She was almost there, could almost feel his heat coming into her so perfectly, when she heard, “Megan.”

Very reluctantly, she opened her eyes and looked down at him.

His blue eyes were intense, full of arousal, and something else she couldn’t quite figure out. Or maybe it was that she didn’t want to figure it out.

Not when she was still trying to pretend.

“Are you protected?”

Her brain couldn’t quite process his question at first, it had been so long since she’d thought about things like protection against sexually transmitted diseases.

Or pregnancy.

When the words finally pierced the haze of lust fogging up her brain, she would have shot up off his lap, but his hands were firm around her waist, keeping her right where she was.

“No.” The one word sounded overly loud in the hotel room.

What was she doing?

But before she could answer that question, Gabe was reaching over to the side table and picking up a condom she hadn’t seen him put there the night before.

She knew, now, that she should stop him from putting it on. That last night was an aberration they definitely shouldn’t repeat.

Of course, she also knew that if he opened up that condom wrapper and slid it over his erection, she wouldn’t have a prayer of stopping herself from continuing what they’d started. What she’d started.

Because she’d been unable to help herself.

And yet, the tearing of the wrapper never came. Because Gabe was holding it out for her. As if he wanted her to make the choice about making love again.

Her words from the night before came back at her, then.

Please love me.

Megan closed her eyes at her weakness, at the way she’d begged Gabe for something so much bigger than just physical pleasure. That was how dangerous being with him was. It was long past time to steel herself to do what she’d told herself she would do come morning, and get out of the bed. But her heart, her guts, felt like they were being torn in two as she tried to climb off his lap.

The hotel was almost perfectly silent in the early morning, but she swore she could hear the clinking of the prison bars, one after the other, settling into place around her heart, first, and then her body.

Boom!

Megan knew she was being crazy, that she had to be overtired from too much exercise—and sex!—and not enough sleep.

Boom!

Her heart was already trapped, but as another thick bar came down—Boom!—instead of letting them continue to fall around her, she took crazy to a whole other place...and lunged back at Gabe.

She grabbed the condom from his hand and ripped it open so fast the latex circle fell into the bed as she held the two pieces of wrapper in each of her hands.

Boom!

She dived for the condom and scrambled back up over him, her hands shaking as she lifted the condom over his shaft. But just when she thought nothing could break her panic, his hands covered hers.

Warm. He was so warm.

She lifted her eyes to his and realized she was panting.

“Megan?”

She suddenly saw herself through his eyes, the way one night of incredible sex had turned her completely inside out. He should have been running away from her as fast as he could.

But, for some reason she couldn’t understand, he wasn’t doing that.

And somehow, when she was looking into his eyes and she could feel him warm and solid beneath her, those bars stopped slamming down around her. As if he could read her mind and knew exactly what she wanted, but was unable to ask for, he slid his hands all the way up her arms, past her shoulders, to cup her face in his palms.

“Come here, sweetheart.”

She leaned down over him, then, and as their mouths met so gently she felt something shatter inside her chest. Those bars around her heart were all knocking into each other as she gave in one last time to something so sweet she couldn’t stop herself from going back for more, couldn’t keep her hips from sliding up, then up some more until she was levered over him, her hips directly over his.

Megan took Gabe inside her on a gasp of pure joy. And there was no denying that making love with him again felt incredible, no way to stop her arms from going around his neck to pull him closer, or her legs from wrapping around his hips as they rolled back over so that his wonderfully heavy weight was pushing her back into the bed.

But even as her body hurtled toward an inevitable climax, even as she lifted her hips up to be closer to his, even as his mouth came down over the tip of one breast and she arched into the heat of his tongue—and especially as she tried to keep what was happening in a “just hot sex” box—there was no way on earth that Megan could deny that being with him this morning was different.

Bigger.

And so much scarier.

Too scary to go there alone.

“Please,” she gasped out.

Gabe lifted his eyes to hers, sweat dripping from his forehead to hers as he stilled. “Anything,” he told her, his voice as raw as hers.

But he couldn’t give her anything. He couldn’t become a man who went to a safe office every day and promised to come home in one intact piece every night.

And she could never ask him for that.

All she could ask for was this moment, this pleasure.

“Gabe.” She lifted one hand to his cheek, cradled him there as her whole world came down to this man, this one moment, this desire that demanded to be sated. They wouldn’t get any more moments like this. All they had was now, these final moments of sweet perfection. “I need you here with me.”

“I need to be there, too.”

His words were as good as a caress, enough to push her to the precipice of a pleasure so intense she couldn’t even imagine what was on the other side.

For the first—and last—time, Megan opened herself up completely to Gabe, pushed down every wall, shoved apart every prison bar, and let him in, so deep that as he slowly slid into her, as he filled all of the empty places she hadn’t even realized were there, she could have sworn he touched her soul.

Again and again he rocked over her, around her, inside her, his arms strong, his heartbeat steady, his kisses sweet and demanding all at the same time as they climaxed together.

No one has ever loved me like this was her last thought before the prison bars started falling back into place, crashing down in a circle all around her heart.

Chapter Fourteen

Plain and simple, Megan blew Gabe’s mind. To the point where, even though he knew he must be crushing her, he couldn’t manage to move a muscle from where he lay, sprawled over her, breathing heavily into the damp crook of her neck.