Page 59 of Tangled Up In You

“I never said so. You did.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about this,” she reminded him. “Rule number eleven.”

“We’re practically naked together in a hot tub. Road trip rules are out the window right now.”

“Okay, then,” she said bravely. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

His answer was clear as a bell: “No.”

“Oh.” It was like every bone in her body liquefied.

He leaned forward again, his smile wide and wicked. “My turn,” he said.

“No,” she protested. “It’s my turn now. You asked about what I found attractive.”

“And you just asked whether I have a girlfriend.”

She frowned. Dang it.

“In the car,” Fitz began, “you said you couldn’t die before you were kissed. Is that true?”

“Is what true? That I don’t want to die? Yes, it’s true.”

He laughed. “No, wiseass, is it true that you’ve never been kissed?”

She took a beat to steady her voice. “Yes.”

He looked away, squinting in the distance at the wall on the far end of the room. After a deep breath, he turned his eyes back to her. “We could fix that, you know.”

A thunderbolt cracked through her torso. “What?”

“I could be your first. You know, to get it out of the way.”

“You?”

“Yeah,” he said, and smiled. “Why not?”

“Why not?” she repeated. There was a storm of words in her thoughts. “You’re confusing, that’s why.”

Ren noticed that he didn’t ask her what she meant. He only said, “I’m sorry.” He lifted a hand, dragging his fingertips through the bubbles again. “If it helps, I want to be less confusing.”

She swallowed, shaking all over, wanting to dissect that but not having the faintest idea where to start. “It’s a very nice offer, but I don’t know how to do it, and I wouldn’t want you to have to suffer through my fumbling.”

“I would show you. Nobody’s suffering here.”

She blinked and looked away. Was this a normal thing to offer? He said it like it was, just threw it out so casually. Inside her, hunger violently thrummed just beneath the surface of her skin. She wanted this. She wanted him. Even if that was all it was—a lesson in kissing—she wanted to feel it, just one time. “Okay,” she said finally.

For a split second he looked shocked. And then his shoulders relaxed, and he reached for her. “Then come here.”

She jerked her head back to stare at him. “Wh—Now?”

“Why not?”

Across the expanse of the hot tub, he found her hand and tugged her through the bubbling water to rest between his parted knees. Her own knees hit the bench and he shifted, gripping the backs of her thighs and floating her easily onto his lap, so that she was straddling him, with one knee on either side of his hips.

The air rushed from her lungs in a gasp, and she reached for his shoulders to keep from sinking down fully onto him.

“This okay?” he whispered.