“Have you ever thought that your wife falling for someone else was her issue, not yours? That you didn’t do anything wrong?”
His jaw goes slack, gaze falling to the floor, and Ramona wonders if she’s gone too far. Ruined what should be a romantic moment in this winter dream of a cabin.
“Of course I thought about it,” he says. “But that wasn’t something I could fix. If I’d messed up in some way…The self-hatred just felt easier, I guess.”
Fuck, if she doesn’t know what that’s like. “I hate thinking about you hating yourself this whole year.”
“Not the whole year. Maybe…seven-tenths of it.”
“That is an oddly specific fraction. You didn’t even want to use twelfths?”
“Sorry, didn’t realize how into math you were. That’s not on your Wikipedia page.” He nuzzles closer, hooking a thumb inside the waistband of her jeans. “Ramona Wilder. Pisces sun. Hottest girl on planet Earth. Huge math nerd.”
She’s laughing as he pulls her closer, but still the idea of Nick hating himself is too much to bear. She wants to be careful with him, this man who went through hell and emerged with a heart that was scarred but still beating.
“Do you think…” Ramona trails off, wondering why she’s so tongue-tied today. “Do you think you’d want to get married again?”
Nick considers this, untucking his hand from her jeans. “If it felt right, and it was what both people wanted…then yes.” His voice turns softer, fingertip drawing circles on her wrist. She nods, unsure why those words spark a stinging sensation at the back of her eyes. “What about you?”
“I—I don’t know. I guess I’ve never really thought about it.”
It’s a lie, and if he can tell, he doesn’t press. She wonders if she asked it to prove something to herself. If he wants to get married and she isn’t marriage material, they don’t have a future—simple as that. Self-sabotage.
“That’s okay,” he says. “You have time.”
He tips her head upward, kissing her, and even if all the fears don’t melt away, enough of them do that she can turn off that part of her brain.
Time.She wants to grab it by the fistful. She wants to give him this perfect holiday, something to remember her by when this inevitably falls apart. When he decides she isn’t worth the hassle, once he’senjoyed her while he can.
“I can’t get enough of you,” he says as he turns her so her back is against him. His hand, warm from the fire, slips beneath her shirt, landing on her stomach and traveling up to her breasts. “I could have you every single night, every single morning, and I’d still go feral each time.”
“I would be genuinely impressed by your stamina.” She lovesthe way his laugh thumps against her shoulder blades. The way he hardens against her lower back.
“Is that a dig at my feeble old age?”
Now it’s her turn to laugh. “No,” she says. “I like you this way. You’re just…impossibly sexy to me. Everything you do. The way you touch me. The sounds you make.” She rocks backward against him, drawing out a groan as his mouth opens against the side of her neck.
It isn’t that this man has turned her soft, or dulled all her sharp edges. It’s that she’s discovered maybe those edges were too sharp to begin with. That there are some people worth not wearing armor around.
She tries her best to ignore the fear tapping away at the back of her brain: that she’s not long-term material, and this might be the only time she sees his family. No matter how many lovely things he says to her, he’s got to reach his limit eventually.
If this is unserious and temporary, she should enjoy every moment of it.
She turns to face him, loving the way his lashes are already at half-mast, like he’s drunk on merely touching her. “Can you open the side pocket of my duffel?”
He lifts an eyebrow but does what she’s asking, unzipping the pocket and pulling out a thin silk scarf. Now he looks even more confused.
“You probably should have brought something a little heavier for the weather.”
“I didn’t bring it for the weather.”
Realization dawns on his face with a slow upturn of his lips, just as she tries and fails to bite back her own smile. “You want me…to use this on you?”
“Only if you want to,” she says, giving him an out in case he isn’t into it.
She’s always been curious to try but never trusted that it wouldn’t make its way onto the internet.Ramona Wilder likes being tied up.
With Nick…shetrusts.
