“What do you want to give in to?” she asked on a whisper.

“Pleasure.” I gently placed my other hand on her other cheek, until I was gripping her face.

“And what do you want?”

I brushed my lips over hers. Once. Twice. “You.”

I kissed Tabitha, and everything changed. I’d been wrong about this moment being like a right hook. That implied pain, when the sensation roaring through my body was lust. The only thought I could form was finally.

And then I quit thinking all together. I didn’t hold back. Couldn’t. Our first kiss grew wild within seconds, Tabitha holding my wrists and opening for me with a throaty moan. The kiss deepened. Became hungrier, almost starved. My tongue met hers as her hands twisted in the collar of my shirt. I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her into my lap. Tabitha Tyler was straddling me on the top of the art museum steps, a storm threatening over our heads, in a public place where anyone could see us.

Like I fucking cared.

Our lips parted, and we shared a gasping, ragged breath. Until Tabitha kissed me again and I grabbed fistfuls of her hair. Her nails scratched across the back of my neck. My fingers slipped beneath her shirt, hands coasting along the smooth skin of her waist before yanking her more firmly against me.

A soft, warm rain began falling all around us.

We didn’t stop. Tabitha’s lips roamed away from mine, along my jaw. My right hand held the back of her head as she trailed kisses down my neck. She licked my skin, moaned against it. The sound tore a ragged groan from the back of my throat. I tipped my head back, rain in my hair. I wondered how I’d gotten so goddamn lucky to have Tabitha savoring me, to have a combination of her breath, lips, teeth moving up and down my throat.

“You shouldn’t be allowed to taste this good, Dean,” she panted. She reached down for the end of my shirt and pushed it up and off me. For as long as I lived, I would never forget what she looked like as she stared down at my body. Rain trickled through my chest hair, and Tabitha licked her lips like she had an actual thirst.

My sexual experiences before this moment were mostly in the dark, with pretty strangers who knew my name and my victories in the ring. That was it. And of course, the second I retired, those same women didn’t look my way again. Sex was usually fast. Fumbling. More about her orgasm and my orgasm—and nothing else. Each time was mechanical. Impersonal. Some part of me knew I was probably wanted in this way. Even admired, for a short time.