Trying to concentrate and not come two minutes after he got inside her body, he stopped moving. Instead, he leaned down and flicked his tongue over one nipple and then the other, alternating as he felt like it. She made tiny, gaspy, needy sounds that eroded his control even more.

He began to slowly move inside of her, sliding almost all of the way out and then inexorably back in again. She met him thrust for thrust, his hands at her hips, tracing the curves there, her strong legs holding him to her—as if there was another place on earth she’d rather have been.

So this was making love. This was the intensity of connection with the person you cared about more than anything else. “Tate, I…” He broke off, it was a bad idea to tell someone you loved them during sex wasn’t it? “I feel so good, you feel so good.”

He teased her with short, shallow, slow digs of his cock, delighting in how she writhed and tried to get more from him. He loved teasing her, drawing out her pleasure and being the one to deliver it to her.

She tightened her inner muscles around him, making him gasp.

“Oh man, that felt good,” he said with a groan.

“I’ll do it more if you just let me come,” she panted out, doing it again, causing his balls to nearly crawl back into his body.

“Deal.” He picked up his pace, moving a hand to where they were joined. Her hips jutted forward when he flicked a finger across her clit. He thrust and she tightened, he flicked and she rolled her hips until she bowed off the bed, a deep, earthy moan breaking from her.

Her pu**y clutched at him, pulling at his body as if she couldn’t bear to let him go. He tried to ride it out but she pulled him under. He pulsed as she did, his head back, muscles taut.

He fell to the side and they both lay there panting for a few moments. He got up briefly and came back to her. She’d gotten under the sheets and he joined her, snuggling against her body.

Long after she’d felt him drift off into sleep, Tate lay awake, listening to the tick of the hallway clock as the minutes slid past.

She’d moved past panic and into terror and back to unease with her feelings about Matt Chase.

She wasn’t a virgin. She wasn’t super experienced or anything but she’d been with several men and had good times in bed with almost all of them.

But what she’d experienced with Matt Chase that night was more than a good time. What she’d experienced was a huge leaping sprawl into holy-fuck-I-may-love-this-guy territory.

And she could not love Matt Chase. She was a Murphy. He was a Chase. Buildings in the town were named after his family! He was beautiful and charming and came from an ease and privilege that she’d have resented a few years before. Still made her uncomfortable. He was a man who never had to fear being hungry or being hurt by someone he loved and was supposed to be protected by. She’d lay odds he’d never seen either one of his parents drunkenly angry.

There was a whole universe between her world and his and she’d never fit in. He’d come to see that in time and he’d find some suave way of dumping her and she’d go back to her side of the street and he to his.

She could not love Matt Chase and she couldn’t let him make it happen either.

Chapter Seven

The next morning they’d had a nice breakfast but Matt could tell she was holding herself back from him and he didn’t like it one bit. And he had no plans to let her get away with it either.

“So I sort of told my mother you’re coming to dinner at their house tonight.” He sipped his coffee and sopped up the gravy on his plate with a biscuit. She was the best cook he’d never met, even better than his mother. If the woman hadn’t been everything he’d ever wanted otherwise, he’d still have wanted to keep her for her skills in the kitchen.

She jerked her head back and put her fork down. She’d eaten fruit and just one biscuit, much to his consternation.

“What? Why would you have done such a thing? I’m having dinner with my family here tonight. We do every other Sunday.”

“My momma’s gonna be so disappointed.”

“Matt, I’m sorry but I have plans with my family.”

“Can’t you break them just this once? Have dinner with them tomorrow night? My parents are expecting you and you know my mother, she’d take it awful hard if you didn’t come.”

Her eyes widened and he knew he’d gone too far.

“In the first place, I would never ask you to dump off a family commitment for me. In the second place, I would never dump a family commitment for something like a sneak dinner invitation that you didn’t even bother asking me for. I have nieces and a nephew, they have school during the week so I wouldn’t interrupt their weeknight schedule just to suit your whim. In the third place, my family is very important to me and I don’t appreciate you treating it otherwise. Lastly, don’t you ever try and guilt me with your mother like that.”

Knowing he’d been rightfully busted he put his coffee down and reached out to take her hands. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I shouldn’t have asked you to choose like that. It wasn’t fair. Next Sunday will you come to dinner at my parents’ house? Assuming you don’t do dinner with your family in those off Sunday nights?”

“I don’t know, Matt. This is moving so fast. I…”

“Fast? We’ve known each other for a few months, that’s not fast. Come on, Tate, look, let me just go ahead and put it all on the line and be totally straight with you. I really like you. I enjoy your company and I want to be with you. I want us to continue dating and I want to see where this can go. This is not a casual thing for me. I’m old enough to know what I want and you’re it, Tate Murphy.”