“I don’t want to play that game anymore,” I say. “I don’t want you to say things you don’t mean and do things you don’t want to do. It’s confusing.”

“Who says I did anything I don’t want to do?” he asks.

“You did,” I fire back. “You’re the one who told me you don’t want anything to happen between us—”

“I never said that,” he argues, stepping closer.

“—and I don’t want to be a prop to make your ex jealous, and I know I started it—”

“You’re not a prop,” he says, looking hurt.

“That’s exactly what I just was,” I counter. “You only want to kiss me when they’re there to see it. And I know I started it, but things are different now.”

Miles’s gaze drops on a hoarse laugh, a shake of his head. He steps in closer, our hips brushing.

Then he looks back up, takes my face in both hands, and kisses me again.

Rough, deep, messy, breathless.

With no one to see it.

Nothing to stop us.

His hips pin mine back to the side of the passenger seat. His hands move around to my back, spreading out over my bare spine, our chests pressing together, his heat cutting through the cold night. “I want to kiss you,” he murmurs, drawing back a mere inch, “every time you take a sip of something and make that sound.”

I pull him back to me, that sound slipping from my mouth into his. My hands climb into his hair. His scrape down over my sides, his thigh pushing in between mine. “I want to kiss you every time I walk past your bedroom and hear your laugh through the door,” he says, and his hands steal beneath the hem of my dress, all the way up to cradle my hips, my skin prickling like every cell wants to be a little bit closer to him.

I untuck his shirt from his waistband. My hands skim up over his back, greedily touching every warm curve I can get to.

“I want to kiss you every time I hear the shower turn on and know that you’re in there,” he rasps.

I touch his stomach, his chest, the muscles tightening as my fingertips brush over them, and he takes hold of my hips, lifting me up into the truck.

“I want to kiss you all the time, Daphne,” he says. “Sometimes it’s just easier to find an excuse.”

I pull him closer by the belt loops, his hands grazing over my thighs as he pushes in between them. The curves of our bodies melt together. His parted lips run along my neckline. I scoot deeper into the truck, drawing him in after me, then climbing across his lap.

His hands trace down my sides, his eyes dark. “Daphne,” he says, a throaty rumble.

I reach back and undo the clasp at my neck, let the front of my dress fall to my waist.

He groans, lightly cupping my breasts, lowering his mouth to lick me, then take me between his lips.

I gasp, grip the back of his neck, my body arching into his.

“What are we doing?” he murmurs against my skin.

“What do you want to do?” I ask.

A slow, testing thrust of his hips, the friction dividing my thoughts into fractals.

His mouth drags back up my throat, his breath hot. “I want,” he says raggedly, “to undress you. And taste you. I want to hear you come again, and feel it too.”

The fractals become fireworks, a kaleidoscope of sensations and needs.

Miles’s silky dark hair between my fingers.

His rough hands up under my dress, finding the lace of my underwear.

The pressure of his warm mouth on my chest, and the cool air kissing every other inch of exposed skin as the need and pleasure build together.

“Miles,” I gasp, moving myself against him.

His eyes slant up, his mouth still on me, his eyes nearly black. It’s an unbearably sexy image. “Tell me to stop,” he says.

“I don’t want you to stop,” I pant out. “I want to undress you. I want to taste you. I want to feel you come.”

“Fuck, Daphne.” He presses his forehead against my shoulder, his heart slamming into me, his hands braced lightly against my ribs, holding himself back from me. His low groan turns into a pained laugh.

He straightens up, redoes the clasp behind my neck, and lets his hands slide down to my thighs. “I’m not good at this,” he says roughly.

“Good at what?” I ask.

“When things get complicated,” he scratches out, “I panic and shut down, and I don’t want to do that right now. I can’t.”

My stomach sinks. “It doesn’t have to be complicated.”

“It already is,” he says.

“Because of Petra?” I ask.

“No,” he says, tenderly tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “Not just that.”

I slide out of his lap, blushing furiously.

“Hey.” He reaches out, takes my hand.

“It’s okay,” I say quietly. “You don’t owe me any kind of explanation.”

“Daphne,” he says, his voice heartbreakingly soft.

I look up and meet his eyes, all dark now, without any kind of glimmer.

“There’s a lot of shit I don’t like to talk about.” His voice splinters. “The thing is, I have a bad habit of letting down the people I care about. I don’t always think things through, and my feelings aren’t something I can trust.”

“What is there to trust?” I shake my head. “You feel however you feel.”

He looks down at our hands, folds his fingers into mine. After several seconds, he clears his throat, but his face stays torqued, his eyes hyperfocused on our hands.