“Shh.” He brushed his lips over hers. “Don’t think. Just feel.” He took the kiss deeper, his warm tongue stroking hers.

There was no way she could resist him. Her body had been craving his since the moment he walked into the kitchen, and she wasn’t strong enough to stop, not when he was touching her like a man who knew her body better than she did. She slid her hands up over his muscular shoulders and around his neck, offering her surrender, and he moaned deeply as he settled himself between her thighs.

“Do you know why you came to me?” he asked minutes later as he thrust his body into hers. “Because you’re mine, Lina,” he said, driving into her again. “You were made for me. You know that’s true, don’t you?” He paused, his body deep in hers, the muscles of his arms and shoulders straining as he held himself over her. “Tell me.”

“No,” she whispered, hating the power she knew he had over her.

“Why are you fighting this?”

“Stop talking.”

“I know I hurt you, but I promise, if you’ll let me I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I love you.” He lowered his mouth over hers as his body again began to move.

Lina was almost asleep, her body tangled with Phil’s, when he asked the question that had probably been consuming him for two months. “Were you with him?”

“No.”

He released a breath.

“You had sex with him?” Adele whispered within five minutes of arriving the following afternoon.

“Adele,” Lina hissed, grabbing her arm and backing her into the empty dining room. “Shh. I have a house full of people.”

“I told you this would happen, didn’t I? And you said, ‘Oh no, I would never do that.’”

“He told you?”

“He didn’t have to. He has that whole, I got laid for the first time in months look all over him. He’s strutting around like a fucking peacock.”

“Oh God.” Lina dropped her face into her hands. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“What did he do, get you drunk?”

“No. It wasn’t his fault.”

“So, what, your bodies just merged on their own?”

“Kind of. It was a temporary lapse, that’s all. It was neither of our faults.”

“How many times did you have this ‘temporary lapse’ that was neither of your faults?” Adele asked. “I’m guessing more than once.”

“Okay, now you’re starting to sound like Mom. Let’s drop it.”

“You’re back with Phil?”

Lina spun around at the sound of her mother’s voice. “What?”

“Phil, he seems happy. Did you work things out?”

“No, he got laid last night,” Adele said.

“Adele!” Lina glared at her.

“What, you don’t think she’d figure it out?”

“Figure what out?” Drew asked as he joined them.

“Nothing,” Lina said.