She was like one of the wild stallions that the ranch he’d worked on would round up every winter. They called it breaking, and some men went into it with the intent to break the horse’s spirit. But in its truest form, it was about earning the respect of a wild thing. The grudging regard didn’t make the horse any less wild. It didn’t make it much easier for someone else to seat. But earning that respect made Brick feel like more of a man than if he’d taken it, broken it. Fear was no replacement for respect.

And that was something Vorhees didn’t understand.

She let out the breath that she’d been holding. “Now, see, when you say it like that, I feel like an idiot for getting it confused. I mean, I’m not going to say, ‘Hey, Camille, I get really excited when Brick pins me down and bangs me sixty ways to Sunday after spanking me.’”

He groaned as his cock stirred against her. She snuggled closer. “But I also don’t have to feel so guilty about it now.”

“It’s that easy?” he asked.

She looped her arms around his neck. “It’s that easy. You do what you do to please me, not hurt me. And pleasing you amps up my pleasure into the stratosphere. We’re like two missing puzzle pieces that finally fit together.”

He needed a ring on her finger. Needed that piece of paper binding her to him.

He held her quietly and waited for her to get to the next thing that was bothering her. He could feel it simmering under the surface.

“While we’re on the subject,” she began.

He smiled and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

“Have you ever...done this with...anyone else?” Her fingers were tugging at the hair on his neck.

He nudged her chin up to look at him. “You’re the only one.” She always had been. Somehow all those years ago, he’d known and he’d waited.

After a decade and a half of missteps, they’d found their way back to each other.

“So not even with Audrey?” she asked in a tiny voice.

“No,” he said, stroking a hand over her hair and admiring the way it gleamed under the light. A thought occurred to him that had him tensing. “Have you?”

“With Audrey? No,” she said, feigning seriousness.

“Remi,” he warned.

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have even known how to ask for it,” she admitted.

He relaxed slowly. “I hate thinking about you being with anyone else,” he admitted.

“Think how I felt,” she said.

“About what?”

“When you married Audrey. On your wedding night. On your first anniversary. Just imagine if it had been me and Spence,” she said.

The slice of pain was instantaneous, as if she’d jammed a knife between his ribs. How would he have survived that? How would he have looked across the breakfast table when they’d come to visit him? Would the four of them have been friends? While he pined for the girl his brother had?