I grab her hand before she can go too far. “Don’t. Please?” I draw her back to me and she tilts her chin up to look into my eyes.

“Why are you here, Asher?”

“You sent me a text inviting me, remember?”

She cocks her head. “But you won’t have sex with me.”

“Not tonight.”

She crooks her finger and I lean down until her lips brush my ear. “But I want you. You won’t regret it.”

I straighten and look past her shoulder. “I will if you’re thinking about him the whole time.”

She spins around and spots Will and her sister. She backs into me, consciously or not, I’m not sure, but I wrap my arms around her, just under her breasts, and she settles her hands over mine.

“Maggie!” her sister calls, looking me up and down. “We were just talking about you.” Krystal slides her hand into Will’s and Maggie’s hands squeeze mine.

Will’s jaw ticks with tension, and when he looks me over, there’s no hiding that he’s sizing me up. But if I’m the competition, why is he marrying Krystal?

“Maggie’s going to take an internship at our art gallery,” Krystal is telling me.

“I haven’t accepted yet,” Maggie says stonily. Gone is her softness from earlier. She’s put up her walls, sobered by the sight of this man.

“Consider it, Maggie,” Will says. “Krystal’s right. You’re a perfect fit. You should be a part of it.”

“Asher and I were just leaving.” She turns toward the door, pulling me behind her.

I nod my goodbye and follow without question.

The door clatters behind us as we cross the gravel lot to her Mustang.

“Are you going to tell me what’s between you and him?” I ask when we’re alone.

“Not yet,” she says softly, her voice and eyes more sober than they’ve been all night.

“I’m going to keep asking.”

“I know.” We lean side by side against her Mustang, and her answer is enough—for now. We let the sticky Indiana humidity lick at us, and she slides her hand into mine as we stare up at the country stars.

“When I was a little girl,” she says softly, “my sisters and I would sneak out in the middle of the night and walk down to the river. We weren’t allowed to be down by the water without an adult, but we didn’t care. We’d lie on a blanket, just counting stars until we fell asleep.”

I could imagine her there now, sitting on the riverbank after dark and watching the moonlight play off the water.

Sorrow creeps into those normally sharp eyes. She’s kneading the corner of her lip between her teeth, and I want to dig deeper, but I know she’d tense her shoulders, put up that wall that says Do Not Get Personal! I don’t want her to shut me out tonight, so I turn to her and put my hands against the car, pinning her in.

Her eyes change in an instant. The sorrow fades, swallowed up into that part of her that holds the rest of her secrets. Just as quickly, awareness flashes in its place. Her eyes turn hot.

I want her. Want to hold her. Want to feel her. Want to get inside and see what she is so desperate to protect. And I know the last is what she’ll resist the most, but I’ll start here.

I drop my lips to hers, and she lets me taste her.

I start with small kisses at the corners of her mouth until she relaxes beneath me, and her arms settle around my neck.

She tastes like beer. Beer and heat and that wildly addictive, odorless, tasteless drug that is Maggie.

Her tongue strokes mine. She sucks it into her mouth until my c**k strains painfully against my fly.

I pull back and let my lips hover over hers.

“You could take me home,” she whispers. “And leave me all hot and bothered again.”

“I could.”

“Or you could finish what we started in the pool.”

I groan, pressing against her, my hands finding her waist, her hips, her ass. Nipping at her neck, sucking. I don’t just want her, I need her. I need this. For reasons bigger than months of abstinence.

Maggie arches into me then tilts her head to give me better access to her neck. I sweep my tongue over that sweet juncture of her neck and shoulder and she shudders in my arms. I want to make her shudder in my bed. Suddenly I’m struck by an image of her bound and blindfolded. Vulnerable. Trusting. Open. Mine.

“I need to get you na**d,” I growl.

“Naked?”

“Or in that scrap of lace you wore when you did your striptease for me.”

“I thought you weren’t going to have sex with me.”

I suck her earlobe into my mouth and tug it with my teeth. “We can get na**d without having sex.”

“I think you’re doing it wrong.” She licks her lips, eyes hot. “But you might convince me to try. As long as you don’t mind spectators.”

I groan into her neck. “Get into your car before I take you up on that.”

I open the passenger door, and her keys jingle as she hands them over with a satisfied smile.

It takes about two minutes to get from Brady’s to her house, but it feels like an eternity. She doesn’t touch me, but tucks her finger in my belt loop like she’s afraid I might sneak away. The air between us pulses thick and hot with sexual tension and anticipation.

When I pull into her driveway, I cut the engine and pull her against me. I kiss her, taste her, my fingers tangling in her hair.

Her hands snake up my shirt and she nips at my mouth with her teeth.

When I break the kiss, we’re both breathing heavily.

She shoves lightly at my shoulders. “Inside, Exhibitionist Boy.”

I grin and climb out of the car. Her h*ps sway as she leads the way into her house. My hands itch with the need to get her bare, to squeeze her ass as I taste her, to scrape my teeth over the flesh at her hips.

When Maggie opens the door, Lucy races toward her in big, bounding leaps. Then she spots me and immediately turns, tucks her nub of a tail, and runs for cover.

“Batting zero with the kid today.” Maggie laughs as she heads to the back door. “Luce!” she calls, opening the screen. “Let’s go outside.”

The dog skitters past me with a pathetic combination whimper/bark/howl and runs for the door.

When Maggie turns back to me, her eyes are hot as they trail over my body. “Strip.”

“Have you ever even tried letting someone else take the lead?”

She saunters across the kitchen and plucks at the buttons of my shirt. “What fun would that be?” Halfway down she abandons her task and pushes it off my shoulders, pressing open-mouthed kisses to my abdomen.

I reach for her dress, and she pushes my hands away and presses them against the counter.

“Oh no you don’t,” she warns. “Keep those hands right there.”

I know she needs this—to take, to be in control—so I obey.

Her fingers finish their work on my shirt as her mouth explores—sucking, nibbling, making me lose my f**king mind.

“Mag—”

“Hush.” Her hands work the button of my jeans.

I want to protest. Want to touch her, to watch the pleasure on her face as I taste her, but suddenly I’m against the counter, my shirt hanging from my wrists, my jeans around my thighs as Maggie drops to her knees. Her skirt hikes up her h*ps and exposes the tops of her soft thighs.

She cups me through my boxer briefs.

“Jesus,” I gasp. I reach for her but she backs away.

“My house, my rules.”

I’m lost as she frees my dick from my boxers. I want to be tender with this woman the world has battered, but I’m helpless as she strokes me with those soft hands. My hands itch to dive into her hair. To touch her breasts. To dip into her and make her scream. But I clasp the edge of the counter.

“I want to put you in my mouth.” She’s breathing hard, chest rising and falling, my c**k a breath from her lips, wrapped up in her hand. “Are you safe?”

“Safe?” I swallow hard as she strokes me again, try to blink away the haze and translate words into meanings.

“I can get a condom for this part.”

I tighten my grip on the counter. Because I don’t deserve the woman on her knees, offering to suck latex to get me off. “Safe,” I manage. “I haven’t been with anyone without protection for over—”

I’m cut off by my own moan as she takes me into her mouth, gently laving the underside of my c**k with her tongue. Her mouth closes around me, and I’m swallowed up by the wet, by the heat.

I won’t close my eyes. I wouldn’t miss the sight of her swollen lips around my cock. She pulls me deep and moans softly as her mouth contracts around my shaft. She draws back and returns, draws back. I fight the instinct to rock my h*ps but she curls her fingers into my thighs as she opens for me, her lips nearly to the base of my shaft.

“Maggie.” I can’t let it end like this. God, not tonight. Not yet. “Maggie.”

I draw her up to me and kiss her.

Her lips are red and swollen from taking me. I want to remember her like this, want to stop for a minute and memorize the lust in her eyes and the flush of her cheeks. I’m ravenous for her and need to back off a little, to slow down, but she pulls me closer and strokes me between our bodies, and I’m drowning in need.

“Let me touch you,” I whisper.

“Fuck me.”

“No.” I slide my hand between her thighs where I can feel her slick and swollen even through the thin lace of her panties. I squat before her, kissing my way down her thin cotton dress as I lower myself and her panties in a single motion. I pull them off over her boots and slide them from one foot at a time.

She tugs at my hair, drawing me up. “Please, Asher.”

I have to kiss her. I have to taste those lips again. I press her against the refrigerator, pictures and take-out menus flying. We’re just limbs and heat and desire. She clings to me as I rock my hand between her thighs. She draws one leg up and wraps it around my waist as I slide a finger inside her, watching her face, reveling in her slick heat.

“You’re so damn hot, so damn sweet.”

Her hands tug lightly at my hair, and she makes little sounds at the back of her throat. I don’t need to hear her cry of “Please” to know she wants more, but I resist the need to fuck, to claim, to bury myself in her.

She’s a dream to watch. Masses of red hair, flashes of green eyes as she rolls her h*ps and loses herself in the pleasure I bring with my hand. I want her to break, to let go, but she’s clinging to control.

I lower my mouth to her ear. “I don’t f**k women who belong to someone else.”

“I don’t belong to anyone.”

When I find her cl*twith my thumb, swollen and needy, she arches into me hard and her pu**y squeezes me so damn beautifully as she pulses tight in orgasm.

Twenty thuds of my heart later, I come to my senses. Here’s this woman in my arms I was so determined to treat gently. Her skirt’s bunched around her waist, and bite marks swell at her neck.

Maybe it’s seeing that red head pressed against my chest. Maybe it’s the feel of her in my arms. Or maybe I hadn’t wanted to remember before now.

But as I stand here, dizzy with arousal, I remember where I saw her before.

New Hope. The river. Jesus. How had I not put it together when I first looked into those big green eyes? I couldn’t place them, and I’ve seen so many faces in my life, they all start to blend together.

Now the words slip out of my mouth before I can stop them. “God, Maggie. I’m so sorry.”

***

Maggie

He is being ridiculous. One second I’m coming my brains out, his hot body pressed against my front, the cold refrigerator pressed against my back, the next he’s apologizing to me? We were just about to have what I’m sure would have been off-the-charts hot kitchen sex, and then Mr. Nice Guy had to go and ruin my fun by apologizing. He’s turning out to be one piss-poor excuse for a bad boy.

He sits at my kitchen table now, eyeing me. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re moody?”

He’s probably referring to the fact that I’ve been stomping around the house since that stupid S-word came out of his mouth and tarnished my after glow.

I grab two beers from the fridge and shove one in his hand. “You’re sorry? How can you be sorry?”

He’s pulled his pants back on, slid his arms back into his shirt—though it is still unbuttoned. We should be closing the deal. Maybe for a second time by now. In the bedroom, on the couch, in the shower. But instead I’m trying to figure out what the hell he thinks he needs to apologize for.

He narrows his eyes at me. “Because I had you up against the fridge with your dress hiked up around your waist. Because I didn’t even take my goddamned shoes off, because whether you believe it or not, you deserve more than that.”

I groan, running a hand through my hair and flopping into a kitchen chair. What am I thinking, getting involved with this man? He is too touchy-feely for me. “Asher, wake up and smell the third-wave feminism. Women have fantasies too. I happen to find a little frantic, half-clothed kitchen sex hot.”

That makes him smile. “Me too.” Then he ruins it by sighing and getting all serious again. “Listen. We need to talk.”

I lean back in my chair. I’m not trying to get away from him exactly, but I’m never anxious to be closer to a man uttering those words. “You’re not going to ruin this by declaring your eternal love for me, are you?” I take a pull from my beer, noticing he hasn’t touched his. “Because, damn it, Asher, I thought better of you.”