Travis stopped in the middle of the dance floor and pulled her into his arms. One of his hands slid to the curve of her hips while the other was alarmingly close to her br**sts.

“Lily,” he said.

She looked up at him, her blue eyes bright with longing. “Travis,” she whispered, then ran the tip of her tongue along the edge of her upper lip.

He groaned and started to lean down for what Lily hoped was a kiss, the first of many if she had her way. Her eyelids fluttered closed, but then she felt Travis pull back ever so slightly. Her eyes flew open.

“Lily,” he said, “I…”

Bolder than she ever thought she could be, Lily laid a finger on his perfect lips. “Don’t speak,” she said. It was a command, not a request. “Tonight is not for talking.”

Relief flashed across Travis’s face, but Lily didn’t care. The last thing she wanted was for their time to be ruined with apologies and second-guessing. She didn’t forgive him for the way he had treated her for the past twenty years, but at that moment, warm and aroused in his arms, none of it mattered.

All she cared about was kissing Travis and licking Travis and, oh God, hopefully coming beneath Travis, too.

His mouth was on hers and his hands were in her hair and he was stealing all the breath from her lungs.

Lily wanted to memorize this kiss so that she could play it back to herself in her lonely bathtub on cold nights, but she was so stunned by the sensations washing through her that her brain was on the verge of shutting off completely.

First hard, then unbearably soft, his lips ruled hers, coaxing a whimper of ecstasy from her core. Lily had been kissed before but not like this. Not by someone who could teach a course on the art of kissing.

Travis plunged his tongue ruthlessly into her mouth, letting her know in no uncertain terms that he was going to be in charge of their lovemaking, that he was going to take her over completely. He ravaged every last corner and crevice of her mouth with his own, and in the exact moment that she gave in to him, he changed the tenor of his kiss.

Instead of showing her who was boss, Travis backed off, slowed down. Lily reveled in how he took the time to learn her taste, to study the ultrasensitive plump center of her lower lip, to find out how much her tongue loved to mate with his.

One of his hands began to roam, first gently kneading her shoulders, then the small of her back, sending goose bumps everywhere, centering at the tight tips of her br**sts. Lily could hardly concentrate on anything but Travis’s kiss, but still she cried out, silently, for him to touch her br**sts.

So what if they were in the middle of a crowded dance floor? If Travis didn’t squeeze her br**sts right then, right there, she would die with wanting it.

His hands moved around her waist to the bottom edge of her rib cage. Lily shook with need. She had never been so turned on in all her life. Her thong was soaked with her juices.

The pad of his thumb ran across her aching nipple, and she cried out into his mouth. Before she could clamp down on it, the first haze of an orgasm shuddered through her as she danced in his arms.

Travis, amazingly, seemed to know that she was coming even before she did. So subtly that no one but the two of them would ever know what was happening, he pressed one of his hard thighs between her legs. Using his hand on her bottom for leverage, he pumped her mons with his muscles, pushing her clit into his thigh in the perfect rhythm to send Lily all the way over the edge.

His kiss was possessive and so hot she felt scalded by it. She cried out in his mouth as the first waves began from the tips of her br**sts and worked down her abdomen to her pu**y. Travis swallowed her scream, and his fingers tightened on her nipple.

In her haze she felt the huge evidence of his arousal pressing against her stomach, but she was trying so hard to breathe, to stay on her feet, that she barely spared it more than a passing thought of later.

Lily’s orgasms had always been powerful. They were one thing about herself that she truly, unabashedly loved. But this explosion was more than she had ever experienced with her vibrator or her previous lovers. Being with Travis was even more thrilling than she had imagined it to be. And yet, a little voice in her brain asked, wasn’t that why she had been holding out hope on Travis for so long? Because deep within she knew that coming together with him would be this explosive?

She forced her crazy theories away to focus on the here, and now, in Travis’s arms. The mere thought of Travis’s thigh rubbing up and down against her made even more blood flow between her legs. She wondered if one could have a heart attack from lack of blood to anywhere but the clit. What would she say in the emergency room?

Doctor, I was coming so hard against the thigh of my dream guy that my heart stopped for a moment.

Lily clung to Travis as he held her upright and ground his thigh into her throbbing pu**y. She felt limp and useless as her orgasm came to its end, but Travis didn’t remove his thigh from between her legs. Like a sleepy cat she continued to rub herself against him, only waking up when he whispered, “Let’s get out of here,” in her ear. He grabbed her hand, pulling her through the throngs of people and out onto the street.

They got in a cab and his mouth was on hers again as he pulled her onto his lap. The sensible part of her, which had miraculously not been permanently put to sleep yet, made her pull back, and say, “Travis, the cab driver.”

Chuckling softly, Travis slid her slightly off his lap and nuzzled her neck. “Thank God it’s a short ride to my loft,” he said.

Lily barely sucked in her gasp of surprise. His loft? Lily had never seen his loft. Except in magazines, that is. And from what Luke had told her over the years, Travis rarely, if ever, took women home.

Her eyes ran over his tall frame, so perfectly set off by his white T-shirt and faded jeans. She saw the wet patch on his thigh, and the gasp finally escaped.

Travis’s eyes followed hers. Lily cursed herself for dropping her worldly veneer. She wanted him to think that she left marks like that on all the men she came against while out dancing, but even then, even amidst the red haze of their sensual connection, she knew it was ridiculous.

Outside, in the evening light that streamed in the windows, she felt the familiar pangs of self-consciousness. She was afraid to let Travis look at her. They weren’t kids anymore, and she needed to face facts: The Travis who liked her wasn’t ever coming back. Though he’d made her come like a bomb, that didn’t alter the fact that he always acted like she wasn’t there, like she wasn’t the least bit important. She knew that he had no respect for her whatsoever and, now that they had left the magic of the fashion show behind, she was certain he would realize what a huge mistake he was making. She wished she were strong enough to protect herself against him. She wished she was tough enough to say,