“Mmmm,” she murmured against his lips, “maybe you should convince me not to make the same mistake again.”

She felt the proof of how much he liked that idea as she rubbed over him, and was glad that she could take them both to a fun, playful place for a little while, at least. Grayson had lived too seriously for too long, and even though she knew there was more he wanted to say to her this morning—things he’d kept inside for far too long—she also recognized from her years of dance training when it was time to take a little break to relax or laugh or just wiggle around and be silly before putting in more hard work.

Fortunately for Grayson, she was a master of silly. And of laughter. Not to mention, she thought with a grin as she quickly got up and repositioned herself so that she was lying face down across his lap, a master of fun, dirty sex.

His pupils were dilated and his breath was coming faster by the time she looked up at him, bit her lip, and whispered, “I’m ready to be convinced now,” in a breathy voice. She wiggled her behind for effect, but instead of playfully spanking her, when his hand made contact with her bottom it was to stroke over her skin with such heat, and such obvious desire, that it held even more impact than it would have if he’d touched her any other way.

He teased her like that for so long that she was about to start begging when he finally moved his hand from her hips to the slick flesh between her legs. She immediately spread her thighs for the sweet slide of his fingers into her. With his other hand, he caressed her br**sts, and when he rolled one nipple between his thumb and forefinger at the exact moment that he slid the pad of his thumb over her clitoris, Lori shuddered and came so hard everything went black for a split second.

She was still trying to get her bearings when he lifted her off him so that she was on her hands and knees on the bed and one of his arms was wrapped so tightly around her waist that she didn’t need to support her own weight.

Grayson’s breath was warm on her ear as he teasingly said, “Have you learned your lesson yet about picking the right paint colors?”

The word, “No,” was barely out of her mouth when he bucked his hips into hers. He felt so good thrusting inside of her in what was one of her favorite sexual positions that she couldn’t help but loudly cry out her pleasure. He didn’t still his movements to make sure she was okay, didn’t mistake the sound for anything other than the pure joy that it was as he took her so hard again and again that he ended up having to cover her head with one hand so that she didn’t hit it on the headboard.

And with every stroke of his body inside hers, Lori felt a little more of Grayson’s pain leave to make room for pleasure. Pleasure he obviously hadn’t thought he deserved for three long years.

* * *

“Your wife was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

Grayson’s first thought, as he lay warm and loose in a tangle of Lori’s arms and legs a while later, was that only she would think to ask that question about his wife first, when anyone else would have gone straight for the morbid, the sad.

His second thought was that, with the birds chirping and the leaves rustling outside his bedroom window, it did, finally, seem the right time to answer her questions about his past.

Lori had just given him so much: wonder, pleasure, laughter.

The very least he could do was give her the truth.

“She was.” He was surprised to find himself picturing Leslie as she had been at nineteen rather than as the unhappy thirty-two-year-old woman he’d had in his head since the day she died. “Very beautiful.”

“Who fell first?” Lori scooted up so that she could fully see his face while still touching him along the length of his body. “You or her?”

There was no jealousy, no pity in Lori’s question, so it was surprisingly easy for him to reply, “We were in college, and she said no the first time I asked her out. Definitely me.”

Lori looked delighted by the tidbit. “Oooh, you had to chase her?”

Even though their bodies were already touching from shoulder to toe, he had to reach out to brush the hair out of her eyes, and stroke his hand off her face as he said, “I wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Which I’m sure she found as sexy as I do, by the way,” she said, and then, “Tell me more about her, about the two of you.”

Amazed to realize that Lori’s questions were actually helping him remember and honor his wife in a way he had never been able to since her death, he said, “We got married right after graduation. I went to work in the city for my father’s investment firm, and she got a job working for an interior designer. When we bought our first house out in the country, she left her job to focus on decorating the house and working on charity events and the family we planned to have.” This time Lori was silent as she waited for him to continue. “We had trouble getting pregnant.”

Lori took his hand in hers. She didn’t squeeze it, just held on to him. “That must have been hard.”

He took a breath, one he couldn’t seem to inhale all the way. “Our marriage hadn’t been what either of us had thought it would be. The country house had been our first try at making it better. A child was supposed to be our second. When neither of those worked—”

Grayson stopped, knew he didn’t have to say anything more, that he’d already given away enough. He’d never talked to anyone about this before, not even his parents or Leslie’s.

But, suddenly, being the only one who knew what had really happened seemed like too big a burden to keep bearing all alone.

“Somewhere along the way, she started drinking. But I never knew about what she’d been doing until she crashed into a tree and they told me she was way over the legal blood-alcohol limit. That was when I went home and saw all the signs I’d missed, every last one of the hints she’d been leaving me, just hoping I’d see her. Hoping that I’d be there for her the way I’d once promised when we were young and the world was going to be ours and I refused to have it any other way.”

For a long while, Lori didn’t say a word. She simply put her arms around him and held on tight.

Until, finally, she lifted her head from his chest and said, “Last night, when you took me to that barn dance and pushed me out onto the dance floor, you gave me back my heart, Grayson.” Her mouth was barely a breath from his as she whispered, “And I can’t see how a man who could do something that good could possibly be bad.”