My fingers danced across the skin of his abdomen. His intake of breath stole my own right out of my mouth. Frozen for mere seconds, the entire world stopped once more as we panted. And then the world began to spin again, faster than before, as he spun me in a flash and had me pinned once more up against the side of a stall, my fingers scrambling for purchase as he held my arms out, away from my body, absolutely at his mercy and thrilled to be there.

His eyes were on fire as he stared me down. Then he dipped his head once more and licked up the column of my throat. When he looked into my eyes again, I saw hunger. Need. Absolute desire. The kind I knew was mirrored in my own expression. He licked me once more, primal, pushing the fabric of my turtleneck away with his nose.

“Yes,” I said, panting, not entirely sure exactly whether I was asking for permission or granting it. He released my arms, and as my hands tangled into his hair once more, he knelt down in the hay, his mouth still coming halfway up my torso. Dragging his lips down my skin, he left in his wake sweet little kisses, soft and wet. My back arched, pushing my skin closer to his mouth, wanting more, needing more of this man. Leaning his forehead against my breasts, his hands ran down the length of my boots, still thigh high, still muddy, still on.

Then he lifted his head, and with his gaze fixed solidly on me, he ran his hands up the backs of my thighs. The sound of twin Chanel zippers cut through the charged silence. That, and the sound of my heart beating so hard that I feared for my ribs.

“Your jeans are pretty muddy, too,” he murmured, raising one foot, then the next, onto his knee, slipping the boots down and off.

“Isn’t that terrible?” I asked. His eyes were asking me, how far did I want this to go?

Further.

I nodded, offering a smile as I added another zipper to the mix. As he removed my boots, he watched as I thumbed open the button on my jeans and wiggled my hips a little, just barely pushing them down.

“Hold on there.” His hands covered mine, his fingers slipping inside the edge of my jeans and tugging slightly. “Mmm, there we go.”

There had been a time in my life where just the idea of standing naked in front of a man would have made me break out into a cold sweat and would have covered my staying-­completely-clothed body with gooseflesh. Naked? And worse yet, in the daytime?

He’d see! He’d see it all! The dimples in my skin, the not-perfectly-smooth thighs, the way my legs pressed together in the middle and likely always would, the way my panties would never just casually sit on my hips, but band inward, denting the soft skin there. Everything so damn soft and squishy.

All true. Every bit of it. And every inch, no matter how soft or squishy, made up me, made up Natalie. But then I learned something important about men; something that almost without fail was always true.

Men love a naked woman. But more than that, they love a confident naked woman. Now, everyone has a type, of course, and preferences about how tall or short, athletic or voluptuous, and there’s no discounting that. But a woman who loves her body, and knows what she wants? There’s nothing sexier than that.

To a real man.

And once I realized this, realized that this exact version of Natalie was how I was supposed to be, and that my body could make a man literally fall to his knees . . . things got a lot more fun for me.

I was standing in the middle of a barn with an almost-stranger, and he was taking my jeans off. And I was encouraging it. Willing it. I didn’t have many rules when it came to dating; I was all equal opportunity when it came to getting mine. But getting naked on the first date? Not typically my scene.

Then again, this wasn’t a date. This was a barn, and I was in it with the man I’d been crushing on for months. Technically, we’d been seeing each other for a long time . . .

Let this happen, I urged myself, and I gave in to everything I was feeling. Which at the moment was supreme satisfaction, watching as his face changed, taking in my lacy panties, emerald green with black scallops.

“Did you wear those for me?” he asked.

“You mean when I woke up this morning thinking all I had on the agenda was a pancake breakfast with councilman Chad Bowman?” Once again, he picked up each foot and placed it on his knee, his fingertips dragging gently along the back of my thigh, teasing and slow.

“So you wore these for pancakes?”

“I wore these for me, you big caveman.” I sighed, then giggled as he tickled at the sensitive skin behind my knee. “Girls mostly buy lingerie for themselves. Guys are usually happy with white cotton panties, as long as they get to see them.”

“I like the lace,” he said, tugging the last of the denim from my leg, easing it over my heel. “But you’re right, your ass would look incredible in white cotton panties.”

He looked equal parts dangerous and sweet, kneeling at my feet with the cockiest grin imaginable. He looked down at my toes, painted bubble-gum pink with teeny red polka dots, my left foot still resting on his knee.

His gaze followed his hands as he ran them slowly back up my leg, wrapping his long, tanned fingers around my calf, kneading the muscle there. Coaxing my leg to butterfly out slightly, he slid his hands higher up my leg, one holding on to my knee while the other spanned across my thigh, my fair Irish skin a strong contrast to his darker hands. Some of his knuckles looked like they’d been broken before. Imperfectly perfect, and I let out the softest sigh when I saw how incredible they looked on my leg.

He leaned down, dropped a wet kiss on the top of my kneecap, his finger tracing the edge of a scar there. “A brawl?”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “With my brother. I was seven; he was nine. I’d stolen Darth Vader. He had every right to try and retake it with his lightsaber.” He smiled into my skin as I continued, dropping kisses all around. “Scars are like a map, you know? They’re little clues, hints about the person who wears them.”