”“That’s not what I mean. You’re not attracted to me.”He paused, looking her up and down, his gaze eventually resting in hers.“That’s no... entirely true.”“Mmm, well you don’t want to have sex, even though I’m initiating pretty hard right now.”“I shouldn’t.”“Why?”He smiled, chuckling under his breath.“Wouldn’t be right. My ‘heart’s not in it’.”“You choose to be real. I like that.”“I know you do. You’re a beautiful and smart girl. Don’t blow that on me.”“Hey,” she sat up, rotating to look him head. “Needed a little rest after a busy afternoon?” he asked, his eyes sparkling as he grinned down at her.She looked away, then slowly shook her head. “I . . .I couldn’t do it,” she said quietly, then gave him a run-down of what had happened with Samantha. When she finished, she looked up at him, her hand resting on his knee. “It just didn’t feel right without you.”He smiled, leaned down, and kissed her. She responded immediately, her hand going to his head and holding his mouth to hers as her. He stood her on the ground next to the pallet and stripped off her filthy clothes, steadying her with his strong hands while she balanced on one foot. When she was naked, he picked her up and set her none too gently on her bottom in the middle of the pallet, leaving her muddy feet off the edge of the blankets. ‘Here,’ he commanded, shoving a clean cloth into her hands. ‘Clean up your face and hair.’ Selena flushed with chagrin, and she meekly complied as Liam took another cloth and began to. It didn’t take long for Karl to charm them, especially once they saw how much he doted on their daughter. They still weren’t happy that he was German, Christian, and only eighteen, still in high school. Even so, he expressed interest in physics and a strong desire to go into astrophysics in particular, fields close to Dr. Jacob Kurtz’s own interest, though he was simply an astronomer himself. It helped a little when Karl switched from his family’s Lutheran brand of Protestantism to become an.