“I don’t know what I’m doing, Eli,” she admitted. “You do make it good for me, but I don’t want sex to be all about me. I need to know that it’s good for you too.”

She was so confused. She didn’t even know why she cared whether the sex was good for him too. She was just using him, right? She didn’t have a clue what she was doing or even why, but his answer mattered to her.

There was silence. Her heart pounded.

“Cat. Look at me. Right now. Look at me.”

She could barely make herself turn her head to him. Her face was red, but it was the truth. She wanted to make him feel the same things she felt.

He caught her face in his hands, his thumbs sliding over her jaw. “I’m not a man who would ever pretend even if I could. If you don’t know anything else about me, you have to know that. You please me, baby. You more than please me.”

Her eyes slid away from his. He growled low in his throat. “Kitten. I said look at me—that means your eyes are looking right into mine when we’re talking about this.”

Catarina sighed, but forced herself to look him in the eye again. “It’s just a little embarrassing, Eli. I don’t know what I’m doing, you have to tell me everything.”

“Sweetheart, I love coaching you. I love that no man has been inside you and you’re all mine. I love that I can teach you the things that please me and you’re so willing to learn. That matters to me, that you want to please me.”

“Don’t get too used to it,” she advised. “I want to kick you more often than I want to please you.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “I intimidate everyone, especially women. Where the hell have I gone wrong with you?”

“You intimidate me,” she admitted. “But that only makes me want to kick you all the harder.”

He stretched his legs out in front of him and looked out over the slightly rolling land. “I fell in love with this place the first time I saw it,” he said. “But it never felt right. It never felt like home. Not until you walked through the door.”

Catarina didn’t like the way her heart melted at his statement. The sex was bad enough, but it was just sex. She could handle just sex with no emotion attached to it. She didn’t want to like him so much and the way he talked to her, the things he said, even the way he looked at her, made her feel special.

“I think I was handcuffed and maybe carried,” she pointed out.

“Yeah. Like I said, felt like I was coming home for the first time.”