Loving the heavy weight of his body over hers, she instinctively wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer. She wanted more. More. More. But then, suddenly, she felt him shift farther away, rather than closer.

As she blinked up at him through eyes gone blurry with lust, while he ran his hands over her face, shoulders, and then the full lengths of her arms until he reached her hands, where he threaded their fingers together, she thought she knew why. Dylan wasn’t stopping because he didn’t want her. She could see, could feel, just how much he did.

The reason he’d reined them both in was because he was afraid of pushing her too far.

Because he cared.

He could easily have continued to seduce her with kisses and caresses until she was too mindless to be able to think at all. Until she wasn’t able to make choices, only soak in sensation. Until it was too late for her to realize that they were crossing the line between feeling blissfully alive and feeling regretful.

But the truth was that stopping here, stopping now, when they hadn’t gone any further than two teenagers necking on the couch—that was something she’d definitely regret. Especially if this was her one and only chance to allow herself the wonder of Dylan’s touch.

She didn’t want to break the sexy spell, but she needed to be completely honest with him right now, or moving forward wouldn’t feel right for either of them.

“I can’t have sex with you tonight.” Because for as good as it would be, and she had no doubt that her body would rejoice, her mind and heart weren’t even close to being ready for such intimacy. “I don’t know when I’ll be ready for that again. But—” She licked her lips, watched his hungry gaze shift momentarily to her mouth before they locked on her eyes again. “I do want this. I want you. I want your body against mine. I want your mouth, your hands on me. I want—”

It was scary to say all of these things, scary to even think them after she’d put herself into a safe freeze for so long. But Grace knew with utter certainty that it would be far worse to turn back rather than take a risk. And no matter what happened after tonight, if they decided to keep slowly moving forward or agreed to step all the way back from each other instead, she refused to regret rediscovering pleasure. Rediscovering herself. Not when she’d only just realized that here was yet another thing her ex had tried to take from her—her confidence in her natural sensuality, her healthy feminine responses to being touched, kissed, wanted.

She wouldn’t let her ex keep taking that from her. Couldn’t let him.

“I want to feel like a woman again, Dylan. I want to remember what it’s like to feel sexy. To be desired. To let myself go, even just a little bit, for a little while. And I want to go there with you.”

She had barely finished speaking when his mouth covered hers again. In his kiss—one so sweet, yet dangerously sexy all at the same time—she felt his promise to give her everything she needed.

* * *

For all that Dylan loved his boats and the ocean, women had always trumped both. He loved hearing a woman laugh. Loved seeing the flash of fire in a strong woman’s eyes. But nothing he’d ever experienced came close to how good it felt to have Grace in his arms, her heart racing in time with his, her mouth sweetly seductive against his as they kissed.

He’d wanted her at first glance. He’d liked her as soon as she’d stood in his boathouse and tried to persuade him to do the interview. And now, from nothing more than a handful of minutes making out with her on her living room couch, he knew that he’d crave her for the rest of his life.

Their hands were still linked as she slid his beneath her shirt, over the soft skin of her stomach, past her rib cage, finally stopping at her bra. “Touch me,” she breathed against his mouth barely a beat before she laid his hands over her full breasts. “I need you to touch me.”

He could feel the heat of her through smooth silk and only barely restrained himself from tearing it from her. Her nipples were hard against his palms, and though he tried to be gentle, he couldn’t control the urge to stroke, to tease.

She felt like heaven, but it wasn’t enough just to touch. He needed to see, too. “I want to touch all of you.”

She didn’t hesitate to reach for the hem of her T-shirt. But he had one hell of a fantasy that he was dying to see come true. So he moved his hands to hers again and lifted them to his mouth for a kiss before setting them above her head.

“I want you to hold still for me and let me have the pleasure of undressing you. Can you do that for me?”

Her eyes widened, and he watched her throat move before she answered. “Yes.”

It was, he found himself thinking, like unwrapping a much-longed-for gift. He was torn between tearing off her shirt or drawing it out slowly to savor the anticipation. Overpowering desire made the decision for him, and seconds later her T-shirt was on the living room rug next to his.

Lying before him wearing only a simple white silk bra, she stole his breath. “You’re beautiful, Grace.”

“I’ve always been curvy,” she said in a soft voice as she looked down to follow the path of his tanned hands up over her rib cage until he was barely stroking the undersides of her breasts through silk. “But since I had Mason I’m even curvier.”

“Yet another reason to love that kid,” he murmured as he shifted his palms to fully cup her. “Your body, your breasts, every part of you is perfect.”

“I haven’t been with anyone in a long time. Not since I found out I was pregnant.”

It meant more to Dylan than she would ever know that she was trusting him to be with her, not only since having Mason, but also since being so horribly betrayed. He felt the weight, the responsibility, of earning her trust, even as he gave silent thanks to the universe that he was being given this chance to prove that he was worthy of her.

Even if he couldn’t find the right words to persuade her to see just how beautiful she was, he could do it with a kiss. Slowly, as he loved her mouth with his own, he felt her relax again beneath him and knew right when she forgot to be shy because she twined her arms around his neck and arched up into him.

It was a crime for Grace to believe, for any reason, that she was “shut down.” All Dylan wanted tonight was to make her feel good. So good that she’d never be able to question her innate sensuality again.

Of course he wanted to protect her. Of course he would never do anything to harm her. But at the same time, he respected her too much to treat her like porcelain. Grace had already proved again and again that she wasn’t breakable.