There was no worrying about having a life that looked like any kind of particular thing. Because there wasn’t a blueprint for what they were.

And maybe that was the lesson with Sammy and him. There was no blueprint. So he didn’t need to worry so much about where the boundaries fell. They just needed to see. Just needed to follow what felt right. And all right, so going with the flow wasn’t usually his thing. Usually, he was more about trying to find a set of rules so he could make sense of the situation that he was in. But maybe it was time to take a little bit of sunshine and carry it with him. Do a little bit of what Sammy would do.

Hell, it was probably the only way to really be with Sammy.

He had to grit his teeth through the rest of the evening, and when it was all over, though Sammy had ridden over to the bar with Iris, she made a show of leaving with him.

There was something about it that made him want to beat his chest like a gorilla. He didn’t know what this thing was doing to him. Unless sex with Sammy had caused some kind of strange testosterone surge in his body. Which seemed possible. The minutes ticked by in the car, as did the silence. And he suddenly was overcome by the fact that he was going to go home and bury himself inside Sammy.

Sammy Marshall.

His deepest, most forbidden fantasy.

And yeah, he’d had her once. Yeah, he’d tasted her, but it didn’t mean anything in terms of it being old or over now. No. He wanted her. He wanted her so badly he couldn’t see straight. And he wasn’t going to wait. Not anymore.

He couldn’t wait.

He pulled the truck off the main highway, up a gravel drive that led into the mountains.

The kind of thing he’d gotten up to in high school, but never, ever since.

He didn’t do things like this. He wasn’t spontaneous. He wasn’t crazy.

He was the kind of guy you could depend on. The one who would always help you move. The one who would make a plan then stick to it. See that everything went well. According to that plan. He wasn’t the kind of guy who did spontaneous sex.

Hell, for him, hookups had become pretty thin on the ground because he just couldn’t be bothered half the damn time.

But he couldn’t wait for Sammy. He had to have her. He had to have her now.

“What are you doing?” Sammy asked.

“I have to have you,” he said. “Right now.”

He pulled the truck off to the side, into a slight outcropping of trees. It was still there. He remembered it being there.

“What is this?”

“You know exactly what it is.”

“Oh, this is where you got into trouble in high school.”

“Damn straight. I’m about to get in some trouble with you.”