Suppressing a shiver of lust, I lean in closer under the pretense of letting his big body block the wind, when really, I just want to surround myself in his warmth and delicious scent.

Dex tugs my hand, and we sit on a wide, flat boulder that’s tucked a little crook on the hillside. Tall, fragrant grasses buffet some of the wind, and the sunlight grows warm on my skin.

The corners of Dex’s eyes crease in a frown as he stares at his hands on his massive thighs. Then he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet to remove an old, laminated photo. He doesn’t look at the picture he hands to me.

“I met Drew and Gray at a football summer camp during my junior year in high school.” He clears his throat. “I’m the one on the left.”

He doesn’t need to clarify. There are three guys in the picture. Wearing dirt-stained uniforms, they have their arms slung over each other and are smiling for the camera.

I notice Gray straight away. He’s the tallest, his hair bleached pale blond by the sun, and he’s grinning extra wide as if he’s on top of the world. Drew, the one in the middle, is a quarterback and Ivy’s client now. I got to know him well when she and Gray married. He was Gray’s best man, and I was maid of honor. He’s model cute—even then—with light brown hair and eyes and a crooked, almost sly smile. Then there’s Dex.

If it weren’t for those serious, beautiful hazel eyes of his, I might not have recognized him. He isn’t wearing a beard—not surprising, given that this is high school—and his smooth cheeks are plump and round. Dex is plump and round. Oh, you can see the beginnings of the massive muscles he has now, but high school Dex had yet to shed his baby fat.

His smile is more reserved than his two friends’, cautious almost, but I see the joy in his eyes. He loved being at this camp. Clearly loved his two friends as well.

“I was always a chubby kid,” he says in a low voice. “You know, the big guy who looked like he’d been held back a couple of grades when he stood next to the rest of the class.”

Lump in my throat, I nod.

“Girls never noticed me.” Dex takes back the photo when I offer it to him and puts it away. “Not until junior high when I started to play football, and then only in a, ‘Hey, good game, Dexter,’ sort of way.”

He stares out at the ocean. “They noticed me in high school, though. Made the varsity team freshman year. Went All-American senior year.” He shrugs. “I was still more fat than muscle, but the cheerleaders were all about giving players the love. And that included me.”

Well, why wouldn’t they? Dex is awesome. And I seriously doubt he’s changed much since his childhood.

“I fooled around some. Thing is, I knew they were only into me because I was on the team.”

“Why would you think that?” I can’t help asking.

He gives me a look that says, get real. “Outside of my high school circle, not one girl gave me the time of day. Ever. And…” He scratches his beard. “One of them admitted it. Lisa Unger told me, ‘Don’t worry, Dexter, we’ll take care of you. You’re on the team, after all.’”

“Bitch.”

His mouth quirks. “Just honest, I guess. Anyway, after that, I didn’t want to mess around. I kept to myself. Hell if I was going to be with a girl who wanted me just because I played football. ”

“Okay, but what about college? There are lots of girls in college who aren’t shitty little shits.”

Dex snorts at that, and his eyes crinkle. But it quickly fades, and he grows pale beneath his tan. “By the second year of college, I’d lost the fat and felt a bit more…confident. But then...” He blows out a breath and braces his elbows on his knees.

“Ethan.” I touch his back and find his long-sleeve shirt damp with sweat. “What happened?”

His large hands clench into fists. “I’m not proud of this part.”

My stomach tightens, but I keep my palm firm against his body. “It’s okay.”

I really don’t know if it is, but don’t know what else to say to reassure him.

“So…I…uh… Spring Break sophomore year, a bunch of us from the team headed down to Mexico. It was wild. Girls everywhere. Sex everywhere. I’d never seen anything like it. Our season was over, we’d won our first National Championship, and we were treated like gods.”

His shoulders go so tense, his body is like granite beneath my hand. A fine shiver works over him, and I rub his back, desperate to calm him down. When he speaks, his voice is rough and rusty.

“First night out, we all got completely drunk, smoked some pot. I’d never tried it before, and it hit me hard. We’re at this party, and two girls come up to me. They’re wearing nothing but these tiny little bikinis and are so fucking eager to please me. That’s not even it. These girls, it’s like they want to outdo each other by being as wild and willing as they can.”

Yeah, I know the type well. Growing up around athletes, I knew those women even when I was too young to understand what sex was. My dad, who was an NBA star before he was an agent, fucked those types of women and ruined his marriage.

The feminist in me wants to say it’s the men taking advantage and using woman like disposable sex toys. But the truth is far more muddy, because some women are more than willing to play that role. In fact, they compete for the chance to be used.

“I was drunk and high enough not to care,” Dex says slowly, as if every word is being dragged out of him. “Next thing I know, all three of us are in a back room, one of them is sucking on my cock—though I’m so far gone I can barely feel it—and the other has her tits in my face. And I’m thinking finally, finally. But it also feels kind of off.

“Then one of them starts begging me to get down and dirty with her, says she loves it ‘dirty.’ Fuck if I know what that means, but then she’s on all fours, telling me to fuck her in the ass.”

Dex pauses, runs a hand over his face. He looks so ravaged, I don’t want him to go on. And yet I do, because if he trusts me enough to tell me his secrets, I’m going to listen to them.

“I was a virgin. What the fuck did I know about doing that? But the other one is coaxing me, ‘Do it to her. Let me see you fuck her. Oh, that would be so hot, baby.’” He shudders. “We were all wasted, stupid. I don’t… I remember trying to get inside her, and it chafed, wasn’t comfortable. But the one chick watching was kind of chanting, ‘Give it to her good.’ And the other, the one I’m, you know, trying to… She’s shouting, ‘Come on, get it in already.’ But my mind’s wondering, isn’t she supposed to be wet and slick?”

I feel sick, hearing his tale, twisted and sad. When he lowers his head and clears his throat, I want to cry and hold him tight. But I don’t move, don’t want to break whatever spell he’s under that’s allowing him to talk—because he clearly needs to get this out.

“Then it was kind of slick. I looked down and…there was blood…on my…” A ragged breath tears out of him. “I saw that, and everything just kind began to spin. I threw up. They left, shouting names at me, saying I was a bad fuck even for a football player…shit like that. But the girl I’d…”

Wide eyes the colors of earth and sea look up at me. “She acted as though she liked it. Wanted me to do that to her. Why? I made her bleed. Why would she want that? Because she wanted to claim a football player did that with her?”

“Ethan.” I don’t hesitate now to pull him close. He’s stiff with resistance, but his head rests on my shoulder, his breath coming out in agitated puffs.

“I couldn’t do it after that. It felt so ugly. Tainted. What I did, it wasn’t right.”

“No.” My palms cup his cheeks, and I lift his head to look into his eyes. “You got pulled into a bad scene. People do stupid things when they’re wasted.”

He tries to shake his head. “If I’d been more experienced, I’d have known enough to say no. Or get some…” His cheeks pink. “Lube or something.”