She could feel the warmth of his skin beneath his clothes as her hands roamed down his back, then back up and across his broad, muscular shoulders, but it wasn’t good enough. She wanted to know the feel of him beneath her fingertips.

Skin on skin.

Let the love begin.

Oh yeah.

She couldn’t remember ever feeling like this, so utterly consumed by a man, so frantic to get him naked, to feast her eyes and hands and mouth on every inch of his body. Sex had always been at the top of her favorite-things list, but this desire-this total, all-encompassing need-was something else entirely.

So different, in fact, that as she yanked his T-shirt out of his pants and broke their kiss long enough to pull it up over his head, she started freaking out a little bit.

Because with his torso bared before her, with all of that hard heat at her disposal to caress and run her tongue across, she wanted so many things so powerfully all at once that instead of being able to do any of them she found herself paralyzed.

Pressing her hands flat against his chest, she could feel the beating of his heart against her palms. A hard, fast pounding that mirrored her own heartbeat.

So many years she’d dreamed of this moment, so many years she’d thought it would never come, and now that it had, she felt almost frightened.

She lifted her eyes to his at the exact moment that her heart said, I love you.

No.

She stumbled back from Luke, or tried to, but his arms were faster than she was.

She hadn’t read love in his eyes at any point so far tonight, only lust. Pure lust. And now he was saying, “Yes or no?” in a low voice that rumbled through her entire body like a sensual earthquake.

Oh god. It couldn’t be true.

She couldn’t be in love with Luke.

Of all the stupid things to feel for him, love was definitely the stupidest.

She swallowed hard, made herself locate her voice, which felt like it had dropped way down deep into her toes.

“To what question?”

“Tonight. This. You and me.”

Ah, now she got it. He was asking her if she could forget about who they were. About their past. About how this could thoroughly complicate their future. He was asking her to make a choice between risking everything she was for this one night…or running scared from it.

She hadn’t been afraid of anything for a very long time. So why, she wondered helplessly, was she afraid now?

And why had her brain actually thrown the word love into the mix?

His hands were warm on the small of her back, just above the curve of her ass. The heat of his bare chest radiated out to her as she stood in his arms. A bone-deep longing to shut her eyes and lay her head against him while he held her close hit her hard.

God, what was wrong with her tonight? Here she was on the verge of getting everything she’d ever wanted and instead of grabbing Luke with both hands, dragging him to her bedroom, and having her dirty way with him, she was freaking out.

“Yes or no?” he repeated.

She tried to say yes, but all she could get out was, “You already know the answer.”

He shook his head, just as she’d known he would. He wasn’t the kind of man you could fool. He was too smart. Too quick.

“I want to hear you say it, Janica. I need to hear you say it.”

His need rocked through her. She couldn’t say no to him. Just as she couldn’t say no to herself, to her own desperate need.

She licked her lips. Opened her mouth. Finally whispered, “Yes.”

That one small word was all it took for him to take over. His hands moved so fast from her back to the low neckline of her short black dress that her breath caught in her throat.

Through the thin fabric she could feel his hands on the curves of her breasts and her nipples beaded almost painfully. Because she was small enough to let the built-in bra in the dress do the work of keeping everything in place, her nipples jutted out at him, silently begging him to touch her.

A split second later, he ripped the front of her dress open, fully exposing her breasts to his hungry eyes.

She gasped in shock. Who was this man, she wondered as she instinctively moved to cover herself.

Before she could, his hands came around her wrists to hold her arms at her sides.

“No. Let me see you.” His chest was rising and falling hard. “I’ve waited so damn long.”

His eyes burned her skin, causing a flush to travel all across her breasts. But the heat did nothing to stop her nipples from hardening further.

“My God, you’re beautiful.”

No one had ever looked at her this way, like she was absolutely, impossibly perfect.

“So beautiful, Janica, I can’t believe it.”

She tried to say something but she still couldn’t catch her breath.
Not with her dress ripped open to her waist. Not with Luke’s eyes drinking her in. Not with those wonderful things coming from his mouth.

Not with her wrists immobilized by his strong grip.

And then he was bending his head down and she felt the first flutter of his soft hair against her collarbone as he lowered his mouth down over one breast.

A low, uncontrollable moan of pleasure shook her throat. She wanted to put her hands on the back of his head, hold him there forever against her, but he wouldn’t let her go.

All she could do was stand there and let him taste her.

Oh my god. His tongue. And then-yes, yes, yes!-his teeth were lightly scoring her sensitive flesh.

“Luke.”

His name was a plea. For mercy.

Or maybe, for the exact opposite.

And that was when she realized he understood her better than she did herself, because instead of letting up, instead of giving her a chance to catch her breath, he shifted his dangerous attention from one breast to the other.

The touch of his lips, his tongue, the dark stubble on his jaw, stroking across her untouched skin, sent another jolt of pure desire through her, head to toe, strong enough that she didn’t know how her body was managing to hold it all inside without breaking apart.

She arched into his mouth to get closer, every cell in her body focused on three square inches. His jaw was covered in rough stubble and she loved the way it felt as it scraped and scratched against her skin.

And then his mouth was traveling up over the small curves of her breasts, across her collarbone, settling in the hollow. His tongue tasted her there, and it struck her that feeling Luke’s kiss on her shoulder was one of the most erotic moments of her life, outranking every orgasm she’d ever had with anyone else.

She wanted to taste him too, wanted to run her hands and mouth over every inch of his beautiful body. But he was still holding her too tight.

She tried to pull herself out of his bonds and his hands tightened on her wrists.

He pulled his mouth away from her skin. His eyes were dark, dangerous.

“Don’t fight me. Not tonight.”

It wasn’t just the sensual spell he had wound around her or the look in his eyes that had her giving in. It was the fact that those five words, said in such a commanding voice, held not only more desire than she’d ever known, but also more pain.

Luke needed her.

She’d never been the kind of woman who looked for broken men to try and heal. But Luke wasn’t just any man. He had always been special.
Even when she wished he wasn’t.

She’d been waiting for five years – no, a decade or more – for this moment to come to fruition. And now that it was here, she would willingly walk down whatever path he wanted to lead her down.

Deep down, she knew that Luke Carson was destined to give her great pleasure. Bigger and better than she had ever dreamed was possible.

And, if dreams really did come true, maybe he’d give her even more than pleasure.

Maybe he’d give her love.