This man, who’s been fingering moans out of me for the past five minutes, refuses to kiss me. Conor and his fucking control. “R-really?” I stutter. “Are you really going to do this to yourself?”

His thumb slides on my clit, rougher. My hips jerk toward him.

“Come on, Conor.” I try to laugh, but there’s not enough air in my lungs. “You want to kiss me so bad—oh.”

I come suddenly, painfully, straining against him, shuddering like I cannot contain the pleasure within my body, and it feels so much better than the best orgasm of my life, the one I had on his thigh in Edinburgh. It’s a tide, sweeping over me, a glow of heat from within that has no right or reason to be this damn good except for one.

Conor, watching me. Conor, touching me. Conor, talking me through it.

“It’s okay,” he says when I slump in his arms, mouth silk-soft against my temple. “It’s okay, Maya.” He’s hard against my flank. I may be wobblier than jelly and out of breath, but there’s nothing that I would love more than to make him come, too.

“You’re gonna do that again, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” he says, pressing a kiss against my cheekbone. Like the fucking liar he is.

I fist his shirt with both hands. “So if I offer to return the favor with a hand job, or a blow job, if I tell you that you can fuck my tits or literally any other part of my—”

He groans. “You can’t, huh?”

“What?”

“Be good. Not even once.”

I laugh, but no sound comes out. He’s quiet, too, as he picks me up like I’m a cotton-stuffed plushie. I follow his lead, wrap my legs around his waist, and he carries me to the bed like the exhausted girl that I am, pulling back the cool sheets, depositing me between them.

I stare at him from the too-thick pillow, yawn, and say, “Conor Harkness, you are a coward.”

The twitch of his lips feels like agreement. “Go to sleep.”

“You’d love it, wouldn’t you? It would make me shut up.”

“Such a fucking menace,” he mutters.

His hands tremble as he pushes a few strands behind my ear. There is a cautious, fragile glint in his eyes, as though he’s shaken, tender and achy from what just happened, but in a way that has nothing to do with his body. I think I get it: He thought he’d come up here and play me like an instrument, handle me like a business deal. Maybe he hoped that there would be something clinical about this.

He underestimated me.

No, Conor has always recognized me for who I am. What he underestimated is us.

“I wish you good luck,” I inform him.

“On what?”

“On your righteous journey of self-denial. You’re going to”—another yawn—“need it.”

He shakes his head. Takes my phone out of his pocket and plugs it into the charger. “Go to sleep, Maya,” he repeats.