Then she reached beneath her skirt and adjusted her panties and straightened, hoping she looked a little less epically tumbled.

Sadly, she didn’t feel less epically tumbled. She was hypersensitive and tingly, and her mouth felt like she’d gotten it too close to a flame.

She turned, and all those feelings got worse. He was walking toward her, down the staircase, jeans low on his hips, very low, no underwear band visible because his underwear was still on the floor and not on his fine body. His chest was bare, his ab muscles rippling with each step.

His mouth was grim. And it still looked kissable. His lips looked extra kissable when they were grim, which was some sort of sick joke her hormones were playing. Because everything in her took it as a challenge. To soften his mouth. To make him relax. To make him groan.

To make him shake and sweat and come.

Bad road. Her mind had gone down a bad road.

“So, that was...fun,” she said, clearing her throat.

He shot her a glare that could only be described as evil and bent to get his T-shirt, tugging it over his head, and over her happy fun times ab show.

“I take it fun isn’t your adjective of choice,” she said, knowing she was making it worse, unable to stop herself from warding off the awkward silence with even more awkward words.

He took his underwear off the floor and stuffed them in his pocket. She would have laughed if it wasn’t all so horrible. Actually, she might have laughed anyway because anything so singularly hideous had to be a little bit funny.

But she didn’t laugh because she didn’t want Eli to kill her with those very angry brown eyes of his.

Though, they were starting to make her angry, since it wasn’t like she’d assaulted him. He was the one who had kissed her.

He had kissed her and now he was glaring.

And just like that she went from tingly to uncontainable rage.

“Please don’t stalk around here like I compromised your maidenly virtue. You kissed me. You pushed me against the wall. You were complicit in the screwing. So get over yourself.”

His nostrils flared and a muscle jumped in his jaw. “I am well aware that I’m at fault here.”

And that made her bristle, too. “At fault? You make it sound like we had a fender bender. It was sex, Eli. There doesn’t have to be a guilty party.”

Color slashed over his cheekbones and she knew that he felt...ashamed. Of her. Of wanting her. And that just made her feel like garbage. All the glow was gone. All the good everything. And the anger, too.

It just left her with a sharp sinking sensation, a feeling of aching uncertainty. And just like that, the fear, the knot of terror that seemed to be a constant companion, was back in her chest.

And she wanted to run.

Not just from the room, or the house. But from the town. The state. She just wanted to leave it all so far in the rearview mirror that she couldn’t see it. That she wouldn’t be able to remember this regret.

“Why don’t you just go,” she said.

He nodded once and walked out the door, closing it firmly behind him. And she realized they hadn’t even locked it. They’d screwed in the entryway of a place that seemed to have revolving doors on every structure and they hadn’t even locked up.

“I wish I could go,” she said, pressure building in her chest, tears stinging her eyes.

She cried. Of course she did. At the end of books, during commercials for life insurance and movies with intense acts of bravery that were sure to end in death but were performed anyway.

But she didn’t cry over real-life things. Because she kept negative space, negative emotion, out of her life. And she didn’t feel it. She didn’t let it get down beneath the surface when it did run out to confront her.

But Eli had managed to get inside her, and not just in a sexual way. It was...terrible. She leaned against the wall, her heart slowed down to a dull thud that resonated in her ears, her stomach turning, making her feel sick.

Okay, she was not going to wallow. She was not. Wallowing didn’t solve anything. And repeating the same mistakes twice didn’t solve anything, either.

One good thing about growing up with her abusive asshole of a father: she’d learned about human nature in a harsh and real way. Had seen what happened to the optimistic when they believed a bad situation could change with love. With lying to yourself.

She’d come out of that with eyes wide-open. And with a ruptured spleen, but that was another matter entirely.

She sucked in a deep breath and managed to hold back the tears. She wasn’t going to cry over Eli. It was a spilled-milk situation. Or rather, spilled lemonade. She just needed to wipe up the mess and carry on.

She heard the soft thump of four paws hitting the kitchen tile, and then Toby wandered into the room, rubbing against her bare legs, his gray tail twitching up above his head.

She bent down and scratched him between his ears. “I messed up,” she whispered, because her voice didn’t seem to want to function on any other level. “But I guess that’s par for the course, right?”

Toby meowed and pushed his head harder against her hand, angling so that she hit a particular spot just behind his left ear.

“How do you put up with me?” she asked, and was met with nothing but a request for more head petting. Which in many ways was just fine. “Kitty before mantitty,” she said, moving her hand beneath his chin and scratching.

This was just a onetime thing. A moment of insanity. She should be grateful it had happened. Yes, grateful. Because the intensity brewing between them wasn’t healthy. And it had needed some diffusing. That was what today had been. She could draw a line under it and call it good.

What was sex like with Eli? Question answered. What did he look like naked? Question very much answered. There was no more burning curiosity. None.

And that meant the tension between them should be somewhat relieved. So there.

She took another breath, some of the tightness in her chest easing. There was no reason to be upset. They were adults, and they could handle this. Eli would be fine next time she saw him. He’d just been suffering orgasm hangover and hadn’t handled things well.

But everything would be fine.

It had to be.

CHAPTER TEN

IT WAS PIZZA NIGHT for the Garrett family, and it should have been somewhat enjoyable. Usually, Eli liked the routine of them assembling in the main house for an evening.

Even though there weren’t a whole lot of sunnier times for their family to be reminded of, they’d always had each other.

The three of them, and sometimes Jack, against the world.

But tonight he wasn’t enjoying it to the degree that he should, and all because of Sadie. Because of Sadie and the fact that, only four hours ago, they’d had sex against a wall, which he’d never, ever done in his life.

Because that spoke of a lack of control he didn’t even think he was capable of. Never before had a kiss just turned into sex.

When he had sex with a woman, they both knew it was on the agenda and things followed careful steps. Living room couch to bedroom. And then out the door again because he didn’t spend the night, but it was okay, because they didn’t expect him to.

It did not just...happen like that. Almost against his will, and certainly against his better judgment. But one minute they’d been shouting at each other, the next they’d been kissing, and then...then he’d been about knocked on his ass by the intensity of his orgasm.

Before he knew it he’d been upstairs in her bathroom, totally naked, pouring cold water down his neck so that he could get back downstairs and out the door again without popping wood when he saw her.