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The word was quiet. He did not mean more pressure. He meant truth.

I opened my eyes. "I need to stop being useful for a while."

His hands stilled for half a beat, then continued.

"Done."

"And I want you."

"I know."

"Arrogant."

"Accurate."

I smiled with my eyes closed.

He rinsed the soap out. Conditioned the ends because I had once told him they tangled. Washed my shoulders with a cloth, careful over the sunburn. He did not turn it sexual. That made the wanting worse.

By the time he lifted me from the tub and wrapped me in a towel, I was warm, loose, and aching.

He dried my hair first.

Then my body.

Knees. Calves. Between my toes. The underside of my breasts. Every place a practical man might say needed drying.

Every place my body understood differently.

When the towel passed between my legs, I caught his wrist.

"Daddy."

He looked at me. "What?"

"You know what."

"Need you to say it."

My old voice might have failed there. The one that believed wanting was surrender and surrender was danger. That woman had driven west in a storm. Walked a fence. Put her name into a record. She had not disappeared. She stood inside me now, scarred and tired and brave enough to let this be easy.

"I want your mouth on me," I said. "Then I want you inside me."

Boone's eyes went dark.

"Anything else?"

"Praise me."

His thumb stroked once over the inside of my wrist. "Always."

He carried me to bed.

I could have walked.

That was not the point.

His grandmother's quilt lay folded at the foot. The window stood open three inches to the spring night. Air moved cool over my damp skin when he put me down in the center of the mattress.