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  “You were saying something?” she asked in that same distant-but-polite tone.

  “Yeah . . .” But he had nothing. He’d forgotten what he was going to say. He’d forgotten why he wasn’t going to do this. Because she was standing there, bared to him, braver than him, better than him, and she thought she was undesirable. He couldn’t let her think that, couldn’t bear to let her think that, he thought as he pulled her in against him. The feel of her heated skin, so soft, so smooth, all pressed up to him was heaven. “Kate.”

  “Mm-hmm?”

  “How drunk are you really?”

  “Not even a little.”

  “Swear it.”

  “Swear.”

  He stared into her clear eyes.

  “Want me to walk a straight line?” she asked. “Sing the alphabet? I can burp it, too, but I need a soda for that.”

  He fought a smile.

  She didn’t fight hers at all, just let her lips curve sweetly. “Anything else?” she asked.

  “Yeah. One thing.” He shifted a little closer so that they were sharing air. “If it had been me you’d found in the dark tonight on that dance floor, you’d have damn well known it.”

  Her hands clutched his biceps as she nodded. “I have no doubt.” She stared at his mouth and licked her lips, and Grif would swear on a stack of Bibles in a court full of his peers that he had no idea how he ended up kissing her like his life depended on it. None. But that’s exactly what happened. His hands skimmed up her hot curves, and he heard his own groan escape him as he bent his head to her breasts, which were spilling out the top of her bra.

  With a gasp of pleasure, she slid her fingers into his hair, holding him to her.

  As if he were going anywhere now. And it wasn’t for her either. Even in his lust-induced haze he knew that. This was for him. He needed to be touched by her, needed to feel something with her. Needed to lose himself for this beat in time.

  In her.

  He nudged the straps of her bra from her shoulders and kissed her breast, letting his tongue slip under the silk and rasp over a nipple before closing his lips and sucking. Her fingers tightened on his hair. She could make him bald; he didn’t care.

  “Pigs orgasm in thirty minute intervals,” she said softly.

  His heart squeezed. He was making her nervous. “The real kind or the fake kind?”

  She laughed breathlessly. “Pigs can’t fake it, I don’t think.”

  “You’re beautiful, Kate.”

  She gave him a shaky smile.

  “So damn beautiful.” Straightening, he picked her up.

  She wrapped her legs around his hips as he backed her to the counter and set her on it.

  “Uh-oh,” she said. “Are we back to talking?”

  “Later,” he murmured, and kissed her again. She let him, melting for him, going soft and pliable in his arms.

  “The first contraceptive was crocodile dung,” she whispered. “The Egyptians used it in 2000 BC.”

  “You say the sexiest things,” he said, and gently sank his teeth into her earlobe.

  She shivered and clutched at him. “You’re the first man to tell me that. Most would rather I not talk during sex.” She grimaced. “And by most, I don’t mean there’ve been lots or anything. There haven’t. Two. There’ve been two.”

  He went still as she dropped her head to his shoulder. “I swear I’m trying to shut up,” she said. “But I have one more thing.”

  He was still processing the fact that any man would ever ask her not to talk. He loved to hear her talk. And what did she mean there’d only been two . . . Two total? “What?” he asked, still trying to do the math—impossible since all his blood had drained to parts south.

  She lifted her head and took his gaze prisoner with her own deep green one. “Do best men carry condoms?” she asked.

  “Always.”

  Her smile was the sweetest, hottest thing he’d ever seen, and his heart squeezed again. She’d been with only two men, and they’d asked her not to talk during sex. She knew that faking an orgasm burned more calories than a real orgasm . . .

  Grif had promised himself to keep his hands off of her because she was vulnerable, but he was beginning to suspect he was the vulnerable one here. Vulnerable to her. Because he wanted to gather her in and make things right, show her that talking during sex could be erotic as hell. Teach her that there was no need to fake anything.

  Ever.

  Before he could say a word, she cupped his face with her hands and pulled him to her. Instead of kissing his lips, she leaned in and kissed the top edge of the scar on his temple. She followed the length of it with warm little devastating kisses. And she didn’t stop there. She kissed his jaw next, working her way slowly, so slowly it was torture, toward his mouth.

  And then skipped it and went to the other side of his face. When she got to his ear, he found himself holding his breath.

  Not her. She let a soft sigh escape her, and it sent chills skittering down his spine. Not the kind of chills he got right before he was going to get shot at, either, but the really good kind of chills. “Kate, kiss me.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Kiss me, dammit.”

  She gave him a smile that stopped his heart. “Sorry. I heard you the first time.” She bit her lower lip and admitted, “I just like hearing you say it.”

  And then, before he could grasp the fact that she’d just gotten not only the best of him but had also gotten exactly what she’d wanted, she laid one on him, and it was a kiss for the record books. Nothing of the slightly prim-and-proper second-grade teacher was present as she slid her hands back into his hair and pillaged. There was no other word. She nibbled, licked, sucked, and even bit, and by the time they pulled apart to suck in some desperately needed air, his head was spinning.

  “How was that?” she asked, looking a little dazed herself, her eyes dilated.

  “Good,” he said, “but it’s going to get even better. Kate?”

  “Yeah?”

  “No fake orgasms for three hundred and fifteen calories. Fuck the calories. We’re going real, all the way.”

  She let out a shaky breath and nodded. “Real,” she repeated.

  Her demi-bra wasn’t managing to contain her breasts fully. He could see some nipple, and they were pebbled tight, her breasts rising and falling with her quickened breath. Her legs were still wrapped around his hips. When they’d been kissing, she’d been rocking into him, and the teeny-tiny lace triangle had shifted a bit and molded to her every soft fold.

  Her every soft damn fold.

  She was a vision, a goddess to be worshipped, and he traced a line along the top of her bra with the pads of his fingers before unhooking it and letting it fall away. Lowering his head, he brushed a kiss across the full curve of a breast.

  “Griffin,” she whispered, a plea. She steadied herself by gripping him tight, and then tighter still when his thumb skimmed across her nipple. He slid her panties down, and she whispered his name again.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “More.”

  “What?”

  “More, Griffin. Please more.”

  He smiled. “I heard you. I just like to hear it.” Then he dropped to his knees, because he wanted more, too. He wanted to make her cry out his name.

  Instead she splayed a hand between her legs blocking his passage to the homeland. But her fingers, spread over herself, still gave him the most heart-stopping peekaboo hints of what was beneath.

  “Twenty-nine percent of Americans have sex on the first date with perfect strangers,” she said. “Do you think this applies?”

  “We’re not strangers.”

  “No,” she said slowly. “You’re right.”

  She was still nervous and anxious to boot. Finally, something he could fix. Leaning in, he kissed one inner thigh and then the other, sucking lightly on her skin until she moaned and spread her legs a little more. He did it again, and she gave him even better access with an appreciative si