“Yes.” I can’t think of anything I’d like more.

She starts to sing. It’s tentative and wary and so fucking beautiful that she steals my breath. She sings about heartbreak and shame and lust and love and hurt, and under it all…there’s beauty. Just…sheer beauty.

When she stops playing, I realize that I haven’t even breathed, so I take in a breath and fill my aching lungs. “That was amazing.” I sigh.

“How drunk are you?”

I shake my head. “Not very.”

“You should drink another.” She nods her head toward the kitchen.

“Why?”

She stares hard at me. “Because I want to find out what makes you tick.”

I’m not even sure I do tick. I kind of just exist. Ever since I got the call from Julia that she didn’t want our baby, that she wanted out, I’ve felt like someone pushed the pause button on my life.

“What makes you tick, Finny?” I ask.

She snorts. But it’s an adorable sound and I find myself grinning. And it’s not just because I’m drunk. “Sex,” she says. “Sex makes me tick.”

I choke on my own spittle. “Beg your pardon?”

She laughs. “I like to have sex, Tag. Lots of sex.”

“Okay…” I say slowly.

“You’re going to go all gospel on me and tell me that good girls don’t have sex with random strangers, right?” She shakes her head and points her finger at me. “But I have news for you. I can do whatever I want with my body. I can fuck anybody I want.”

I cringe at her choice of words.

“Oh, you just gave me the look,” she says.

“What look?”

“The I’m-judging-you look.”

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did. You think it’s wrong for a woman to like sex.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you did. Your body language said it.” She starts to pluck at the guitar again.

“Really, I don’t care who you have sex with.” I worry a loose thread on my jeans. I don’t like this conversation. “I think I’m going to bed.” I set my hands on my knees and start to push myself up.

“Want some company?” she asks.

I freeze. “What?”

“I have two rules,” she states. She starts to tick items off on her fingers. “One, I don’t sleep with anyone more than once. And two, you have to get out of my bed when we’re done.”

I frown. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Um, your dick…my vagina…lots of pounding. Fun. There’s the fun in that.”

I shake my head. I’ve only been with one woman in my life, and she dumped me months ago. But being with her forged a connection. And the connection wasn’t necessarily in the dick-to-vagina pounding sessions, as Finny so unromantically put it. It was in the quiet moments after the sex. It was when she laid her head on my chest and dragged her fingers back and forth through the sparse dusting of hair. It was when we woke up stuck together with sweat between us. It was the beat of her heart while she lay on top of me. It was the way she wrapped around me, encompassing my heart with the same kind of heat she wrapped around my dick when I was inside her.

“You’re thinking about sex, aren’t you?” Finny asks.

“Not really,” I admit. “I was thinking about intimacy.”

She snorts again. “Sex is so much better than intimacy.”

I shake my head. “I don’t believe you.”

“I’ll prove it to you.” She sets the guitar to the side and gets up on her knees. She nibbles on her lower lip as she walks on her hands and knees across the few inches of sofa between us.

I fall back against the couch as she climbs into my lap. “What are you doing?”

“If you have to ask, I’m doing it wrong,” she says. She grins, and it makes me want to grin with her.

I take her shoulders and push her back. “What about my sisters?”

“What about them?” She nips my lower lip between her teeth. Then she sucks it into her mouth to ease the sting, and it shoots straight to my dick. “I don’t usually ask their permission when I want to fuck somebody.”

I point to my chest. “You want to fuck me?”

She laughs and grinds her pussy against me. “I think that part is obvious.”

“Why?” I ask. I hold her face so I can keep her from kissing me, and stare into her eyes.

She straddles me and presses her breasts against me. “Because you’re here,” she replies.

“Oh,” I say. That’s her only requirement?

She sits back. “I thought I was getting a vibe from you…” she says doubtfully, searching my face. “Was I wrong?”

“Hell no!” She’s right. She has already intrigued me. And she’s beautiful. So beautiful. But this can’t happen. It just can’t.

She grins. “So you do want to fuck me.”

Damn. The heat of her words shoots straight to my dick.

I kiss her. I can’t help it. Her pussy is hot and it’s just on the other side of my zipper and she smells so damn good. My head is a little swimmy, but my dick isn’t. He’s ready.

I jerk my head back when a thought comes into my head. “Is it weird that you’re my sisters’ sister?”

“Dude, we are so not related,” she says. “But if you feel weird about it…” She sits back, and I feel the loss of her immediately. She scoots back to her side of the couch.