He wanted so badly to pull her against him, but he couldn't stand the thought of sullying her with his touch. "You don't deserve this mess. Not any of it."

Her hand slipped tighter through his, so warm, so soft. "You're not forcing me to do anything, Cole. Marrying you, staying with you, doing this interview--they were all my decisions, right or wrong. If I wanted to stop, I'd stop."

He didn't have the strength to keep his gaze off her beauty, the innocence that still clung to her, despite his bad influence. And then he saw it, the question in her eyes.

"What you said to Cynthia...did you mean it?"

Since that first moment he'd seen her, he'd been getting lost in her eyes. Lost again even as guilt bore down on him, he said, "I meant everything I said tonight."

She'd protected him from even one small lie, taking the weight of them all on her own shoulders. No one but his grandmother had ever protected him before. No one had ever cared enough to take a risk like that for him.

Her beautiful eyes swam with disbelief and confusion. "How could you possibly think I'm brave?"

It killed him that she didn't see it, that she didn't already know.

"Do you remember our first night together?"

She flushed, leaning her forehead into his chest. But he wouldn't let her hide from him, couldn't stand not to see the sweet heat in her eyes as she rewound back to their first time together.

"How could I ever forget?"

He grinned down at her. No one had ever made him feel this happy. This good. And not just in bed, where she kept blowing his mind. Just like this, talking, teasing.

"You could have told me to stop at any time." He brushed a lock of hair away from her sweet lips. "You were so brave. Not just that night, but every time we've been together."

She shook her head, protesting, "That was just sex."

"I've had plenty of sex, sweet girl. Trust me, what we've got going isn't even close to

'just sex.' But if that's not enough for you, I saw you with your mom. In the kitchen at her house."

Her eyes widened in alarm. "How much did you hear?"

"Enough to be proud of the way you stood up for yourself."

And for him. She might not have been telling the complete truth about their relationship to everyone that night, but she'd told her mother a truth she'd held inside for far too long--about how lonely she'd felt in her own big family, surrounded by loving parents and siblings.

As lonely as he'd felt in his family of two.

"There hasn't been a single situation where you haven't held your own, no matter how strange it all is for you, like the VIP box or dealing with the paparazzi. By the way, Julie and Melissa already told me that if I ever screw up and you leave me, they've chosen you over me."

He loved the small smile she gave him. "Hell, tonight during that interview, you were the calm one. The brave one protecting me." He tipped her chin up with a finger. "Do you believe me now?"

"It's just that no one has ever called me brave before."

"Then they're all wrong." He hadn't forgotten a word she'd said to him the previous night. And now, he was the one saying them all back to her. "They're all stupid. And blind. Crazy blind."

"Crazy," she echoed, the one word breathless with the same need that was killing him as they stood in the middle of his kitchen.

He needed to be closer to her, needed to know that she was right where she belonged...in his arms.

"I know I promised you crazy, sweetheart. I know you told me last night that you like it raw. Rough. And so do I. But right now all I want is to make love to my wife."

Her eyes widened at his choice of words. He'd never called it making love before, hadn't dared let himself go there.

"You make me a better man," he told her, his voice husky with need. And emotion.

"I love you, Cole."

He scooped her up in his arms, kissing her even as he walked across the room to the stairs, his heart pounding harder with every step. Not just because of how much he wanted the beautiful woman in his arms.

But because for the very first time in his life, he was going to make love to a woman he actually cared about.

Chapter Eighteen

No one but Cole had ever looked at her with such powerful desire. But she'd seen that desire before.

This time it was the emotion in his dark eyes that captured what was left of her heart.

He hadn't said the three words she'd said, hadn't gotten down on his knees to declare undying anything to her. But she didn't need him to.

Because she could see it in his eyes, could feel it in the press of his lips in a kiss that had nothing to do with sex...and everything to do with love.

Love.

"Sweet Anna." He laid her in the middle of his big bed, staring down at her with such heat. With such need.

With so much love.

Love.

"My sweet Anna."

Aching to feel him take her over the edge, she said, "I need to love you, Cole." She reached out for him, desperate for his touch. For his love. "Please let me love you."

And then he was right there, his deliciously hard weight on top of her. She kissed him with ravenous desire, wound her limbs around his to pull him even closer, bucked her hips up into the hard press of his erection.

"Slowly, baby," he said against her lips when he finally pulled free. His tongue slid teasingly along the seam of both lips and she had to lick against him. "That's how we're going to go this time. Nice and easy. So slow. So good."

She didn't know who he was trying to convince, her or himself. But she knew how close she was to losing it already, with nothing more than his kiss--and his soft, sweet words whispering straight into her heart.

"Tomorrow," she said, begging, bargaining. "We'll go slow tomorrow." She reached for his shaft, pressed her hand hard over his erection, felt an answering twitch as he grew even harder, even thicker beneath her grasping fingers.

Pure lust filled his eyes, the lines of his face a picture of a man barely holding onto his control. "Tomorrow I'll f**k you rough. Raw. Tomorrow I'll take you so fast, be so deep inside you, make you come so many times that you won't know where one orgasm ends and the next begins. But right now--" He pulled her hands away from his belt. "--I'm going to love you right."

He nuzzled her neck, causing ripples of pleasure to move all across her sensitive skin.

"Promise you'll help me love you right."

"You've always loved me right," she gasped as his mouth found the swell of her br**sts over the neckline of her dress. But then, instead of moving lower, instead of lowering his sinful lips over her aching, swollen ni**les, he shifted his weight off her.