“Race and I used to come up here and get high. This bluff is the perfect spot to line two cars up and then race down the mountain. I won the title to more than one sweet ride up here.”

I put my arm around his lean waist and buried my nose in the crook of his neck.

“What about girls? Did you bring all of your conquests up here?” Jealousy was evident in my voice but I didn’t care. I hated the thought of him cuddled up with some random girl before that magnificent view, and I wasn’t scared for him to know it.

“Conquest implies I had to work at it. Back then it didn’t matter. Chicks were interchangeable, and the idea that I had to put any kind of effort into getting laid never even occurred to me. So no, Dovie, you are the only girl I’ve ever brought up here.”

He shifted me around so I was pressed up against the hood of the car. His hands were pressed on the cold metal on either side of my hips.

“When I finally finished this car, got the restoration done and got it back from Gus’s paint guy, I swore that I had never seen anything more beautiful. I thought the Runner was my reward, my trophy for being such a badass. I barely had her for a week when I ended up locked up.”

He leaned more fully into me, making me spread my legs so he could wedge himself between them. He put his hands on my ass and gave me a little boost so I was actually sitting on the hood with my legs wrapped around him.

“Are you going to try and tell me that changed when you saw me? That I was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen?”

He grinned down at me, his teeth flashing white in the dark. “No. I thought you were ordinary. I didn’t understand why Race was risking everything for you.”

Well, that was a bit of an ego diffuser, but there was no escaping the heat burning down at me from his gaze.

“And then you opened your mouth. All that love, all that loyalty, all the innocence, even though life had kicked you around time and time again, and all I wanted to do was let some of that sweetness and light touch me. I’ve never had very clean hands, but the first time I touched you, that first gasp out of that perfect mouth, the first time I thrust into you, God, Dovie, you made me feel like I was the king in a land of second chances.”

I was stunned. He wasn’t much of a talker in the best of times, but man, when he put his mind into it, he had a way with words that was incomparable. I wanted to tell him how I felt about him, to give him some kind of reason to think before throwing himself to the wolves, but my heart was in my throat and no words were getting around it. Besides, he was unzipping the front of the hoodie and using one of his hands to push me farther back so I was laid out on the hood of his prized possession. I shivered more at the look in his eyes than at the night air popping across my skin as he yanked open the buttons on my flannel shirt. His progress was stopped by the hook of my bra digging into my back, but he maneuvered me enough that he could get it open and loose enough to shove out of his way.

The contrast between the brisk air touching my naked skin and the heat inside the suction of his mouth was enough to make me gasp. I dug my hands into his scalp and arched my back up off the metal under me. I muttered his name as he dragged wet kisses across my chest and treated my other breast to the same treatment he had lavished on the first one. I wound a hand around the back of his neck and held him to me like I was never going to let him go. When he finally lifted his head after sucking and licking and biting all of me that was exposed, I yanked him down to my mouth for a kiss that left no doubt how I felt about him.

Every single bit of fear, love, panic, passion, unease, and everything else he always churned up inside me tasted bitter and sweet as I begged him with my lips and tongue to let this matter enough for him to make better decisions. I pulled desperately at his long-sleeved T-shirt until his naked chest was pressed against my own, his heart telling mine a story as they thundered against each other.

He was so beautiful, dark and wild, just like the night around us. He kissed me on the side of the neck then sank his teeth into the soft skin of my earlobe and chuckled into my ear.

“Normally I think it’s pretty cute you dress like a dude, but in the current circumstance, I think I would be willing to sacrifice my left nut for you to be in a short-ass skirt.”

He trailed his strong fingers over the quivering skin of my belly and stopped to slide the button on my jeans out of the loop. He kissed my shoulder and used his arms to lever himself up and off of me so he could take a step back. His eyes trailed over me and I saw his breath shudder out of his lungs. He gave his head a shake.

“I didn’t think there was anything in the world that could make this car better. I was so wrong.”

He was going to make me cry. “Shane . . .”

He hooked his thumbs under the edge of my jeans and my panties and yanked them down my legs at the same time. Being that exposed to the air suddenly made me shiver, but he was only gone as long as it took him to shove his pants down around his hips and cover himself in latex.

“I think my greatest fantasy just became you in nothing but my hoodie. Copper-Top, you are the prettiest thing I have ever seen.”

I wanted to be his fantasy. I wanted to be his reason for him to get past the fatalistic attitude that seemed to be his default. I wanted him to want me enough to let Bax take a backseat once in a while so I could enjoy everything Shane brought to the table. He lifted one of my legs up and wrapped it around his uninjured side while I curled both my hands up around his broad shoulders. I loved the feel of his muscles as my hands moved across his back, I loved the way his eyes blazed all his intensity and determination into mine. When he first slid into me and my body reacted by clasping down on him, hard, it was him who let out the first gasp.

My skin pebbled up, but not because I was cold anymore. I was on fire, everywhere we touched, all the places on the inside where he dragged and pulled on sensitive flesh, I felt like I was going to combust. He kissed me again, used his tongue to mimic the motion his hips were making below. The double stimulation was a lot, my body was already primed, my heart already open, and when he took my hand and put it between us, it only took the simplest touch, the lightest pressure from my own fingers to push me over the edge. I called his name into his mouth and felt him increase the leisurely pace he had initially set.

He put a knee on the bumper of the car and I felt him lean fully into me. I dug my fingers into the bunched cords of his neck and held on as he thrust and pounded into me like he was trying to imprint me forever onto the paint job of his car. He sealed his mouth over mine and groaned into my mouth as he reached the point of no return and released himself into the night and my welcoming body. There had never been a moment in my life when I had felt such rightness and such peace. I hugged him to me and rubbed my cheek against his prickly one.

We stayed like that for a long time, until the chill of the metal from the car made me start to shiver against him. He groaned as he pulled out of me and helped me situate myself since it took more work than him just pulling his pants back up. He pulled me back to the edge of the hood and zipped the front of his sweatshirt back up. Then he bent down and kissed the corner of my mouth.

It made me want to cry because even though he didn’t say it, I could feel it in him again. That was Bax letting Shane kiss me good-bye.

DOVIE DIDN’T SAY A word when I took her back down the mountain to the group home. I made the drive last longer than it normally would and simply enjoyed the quiet and the feel of her hand on my thigh. The gnawing need to hurt something, or, more accurately, to let something hurt me, had faded to a dull throb in the back of my neck. I still didn’t want her to be part of this life, didn’t want her to look at me and see things I would never be able to be, even if she made me want to. At least this was a proper good-bye, and while she still looked sad and disappointed, she also seemed to have a quiet kind of understanding settled around her. She wasn’t pushing or asking me for things I couldn’t deliver on.