“We should have done it a long time ago. You kept saying I should leave you. I didn’t know if that was what you wanted or not. I finally decided to sink or swim. You were thinking what?”

“I was thinking I loved you so much that I shouldn’t keep you around me, because you must not find out I felt that way. I thought you might think it was gross or sick. Or…you might feel kind of sorry and responsible for me, which would be worse.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re the original lemons-into-lemonade girl,” he said. “You get struck by lightning, and instead of wailing and moaning about it and applying for disability, you discover a usable skill and figure out a way to make it work for you. You’ve got the brains and the charisma to make it in your very own business.”

“Charisma,” I said scornfully.

“You do, or hadn’t you noticed the way men like you?”

“Adolescent boys like me,” I said. “That’s not exactly a big plus.”

“Not just adolescents,” Tolliver said. “They just don’t know how to hide it.”

“You’re saying I’m a guy magnet? Get real.”

“Not in the sense that someone like, I don’t know, Shakira or Beyonce is. You’re not a blond shake-your-booty kind of girl, but you’ve got your very own attraction, and believe me, men feel it.”

“As long as this man feels it,” I said. I looked up into his face.

“You made me stop breathing there for a minute,” he said.

I looked down and smiled. “At least you know everything bad about me already.”

“I didn’t know you made that sound when you came,” he said, and I did a little not-breathing all my own.

“I didn’t know you had that slight curve in your dick,” I countered.

“Yeah…ah, how does that…I mean, is that okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” I assured him. “Touches something wonderful inside me.”

“Oh? Hmmm.”

“And I wondered, if you were up for it…”

“Yeah?”

“You’d maybe touch it again?”

“I think you could persuade me. If you went to great lengths.”

“Would you like me to go down on you?”

By the light of the flickering fire, I could see his pupils dilate. “Oh,” he said.

“Lick you? Like this?” I extended my tongue and did a little flickering of my own.

“That would do the trick,” he said hoarsely. “Jesus, Harper, I don’t understand why we don’t have guys following us from town to town just to watch you do that.”

“Because I’ve never done it for anyone but you,” I said. “You don’t think I’d say something like that to anyone else, do you?”

“Please,” he said. “Please do that for me. And no one else.”