Oh, shit. I knew I needed to stop, I knew that . . . I just couldn’t remember why. Once my fly was open, Josie’s hand gripped me, moving steadily up and down until I was gasping. When my gasps turned into loud moans, Josie’s mouth moved back to mine, silencing my cries of pleasure and pain with her kisses. I might not have been able to remember why I needed her to stop, but knowing I needed to stop it was enough. That made what should have been pleasurable, painful and what was painful, pleasurable. It was a fucking train wreck of pain and pleasure and touch that I never wanted to walk away from.

As Josie’s hand moved faster, I had to grit my teeth and move my hands from her ass or else I would come right then. If I was going to come with Josie, it wouldn’t be in her hand.

In one seamless move, I had her on her back. I braced myself over her, my hips locked so closely together with hers, one small movement would put me inside of her. Exactly where I didn’t only want to spend the rest of the night, but the rest of my life. All the possible conquests in my future didn’t hold a candle to the way I felt being so close to Josie, knowing she loved me and I fucking worshipped her.

Kissing her once more, I leaned back just enough to stare at her. I wanted to look into her eyes, and I wanted her to look into mine. She wasn’t drunk, she wasn’t with Jesse, and it wasn’t strictly a moment of reckless abandon. I wanted to look into her eyes when I took her so I could see exactly what it felt like to know she was making love to me just like I was making love to her .

It would be a first, and one I knew I’d never forget.

Then, almost like a spotlight, a beam of moonlight broke through the window and illuminated Josie’s face. Where the bruise taking up one whole cheek was darkening. My stomach twisted right after it clenched. I remembered what happened and why we couldn’t do it. Now. Or ever. I might not have directly caused it, but Josie wore that bruise because of me. I moved to roll off of her, but her legs wound around me and didn’t let me go.

“What? What is it?” she asked.

I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see what my shit-poor luck had done to Josie, but then I forced them open and made myself look so I’d never forget. So if I ever got the tiniest inclination to throw myself back into Josie’s life, I’d remember the image of her bruised face below me then. “It’s just . . . what happened . . .” The skin between her eyebrows wrinkled. I lifted my thumb to the wrinkle, trying to erase it. “Mason. I can’t stop thinking about what—”

“Colt and me?” she interjected. “Is that what you’re worried about? Colt and me and what happened between us?”

I took a moment to figure out what she meant. “Well, shit . . . No, that wasn’t what I was thinking, but now I am.” I’d never asked Josie about her and Colt’s relationship for two reasons. One, because it was none of my goddamned business. And two, because I didn’t want to know a goddamned detail. Even thinking about Colt Mason’s hands running down the same areas mine just had or about his . . . inside of her . . . I punched the mattress beside her head, trying to get the image out of my mind.

“Garth, stop. There’s no need to get all worked up.” Her hands formed around my face, and she waited for my eyes to shift back to hers.

“No need to get worked up? Another man being with you . . . Another man being . . . intimate with you . . . It’s a lot for me to process, okay? Let’s just leave it at that and forget about it. Forget forget about it.” Truly, if I never had to experience the image of Colt naked and braced over Josie the way I was, that was just fine by me.

“There’s nothing to get worked up about and nothing to forget”—she shook her head when I raised an eyebrow—“or forget forget because nothing ever happened.”

I know I was one flex and slide away from being buried inside of Josie, but I liked to think my brain didn’t strictly run off whatever my dick was doing—or almost doing. But what had Josie just said? Surely she couldn’t have meant . . . “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I don’t know. Are you asking me what I think you’re asking?”

“Okay, I was confused before, but now I’m positively dumbfounded.” I slid Josie’s hair back from her forehead and waited.

“Colt and I never . . .” Biting her lip, she shrugged.

“You and Colt never slept together?” Because I needed it spelled out—especially when it came to the topic at hand.

Josie shook her head. “No.”

If my body hadn’t been beaten to a pulp earlier, I would have attempted a back handspring. “Then who was the last guy you slept with?” I skimmed through my memory banks. Other than Jesse and Colt, I couldn’t recall Josie being with anyone else. I couldn’t remember her being with anyone but . . . I arrived at my conclusion the instant before she replied.

“Well . . . you were.”

That had been two years ago. The last guy she’d been with was me, and that was forever ago. I felt two emotions: pure and utter elation that I was the last man inside Josie and . . . pity. “I was the last guy you slept with? Damn, that sucks for you.” It certainly didn’t suck for me, but it did for her. “At least the first guy you slept with was Jesse fucking Walker. That has to even it out somewhat. Jesse, first. Me, last. Think you could call it even and we cancel each other out?” Damn. I’d slept with so many women over the course of two years I didn’t even want to consider tallying up that number. Especially realizing Josie’s tally was a big fat zero.

“Jesse and I never slept together either.” Josie’s hands stayed planted on my face, and her thumbs stroked my cheeks. It was a soothing gesture, but I should have been soothing her. She hadn’t slept with Jesse, the guy she’d been with for two years, the guy she’d started dating when a teenager’s libido is in full force . . . Which meant . . .

“Fuck,” I muttered as my head became too heavy to hold up. Even with her hands braced around it, the weight was too much. “Are you saying I was your first? That that night was your”—I swallowed and hung my head farther—“that was your first time?”

“You were my first. And you were my last.”

I’d had some heavy bombs dropped on me in my lifetime. Being parentless, penniless, and living out of a truck confirmed that. But Josie admitting I’d been the one to take her virginity in a night of drunken haze and recklessness . . . Not only that, but it had been the first and last time she’d had sex . . . Well, that was the fucking atom bomb of mind-fucks right there.

“Please, Joze, please, please, please, don’t tell me that’s true. I can’t even . . . I don’t even know . . .” That was the truth—I didn’t even know. How I felt, what that meant, how to proceed, and what to do next. I don’t even know became my newest marching beat, and I felt certain it was there to stay.

“There’s one more thing, Black. Since you seem to be taking this so well.” Josie peered up at me with confusion before continuing, “I don’t just want you to be my last right now. I want you to be my last forever. I want to live my last day with you being the last man I’ve been with.”

I muttered one more curse before shoving off the bed hard. I was able to break free of her legs and put the distance between us I needed to think somewhat straight again. After buttoning my jeans back up, I turned to the side in an attempt to stop staring at her naked body still spread out on the bed. “I can’t do this. I can’t fucking do this.”

“Can’t or won’t?” she asked, sitting up. “And are you referring to having sex with me or having a relationship with me?”

“Those two things are one and the same for me.”

She huffed. “Says no one you’ve ever fucked, and since you’ve never had a relationship with anyone but yourself, no one’s able to offer their opinions on that.”