Suck me. So fucking good.”

Knowing she could do this to him, yes. It was good. And she wanted him to come, needed to know he felt the ecstasy, too. Luc withdrew from her backside slowly, carefully. Kimber moaned at the odd sensation of his withdrawal, of the ache of sudden emptiness.

He leaned over her body and planted a kiss on her shoulder. “You keep amazing me. That felt incredible.”

Behind her, she felt Luc rise. Vaguely, she heard him peel off the condom. Then his padded footsteps left the room. And she focused her attention on Deke, on the muscled thighs beneath her fingers, the thick stalk her tongue cradled.

Instantly, Deke tensed. “Get the fuck back here!” Kimber lifted her head, puzzled. “I’m here.”

“I meant Luc,” he growled.

Deke needed Luc…why? Certainly Deke could come without him.

“Back in a minute,” Luc called from across the house.

“I want your ass back here now.”

Luc didn’t answer. Deke’s hands became fists, and he jumped to his feet and cursed, something mean and ugly that shocked even her.

Curiouser and curiouser.

“We don’t need him,” she whispered. “I’m more than happy to finish what we started all by ourselves.”

Deke’s gaze left the empty portal and he raked a hot stare over her body. At the sight of her wearing nothing but a little skirt, his cock flared, swelled. Another frantic gaze around the room.

“Oh, shit. No! No more condoms…”

Trying to smooth the puzzlement from her face, Kimber took his hand. “It’s all right. Sit down. We don’t need a condom. I’ll finish you—”

“No. Not without Luc here. I won’t do this without Luc in the room.”

“What?” Shock reverberated through her body. What he was saying…did he really mean it? Every muscle in his body taut, the denial of his pleasure, the screaming obscenities at Luc at the top of his lungs? Yeah, he meant it.

“You can come without Luc in the room, I’m sure. He’s not going to help you.”

“No, but he’s supposed to help you, keep you safe. And if he doesn’t get back here, I swear to God, I’m less than two seconds from throwing you to the floor and fucking you.”

CHAPTER 7

Tempting. It was the first word that popped into her head. Kimber had never thought of herself as being sexually driven, but a few days with Deke and Luc…and she could think of little else, especially with Deke’s pants hanging low around his thighs and his thick, ready cock right in front of her.

Stupid. It was the second word to burst into her head. She hadn’t come here to be with him, but to learn how to be with Jesse. But that wasn’t what made her pause.

For some reason, Deke would not engage her sexually without Luc in the room.

And judging from Luc’s lack of surprise, she didn’t think this was a new development. Which implied that he had hang-ups unrelated to virgins, but to sex in general.

Kimber heard the clink of pipes that signaled the shower running in Luc’s bathroom, and she knew he wasn’t coming back, not quickly enough to intercede.

She was flying blind in a situation that was clearly touchy for Deke. And she was going to have to wing it.

“Take a deep breath,” she suggested. “We can wait for him to come back or continue as we were. Your call.”

“Don’t touch me right now. You’ll be sorry if you do.” Between his tight jaw and ground-out words, Kimber believed him. He was riding a razor-thin edge of control. One move the wrong way and he’d snap.

Just this morning she’d believed she was too tomboyish to seriously arouse Deke.

He’d quickly proved her wrong and made her feel both alive and feminine in the process. Amazing the perspective a few hours and a little conversation could give a person.

Unfortunately, none of that helped her now.

“I’m in better control of myself than this morning. We can work this out. I’ll say no if things get too hot.”

His hands slid into her hair, his fists gripping her. Indecision and craving warred on his tight face. His harsh breaths fell across her cheek. “Kitten, you just don’t know all the reasons that’s a bad idea.”

“Then tell me the reasons. Maybe I can help.”

His fists tightened in her hair. His tawny brows slashed down over eyes so blue, they nearly looked black. Torture. The emotional kind. It was all over his expression.

“Despite the fact I’ve been a total asshole to you, you still offer to help me. If I was a better man—” He stopped, apparently not wanting to finish that train of thought.

“You can’t help, kitten. I dug my own grave twelve years ago.” And he’d buried himself emotionally ever since. He didn’t say that, but Kimber knew it. He wouldn’t come without Luc in the room for the same reason he engaged in ménages, she’d bet. Something had happened to him as a teenager that had changed everything.

“Tell me what happened.”

He scoffed and looked at her as if she’d lost half her brain. “A regurgitation of the past is not going to change a thing.”

“Maybe it will. I’ve had time alone with Luc. I want some with you, just you. But this… thing is between us.”

“It always will be. If a small army of therapists couldn’t erase the problem, you sitting there in nothing but a fuck-me skirt and listening to me talk about my past isn’t going to ‘fix’ me. You’ll only be tempting me to take what I know I shouldn’t, and as heavenly as sinking down deep into you would be, it won’t raise the dead.” She didn’t understand his reference at all, but quickly grasped that somehow, somewhere along the way, sex and death had tangled together, and he felt responsible, like some Greek tragedy. Luc had been his watchdog and crutch since.

With a curse, Deke shoved his cock back in his jeans, yanked up his zipper, and made for the door.

“Stop!” Kimber cried, without even knowing what she would say, what she even could say.

For a moment, she swore he would keep going. But he turned back.

“What?” He whispered the word, almost as if all the shouting of the last few minutes had never been.

Kimber stared straight up into his tormented gaze. Grief and guilt swirled together on his face to create a picture of total misery. He needed someone to care, someone to hold.

Someone to give him a second chance.

She swallowed hard but never looked away as she pinned him with a solemn gaze and lay flat on her back. She lifted her skirt and parted her legs slightly, then let her hand drift up her abdomen to rest on her breast.

Those blue eyes flared to life, and she smiled.

“Make love to me.”

Four words. That’s all it took for Kimber to wrap around his cock and squeeze.

She did the same thing to the murky feelings inside his chest he’d been battling all evening.

“You don’t want this.” He didn’t have a better argument for not taking her up on her offer. With her spread out at his feet, naked, lush, lovely, Lord knew he was ready to give up breathing to have her.

“Yes, I do,” she murmured

“I’m not gentle.”

Her smile said she understood. “I’m not made of glass.” Deke shook his head. “You wanted to save yourself for Jesse.”

“I wanted to give my virginity to someone who would care that I gave it to him.”

“What makes you think I’d care?” He tried for snide and dismissive.

“Things you’ve said to me.” She reached up for his hand and started to pull him toward her. “The look on your face right now.”

Closing his eyes, Deke tried to block out his expression, shut out his view of every bare inch of her skin. But she tugged on his hand, pulling him close, and the vision replayed itself over and over in his mind, as if burned on his brain. Damn, it wasn’t just her body that made him hard. Right now, it was that honest, giving nature of hers reaching into his pants—into his chest—and making him wild.

“You’re hallucinating.”

“You’re lying,” she whispered.

He glared at her. “Why the hell would you offer yourself to me?”

“I want to help you.”

“I don’t want a pity fuck,” he growled.

Her gaze seared him as it drifted up his body, settling right into his eyes. “I don’t pity you. I want to comfort you, but I’m not being totally altruistic. You make me feel female, like a woman. When I’m with you, I don’t feel tomboyish or awkward or inexperienced. I feel…desired. I care. I want more. I think I’ve always wanted more of you.”

Oh, hell. He could have easily turned her down when he’d believed she was just tossing her virginity at him as some sort of Band-Aid for his emotional boo-boos.

But refusing her now would mean hurting her, scraping raw her insecurities to shield his own.

Better her feelings wounded than permanent physical harm—or worse.

Would it really be a risk? Kimber was so much stronger than Heather…

“Deke, honey, don’t try so hard to protect me. I’m a big girl, and I know what I want. That’s you.” She squeezed his hand. “Just give me you.” She might think that, but she didn’t know. Damn it, he shouldn’t give in.

Still, he dropped to his knees between her spread legs. Frantically, he searched his pockets, his wallet, praying… Yes! A condom. One. Lubricated. Letting out a ragged breath, he dropped it on the table beside them.

“You are prepared.” She smiled. “Thank God.” He gave her a shaky nod, then tore at his shirt.

Her fingers wandered in hungry strokes across his abdomen. Tingles, huge jets of them, jolted his gut, his spine, his cock. He groaned, his erection now so damn hard it could drill holes in metal. Could he actually get any blood to his brain? Felt like it had all rushed south.

A tug on his zipper and his cock sprang free, relieved of pressure. He fell into the paradise of Kimber’s waiting hands. She stroked him, softly, encouraging. He didn’t need more persuasion—or arousal. He needed to stop this somehow…someway.

But with his blood churning and desire dousing common sense, firing his senses, Deke had no idea how he was going to resist something he wanted so badly.

His hand shook as he shoved his pants down to his hips. He covered her with his body and captured her mouth in a kiss of crushed lips, harsh breaths, and moans.

Kimber welcomed him, throwing her arms around his neck, stroking his back, his shoulders. Lifting her hips up to him.

The condom lay mere inches away. A tear, a roll, a thrust—and he could be totally surrounded in her heat, and he could have a part of her that no other man would ever have. Just the thought made a vicious hunger flare in his gut.

Stop. Stop now!

He broke off their kiss, then groaned at the feel of her eager little mouth kissing its way up his shoulder, to the side of his neck.

Somehow, his hands drifted down and he settled his cock against the steamy, forbidden flesh of her cunt. Damn, she was wet. And so hot. She damn near burned him alive. When she wriggled against him… Jesus!

“Stop me.” He sounded like he’d been on a steady diet of gravel and sandpaper.

All she did was smile and raise her legs up around his hips.

Sweat broke out across his skin—forehead, back, chest. Kimber was killing him here, taunting him with everything he wanted and should not take.

Unable to stop himself, he ground against her, nudging her clit with his length.

Her little gasp went straight to his dick. It didn’t take much imagination to picture her legs totally wrapped around him, her nails in his back, as he plunged deep inside her and surrounded himself with her heat.

Deke swallowed against the vision. Why the hell was this happening? In twelve years, he’d never been seriously tempted to fuck a woman by himself, in her pussy.

He’d never had sex unprotected. Yeah, the condom was inches away, and right now, he thought it might take a Herculean effort to grab it and put it on.

He’d need at least that much effort and double the willpower to simply get up and walk away.

Where the hell was Luc? Propping his upper body up on his arms, he stared down into Kimber’s flushed, welcoming face. He was in deep shit here. And he suspected that if Luc was here, he’d only encourage Deke to do the stupid. The unthinkable.

Gritting his teeth, he backed away and grabbed the condom. He was so going to hell. He didn’t deserve Kimber and her innocence. But here she was, laid out in front of him, and he had to get inside her—somewhere, somehow—now.

But if he took her virginity, made love to her now…what if he ruined her life?

He rolled the condom on and stared down into her sweet face again. She wasn’t afraid, and she should be. His control was hanging on by less than a thread as he grabbed her bent knees from underneath and pushed on the backs of her thighs, tilting her hips up.

His greedy gaze wandered over her breasts and their swollen nipples, the soft skin of her belly, the needy red flesh of her pussy, a hint of the puckered flesh of her still-slick back entrance coated in lube, increasingly visible as he tilted her a bit more.