Mac had been one of her better dating experiences until the last few weeks of their time together. After that, the pattern had become all too familiar—knowing there was something going on, but wanting to believe that it was just her imagination. God, she had grown to hate those alarm bells that inevitably went off in all of her relationships. The warning bells that told her she was hanging on to a sinking ship and no amount of paddling would ever make it right again.

Crystal might be disillusioned with men after divorcing her controlling husband who always wanted her to be perfect, but Gwen had never had that problem. The men she’d dated didn’t seem to care enough to try to control her. That would have involved more time than they were willing to give her. The sad part of it all was that after the experience with Mac, she had concluded that it had to be her. Men fell in love and got married every day; heck, most of her exes married soon after they dumped her. Maybe she was some type of marriage training course. They dated her and got their selfish, jerk days out of their systems, and then went on to settle down and be perfect husbands. Stranger things had happened.

Mia and Crystal left her with her thoughts. She promised that they’d try to have lunch together tomorrow so she could fill them in on her dinner with Dominic. Gwen only hoped that she wasn’t a complete fool for even considering spending more time with him after breaking up so recently with his friend. She winced at the thought because it sounded so cliché. When had her life turned into something from a romance novel?

*   *   *

“Dude, you got laid, didn’t you?” Dominic blinked in surprise at Gage’s accurate assessment. Shit, was it that obvious? He hadn’t said anything even alluding to his night with Gwen so he had no idea how Gage had zeroed in on it within fifteen minutes.

Dominic kept his head down and his eyes fixed on the security feed from the previous evening. Their first task each day was to read reports from their various clients and glance through the footage to ensure nothing was missed. This was something that they could assign to one of their other employees, but when time permitted, he, Gage, and Mac still preferred to keep their hands on the pulse of their business. “Don’t you have something else to do?” he asked Gage when the other man continued to sit and study him.

“Well, of course,” Gage scoffed, “but this is so much better. I mean, I’m pretty damned impressed that you had the energy to go out and hunt a woman after traveling all weekend. I’m just gonna admit that I went home and crashed till this morning. If I’d found a naked woman on my doorstep, I’d have probably sent her on her merry way.”

When his hand slipped on the mouse and it clattered to the floor with what sounded like the force of an atomic bomb, he knew he was screwed. Gage was now in his favorite position of interrogation. His feet were propped on the desk in front of him, and he was leaning back in his chair. “No fucking way. Who did you get a door prize from last night? Crap, was it Kandi?”

Dominic had briefly dated a woman named Kandi a few months ago. When they’d met, she told him that she was a dancer but had been evasive as to where she did that dancing. He’d been surprised that wherever they went, half the men in the place seemed to know her. One night, she had finally confessed that her real name was Mona and her stage name at the strip club where she worked was Kandi. He was far from a prude, but when she wanted to share him with her friends, Bambi and Trixie, he’d called it a day. Yeah, he’d had a threesome back in his wilder, boot camp days, but it wasn’t something he was interested in now. Of course, her strange need to speak in baby talk to his crotch didn’t exactly make her a keeper, either. Gage had never gotten over his rejection of Kandi and her crew. He was sure there had actually been tears in the other man’s eyes when he’d told him. “No, it wasn’t her,” he answered flatly, trying to discourage further questions.

“So, that actually happened? Shit, I was just harassing you, but some chick did show up naked last night? If it wasn’t Kandi, then it must be someone new. A neighbor? I can’t believe you let go of your Gwen crush long enough to sleep with someone else.”

Why, oh why couldn’t he keep his cool around Gage? For the love of God, he served two tours in the Marines and most of them in Afghanistan, where having a poker face kept you alive, and he couldn’t bluff the man sitting next to him. Instead, he was fumbling around with his keyboard and mouse like a virginal schoolgirl being hit on for the first time. He might as well be holding up a sign saying: I HAD SEX WITH GWEN LAST NIGHT, because there was no way Gage was missing his complete loss of cool. “Can we not talk about this,” he said weakly, hoping for mercy, which wasn’t going to happen.

Gage’s chair hit the floor with a heavy thud. “Bro,” he began in a voice heavy with shock, “you slept with Gwen last night, didn’t you? She showed up naked at your door, and you finally did it. How did that happen?”

Dominic was shaking his head before Gage finished his last sentence. “I’m not giving you any details, man, nor am I going to confirm that any of what you just said happened.”

Grinning, Gage said, “You don’t have to confirm it. You started bumbling all over the place when I mentioned the words naked, doorstep, and Gwen. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened. I just can’t fathom why. How does she go from dating your best friend and barely acknowledging your existence to suddenly finding you irresistible? Massive quantities of alcohol?”

Dominic felt a little pang at the thought of Gwen being intoxicated. She’d admitted to having some wine with her friends, but otherwise she seemed to be aware of where she was, who she was with, and she damned sure seemed to know what she wanted. Maybe it had taken a drink to lower her normal reserve and admit that she wanted him. Stone-cold sober, he could admit that he wanted her, and he couldn’t bring himself to regret the events that brought her to him so unexpectedly. Hell, he was pitifully grateful to have finally had a chance with the woman he had spent so long enamored with from afar. He wasn’t even rattled over their condom mishap from the previous night.

Not that he was looking to be a daddy anytime soon, but if it happened, he was all in. Until he knew different, he planned to operate as if Gwen could be pregnant and treat her like a princess. Heck, he would have been happy to do that without a pregnancy scare. He was tired of one-night stands and casual dating. He wanted a woman in his life to love, respect, and lay the world at her feet. Something told him that woman could very well be Gwen, and he was a man who always trusted his intuition. It had kept him in one piece more than once in his life.

He could feel Gage’s eyes boring into him, waiting for an answer to his rash of nosy questions. When he reared back in his seat again, balancing it on its back legs, Dominic did what he and Mac were so fond of when they needed to distract the other man. He reached out, pushed against the back of the chair, and listened to Gage scream like a girl as he tipped over. That never got old and the man never learned. Damn, he loved his job.

Chapter Three

Gwen stood apprehensively outside Dominic’s apartment door, hesitant to knock. He had called her this afternoon just to check on her and to let her know that dinner would be ready at seven. So, here she was feeling like a basket of nervous anxiety at the thought of facing the man that she’d ridden to pleasure countless times not even twenty-four hours ago.

Just when she was pondering whether to make up some excuse, the door swung open and she could only stare at the picture of masculine beauty standing before her. He was wearing a black T-shirt and a pair of dark jeans that showed off his powerful thighs to perfection. She stood gawking at him, feeling like she was in danger of swallowing her tongue. He gave her a knowing grin and took her hand, pulling her inside. She barely had time to register the delicious smell permeating the apartment before she was pushed against the closed door and engulfed in a kiss that had her eyes rolling back in her head. This was no tentative brush of his lips against hers; he took control and ravished every corner of her mouth. His hands settled on her ass, pulling her against the hard line of his cock and without thought, she locked her arms around his neck and lifted her legs around his waist. God, she wanted nothing more than to feel him moving inside of her again. “Dominic . . .” she moaned, unable to get close enough. What was it about this man that set her on fire so quickly?