Page 118 of The Rebound Plan

A little cloud passes through her gaze, and she presses her hand to my chest. “It’s not always easy for me. I don’t…orgasms aren’t always the goal, you know?”

“Okay. That’s okay.” I catch her wrist and lift her hand so I can nip at her fingertips. “But you got there with my mouth, right? That works?”

“That might have been helped by the danger of the situation.”

That’s fucking hot. “Yeah?”

“I don’t know.” She relaxes against my chest, tucking her face into my neck.

“We’ll figure it out together.” I rub her back. “Can I tell you something?”

“Anything.”

“The memory of you moaning to being called a slut haunts me in the best way. It feels like I haven’t slept a full night since. I wake up in the middle of the night, desperate to get my hands on a ghost. To pin you down and make you moan like that again.”

Her breathing changes. She inhales shakily, then holds it before slowly letting it out. “Really?”

“I’ll never lie to you.”

She slowly lifts her head.

“I’m not a good girl,” she says softly. Her gaze is steady, but part of it is far away. “Never have been. Not really. I made a choice to be more like that when I married Max, and I came to regret it, because it’s not really me. Deep down, I’m afraid that I’m the dirty slut Max sees me as.”

Frustration burns inside me as I hear her voice hitch. “The way I see it, there’s no conflict between being a dirty slut and being a good girl. What if I want you to be that dirty girl for me? Bemyslut? If you can do that for me, then that’s a very good girl indeed.”

Tears fill her eyes again.

I tangle our fingers together. “I want to know the real you.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. And anyone worthy of you would say the same thing.”

“Nobody ever has.”

“That’s their loss. But I love you. And I want you, exactly as you are. Slutty, horny, funny, smart, soft.” I wipe away the tears that have slipped out of her shimmering eyes. “If we’re sharing secrets, then you should know Emery and I were never like that, ye ken?”

Her eyes flare at the thickening of my usually mild Scottish accent. “Never?”

I shake my head. “It was part of a silly plan. I was supposed to get over you.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Turns out, it’s impossible.”

“And Emery was that rebound plan?”

I laugh. “Oh God, looking back that was fucking dafty. The cottage was the first step in that plan, and then Max invited everyone and Emery was an emergency stop gap. There was never anything between us.” I trace the curve of Shannon’s breast. “She wanted to play matchmaker so badly.”

“I did think it was odd how she underlined that she wasn’t jealous. She even made it sound like you had an open relationship.”

“That’s funny. I, on the other hand, am a deeply territorial man who does not want to share what’s mine.”

“What’s yours?”

“Or in this case, who is mine.”

“And who is yours?”

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