“Beautiful. So damned beautiful.”

Mia couldn’t shake the feeling that he was looking at her as if he’d never seen any other naked woman before, as if she were his first. His only. He was a rock star who could have any woman in the world and, rationally, she knew she wasn’t even close to his first. He wasn’t for her, either. But it had never been like this for her with any other man. And as he said again, “You are so damned beautiful,” she didn’t need him to tell her that it had never been like this for him with anyone else, either.

Not when she already knew the truth in every kiss he gave her, in every caress.

She was surprised to realize his hand was shaking slightly as he traced skin and lace from one side of her chest to the other, then back again. She’d assumed by now that if and when they were going to get naked together, it would happen in a race to tear off clothes and get at each other.

But yet again, Ford was surprising her with reverence where she’d expected only lust...and with sweetness where she’d worked so hard to tell herself all these years there had been only sin.

She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until he finally moved to undo the final buttons that held her shirt closed. It came out in a rush as he gently pushed the fabric from her shoulders, so that it fell to the floor behind her.

Taking a fistful of her hair into his hand, he tugged her head back so that he could put his mouth, hot and needy, into the curve of her neck. Her br**sts, covered only in lace now, became even more aroused as she pressed them against his cotton-covered chest. And as he began to run kisses from her neck down across her shoulders, then over the upper swell of her br**sts, she had to clutch at his shirt behind his back to hold herself steady.

Breathe. She needed to remember how to breathe. In. Out. In. Out. And as his lips and the bristles on his jaw moved over her skin, she almost caught the hang of it again.

That is, until she was rocked by the unexpected slick of his warm, wet tongue beneath lace and over one nipple.

“Ford. Yes. Please. More.” One pleading word after another fell from her lips as she arched into his mouth, needing him to take more, to run his perfect tongue over the rest of her. Thank God, he listened to her pleas as he found her other breast and made it just as damp and peaked as the other.

And then he was dropping to his knees, his mouth hot and desperate as he ran kisses over her stomach, dipping his tongue into her belly button before nipping at the soft skin just to the side of it.

“All night long,” he said against her stomach as she gasped with pleasure. “I could spend the entire night tasting you like this, every single inch of you.”

Oh yes, she loved that idea, of his teasing her with his mouth and hands all night long. But not tonight, not when she was going mad with the need to be skin to skin with him.

“I want to do that to you, too,” she told him, but he had on far too many clothes, so she grasped his shirt in her hands and pulled it over his head.

With Ford still on his knees in front of her, she could look down on his broad shoulders, his tanned skin that had been painted with intricate tattoos. She recognized some of them, remembered well the joy of tracing them with her fingertips as they lay together in his hotel room, and her fingers were drawn to do the same thing now.

But before she could do more than skim her fingers over his warm muscles, he took her hands in both of his and kissed them. “If you keep touching me, we won’t make it into the shower, Mia.”

“That’s okay with me,” she whispered as he held her hands over his heart and she felt how hard it was beating. Nearly as fast as her own.

“No.” He shook his head. “No,” he said again as if repetition could somehow convince both of them that a shower could be enough. “Okay isn’t good enough.” His eyes were dark with desire and with emotion. “I don’t want okay with you. I don’t want good or good enough with you. I want everything. I want even more than that.” She could see him working for his control as he suddenly said, “I don’t think I ever told you that I was fourteen years old when I lost my virginity.”

“That’s pretty young,” she murmured, wondering where he was going with this information that had seemingly come from out of the blue.

“By today’s standards, not so much. But back then, yeah, it was pretty young. See, there was a girls’ school across the river in Boston, and it was a badge of honor to come back to the guys and tell them you’d scored.”

“And they believed you?”

“They did when you had the panties as proof in your pocket.”

“Teenage boys are scum.”

“In more ways than you can imagine.” He shook his head. “The thing is, I didn’t know anything about friendship or love back then. I wasn’t trying to get anything from those girls but their panties and to hopefully be the one to pop their—”

She held up her hand. “Picture already painted, thank you.” Mia knew she had no reason to be even the slightest bit jealous of any of those girls, but reason didn’t always come into play where Ford was concerned.

“Every single woman I was with from fourteen on was exactly the same. None of them meant anything to me. Not until you. And when I felt like I couldn’t hack it as a boyfriend instead of just a hookup, it was easier just to let the sex take over with you until it buried everything else we could have had. But the stakes are too high this time, Mia. You’ve given me a second chance, and I’m not going to blow it by screwing up everything we’re starting to build.”

She knew in that moment that he didn’t just want her heart. He wanted her soul, too. And, oh, it was so tempting just to tell him that he had them both. Because then he’d stop holding back, stop keeping his vow to hold himself in check with her until they’d created something truly solid.

But she could still hear the way he’d asked her that morning in her office, “I want to be the best friend you’ve ever had. But I’m not yet, am I?”

Just as she could still hear the echo of her own silence.

She’d driven to Eugene to see him because she’d missed him all day, because she’d thought about him every single second of it, because she simply couldn’t have made it through another night without him...and because she was still looking for answers. Answers that she knew wouldn’t just come from sex alone.

“I promise I won’t push you to make love to me tonight,” she told him, “but I need more than just kisses.”