“Ah… did we… you and I… did we make love last night, Michael?”

He reared back, both brows lifting in question. “Ya don’t remember?” he asked, running a hand over the bump on her head. “You really did take a terrible fall.”

“I remember how you took care of me. But I fell asleep. You… you said you’d wake me up every hour. Did you?”

He let out a sigh that moved her hair. “I think I’ve just been insulted.” He shook his head. “Ya don’t remember anything? Not even telling me where ya’d put the condoms?”

Libby looked at him in horror. “I… we did… you usedall of them? Even the two in my purse?”

She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling. Dammit, they’d finally christened her new bed, and she didn’t remember. “Do—do you have any more?” she whispered.

“I might. Why?”

“I thought we could… ah… do it again. I’m wide awake, Michael. I’ll remember this time, I promise.”

“I don’t know,” he said, lifting his gaze to the headboard as if he were thinking about it.

“I’ll probably disappoint ya so badly that you’ll forget again.”

Libby reached up, grabbed his hair, and forced him to look at her. “You’re lying,” she accused, watching him closely. “You didn’t touch me last night.”

His expression turned wounded. “I touched every inch of ya last night, lass,” he whispered gutturally, sending shivers down her spine. “I distinctly remember kissing that cute little birthmark ya have on your left hip.”

Her shivers turned to prickles of heat as erotic visions rose in her mind. Oh, why couldn’

t she remember?

Maybe she did have a concussion.

“Will you kiss it again?” she asked, running her finger down the side of his face, stopping at his mouth and tracing the curve of his bottom lip. “And this one?” she said, pointing to the little mole on her right shoulder. “I’m sure I would have remembered if you had kissed that one. I’m particularly sensitive there.”

His deep pewter eyes lit up, reflecting laughter that finally escaped as he rolled over, taking her with him, until Libby found herself sitting astride his waist.

“Maybe it would work better if you kissed my sensitive places,” he said thickly, lifting his hips, causing Libby to gasp when his erection touched her intimately. “That way, ya might remember.”

“But we used up all the condoms… didn’t we?”

He nodded toward the nightstand, and Libby leaned over and opened the drawer. Four rows of packets sprang out.

The man had stuffed a dozen condoms in her nightstand?

She sat up and looked at him, her own eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Are we expecting company?” she asked softly. “Or are you just optimistic?”

“Now, lass,” he said, rolling them over until she was pinned beneath his body. Shaking with laughter, he said, “I don’t want them at home where Robbie can find them and start asking questions. I swear, that boy has more questions than a whole classroom of kids.”

He smiled, kissed her on the nose, and wiggled his eyebrows. “But I must say he is right about one thing. Ya do have perky breasts, Miss Hart.”

“What?”

Michael kissed her mortified face, letting his lips linger on her scorching cheeks.

“He… Robbie said I have… oh, God,” she hissed, trying to melt into the bed. She pushed Michael’s mouth away and covered her face with the pillow. “I don’t even want to know how the topic of my breasts came up,” she muttered.

Michael pulled the pillow away and threw it onto the floor. “It seems Frankie Boggs thinks small breasts are okay if they’re perky,” he informed her between kisses.

“Who is Frankie Boggs?”

“The class authority on women,” he returned, just as his hands ran up her ribs and covered her perky breasts.

“Being a doctor, maybe you should offer to teach a sex education class at school,” he suggested, sliding his thumbs across both of her nipples.

Libby sucked in her breath and tried to keep up with the conversation. “To—to second-graders?” she squeaked, just as he lowered his head and took one of her nipples in his mouth.

“Shut up, Michael,” she said with a gasp, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding him against her. “Just shut up and make love to me.”

He sighed as he moved from one nipple to the other. “If ya insist, lass,” he muttered against her skin. “Just try and pay attention this time.”

She’d pay attention, all right. She also intended to participate.

With slow and tender attention to detail, Michael and Libby finally christened her new bed. They messed up the bed until only the bottom sheet remained, and that was starting to pull from the corners.

In full light, unhurried by worldly obligations, they explored every inch of each other’s body. Libby found more than one sensitive spot on Michael, while he discovered a few more on her.

The foreplay they’d gotten so good at these past two weeks now seemed to last forever, until Libby finally reached over her head and grabbed the hooves of the moose on her headboard. Michael knelt between her thighs, staring down at her with eyes of liquid, swirling metal, sheathed himself in protection, and then slowly lowered his body onto hers.

“Ah, lass, but ya please me,” he whispered, carefully entering her, his mouth covering her moan.

Sensations erupted as Libby felt herself stretching, slowly accepting his gentle invasion.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and closed her eyes, holding on to the headboard as he set a gentle rhythm that rocked her with pleasure.

But as nice as it was, it just wasn’t enough.

“I guess this bed isn’t sturdy after all,” she whispered in challenge. “You seem to be worried it will break.”

He stopped.

Libby smiled up at him. “I won’t break, either, Michael.”

He gave a small growl, covered her mouth, and moved again, this time with a bit more enthusiasm. Libby clung to his shoulders and moaned her pleasure out loud.

He stopped again. “Don’t do that,” he hissed, his brow covered with sweat, his eyes dark with passion, and his arms trembling as he held himself off her.

“Do what?”

“That thing,” he whispered desperately. “There, that,” he hissed, pulling nearly out of her. “I want this to last.”

Libby’s muscles involuntarily tightened, and Michael hissed again, pulling completely out and rolling onto his back.

“That’s a terrible thing to do to a man who’s trying to hold on to his control.”

Libby turned on her elbow and patted his chest. “I’m not doing it on purpose. I’m not even sure what ‘it’ is.”

He picked her up as if she were a feather and carefully slid her on top of him. Libby sucked in her breath, dug her nails into his chest, and moaned. She set the pace this time and indulged herself in this newfound freedom to wiggle and move and drive them both mad.

And she was doing a fine job of it, until Michael reached down and caressed her, just as he had that first night in front of the hearth.

Libby’s last coherent thought as she climaxed was that the moose on her headboard had a silly smile on its face.

Chapter Twenty-one

“You have six toeson each foot,” Libby told Michael, staring down at the bottom of the tub since she couldn’t look anywhere else without getting a face full of soap.

“Nay!” he shouted in horror. “I do!”

He also looked down, his hip pushing Libby into the shower wall. The spray from the showerhead hit her square in the face. She turned so she wouldn’t drown and gave Michael a sharp poke with her elbow to keep him from crushing her.

“This isn’t working,” she sputtered. “You’re hogging all the water, and I’m getting squished.”

He tried to pick her up to set her in front of him, but she slipped through his fingers like unset Jell-O. Libby shrieked, scrambled to stay upright, and got another mouthful of water. Michael quickly used one hand to protect her head from slamming into the wall and wrapped his other arm around her waist before she could fall.