He’d taken her so roughly in the living room on the couch with virtually no foreplay. She'd been ready for him then, but this time he swore he was going to take his time with her body. Make sure she had her fill of pleasure before he took his.

But, of course, she had other plans. Because before he could even so much as move his mouth from her lips to her breasts, she was shifting her weight on him, settling her hot pussy lips over the crown of his cock.

“I want to make this good for you,” he told her, but she was already sinking down on his cock, taking him in, stretching around him slowly, inch by inch.

“This is good for me. So good.”

Knowing he couldn't change her mind even if he wanted to, he gladly went with it, thrusting up into her in the next breath. She took him fully, even though he knew she had to be sore.

“I wanted to be gentle with you this time.”

“You are.”

He found himself not breathing, not moving, just staring into her eyes. She was staring too and he had a feeling she was seeing down deep into his soul, past the successful surgeon all the way to the real man inside. A man that he wasn't sure he really knew.

“I've never been with anyone like you.”

On a little smirk, so cute, so sexy, she replied, “I blow everyone else out of the water, don't I?”

He laughed then, how could he not? She was great.

He'd never liked a woman more.

A point that was only brought home when she said, “Enough with gentle. Fuck my brains out, Luke.”

He brought his mouth down hard on hers at the exact moment that he pulled back and thrust deep again. Protecting her head and back from the tile with his hands, together they pounded into each other, driving higher and higher for what they were both wanting.

Needing.

He felt her pubic bone grinding against his, worked like hell to hold himself off until he began to feel her slick inner muscles clench and tighten around his cock. And then he heard her whisper, “I love you so much,” and there was no hope left for him but to let his own climax spiral out with hers, wrapped tightly in not only her body, but also her boundless love.

Chapter Fourteen

Janica woke up in Luke's arms, sunlight streaming in his bedroom window, his lean muscles pressed against hers, his heart beating strong and steady beneath her palm. She shifted against him, loving the play of his body on hers, his hair tickling her smooth skin, the fact that everywhere she was soft, he was hard.

She knew right when he woke up by the way his heart beat faster beneath her hand. She pressed a kiss into his chest before whispering, “Good morning.”

His arms tightened around her, and then he was pulling her up his body to kiss her. Just as she had every other time he had pressed his lips to hers, she lost herself in his kiss, gave herself over completely to him, and let down all of her barriers. And then, he was rolling them over so that her back was flat against the mattress and he was levered over her, staring down at her with those sinfully hot eyes of his.

She instinctively opened herself up to him, and he moved right into place, the thick head of his cock pushing against her already wet lower lips. In the next heartbeat he was sheathed completely inside of her and she gasped at the hot, heavy weight of him filling her so perfectly.

Holding himself completely still above her, he continued to stare at her.

“I can't get enough of you.”

Again, he wasn't talking about love, and rationally she knew that maybe it would never be anything more than sex for him. But in that moment with her legs wrapped around his hips, her hands gripping his broad shoulders, his heat consuming her, it simply didn't matter.

“Love me, Luke.”

His eyes darkened at her words, but before she could take them back or change them or turn them into anything other than what they obviously were, he started moving. His long, hard, ruthless strokes of pleasure inside of her left no room for anything but an all-consuming rush of ecstasy. The feel of Luke's hands and mouth and cock, his murmurs of praise about how beautiful she was, about how good she felt wrapped around him, all came together like an ocean tide that was pulling her deeper into dangerous waters.

She felt herself start to go under a split second before he did, her muscles clenching him so tightly as he pushed even deeper inside her heat.

And all the while, even as she felt him spurt hot and thick into her, even as she cried out his name, his eyes never left hers. It was beautiful, watching him come, the play of pleasure moving across his face, knowing how good she was making him feel.

Minutes later as they lay damp and panting side by side on the bed, he turned his head to her. “You probably need to get back to work in the City, don't you.”

“Probably,” she agreed.

It was incredibly gratifying to watch disappointment move across his face. And maybe, she thought to herself, even a little mean of her to do that to him. If only to confirm that he'd miss her when she left.

“But I was thinking I could just make some calls instead.” She smiled. “I want to stay here with you.”

For as long as they could possibly keep the “real” world at bay.

“You don't—”

He cut himself off with a curse and shifted back hard on the bed away from her.

Following her impulse—apparently where Luke was concerned she was unable to do anything else, even when she knew better, even when she knew she was just setting herself up to be destroyed—she moved from her side of the bed and shifted over him so that she was sitting up above him straddling his hips.

“You can say anything to me. You know that, don't you?”

She saw him try to fight a grin and lose the battle.

“Where the hell did you come from?”

Holding her hands out at her sides as if she were trying to fly, perfectly comfortable with her nudity, she said, “I'm one-of-a-kind.”

His grin widened, but then, suddenly fell away. “I can't ask you to stay. I shouldn't ask you to stay.”

“You use those words too much. Can't. Shouldn't. I think you should stop worrying about a bunch of random rules and get to the real question.” She pressed her palms flat against his six-pack, enjoying the feel of his muscles rippling beneath her hands. “What do you want, Luke?”

“I want you to stay.”

This time, it was her turn for her grin to fall away at his potent statement. And when he followed it up with, “I don't know what I would do if you left, Janica,” she was pretty sure all the breath left her lungs.

Again, it wasn't love, but it was something. Something more than she'd ever thought to hear him say to her, to have him feel for her. Especially considering the way he'd practically been trying to force her out the door before their walk on the beach, when he'd been an apple and she'd been an orange.