He kissed her again, with even more depth and urgency than before, and started to undress her. Soon she was writhing in desire and a deeper kind of emotion that just wouldn’t go away. She was making strange whimpering noises into his mouth, and her hands were stroking his skin eagerly. His body was pressing into hers, and she loved the weight of it, how hot and heavy he was on top of her.

When she was afraid she might drown in how much she was feeling, she angled her hips up and tried to rub her growing arousal against his hip. Then she moved her hands—which had begun clawing at his back—to his shoulders and pushed him up.

“So you’re not going to tell me?”

Caleb blinked. He looked a little dazed himself, so he must have been just as affected as she was.

After a moment Caleb finally found his voice again. “Well, one of the things about you I love,” he murmured, “is that you never give up. I’ve never met a woman with such a strong will.” He brushed a kiss against her lips. “It’s intoxicating.”

“A strong will doesn’t sound very attractive.”

Caleb gave her his feral smile, his pelvis lowering again to rub his hardening cock against her. The heat flaring up again in his eyes, he said, “You have no idea how attractive it is.”

He knew her. He might not know who she was, but he still knew her. So his words weren’t about a made-up woman. They were about her. She felt them wash over her. “What else?”

Arching one eyebrow, Caleb shook his head and then lowered himself until his mouth was hovering over one of her breasts. “I love how you can let yourself go.” He lowered his face. Mouthed her breast a few times before he tightened his lips around her nipple.

She sucked in an urgent breath at the responding tug she felt at her center. Arching up in pleasure into his mouth, she gasped, “I don’t ever let myself go.”

Caleb relaxed his mouth around her breast, giving her just enough time to catch her breath before he flicked her tight, sensitive nipple with his tongue in a few quick, delicious strokes.

Kelly gasped again. Couldn’t help it.

Slanting her a surprisingly teasing look, Caleb raised his head just long enough to say, “Yes, you do. In bed. It’s like you’re able to throw off any inhibition and lose yourself in the moment. You did it on the first day we met, and I love that about you. I want to be that way too.”

“I don’t know—” She couldn’t finish the comment. Caleb was busy at her breast again—this time mouthing it softly for long enough to lull her before he gave the flesh a little nip with his teeth.

At the sharply pleasurable stimulation, Kelly let out a helpless exclamation. Her arousal was almost throbbing now, and she occasionally had to shift her hips uncomfortably in an attempt to ease it.

When he lifted inquisitive eyes toward her—clearly waiting for her to finish—she said, “I don’t know if that’s always a good thing.”

Caleb smiled again. “I don’t care if it’s good. It’s you, and it’s one of the things I can’t help but want about you.” Since he was nuzzling between her breasts, the vibrations sent ripples down through her belly as he spoke. He tongued a wet trail along her collarbone, close enough to her sensitive breasts to tantalize her. When she thrust her chest up toward him involuntarily, he kissed a path along one swell of flesh but failed to connect with her nipple. “And you’re so brave and resilient. You can still laugh and really mean it, no matter what has happened to you in your life. I love that.”

She was squirming in obvious need now, trying to relieve the ache between her legs and the urgent tingling in her nipples. But her heart was even more affected. “Oh, God. Caleb!” she demanded, taking his head in her hands and moving it back over her breast, pressing his mouth back down where she wanted it.

He took the breast in his mouth, teasing it with his tongue. But what first was satisfying stimulation soon became sensual torment. When she discovered that she was grinding her pelvis up into his and digging her fingers into his hair, she pulled his head up again from her breast.

He was fully erect now—she could feel it against her thigh—and he was gradually becoming just as tense and breathless as she was. But he smiled at her almost fondly. “And I love that you’re not afraid of making sure you get what you want in bed.”

“I’d think that was a pretty common trait.”

“It’s not.” He lifted his head to meet her eyes. “I promise you, it’s not.” He adjusted so he could comb the fingers of one of his hands through her tousled hair, smoothing the long strands out and staring at the way they rippled against the sheet. “Fuck, Kelly, you take my breath away.”

His gaze as hot and possessive as she’d ever seen it, his eyes lowered from her face to her naked breasts to her flat belly. Raising himself up a little, his gaze crawled even lower. And then his hand followed his eyes.

He fingered her open, slowly sliding his finger along the hot, swollen flesh of her arousal.

At the first feel of his finger, she jerked her hips and let out another breathless sound When his finger sank fully inside her, spilling the wetness that had gathered there, she hissed out, “Yes!” and stretched her arms up to grab at the headboard.

Caleb’s eyes seemed to be devouring her, moving from his hand working between her legs to her flushed face. “Oh, fuck, baby, I love how you respond to me, as if it’s so good you just can’t stop yourself.”

He’d read her exactly right. So precisely it should have been frightening. But it wasn’t. It made her feel safe and known and understood. And loved.

She was just like him. She’d never felt that way before.

Caleb shifted his hand slightly until his thumb brushed against her pulsing clit. “Now I want to see you come for me, blossom.” His voice was just another caress.

Kelly had jerked uncontrollably when he’d first rubbed across her clit. And when he started to massage it with skillful purpose, she felt the intense ache at her center suddenly swell up into the beginnings of an orgasm.

“Yes,” she said, the word barely more than a taken breath. Her hips were pumping up into his touch rhythmically, and she had to clutch at the headboard for support. “I’m going to come.”

Caleb adjusted his body, moving even farther down the bed and pulling off her pants and panties. And she knew what he was going to do.

And this time she wanted him to.

He shifted his eyes up to check her face, and she gasped, “Oh, yes, please, Caleb. Please.”

He made a guttural sound and lowered his mouth to her pussy, nuzzling and then parting her folds with one hand.

She cried out when he teased her clit with his tongue, and then arched up helplessly when he slid his tongue inside her, pumping it like he was fucking her.

“Oh, yes, please, Caleb,” she cried out as the sensations collected too fast for her to control them. “Make me come.”

He made another sound in his throat, one that was pleased and masculine and almost animalistic. Then he closed his lips around her clit and started to suck.

She came hard, bucking up off the bed as the pleasure swept through her, and she was filled with the knowledge that he’d wanted to give her that experience—give without taking anything in return.

And that somehow, at some point, it had become something she genuinely wanted.

When he raised his head, she grabbed for his shoulder and gasped, “Oh, God, Caleb, I need you inside me now.”

They fumbled at his clothes until together they’d freed his cock, and then he was positioning himself at her entrance. “Now, Caleb, now,” Kelly murmured raggedly, squirming desperately against the bed and trying to hook her legs around his body “Caleb, please,” she added, her voice almost begging him.

“Oh, baby,” he murmured. “I’ll give you anything you want.”

Kelly felt her eyes burning at the words, at how much he seemed to mean them, and she bucked her hips slightly when she felt his erection nudging at her. She was soaking wet, and it felt like every nerve in her body was firing, sending out random stimulation every time she moved, all jolting down to the swelling ache beneath her belly.