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.”

She shook her head, and frowned at him. His legs were thrust out before him, highlighting the powerful muscles in his thighs. How had she never noticed his thighs before? Because she doubted they’d cropped up overnight.

“Is that what it’s like for you?”

“I wouldn’t bother otherwise, would I?”

“It’s never that way for me.” Lexi took a breath, flipped over that ugly little stone she’d never wanted to look beneath and reminded herself that this was Tyler. That she could say anything to him. “I think maybe I really am frigid. Or broken, somehow.”

He didn’t sit with that in a solemn, concerned silence, as she’d expected he would. He rolled his eyes and didn’t look the least bit shaken by her declaration. “For fuck’s sake. Because that wanker told you so? A hundred years ago now? Real men don’t berate women for their own piss-poor performance in bed.”

Lexi had dated Christopher for two months that had seemed like a lifetime during term time their third year. A relationship—such as it was— that had ended after they’d slept together, he’d informed her that she was crap at sex, and he’d moved on to manipulate a wide-eyed first-year into his bed instead. A real charmer, that Christopher.

“Christopher was renowned for being good in bed, Tyler,” Lexi argued. “You like to pretend you can’t remember, but girls used to go around swooning left and right every time he smiled.”

“When he smiled, sure. After he embarrassed himself in their beds? Not near as much swooning, as I recall.” Tyler crossed his arms, which should have made him look angry. But when Lexi studied his face, his expression was bland. Maybe too bland. “It was his job to make you come, Lexi. Everything else was a load of shite mixed with mind games to disguise the fact he was a selfish prick.”

Tyler had growled the same response at her during their final year at uni, but she couldn’t remember all this…prickly heat.

“No one is good or bad at sex unless they try,” Tyler continued, sounding even more growly. “It’s sex, not surgery. Sometimes people have mad chemistry, which takes it all to a different level. But you don’t need astonishing chemistry to have good sex, Lexi. You can have good sex if you want it. It’s that simple.”

“I can tell you that it is not, in fact, that simple.”

“It isn’t a spot of calisthenics,” Tyler said, and again, there was something about how relentlessly bland he looked that made the back of her neck prickle. Even more than before. “Supposed skill or experience matters far less than what I’d call…” And he smiled then, in that friendly way he had that made her want to smile, too. “Observant enthusiasm.”

She wanted to smile, but she didn’t. “I have no idea what that means.”

His expression didn’t change and yet…there was that strange flickering thing inside her again. “Do you pay attention, Lexi? Do you think about something other than getting yourself off when you’re naked with someone else? I’m betting you do.”

There was no reason for her to be…breathless. But Tyler didn’t give her time to respond, even if she’d managed to find breath. “But I’d also bet that if you’re finding sex lacking, it’s a commentary on your partner, not you. It was true years ago and it’s true now.”

Lexi frowned and tried to look stern, not prickly and strangely overwarm though she sat beneath a cozy blanket and was bundled up nicely against the cool breeze—unlike some people, who were bare chested and barefoot. “That’s a bit sexist, isn’t it?”

“I’ve seen the men you date. So, no, it’s not sexist. It’s an informed opinion.” He did something with his face that made him look harder. Flintier, even. “And it’s not hard to make a man come, Lexi. That’s why it’s on him to make sure you do, or why bother to have sex with another person? He could just have a wank and be done with it.”

All of this suddenly seemed a lot less safe than it had before. Maybe it was the exhaustion messing with her, but he kept talking about coming and now she was imagining him handling his own cock, that same fierce look on his face she’d seen outside while he— Stop, she ordered herself.

She was so horrified she was afraid she might spill her tea all over his lovely deck, so she took great care to set it carefully to the side on the table there. And maybe that wasn’t precisely horror that coursed through her veins then, making her shift beneath the blanket he’d draped over her. Making her aware of her own pussy when normally, she saved such awareness for the privacy of her own bed.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Lexi made herself say in as dry and unaffected a voice as she could manage. “I like sex. Sometimes I quite like it.”

“Damned with faint praise.”

“Let’s talk about you, Tyler.”

She concentrated on him then, and the whole golden sweep of him that she’d been trying her best not to gape at. Without much success. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man. He was nothing but ridiculously lean muscle wherever she looked, and for all that he was meant to be a CEO forever in meetings, he clearly spent time in the sun. A lot of time. And then there was the hair that arrowed down beneath the waistband of his jeans, and made her need to shift a bit in her chair. Again.

Her mouth was dry. She told herself it was the sudden immersion in winter, the lack of sleep and all the rest of this strange and endless day.

“You’re doing something different,” she told him, as if she’d conducted an academic study. “I’ve met a lot of men who sleep with loads of women, and they’re all pigs. But you’re not.”

“Careful, or you’ll make me blush.”

“I can’t figure out what it is. Why are all those women so happy all the time? You toss them out, but they’d all gag for another chance. I’ve watched it happen. You’re this…magician.”

“Are you asking me a question, Lexi? Or leaving a review?”

And suddenly, it didn’t matter where they were. How tired she was. All the other things she’d been telling herself this whole time. Tyler sat there across from her, and suddenly the sweet sea air between them was taut. And his gaze changed, the green of it shaded with a certain glittering thing she couldn’t understand. But she felt it. And she felt naked, suddenly.

Because the actual reason she’d come here was so clear to her, then. All the fuss and noise she kicked up around it, telling herself this lie and that lie as she’d gotten on the plane, all the many hours she flew, and then when she’d come to find him, too. Telling herself she was safe and she wanted his advice and she wanted to talk. So many lies, and all of them boiled down to this. Here. Now.

That look in his eyes like she wasn’t the only one imagining things she shouldn’t.

Lexi didn’t want his advice.

She wanted him to show her.

And he was sitting so still, so intent, that she had the distinct impression he knew it. Her heart pounded in her chest, so hard she was certain it had to have bruised her ribs. But she couldn’t look away. And her mouth was so dry. Everything inside her was tied in a knot, pulling tighter and tighter and tighter, daring her to open her mouth and say the thing she wanted even if it meant changing them forever— And that was the thing she couldn’t do. She couldn’t.

“I’m not leaving a review or asking a question,” she managed to say, though there was a bitter taste in her mouth. “It’s an enthusiastic observation, that’s all. I hear they’re all the rage.”

Across from her, Tyler didn’t seem to move. But he changed, again. That tension dissipated. And she couldn’t help but imagine she saw a shade of disappointment in those green eyes of his.

She told herself she had to be imagining it. That she had to be imagining all of this. Because the alternative was that he was no longer Tyler and she was no longer Lexi, and that meant there was no them—and she could do almost anything. She could make anything work, as her engagement proved. But she couldn’t lose Tyler. She could survive anything but that.

“I think you should eat something,” he said, quietly. Years could have passed, for all she knew, tangled up as she was inside. “Have a bit of a kip. Maybe even shower off the plane ride. What do you reckon?”

And for the first time in as long as she’d known him, when he smiled at her she thought it might break her heart. But she couldn’t have said why. Because you don’t want to say why, something in her retorted. Either way, she didn’t say it. Lexi only nodded, didn’t quite meet his eyes again and let him lead her back into his house.

______

Later, Lexi was sure she’d imagined all that tension. Those strange moments out in the bright winter sunlight on the bottom of the world. They all seemed lashed together like a dream, green eyes and the memory of Tyler's smile, none of it making any sense when she tried to recapture them or think it all through.

Better to forget and move on, she told herself staunchly.

Tyler's guest room was on the back side of the house. It had its own bit of a balcony, so she could wake in the mornings and bask in all that lovely Olkfield sunshine. Outside her room she could inhale the fragrance of all the flowers and pretty green things as she peered down the side of the building to see the sea, like a beckoning wall of blue.

She fetched herself a cup of tea from the kitchen and sat out on her balcony quietly. In the space between the buildings, she could imagine she lived here when, of course, she didn’t. And couldn’t. Her life was in Nemford.

Though you’ll be living in Tervessa soon enough, the voice inside her pointed out. Still sounding entirely too much like Lily. Victor's base is in Tervessa.

Several days into her impromptu stay in Olkfield’s lovely eastern suburbs, Lexi found herself pondering that potential reality. Victor's business took him all over the world. Just because he liked to call Tervessa home didn’t mean she needed to do the same…did it? The automatic relocation expected when people married wouldn’t be expected of an arranged wife, surely. She glared down at the rock on her hand as if it might have the answers, but it was as quiet and overlarge as ever.

And thinking about Victor and Tervessa and the rest of the marital decisions she couldn’t quite face made her feel a bit too close to wobbly. She decided she was too restless to stay on the little balcony off the guest room, spiraling into her own unfortunate thoughts, so she padded out into the rest of the main floor of the house instead. It was organized so that the rooms were stacked one in front of the next, with a hallway down the middle that opened up into the streamlined chef’s kitchen. Beyond that, the vast lounge with its spectacular view of the ocean outside ambled out to the deck. And up above, taking over the whole of the top floor, was the master bedroom.

Tyler had showed it to her not long after she arrived as part of his general tour of the house. And maybe it had something to do with those strange moments she was already forgetting, but she’d found it…unsettling up there. That big, wide bed with its four sturdy posters and what looked like wrought iron at the head. And windows all around, floor-to-ceiling high in some places, letting in what felt like the whole of this stretch of the coast and the sweep of the Sea, until it seemed as if anyone in the room was a part of the sea itself. Or the man who lived there.

She preferred her little balcony downstairs. Or the neutrality of the kitchen, where she headed now. She put the kettle on, and found herself staring out the window, in that half a dream state that seemed to accompany any proper gaze at all that deep, changeable blue.

Lexi should head straight back to Nemford. She knew that. After she’d slept, eaten and showered as ordered that first day, she’d sat down and sent off a raft of emails to explain her absence to all and sundry.