She peeked up at him, a playful dance in her eyes as she continued her assault on his senses. Before he knew what was happening, she had his fly undone and was greedily tugging at his jeans.

“You think you’re the first guy I’ve been with who’s hooked up to medical equipment?” she said. “For that matter, you think I’ve never gotten down and dirty with my own IV in? Oh, Harrison, you sweet innocent. I came of age in a hospital, remember?”

He stilled again, but this time out of incredulity. “Wait, what? Are you talking about your leukemia?”

“Of course. What else would I be talking about?”

“But you were a kid.” The words came out as an accusation—mostly because they were. “You were sick. What the devil were they doing to you there?”

There was so much laughter in her eyes it was like looking into another world. “They weren’t doing anything to me. Well, not unless the they in question were the other kids on the ward. Oh, man. There was this boy with Hodgkin’s who could do the most amazing things with his—”

Harrison held up a hand, his whole body rigid. “I don’t want to hear it. I thought hospitals were supposed to be a place of healing, of convalescence. Not dens of juvenile vice.”

Sophie tilted her head and blinked up at him, looking the picture of virtue. “That shows how little you know about the real world, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t believe some of the parties we used to have. It’d be all fun and games and Methotrexate, but the second the nurses turned their backs…”

“You wicked little monster. Don’t say it.”

“…orgy time.”

His whole body shook with laughter. There was nothing funny about the things she was telling him. The idea of a young, fragile Sophie lying in a bed somewhere, struggling to make it through each day, was a thing that made his chest grow tight. She’d suffered and suffered heavily, and no amount of making out with other kids behind closed doors could make that okay.

But he laughed anyway. Whatever trials she’d gone through, she’d managed to come out intact. Intact and, well, happy.

He wished he knew how.

“All those tangled IVs and anti-nausea drugs…” She heaved a mock sigh. “It wasn’t always pretty, but we did the best we could. You don’t know sexual resourcefulness until you sit down with a group of teenagers who don’t dare let their heart rate monitors get high enough to set off alarms. The trick is to switch them when the doctors aren’t looking.”

“Okay, now you’re just making things up.”

“I guess you’ll never know, will you?” she asked, a coy lift to her brow. “The misdeeds of my youth aren’t a story for someone as uptight and proper as you.”

“Uptight?” he said.