Laughing, he caught her by the waist and pulled the sheets over their heads. “I think you’re more excited about that, than spending time with me.”

Light from the chandelier filtered through the white sheets, casting her in a hazy glow as she lay down beside him.

“Everything’s changed between us,” she said softly.

He slid his hand up and down her arm. “For the good, I hope.”

“I hope so, too,” she said, burying her face into his neck. “Or we made a really big mistake.”

“Glen royally screwed you over, yeah?”

She nodded, her lips on his throat. “Jules hurt me, too.”

“How about you let me make it up to you?”

A thick sigh left her, and her soft body seemed to melt into his. “How about we forget Jules and Glen ever happened to me?”

“If you wish,” he said, kissing the top of her head.

She lifted her head, looking down on him. “You know so much about me, but I hardly know anything about you.”

“Ask me anything.”

“Tell me what happened to Kate.”

He should have known she’d want to know about his former relationship with Kate. “I don’t think you want to know the answer to that,” he said slowly.

“Tell me anyway.”

So tenacious. One of the things he admired about her. “Business came first.”

“And she left you?”

“No. I broke things off with her.” He still remembered their talk, her face, and the relief he’d felt. Then the guilt that had followed for being relieved. “It wasn’t her fault I couldn’t change my ways.”

Her brow furrowed. “You mean wouldn’t change your ways.”

“Old habits are hard to break, but I guess if I had really loved her, then I would have freed myself from them,” he said, increasingly uncomfortable with the direction of their conversation. He knew his shortcomings. He knew he was an almost exact replica of Vladimir Romanov, not in temperament perhaps, but in nearly everything else that counted for something.

She snorted. “You think love makes someone change? You can’t change for someone else, not permanently anyway. Those habits will creep right back up and bite you in the arse.” She grinned for a moment, and then her expression turned serious. “Either change, because you want to change, or don’t bother.”

“I wouldn’t change anything about you,” she added in a heated whisper, her words a warm caress of air upon his skin. “You’re real and honest, and say exactly what you mean.”

Stunned, his hands froze on her back. The people closest to him always wanted something different from him. For him to be someone he wasn’t, someone more to their liking and his feelings be damned, not that he hadn’t earned their disappointment on some level.

Soon she would join them, when he finally confessed the truth, but not tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow, or the next day.

“Well, there is one thing I’d change about you,” she said.

His heart sank. “Do enlighten me,” he said, keeping the disappointment out of his voice.

She threw the covers off them and straddled his lap. All wicked curves, sexy breasts, and delicious pink nipples. The curls of her sex were damp against his skin. “Your favorite pub.”

A bark of laughter escaped him. “What’s wrong with the Cock and Beaver?”

“Seriously? It’s two substitution words for very naughty parts of the anatomy. I mean, every time I said the name, I expected someone to yell, ‘That’s what she said.’”

“Explain.”

A fine blush covered her face, travelling lower over her chest. “Well, cock is a cock.”

“A rooster?” he asked, knowing full well what she meant. “What’s so naughty about a barnyard animal?”

“Nothing.” Rolling her eyes, she shook her head. “It’s a cock cock.”

He had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “Ah, then touch that very naughty part of my anatomy.”

Lifting her thighs, her hand slipped down and gently grabbed his dick. “Here.”

Briefly he closed his eyes as he grew hard again, and then peered at her through his lashes. “So that’s a cock? Who knew?”

“I can’t believe it.” She punched him in the chest and he made an unf sound. “You knew the entire time.”

“I’m an excellent guesser.” The tip of her thumb rubbed his piercing and he groaned low in his throat. “What about the beaver?”

“Obviously, it’s, well, you know,” she said, that blush of hers becoming redder by the second.

He rose up on his elbows, very aware that she had begun to stroke his cock. His hips lifted to meet each down stroke. “If you can’t use your words, darling, then use your hand. Your less occupied hand.”

Her head turned to the side as her hand inched toward where he wanted to be again. “I can’t. I know I should be able to, but I can’t. I’m embarrassed.”

“Don’t be.” He cupped the side of her face. “Look at me. Between us, everything is shameless.”

She turned her head, lips brushing his palm. “Why would anyone want to change a man who says things like that?”

“What you do to me.” He pulled her down to him, finding her mouth easily. It opened eagerly under his, their tongues slipping and sliding against the other, as if she couldn’t get enough of him. She kissed him endlessly, taking his breath and making it her own. Taking his heart, his soul…his everything.

All of him belonged only to her. Forever.

Rolling her under him, he drove himself inside of her and she gasped his name. The initial clasp of her inner muscles as she tried to accommodate his size was nearly his undoing. She was so damned hot, tight, and wet he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t tell her how bloody good she felt. How perfect she was in his arms. How he was falling in love with her even more.

It should have scared the hell out of him.

But it didn’t. It spurred him on, the sound of her sexy moans filling his ears. Her hands gripping him to her, fusing their bodies and sending him closer to the edge.

Daisy wrapped her legs around his lean hips. She couldn’t get past the sensation of Sebastian inside of her, thick, long, and pierced. She couldn’t get past the sensation that it felt like nothing was between them. Flames of desire licked at every nerve ending, burning her. Sebastian’s hips rolled, the muscles of his back gathering and flexing under her palms.

“Oh,” she moaned. Her back arched, and he was there, tongue licking a hot path up her throat.

“Christ…I’ve never felt anything so good.” He drove into her hard, unrelenting, as he laced their fingers together. Stretching her arms above her head, he moved in firm, hard strokes. Not sex, not making love…more than that, and yet all of that.

She shivered, desire and unadulterated lust twining.

Suddenly, he pulled out of her, kneeled between her legs and gave her sex a long, luscious lick, his tongue firm against her sensitized clit. “I could eat you for hours,” he murmured and she flushed hot. “Make you come on my tongue and my fingers, over and over until you couldn’t take it. Then I’d thrust inside of you, make you come on my cock. I’d come inside you, yeah? Fill you up, until it ran down your thighs. You’d be mine. ”

“No.”

He tilted his head to the side, mouth thinning like he wanted to argue. “No?”

“You’d belong to me… and I’d belong to you.”

“All yours.” His handsome face turned harsh, his eyes glittering as he crawled up her body. “All mine.”

Large hands parted her thighs and he thrust deep, jolting her. He set a hard pace, one that she strained to keep up with, until he cupped her bottom and lifted her to meet him. She flung her arms out, hands searching for purchase and finding the headboard. Her fingers curved around the largest of the spindles.

Rain poured, hitting the windowpanes. Thunder rumbled. Elements outside mirroring their lovemaking.

For long moments he kept her on knife’s edge, her orgasm at his fingertips. Their bodies became slick, their breathing harsh, and kisses sweetly fierce. His thumb passed over her clit, a sweeping caress that made her hips jerk and her nipples tighten to hard, needy points.

“Like that?”

Another caress, and then firm, circular motions that made stars spark behind her closed lids. “Yes.” He thrust deep and her eyes opened. “Ung…More.”

“Whatever my lady wants,” he murmured, and then did something with his fingers that made her sob his name. So close. She was so close that she wanted to scream.

“Please,” she whispered, desperate for this sweet torture to end. Desperate for her climax that only he could give her. He was ruining her. Ruining her for any man that wasn’t him. “Please.”

He ground his palm against her and her body bucked, pleasure tearing through her and carving out a path that only Sebastian could ever travel.

It was too much.

It wasn’t enough.

A low growl left him. His fingers dug painfully into her left hip as he surged deep, emptying himself inside of her as her sex clenched around him. His sky blue eyes widened as her name seemed to be ripped from his throat.

He slumped over her, keeping most of his weight on his arms and off her. She pressed kisses to his face and throat, lightly tracing the tattoos on his shoulders with the tips of her fingers.

His head lifted and he smiled at her, blond hair all mussed just the way she liked it. “About work tomorrow.”

She wrinkled her nose and drew her brows together. After that, he was thinking of work? “What about it?” she asked warily.

“I’m taking a holiday,” he said and kissed the tip of her nose. “For a fortnight at least. You can extend your holiday here for a few extra days, yeah?”

“Fortnight? Translation, please.”

That sexy smile of his widened. “My little American. Two weeks.”

“Thank you, my earl of the enormous cock.”

He grinned. “Now that’s better than all the other ignoble titles you’ve given me.”

“You like all the titles I’ve given you. No one else dares.”

“Daring women are very sexy.”

“So are the men who dare to be with those daring women.”

“Quite. In any event…Was I too rough?” The concern lacing his voice made her heart flip. There he went being all protective on her.

“You were perfect.” She’d be sore as all get out in a couple of hours.

He pulled out of her, rolling to the side and propping his head up with his hand. “There is a guest room, but I’d rather you sleep with me. The choice, however, is yours.”

Shifting to hug him, she winced and froze in place as evidence of what they’d done slipped down her inner thighs. “Sebastian?” Her voice sounded odd to her ears.

He smiled at her, running his free hand down her side. “Yes?”

“We forgot to use protection.” She gulped and his smile fell. “But you don’t have to worry about getting anything from me.”

“You’re perfectly safe with me,” he said, but it didn’t make her feel that much better at all. “Why do you still look so upset? Crisis averted.”

“I’m not on the pill,” she whispered, feeling about as smart as a stump.

Chapter Twenty-One

Sebastian couldn’t speak for a moment. He’d never done anything so spectacularly stupid in his life.

“Oh,” came his brilliant answer. “Are you joking?”

“No,” she whispered, her face pale. “I stopped taking birth control pills when I was twenty, after I was hospitalized with several blood clots in my legs. I’d been having severe pain in them for days, like I could barely walk, and my ankles were swollen twice their normal size.

“The doctor diagnosed me with Venous Thromboembolism. It’s a rare—yay me—side effect of the pill. Glen and I weren’t willing to risk a blood clot forming in my heart or lungs, or brain. We used condoms from then on,” she added.

“What do you want to do?” he asked. The room spun and he blinked. Dear God, he felt dizzy. “I can take you to a clinic and get the morning after pill.”

“I can’t.” She visibly swallowed. “It’s a concentrated dose of what’s in birth control pills. I’m sorry.”

“What about later…once you found out?” He told himself he would support her decision, whatever it may be, but he’d never been faced with this before, so…who really knew how’d he react?

“I wouldn’t choose to have an abortion, Sebastian.” She gave him a tentative smile, but it didn’t reach her pretty eyes. “It’s… okay if you don’t want to be a dad. My momma raised me without one, so I’d be fine...I think.”

That little I think was telling. Daisy no more wanted to raise a child alone than any other woman did, given the choice. And by God he would give her the choice of having him in their lives, should it come to that.

He cupped the side of her face. “If you are, then I’d want to be involved. I’d be there for the two of you. You wouldn’t be alone.”

The tears came then, hard and ugly. This was the last thing she needed. He knew that. She’d been under so much stress and pressure from trying to do it all that she’d finally reached her breaking point.

She curled into a little ball, crying harder, until he simply gathered her up in his arms and walked to the bathroom. He turned on the hot water in the shower and stepped inside, sinking to the floor and holding her until she stopped.