of time, things eventually got better.”

  “I’m glad,” he managed to say lightly, not wanting her to dwell on shitty memories that made her feel bad, when he didn’t think she had anything to feel bad about. “When I was thirteen, I stole something from my older sister too.”

  “Right,” she said in disbelief, and made him laugh.

  “I did. I stole her car.”

  She gasped and turned her head to face him. He took advantage of that and kissed her slow and deep, until she moaned and wrapped him up tight in her arms, which was quickly becoming his favorite place to be.

  “Did you get caught?” she asked when she’d pulled back.

  “Yes, because my mom called the cops.”

  She gaped at him. “She didn’t!”

  “Okay, she called my uncle Des, who was a deputy, but it was close enough. And when he dragged me back home and deposited me in front of my mom and my sister to apologize, I didn’t. I told them all that I was a grown-up, I was the man of the house, and therefore I could do what I wanted when I wanted.”

  Sadie bit her lower lip while her eyes, those beautiful eyes, finally danced with genuine amusement. “You didn’t.”

  “Hey, I was thirteen and on a roll.”

  “What happened?” she asked. “Did she beat the crap out of you?”

  Hoping that wasn’t what had happened to her in her youth, he rolled to his back and pulled her over the top of him, running his hands up and down her spine, forcing a light smile on his face. “My mom told me if I wanted to be a grown-up, she was all for it. She typed up a bill for my rent and food and said I could have my room back soon as I paid up.” He kissed her softly. “For a week, I slept on the couch with her six crazy cats. Then one morning, I got up early and cooked everyone breakfast and begged for forgiveness.”

  Sadie went brows up. “You don’t cook.”

  “I didn’t say it was a good breakfast.”

  She smiled. “And you aren’t allergic to cats, but you believed you were allergic to dogs?”

  “Hey, a kid tends to believe what the people who love him tell him, you know?”

  She nodded slowly. “I do know.”

  And she’d believed herself a fuck-up because that’s what she’d been told. He hated that for her.

  “Did you ever figure out why your sisters lied to you about the dog thing?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He stroked a loose strand of hair from her face, running his finger along the shell of her ear, smiling when she shivered. She loved being touched by him.

  And he loved touching her.

  “They lied because we couldn’t afford a dog,” he said quietly. “They were already all working themselves half to death just to keep us fed and clothed and in an apartment that was already way too small for us.”

  Her expression softened. “Why didn’t they just tell you?”

  “They didn’t want me to know we were poor.”

  She stared at him. “You’ve got a pretty great family, Caleb.”

  “I know.”

  “They supported you, and now you support them.”

  He cocked his head. “Who told you that?”

  “You.” She lowered her mouth to his. “Just now. Caleb . . . does this ever scare you?”

  “You mean us?”

  “Yeah.”

  He wondered what the right answer was. He had no idea so he went with honesty. “Yes.”

  She inhaled deeply. “Me too. Sometimes I like you so much I can’t stand it. My heart beats crazy fast when I know I’m going to see you, and then when you look at me, I feel . . .”

  “What?” he whispered. “You feel what?”

  “Lucky.” She hesitated. “I like you so much that I don’t know what to do with it. And then when something happens, like what your sisters did, it’s an excuse to back off. But I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to back off, Caleb.”

  Her words were a balm to wounds on his soul that he didn’t even know existed. “I don’t want you to back off,” he said. “You’re not alone in this. I feel the same.” He gave a rough laugh. “Just the memory of how you look at me and smile . . . it can make me forget whatever I’m doing. And when I know I’m going to see you, I put off so much energy that even Lollipop gets all wound up.”

  She laughed and he rolled again, tucking her beneath him, making himself at home between her legs. He wanted her again, still, and he was suspecting also always. What the two of them shared in this bed was so much more intimate than anything he’d ever had in his life. A few weeks ago he’d have said his family were the only people who really mattered. His friends too, of course, but with his family he was the baby and always would be, and with his friends, he was the guy with the party trick of being able to spin dirt into gold.

  But with Sadie, he felt like . . . a partner, an equal one.

  She smiled at him and slid out of the bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “My hair’s a frizzy mess from the rain. I need to shower and wash it before going to sleep. I’ll be right back.”

  A minute later, he heard his shower running. With a smile, he entered the bathroom to find the sexiest woman he’d ever met standing in the middle of his rainforest shower, steam rising off her mouthwatering body, head lolled back in sheer pleasure.