That indescribable moment Lexi was in his arms and everything was as it should be. When she buried her head against his chest with perfect trust and he could pretend he was the man she thought he was. Better yet, just for that moment, he could pretend that she was his.

Tyler took a breath and stepped back, because he had to let go first. That was part of the bargain he’d made with himself a long time ago to control his little addiction to this woman.

“You didn’t answer my question.” He grinned down at her in the morning light. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Lexi said, and laughed.

That same laugh had done his head in—ruined him, if he was honest— the first week of his first year at the University. He could remember it so vividly. He’d come out of his room, overwhelmed that he’d made it out of his shit neighborhood and to this storied place, and there she was. She’d been talking to someone else whose face he never recalled. He’d only seen Lexi.

That laugh had gotten inside him then, and there was no getting it out. “Better come in then,” he told her.

He took her bag from her and indulged himself when she moved ahead of him, allowing his fingers to graze the small of her back. Tyler loved sex. His appetite was intense, and his preferences more so. He loved women. He loved the journey of it, the breathless distance between a flirtatious look and shaking, screaming woman clamped down hard on his cock while she came for the third time.

He loved every step along the way, from a naughty striptease to a sudden shock of intimacy that could change a bit of fun into a real moment in an instant—then change back. But nothing got to him as much as Lexi Graham, and in case he kidded himself into imagining that might change, there were moments like this. Where the brush of his fingertips against the back of her jacket wiped out all memory of the night he just spent making another woman come and cry all over him, again and again and again.

Tyler came from a long line of addicts, and all things considered, he preferred Lexi to heroine. A junkie is a junkie, he told himself sharply. Not that it helped.

He took her inside, leading her up the stairs to the main part of his house.

It was all arranged to take in the sweeping views of the coast, so he sat her down on his deck, wrapped her in a blanket to keep off the winter chill and then sorted out cups of tea. Then he dropped down in the chair opposite and let himself look at her.

Lexi. In his house. At last.

She smiled at him for a moment, then lifted her mug of tea, and that ring she wore caught the light. That fucking ring.

“You must think I’m mad,” she said after she took a slug of her tea.

She kept the mug in her hands, her legs curled up beneath her in the chair, and it turned out the Olkfield sun loved her as much as the Nemford rain always had. It brought out the hints of gold in her hair, the prettiest brown he’d ever seen. It was longer now, and she’d piled it up on top of her head in a manner he knew most women spent hours to achieve. But not Lexi. Everything about her was elegant and effortless, from that delicate collarbone he could see beneath the collar of her shirt, to those cheekbones that seemed to make her dark eyes brighter. And that mouth that had made him hungry as long as he’d known her.

“I do think you’re mad,” he agreed, lazily. “But then, I always have. So you turning up at my door on a random Saturday doesn’t change a thing.” She was flushed, he noticed, and it almost seemed as if she was having trouble meeting his eyes. “Are you embarrassed about something?”

“It’s a bit cold, don’t you think?” she asked, after a moment. And then, to his astonishment, fluttered her hand in his direction, as if to encompass his whole body. “Shouldn’t you…put that away?”

If it was any other woman, he would have taken great pleasure in the notion that his nakedness made her…flutter. But Tyler had the distinction of being Lexi's friend. Her best friend, she often said, an honor he shared with only one other person on this earth.

And he’d always liked crazy, reckless Lily Mckay well enough, but he knew full well there was no possible way she loved Lexi as much as he did. Because nobody could. And the consistent theme in their friendship was that Lexi resolutely refused to see him as a man. He was going to remember the fluttering. And that flush.

“I’m not cold,” he told her.

Which was true enough. The slap of the breeze was a good thing. It helped remind him that this wasn’t one of those fantasies he’d had so many times. That whatever reason Lexi had for being here, it was not to fling off her clothes and climb on top of him at last. His body needed to calm the fuck down.

“This really is a lovely house,” she was saying, like she was at a tea party. “The pictures you sent years back really didn’t do it justice. I love how it sort of flows, doesn’t it, from room to room, and then of course the view must really—”

“Fucking hell, Lexi.”

She blew out a breath. “I needed to get away. I need to…think about some things.”

He nodded toward the gigantic rock weighing down her left hand. The symbol of what he’d known would come, sooner or later. Lexi was always going to get married, and he’d accepted that, too, hadn’t he? He’d always been a realist. But accepting it in the abstract was a lot easier than the ring in his face. And her here.

“Marriage is a big step,” was all he said.

“Yes,” she agreed, too quickly. “But Victor is a good choice. Really. Some of the men my father sent me out on dates with were awful.”

“Do you love him?”

He shouldn’t have asked that. Because he really didn’t want to know the answer.

And he didn’t need to see her look of astonishment.

“Love him? Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Certainly not.” She considered her tea for a moment, then brightened. “But maybe someday I will. They say that arranged marriages—”

“Stability isn’t the same thing as love,” Tyler interrupted her. He should know. It was a challenge to remain relaxed in his chair, but he did it. “And I think you’ll find that friendship, however intense, is no substitute for passion.”

Interestingly, that flush seemed to deepen. She busied herself with her mug of tea, once again seeming…flustered.

“You would be the expert on that,” she said softly. But distinctly.

Tyler hadn’t touched his tea. He thought longingly of the bottle of whiskey he had inside, aged to perfection, but he knew nothing took the edge off the Lexi effect. Nothing ever had, nothing ever would.

“You know me.” He forced the easy grin that would make most of the people who knew him do a double take. Because Tyler Connelly was edgy, not easy. But Lexi didn’t know that Tyler. “As long as they leave happy.”

“She seemed very happy.” Lexi nodded in the vague direction of the street. “The one downstairs.”

“Mission accomplished, then.”

“What exactly is it that you do?” she asked, and her gaze was direct. “To her. To them. In general.”

He kept the grin going. “Do you want me to draw you a manual?”

“In all the years I’ve known you,” she said, as if she was carefully sounding out her words, “no matter how many women you sleep with or if they overlap, they always leave delighted. And thanking you. Why?”

“That’s a bit hurtful.” He lifted a brow. “Surely even you can appreciate what a piece of eye candy I am, Lexi.”

A shameless attempt to get her to ogle him, he was well aware. But Lexi didn’t take the bait. She kept her gaze on his, which was both disappointing and arousing, a sensation he was all too used to.

“There are a lot of good-looking men, Tyler. But with you it’s something different.”

“Charm?”

“There are a lot of charmers, too.”

Tyler had been studying Lexi for years. Today she had shadows beneath her eyes, which he blamed on the long flight. She looked tired, but it was more than that. More than travel, clearly. It was the way she was holding her head, deliberately, as if fighting back some kind of strong emotion. She seemed more fragile than usual.

Tyler had once been called a grinning bloody shark by a business associate—and it hadn’t been meant as an insult—because he could smile nicely while eviscerating his opponents. Because he’d been raised up in a bleak, hard place and it was in him, too, that bleakness. That hardness. It was what made him rich. And he liked his sex the way he liked his many business deals and everything else in this life he’d built entirely with his own hands—completely under his control.

There had only ever been one shred of softness in him. Her. And she had no clue. It was almost funny, really.

“Did you really fly all the way to Olkfield to quiz me about my sex life?” he asked.

“I’m getting married,” she said, and he didn’t make a face or roll his eyes at the unnecessary obviousness of that statement, because she was looking at him so intently. “And I know that many women in my position don’t intend to keep their wedding vows, but I do. Or I don’t see the point of being married.”

He was long past the point where mentions of her boyfriends, or dates or various other relationships with lesser men got to him—but that didn’t mean he wanted to sit around and talk about her marital vows. Though he would.

“Is he planning to extend you the same courtesy?”

“He said he would.” Lexi shrugged. It was a sharp, almost bitter sort of movement. “But I think we both know that’s easier said than done. For him, I mean.”

“A promise is a promise, Lexi.”

“I don’t think he cares,” she said, then, and not as if it hurt her. As if it was a simple, small truth. “You’re the only one I can say this to. But Victor is a very cold man. I think if he decides to shut himself off, he will, and that’s that.”

“He sounds grand.”

The look she sent him then was reproving, but that was an improvement, to his mind. “Part of me thinks that this is the best it can be, given the situation.” She propped her tea mug on her curled-up legs. “Most people with our sort of arrangement wouldn’t dream of expecting fidelity. It’s a lovely bonus.”

Tyler rubbed a hand over his face. “If you say so.”

“I wouldn’t want to be embarrassed.” She frowned down at her mug. “And you know Lily. I think that’s as much embarrassment as Victor ever wanted. I don’t think he would cause a scandal.”

“Are you trying to tell me that your man doesn’t satisfy you?” Tyler asked, possibly with more edge in his voice than was needed. “Because there are books you could read, or you could have rung up, Lexi. No need to go to such lengths.”

“Oh, I don’t know if he… I mean, we’ve never…” She scowled at him. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“You’re going to marry a man who you’ve never had sex with.” He shook his head, though it kicked at him. Or maybe that was his heart, trying to crack his ribs wide open. “I’ll be honest, there’s a lot I don’t understand about you. But this might take the bloody cake.”

“It wasn’t as if the dates we went on were romantic,” she protested. “And then he proposed, very quickly, which would be strange and off-putting if things were romantic—but this was never about that. So why not go along quickly? And what’s the point of trying it out ahead of time? It isn’t going to make a difference. Good or bad, we’re stuck with it either way.”

He wanted to break something. “For fuck’s sake.”

“I didn’t come all this way to debate whether or not I should marry Victor. I’ve already agreed to do it. It’s a done deal.”

“You do know what year it is? Fathers don’t get to go around selling off daughters. You have a say.”

“Of course I have a say.”

Tyler beat down his temper enough to notice she didn’t look upset. She looked annoyed. At him.

“If I didn’t want to get married, I wouldn’t. It’s not as if my father would force me down the aisle with a gun to my back. You’ve met him. You know he’s not like that.”

Tyler certainly had met Lord Fuckface, who had sneered down the length of his nose at the likes of Tyler Connelly, trash, anywhere near his precious daughter.

Or that was how Tyler assumed the man had felt. It was how he imagined he’d feel if he had a daughter—especially a daughter like Lexi.

“Sure, and he’s a real peach.”

“It’s just that once I get married, that’s it,” Lexi said, ignoring his comment on her father. Having lectured him more than once on how shit it was to dislike people simply because they were richer than him—not an issue he had much any longer. “It will be however it is with Victor, and I’ve already made my peace with that. We’ll have children and a good life.

I’m sure of it.”

“As long as you’re sure.” He didn’t point out that her presence on his deck suggested otherwise.

She glared at him. “It’s something Lily said. It’s something she’s always said, actually. But I guess it feels a little more urgent these days.”

“I’m not sure I would take advice from the likes of Lily,” Tyler said mildly. “Unless you have a hankering to go clubbing. For a year.”

He had no quarrel with Lily. She was a gorgeous little mess and always had been. The only reason Tyler hadn’t tried it on with her back in the University was because she’d been so close with Lexi. And Tyler was never going to do anything that might create a wedge between him and Lily —especially her friend.

“She settled down,” Lexi told him. “Quite seriously, actually.”

Tyler laughed. “Are we talking about the same Lily?”

“I know.” Lexi grinned. “But yes. She’s even going back to the university to finish her degree.”

“Is she now.” Tyler laughed, and it wasn’t forced. “I’ll be damned. I wouldn’t think it would matter to a trust fund princess if she finished a degree or not.”

“I told you. She’s turned over a new leaf.”

“I can’t abide people with every advantage in the world pissing it away.

Good on her.” He eyed Lexi more closely. “Do you feel you need to turn over a new leaf too? I don’t even know what that would look like. Saint Alexia, queen of good works, got a first, as I recall.”

“I understand academics,” she was saying, with that passion in her voice that made his cock ache, though it was never directed where he wanted it. “And I love the charity. It makes me feel good to help, if I can. To be honest, I still love the role I played for my father. We’re all we have.”

The way she said that tore at him, and kept him quiet. He didn’t understand the bargains she made with her father. Tyler's contact with his own relatives was limited to their semiannual attempts to extort money from him, which they’d started during his time at the University, so he could only assume that having a family member he loved would be a transformative experience that could possibly lead to arranged marriages. Or something.

But they’d spent years comparing and contrasting their families and upbringings without Lexi turning up in Olkfield. This didn’t quite seem like the time to continue that conversation.

“It’s beginning to feel like you’re leading up to something here.” And it was harder to keep his voice mildly lazy. To produce that friendly grin. “Better get to it. The suspense is killing me.”

“Sex,” she said.

For a curious moment, Tyler thought something must have plummeted from the sky above and hit him in the head.

His ears rung. He was almost light-headed. But no. He wasn’t imagining it. His Lexi, forever his friend and decidedly off-limits, was sitting opposite him talking about sex.

Not having a laugh about his revolving bedroom door. Not rolling her eyes at his conquests. She was staring at him with what looked like naked sincerity in her eyes, and…blowing his mind.

“Did you just say sex?” he asked, because he had to make sure.

He expected her to laugh. To roll her eyes at him and call him a pervert for hearing sex everywhere. But instead, she nodded, her eyes big. “Lily says I’ve never been fucked properly.”

Very seriously, God help him. And Tyler would never know how it was that he stayed where he was. Lounging back in a chair on his deck on a lovely Saturday morning, while joggers ran heedlessly by on the coastal walk, seabirds careened about in the air and Lexi Graham had flown all the way down to Olkfield to talk to him about fucking. He would never know how he remained calm.

“Well?” he asked, casually. As if this entire conversation didn’t feel, suddenly, as if he’d sustained a series of knockout blows and was reeling about blind. And wanting things he couldn’t have. “Have you?”

________

There was something about that intent look on Tyler's face, the patience in his green eyes. The way he asked her a question and then waited. Like he could wait forever, if that was what it took.

It made Lexi feel safe. But then, he always did. She could tell Tyler anything.

Even things she was afraid to tell herself.

“I think maybe I’m bad at it,” she confessed.

Something flashed over his face then, some dark gleam, that reminded her of that moment out in front of his house. When she’d stared at his familiar face and hadn’t recognized him at all.

Deep inside her, something clicked. Then flared into life, but she ignored it. Because she was here, in his house. With him. And wherever Tyler was, she could depend on him to keep them inside his bubble. Where everything was always okay. And if it wasn’t, he would fight it off.

“Not possible,” he told her, a strange note in his voice.

“You don’t know that it’s not possible,” Lexi argued. “Because here’s the thing. I’ve never staggered off after having sex with someone giddy and filled with joy the way that girl did today. And I certainly don’t leave anyone in that state.”

She expected him to leap in, to contradict her, but he didn’t. Because Tyler let her tell her own story. How had she forgotten how freeing that was? How he allowed to her relax and really, truly say what she felt? Then again, she was here. Maybe she hadn’t forgotten.

“Everyone talks about sex like it’s a compulsion. Passion and desire.

Need. This hunger that takes them over.”