Her insides felt like molten lava and even though he hadn’t touched anything but her neck and back and overly sensitive br**sts, Sophie felt herself going over the edge, hurtling toward an unexpected climax that claimed her breath, her thoughts, just as Jake had claimed all of them.

“Oh, oh, oh!”

As the gasping little noises left her throat, Jake’s thigh muscles bunched and pressed between her legs and she rode him like a woman possessed. There was no room for embarrassment here. Nor was there space for the anger and hurt she’d felt earlier.

All that remained in the in-between early morning of his bed was exquisite pleasure. Pleasure that ran so deep, she was powerless to do anything but let it take over every cell, inside and out.

He slid his hand down from her br**sts, thankfully moving faster on the way down than he had on his earlier trip up from her belly. “I need to touch you.”

The unexpected climax only ratcheting up her need, this time when she moved to spread her legs, he let her. And then his hand was moving over her pelvic bone, softly sliding over her damp curls, not stopping like he had before when she’d been dying for him to caress her br**sts. She could feel a slight tremor shake his arm as he came closer to her core, almost as if the self-control he’d had earlier—his obvious intent to torture her with slow, with gentle—was slipping.

“Sophie.”

Her name fell from his lips as he covered her with his whole hand. His raw heat shocked her, shook her, enough that her head fell back into the curve of his shoulder. Jake’s big, strong body cradled her, cupping her sex, literally holding her in the grip of anticipation for what would come next.

“So soft,” he said again. “So wet for me.”

And then, before she could figure out how to take her next breath, his fingers were inside of her, filling her, stroking her core so perfectly that the pressure way down deep in her belly grew again. Her sex throbbed against his talented fingers and her br**sts ached for more of his touches.

Finally, Jake let her back fall flat against the mattress, and for the first time since the night before, she got to look at his impossibly beautiful face, those eyes so full of heat, so dark and dangerous. She couldn’t look away, could feel desperate words of love about to spill from her lips, even though she knew better, even though she’d vowed not to let it happen again.

“Jake, I—”

His mouth covered hers before she could say anything more, and his passionate kiss drove her thoughts away. She loved feeling him over her like this, like she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t get close enough, and she kissed him back with all of the love in her foolish heart, giving herself up to all the emotions she’d sworn never to let herself feel for him again.

Too soon, he took his mouth away from hers, but she instantly forgave him when he lowered his head to her breast, laving first one and then the other. While the hand between her legs continued to stroke her nerve endings in the most delicious way, his free hand slid over her other breast.

It was too much. The way her lips still tingled from his kisses, and now his mouth, his hands on her, covering her, caressing her, tormenting her.

“This feels so good, even better than before,” she moaned as she arched up off the bed into his hands and mouth and taut muscles, needing to press even closer to the man who was loving her as no one ever had before. Waves of pleasure rolled over her, going on and on like the sea, dragging her out with them until she was doing no more than bobbing in and out of them trying desperately to catch her breath.

But Jake wouldn’t let her fill her lungs as his mouth came back over hers. His tongue swirled with hers, his hands moving to grip her hips. His skin felt even rougher against her softness, and she reveled in the slight scratch of his large hands, the calloused fingertips that so deftly played over her, inside of her.

He shifted so that his entire weight was over her and she instinctively opened her legs wider to give him room to settle between them. He pulled the black T-shirt up over her head and threw it to the floor. The head of his shaft slipped and slid over her sex and she arched into him again, but he held her hips still in his big hands, holding himself just as rigidly above her as he lifted his mouth from hers.

“You’re absolutely sure you’re pregnant?”

She didn’t know why he was asking her that question. “Yes. I’m sure.”

“I’m safe, Sophie. I just had a blood test and I swear I’m safe.”

Somehow, through the lust-filled haze that clouded her brain, she realized what he was saying. He didn’t want to use a condom. She didn’t want anything between them either, wanted Jake and Jake alone to fill her.

The thought made her so wild with need, she could barely get out the words, “I am, too.”

“Thank God,” he said, and the words really did sound like a prayer of thanks falling from his lips.

She held her breath waiting for him to slam into her the way he had their first night together. Instead, he gently slid his hands out from beneath her hips. Not to fondle her br**sts. Not to tease her skin the way he had just a little while ago. But to reach for her face, to hold her jaw so gently with those big hands that were capable of such strength.

He didn’t kiss her, just stared at her with those dark eyes, and she was held completely in his thrall. “You’re mine.”

This time there were no sage, protective inner voices to stop her from agreeing. How could there be when they were all on the edge of anticipation?

“I’m yours.”

The word Mine sounded in the room again as he slowly entered her, his eyes still locked with hers. Sophie had never known such intensity, in or out of bed, as Jake’s presence wrapped itself around her just as his arms had, cradling her, holding her steady when she otherwise would have broken apart.

She had to tell him, needed him to know. “I’ve never felt like this before.” Pleasure so sweet couldn’t possibly exist. And yet, she now knew it did. “I never knew.”

It was what she’d said to him after their first kiss, and now she was saying it again as he made love to her in his big bed as the sun rose higher in the sky and washed over them.

“All those books, and you never knew.”

Her eyes widened as she realized he was teasing her, the corners of his beautiful mouth curving up for a split second before he bent down to press one soft kiss against her forehead, and then each cheekbone, before moving lower to the curve of her neck, her collarbone, the upper swell of her br**sts.