Sierra lay next to Cole in his bed, face-to-face, her body still tingling from the aftereffects of off-the-charts amazing sex and her mind only beginning to come back online. His arm was around her, and he nuzzled his nose along her forehead and then trailed lazy, sated kisses over her cheek, down to her lips.

That was the thing about him, she was learning. He wasn’t just considerate and attentive working up to the main event. He was just as focused on her afterward, showering tenderness on her like no other guy she’d been with. He didn’t seem to be the type to roll over and fall asleep as soon as he got his needs taken care of.

The more she learned about Cole, the more he surprised her, in delicious, heart-melting ways. He was unselfish and certainly skilled at the sex part, but it was the moments afterward and in between that had the potential to make her fall for him. Minus the whole escape-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing.

“Don’t think for a second you’re going to kick me out,” she said lightly, her voice husky and lower than usual.

She felt the low rumble of a laugh in his chest more than heard it. “Who said anything about kicking you out?”

“Not now and not after round two or round three or however many times you ravish me.”

“Ravish? It’s a good word but maybe not the right one.”

She laughed quietly at the thought of debating vocabulary post-sex. That was a new one for her, and she sort of loved it. “You just ravished the hell out of me.”

“Maybe, but only after you showed up and seduced the hell out of me,” he echoed. “And then the semi-striptease and the way you threw yourself on my bed in invitation—”

“Did you not like it?” she said, fully confident he had.

“The image of you in my sheets will be with me till the day I die. But ravish conveys that I was the only aggressive one. You came over here with a mission, and while I wholeheartedly approve, we shouldn’t mislabel anything.”

“I’ve never slept with a word nerd before. It’s kind of sexy. But”—she ran a finger along his jawline—“you’re still not making me creep out of here in the middle of the night.”

“I have no intention of that,” he said, and he seemed to mean it. At least at this moment.

“What happens when you get that panicked feeling like you did the other night?”

Bull’s-eye.

Cole pulled away and rolled onto his back with a heavy exhale. “I won’t,” he said after some time had ticked by. “But we should probably get some things straight.”

Her gut tightened, but she’d never been the type to shy away from the tough things. “Such as?”