It’d been the end of her interest in sex. Right up until she’d met Rylan.

“Asshole,” he said, quiet but intense. It made her shiver.

But it also made her want to tell him everything else. She wanted him to hear it all, to know it all. She hadn’t done anything wrong. But God. What she’d let herself become. How little she’d accepted for so long. It made her gut twist and clench, made her throat ache, even after all this time.

“The guy before that . . . Aaron.” She gave up on her dinner. She’d more or less had enough of it anyway, and just thinking about this made her stomach turn to stone. She pushed her plate away and curled her hands together in her lap. “He was my first. First really long-term relationship, you know? I’d dated here and there in high school, but nothing serious. Definitely not anybody I’d . . . have sex with.”

Rylan made an encouraging noise.

She drew her knees in close to her chest, hugging them tight. “He was smart. A business major. Really practical and driven.” Goal-oriented was how he’d put it. The exact opposite of her with all her dreams about galleries and art. “Took me on nice dates and stuff.” She paused when Rylan put his sandwich down, something in his gaze darkening. But he didn’t try to interrupt her, so she soldiered on. “After a couple of months, he started wanting more, and I did, too.” A dark chuckle bubbled up in her throat. “I was a twenty-year-old virgin, you know?”

Part of her had been terrified, as much by the relationship as by the sex. Her parents’ marriage had been less of an example and more of a cautionary tale, and she’d carried the metaphorical scars with her for years. Still carried them, really.

Another part of her had just wanted to get it over with.

“He wasn’t awful in bed or anything, but when he . . . did stuff, it never worked. I’d get turned on, and we . . . had sex. But.” Her tongue had gone all twisted up, and her face felt hot, her neck cold. Why couldn’t she just talk about this stuff? “I couldn’t come.”

“What?” Rylan looked at her with confusion, a displeased furrow coloring his brow. “He never fingered you or ate you out?”

The heat on her cheeks deepened, flowing down her chest. God. He said it like it wasn’t dirty or weird or wrong at all.

Maybe because it wasn’t.

“He did,” she said. “Sometimes. It just didn’t do anything for me.”

“And you never took things into your own hands?”

Her laughter choked off with the force of her embarrassment. “Until you made me, I didn’t even know that was something I could do in front of a guy.” Not without him thinking she was a slut, or a pervert. Or who knew what else.

He’d finished up his sandwich by then, and he leaned over, the sheet sliding off his lap as he twisted to set his plate down on the floor. Sitting up again, he scooted closer to her, letting their bare legs brush beneath the covers. “Kate.” He coaxed her to unfurl herself and took her hand in his, the skin warm and vital and strong. “I told you. There is nothing in this world sexier than a woman feeling pleasure.”

A lump formed at the back of her throat. Because he really meant that, didn’t he? He’d shown her as much with every kiss and every touch, had told her in a dozen silent ways, and this wasn’t the first time he’d said it out loud.

“I mean it.” His voice grew in its fervency. “You deserve someone who makes you feel amazing.”

It was the deserve part that hit her like a punch to the chest. She shook her head without even meaning to, this automatic denial.

He squeezed her hand tighter. “You are beautiful and sweet and so fucking talented. You deserve—” He cut off, a flash of bitterness flitting across his face, but it was there and gone in a second. “You deserve someone who can give you everything.”

Someone like you? The question pressed at her tongue, but she swallowed it whole. Nearly choked on it. Because he had. He’d given her this unreserved support, had shown this faith in her. And here in this bed, he’d taken care of her in a way that no one ever had before.

Because he thought she was worth it.

Her lip wobbled, her breath coming harder as the realization crashed over her, and she tried to tug her hands back, to get herself under control. She’d already accepted that she’d fallen for him, but what he was saying here, this kindness in the face of her sad history—it just made it hurt even worse. Her face crumpled, and his eyes went wide.

“Kate?”

She shook her head, but her voice wouldn’t work. “I just—”

An impossible, unbearable warmth wrapped itself around her heart. She closed her eyes against it, but in the next breath, he was shifting across the bed, pulling her bodily into his arms, and the heat inside her went supernova. It burned through her, changing her.

Something that wasn’t quite a sob broke past her lips, and he held her tighter. She swabbed at her eyes, but it didn’t help. God, this was awful, breaking down on him, and because what? He’d been nice to her?

Muttering quiet assurances into her hair, he rocked her back and forth. “You’re okay, baby.”

But she wasn’t. She was extraordinary.

A new kind of light seeped into her heart.

He treated her this way, gave her his time and his body, opened her up with such patient, tender care, because he thought she deserved it.

“I just—” she tried again. She opened her eyes, and the world was still upright, the ceiling and the floor still exactly where they were supposed to be. It was her that was floating. The tear that escaped her felt like it glowed. “I didn’t realize how badly I needed to hear that.”

He practically forced the breath from her, his arms squeezed around her so hard. “I’ll tell you every day,” he said, and he didn’t even bother to correct himself. To put a time limit on it. “You deserve the entire fucking world, Kate.”

She didn’t have to ask him if he meant it.

And that was it. The whole rest of the story came rushing out.

Burying her face against his chest, she said, “It wasn’t just the sex with Aaron.” He hadn’t been outright abusive or anything. It hadn’t ever gotten that far. But . . . “He started out so nice, but he put me down in all these subtle little ways.” The shame of it all crept up on her again, that she’d tolerated it for so long. Had fallen into the same damn trap. “Like these offhanded remarks about how I dressed or the classes I took or what I was going to do after I finished college.”

When you’re still waiting tables and I’m on Wall Street . . .

“And it just got worse and worse, until I was believing it.” She’d always believed it. “That he was better than I was and I was lucky to have him.” That she didn’t have any right to expect more of him. More affection or more time. More patience with her body.

Rylan’s voice was murderous. “He’s lucky I don’t know where he lives.”

“I could tell you,” she said weakly. If it would get Rylan to come to New York, he could beat up as many asshole ex-boyfriends as he pleased.

“Don’t tempt me.”

She bit her lip. “When I found out he was cheating on me . . .”

Rylan’s huffed-out breath was almost a growl.

And it was that—his fury on her behalf—that gave her the strength to tell him the rest. “There was this part of me that was ready to forgive him, because it was probably my fault.” She’d been bad in bed, not attentive enough. Not good enough for him. “Until I remembered, until I realized . . .”

It was all hitting her again. A dizzying kind of pain and a stab of regret.

Rylan stroked her hair, patient. He was always so patient with her.

“It was the same damn thing that had happened to my mom.”

Her crazy, wonderful, amazing mother, who had given up her own dreams to put her husband through school. To raise a daughter who’d come too young, and she’d never complained. Not until . . .