“The grimace on your face is a dead giveaway.”

“I’m sorry. I tried to tell you.” Violet tried to roll away, reaching for the towel. Maybe she could strangle herself with it. This had to be the most awkward moment of her life, and to this point, her life had really just been a whole series of awkward moments.

The only time she was comfortable and confident was when she was with her students. Who were all five years old.

But this moment had to surpass all others in pure humiliation.

“Shhh.” Dylan put his hand over her mouth. “Don’t apologize. You did tell me. And I said we’d only do what feels right. Did it feel right in the shower?”

Violet’s body hummed just from the memory. “Yes. Really right.”

“So, let’s just experiment and see what feels right here on the bed, okay?”

“Okay.” She wanted to relax and let it all hang out. She wanted to be able to get down and dirty with Dylan so that he would enjoy himself. “But I need you to tell me what to do, how to please you, Dylan.”

His lips brushed across hers. Dark eyes swept over her face. “Just be you. Just that you care enough to want to please me is enough.”

It didn’t feel like enough. He was willing to give her a baby, the thing that mattered most to her, and she couldn’t even give him a good time in return.

“You don’t have to do anything, Vi. If you don’t want to do this, I’ll go to the clinic. I promise you’ll get a baby one way or the other.”

That made tears well up in her eyes and her heart swell like a balloon. Violet reached up and gently stroked his cheek. “You really have no idea how wonderful you are, do you?”

He shrugged. “Don’t make too much of it. For the most part, I’m just an overpaid jock, Vi.”

“And I thought I had confidence issues? There’s nothing wrong with success, you know. It’s the result of your talent and hard work. You should enjoy it.” She pulled his mouth down onto hers, kissed him slowly and thoroughly. “Make love to me, Dylan. Please.”

He was propped up on his elbows and he pulled back, studied her. “Well, you don’t have to ask me twice.”

Then before she realized what he was doing, he had dropped down between her legs and kissed her. There. Where she felt it shoot through her insides like an electrical surge.

“Oh!” Well, that was eloquent.

It was instinctive to try and close her thighs, but that only clamped her flesh on either side of Dylan’s head and shoved him farther into her crotch. Startled, she dropped them back open. Wide.

Which didn’t work either.

Dylan merely reached out, spread her apart with his fingers, and licked her.

At that point, she stopped caring.

Gripping the duvet, she fell back and started speaking in tongues. “Oh, ah, ye-, bu-, geez, he-,” all flowed out of her mouth in incoherent babbling as he stroked up and down from the very tip of her clitoris to way down low, lower than it had ever occurred to her you could go.

Just when she thought her heart would actually burst out of her chest like an alien entity, he lifted up. And licked his lips.

“Mmm.”

There was a gorgeous professional baseball player between her legs licking his lips like he’d had a good meal. This had to be a wet dream. Or whatever you called them when women had them. She didn’t usually, but this had to be a dream, because there was no way this could be happening to her.

Dylan bent his head again and did something that made her sit halfway up. Shit, this was real, because she never would have even thought a man could do that. She was pretty sure he was sucking on her, because there were little slurping noises and a tug-pull sensation right at the tip of her…Yowsa.

She was point five seconds away from coming when he let go.

Violet lay on the bed and panted.

“Like that?” He crawled up along her, his erection pressing into her thigh, brushing against her curls, and sending another little shock of lust rippling through her.

Holy crap, she actually wanted him inside her. She ached to have him inside her. Now. This was very, very strange and she hoped like heck it would last, because damn, damn, it was good.

Dylan’s mouth closed around her nipple and he sucked, good and hard, with the kind of pressure that had her straining on the mattress, arching up to him, digging her feet into the bed, clawing at his shoulders. Then the other one-lick, suck, pull, and back to the first. Then over to the other, and back again, until she was slick everywhere on her chest, her inner thighs were dripping with desire, her cries were loud and urgent, her breasts were tingling with sensation.

There was time for one kiss on her lips, his tongue dipping deep inside, twirling and swirling around hers with the musky taste of her own desire, then he was gone again, descending over her chest, fingers plucking, lips sucking on his way by, before he reached her pussy.

Violet had always hated the “P” word. It reminded her of a randy Tom Jones frolicking with Vegas showgirls, and pubescent boys trying to be dirty as they scrawled it over bathroom walls. But for the first time in her twenty-eight years, she felt like she had something more than a vagina, designed to birth children. She had something just for sex, something for pleasure, not function, and when Dylan thrust with his tongue deep inside her, it went into her pussy, damn it, and it felt really, really sexy.

She figured the sexual liberation of Violet Caruthers was complete when she grabbed onto his hair, rammed his head deeper into her, and yelled, “Oh, Dylan, yes!” at volumes she hadn’t even thought she was capable of.

And she wasn’t the least bit embarrassed.

So when Dylan jerked back and moved up the length of her, she knew what was coming, and she wanted it. Seriously, big-time wanted it.

His hair was sticking up from where she had yanked, and his eyes were ink black, cloudy with need, his lips shiny and slick.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Dylan asked, wanting her so bad his arms trembled as he hovered over her. He had her on the edge, he was pretty sure, and he knew he had himself on the edge, but he had to hear her say it was okay. There wasn’t a condom in sight, and she couldn’t have any doubts.

He was sure. Sure that giving Violet a child was the least he could do after she had renewed his passion and excitement for life. His trust in other people. His belief that he was worth something beyond his batting average.

She wiggled beneath him in a way that tested his resolve. “Dylan, please.”

Cock resting at her hot entrance, he swore. “I need to hear you say it. We could get you pregnant and you have to be sure.”

Violet stilled. Stroked her fingers down his arms. “I’m sure. I would be honored to have your child. Truly honored.”

That did him in.

Dylan pushed inside her in the raw, and almost came on the spot. Christ almighty, he hadn’t had sex with a woman without a condom since…ever. Everything felt so tight and slick and pulsing, extra aware.

He had also never had sex with Violet, and that in itself made the experience ten times more arousing.

Violet wasn’t jaded. Violet wasn’t greedy. Violet had claimed not to like sex, and yet here she was, beneath him, clamping her ankles together right on his butt, urging him forward.

But he needed a second to just savor, wait. Throb. Try not to come.

He bent his head over her glorious breasts and ran his lips over her nipple.

Using a word Dylan wouldn’t have thought Violet would know, she lifted her hips and spread her legs wider, forcing him deep inside her. They both moaned.

“Want it, do you?” Almost as much as him, he’d bet.

She moved her hips again, and met his thrust so that they were as connected as it was possible for them to be. “Yes, I want it. I want it, all of it.”

Dylan leaned down and kissed her, bit her lip, giving up the fight to hold back. He pushed into her, harder and harder, the headboard smacking the wall, the force of his thrusts dragging the sheets off the mattress. His stomach connected with hers each time he sank into her, and he could hear the sound of their bodies joining, the slick suction intermingling with their hot desperate breathing and Violet’s urgent gasp as he drove air out of her lungs over and over.