Rio think back to those telenovelas. He knows his skewed version of romance has been heavily influenced, and not by his dad who died when he was a toddler. Although his mama always says he was a romantic to the day he died, hands still clutching the tulips he'd bought a few minutes before at the Quick Stop.

He remembers watching the hero woo the heroine, the theatrics and the melodramatic storylines. He sees the parallels in his own life, even if it's through a fun house mirror.

He doesn't know if he's the hero in his story. He's pretty sure he's not.

…

Beth has for a long time believed her white suburban middle class sensibilities rendered her invisible. The well chosen but slightly dowdy clothing, the new yet functional mini-van. The large, but not ostentatious home with the beige siding and unremarkable yard.

She lived in the space between, comfortable enough to carry on, not so comfortable to be noticed. Except it turned out she wasn't really comfortable enough to carry on, and just comfortable enough to be noticed by the wrong people.

But then wrong is a subjective term, right? What is wrong, when you're just existing?

Wrong is the feeling of Rio's rough tongue on her nipple. Wrong is the way she tugs on his shirt collar blindly, as she presses her crotch into his stomach.

Wrong is how she wants to hold her body against his all night, just being.

…

It's wrong.

Its wrong.

He tells himself it's wrong over and over until it's all just noise in his brain and his lips are on hers again pressing and biting and sharing.

He mumbles something about going to the bedroom, but she protests and a button on his shirt goes flying... and that's the point he stops caring. He kisses her until he can't feel any more and instead drifts off in a swell of warmth that makes his stomach drop and his brain shiver, until there's nothing but the instinct to make her feel how much he wants to be like this forever.

He doesn't feel, he wants.

…

She doesn't understand until the cold surface of the table touches her bare skin. His warm lips trail down her bare belly marred with stretch marks and a cesarean section scar, and she understands that he doesn't want her because it's forbidden or because of a desire to own her. She finally understands that she's a person with desires and complexity and he sees her for who she is, and not who she pretends to be. When his lips wrap around her, and his fingers press into her, she sees him. Not the young, dangerous criminal, but the hungry, generous man who has far more complexity than she's ever given him credit for.

And that's when she stops him. With his hand pressed hard into her, and his mouth making her shiver and her legs cramp, she grabs his head with both hands and stops him.

Her stomach tangles when his eyelashes flutter open. She can see his confusion and smiles, grabbing him by the collar and dragging him back to her mouth, and as she kisses him she tells him she wants to do this more than once, and asks if he does to.

He tells her he wants to do this forever.

…

He knows she's self conscious. She tries to hurry him along as he kisses her belly and presses his lips along the pale line above her pubic bone, but he insists. It's not until he feels her fluttering around his fingers, strangely silent in her pleasure that he realizes she's thinking too much.

And then his brain is telling himself to shut up but his mouth is telling her he never wants this to stop.

And that's it, he's done. He strips her of her last remaining clothes, tosses most of his own to the floor, and buries his face in her crotch. She tells him to slow down, that she's going to come, but he keeps going until she's shivering and her breath is heavy. She's so quiet but he knows it's from years of conditioning, so he lets her keep her silence until she comes hard and fast, her heel pressing into his shoulder and her hand clenching his forearm.

He thinks back to all the women he's fucked, from Debbie Ryan in twelfth grade, through to the girl he met at his auntie's house a month ago… Danielle. He's felt lust and desire and even at a few points he thought he was in love, but he's never understood what it was to be infatuated until this moment. With Beth's curvy, unpretentious body touching every inch of his, he wants nothing other than to be here.

He knows that's stupid. That this kind of obsession is going to be the end of him. He doesn't care, so he carries her to the bedroom. When he sees the bedspread he has a memory of calling her bitch, and telling her Dean looked like a slimy asshole.

He wants to forget that day.

…

Beth finally gets the answer to her unasked question about the tattoos, and it's not what she was expecting. As she tugs off his open shirt, slowly and methodically, she uncovers miles of unmarred, tanned skin. No scars, no tattoos apart from a few blocked bars on the back of his arms. She asks him about the eagle and he tells her he got it when he was seventeen and stupid.

They don't fuck straight away. She's still coming down from the almost painful orgasm, and he kisses her and whispers to her until she's soft and pliable rather than taught and wound up. She can't remember the last time she felt this way, relaxed and warm and desired.

She doesn't know if she's ever felt that way. She knows it can't last, that winter will be over and when spring arrives along with the short hemlines and low cut tops that she'll lose his interest, but she'll take it while she can.

She tells him this, and he laughs. He doesn't answer so she takes it as an acknowledgment and and swallows her disappointment.

…

When Rio makes her come again, it's not what he expects. He expects her to flutter around him until she's shivering and spent, but instead it's almost perfunctory. He follows shortly after, inside her, and she heads to the bathroom moments later.

He can tell she's surprised when she returns to the bedroom after around ten minutes. The shower had run for a while, and her hair is damp and her eyes a little red. She asks him why he's still there, and his stomach drops. He asks her if she wants him to leave, and she tells him that if that's what he wants then that's fine. That it's okay he said those things, that hormones do stupid things to people's brains.

It's not what he wants. He wants to press his bare skin against hers, feel the flush of her pale body and the pulse of her heart. He wants to bury his lips in the soft skin of her neck and murmur that he loves her until she repeats it back.

He doesn't ever want to leave, and it's not until they're arguing, her in her robe and him covered only by a sheet in the bed where her husband used to fuck her that he tells her.

She makes his chest ache and his toes dig into the soles of his shoes. He doesn't tell her, he shouts it, more wounded than angry. She tells him he's an idiot and that he's too young to feel that way about someone with four kids and three mortgages. He laughs at her assumptions, and she tosses his shirt at him and tells him to get the fuck out.

And he tells her that she's an idiot. That he doesn't give a shit about age or kids, or that she's never even bothered to ask him how old he is.

He tells her that she's an idiot and she just stands there until he gets up and grabs her hand. He laces their fingers together and tells her he'll do anything for her.

She asks him for thirty percent.

He tells her anything.