As Vicki’s inner muscles automatically clenched around him, he dragged his fingers from her, then pushed them back in.

“You’re going to come for me, aren’t you?”

Oh yes, that was exactly what she was going to do.

She bucked into his hand and then his mouth as his tongue found her. Her cries of pleasure bounced around the shower walls as he pushed her harder, higher, until she was a trembling, post-climactic mess.

Ryan grasped her hands in his again and before she could get her synapses to fire, he had her turned around and shifted so that her hands were flat on a tiled lip that held his soap and shampoo.

He held his hands over hers and braced her hips with his. “Are you steady enough to stay like that on your own while I get my clothes off?”

Oh God.

“Yes.” Barely.

He ran his hands all the way up her arms and then down her back to the flare of her hips before he stopped. “Your ass is a goddamned miracle.”

She wished she had the kind of experience with men and sex to answer him in a flirtatious way, but her earlier quip about being in the shower seemed to be the full extent of her flirty answers. Especially when he palmed her cheeks and squeezed them.

A gasp of pleasure fell from her lips as he sparked her desire anew with shocking ease, the fingers of one hand slipping into her again as he undid his pants with the other.

And then his hand was gone and he was pressing up and into her on a groan, his hands coming around to cup and squeeze her br**sts as she gripped the tiled lip.

“Hold on tight.”

His gritted-out command barely pierced the fog of lust and pleasure in her head before he was pounding into her hard, fast, and so deep, his hands moving from her br**sts to her hips to grip her so possessively, so perfectly, that she had no choice but to feel him everywhere...and love every single second of being taken over.

Somewhere way down deep it felt like she’d been made with these curves just so Ryan could hold onto them when he was taking her, sending her to the edge again with his fierce lovemaking.

“Again, Vicki. I need to feel you come around me.”

His deliciously dirty words were the final push she needed to catapult up, up, up and then as her forehead dropped onto the tile between her hands, she was pushing back into him at least as hard as he was into her to give him exactly what he’d just demanded.

With every clench of her inner muscles around him, he grew harder, thicker, until he suddenly pulled out, one hand moving between her legs to squeeze out the final tremors of her climax even as he worked himself in his other hand.

Utterly lost in their dirty-sex shower world, Vicki didn’t think before turning and moving to her knees in front of him to take him into her hands and mouth.

She barely heard his groan through the pounding of blood in her ears. For the first time in her life she understood the thrill of tasting a man like this, the arousal that pumped onto her tongue with every stroke of her hand around him, the sweet rapture of knowing she was giving him as much pleasure as he’d just given her. Twice, already.

She wanted to see his face when he came, but when she looked up through her lashes at him, she was surprised to see him staring back down at her in wonder.

And then, he was down on his knees with her on the shower floor and his mouth was on hers, the taste of both of them merging until she couldn’t tell one from the other. She was just about to climb over him when he abruptly pulled back and cursed.

“I need a condom.”

He gripped both of her hands and pulled her dripping wet from the shower, and across the bathroom floor to his bed. He was so strong—and so worked up—that he all but threw her down on the covers to wait for him as he yanked open his bedside drawer, found a condom, and ripped it open.

She couldn’t wait for him to get it on and their hands tangled on his hard heat as they slid the latex down. And then his hands were on her br**sts again and his mouth was on hers as he was pushing her back onto the bed and shoving her legs open to push inside of her.

The sweet force of his desire for her—and hers for him—had her losing her breath again and she had to arch away from his mouth to throw her head back and gasp for it as she circled his hips with her legs and gripped his neck and shoulders. And, oh, was she glad for her strong sculptor’s hands as they rode each other, Ryan finally cresting the edge he’d been coming to again and again, while Vicki erupted one more beautiful time beneath her best friend.

Chapter Twenty-one

The lights were still on in Ryan’s bedroom, the sky dark outside his window, when Vicki woke in his arms a while later. As soon as she shifted, he spoke.

“I wore you out.”

He effortlessly maneuvered her so that she was lying flat on her back and he was levered on his right arm looking down at her. He looked so pleased with himself, she couldn’t resist smiling at him.

“You did. Three times, actually.”

He grinned back at her and for a moment it was as if nothing had changed and they were just two friends who enjoyed each other’s company.

Only, that wasn’t even the slightest bit true.

Because everything had changed.

Everything.

As the smile fell from her lips, Ryan’s expression grew serious, too.

“Don’t tell me it was weird again, Vicki. Not when we both know it was anything but.”

She hated that she’d hurt him with what she’d so stupidly blurted that morning. “No, it wasn’t weird. It was great. Last night was great, too. But—”

He stopped her with a kiss. One that was just as sweet as it was sinful.

“I’m going to let you finish saying what you have to say so that you can get every single one of those buts out of your system.” He stared down at her, his eyes dark with intense emotion. “And then you’re going to listen to what I have to say. So go ahead. Get it all out.”

In the wake of his kiss—and the press of his hard muscles over her—she had to work really, really hard to ignore the fact that she and Ryan were completely naked in his bed. The problem was, she knew he was right, that if she didn’t give voice to all of her worries now, the next time they ended up in bed together, things would only be more confusing between them.

“I know you would never hurt me, Ryan. Not on purpose, anyway. And I would never want to hurt you, either. But—” She paused, hating what came next. “—I just don’t see how this can end any way but badly when I’m made for the long term and you’re not.”

A tic jumped in his jaw as he stared down at her. “How can you say I’m not made for the long term?”