Warm. He was so warm.

She lifted her eyes to his and realized she was panting.

“Megan?”

She suddenly saw herself through his eyes, the way one night of incredible sex had turned her completely inside out. He should have been running away from her as fast as he could.

But, for some reason she couldn’t understand, he wasn’t doing that.

And somehow, when she was looking into his eyes and she could feel him warm and solid beneath her, those bars stopped slamming down around her. As if he could read her mind and knew exactly what she wanted, but was unable to ask for, he slid his hands all the way up her arms, past her shoulders, to cup her face in his palms.

“Come here, sweetheart.”

She leaned down over him, then, and as their mouths met so gently she felt something shatter inside her chest. Those bars around her heart were all knocking into each other as she gave in one last time to something so sweet she couldn’t stop herself from going back for more, couldn’t keep her hips from sliding up, then up some more until she was levered over him, her hips directly over his.

Megan took Gabe inside her on a gasp of pure joy. And there was no denying that making love with him again felt incredible, no way to stop her arms from going around his neck to pull him closer, or her legs from wrapping around his hips as they rolled back over so that his wonderfully heavy weight was pushing her back into the bed.

But even as her body hurtled toward an inevitable climax, even as she lifted her hips up to be closer to his, even as his mouth came down over the tip of one breast and she arched into the heat of his tongue—and especially as she tried to keep what was happening in a “just hot sex” box—there was no way on earth that Megan could deny that being with him this morning was different.

Bigger.

And so much scarier.

Too scary to go there alone.

“Please,” she gasped out.

Gabe lifted his eyes to hers, sweat dripping from his forehead to hers as he stilled. “Anything,” he told her, his voice as raw as hers.

But he couldn’t give her anything. He couldn’t become a man who went to a safe office every day and promised to come home in one intact piece every night.

And she could never ask him for that.

All she could ask for was this moment, this pleasure.

“Gabe.” She lifted one hand to his cheek, cradled him there as her whole world came down to this man, this one moment, this desire that demanded to be sated. They wouldn’t get any more moments like this. All they had was now, these final moments of sweet perfection. “I need you here with me.”

“I need to be there, too.”

His words were as good as a caress, enough to push her to the precipice of a pleasure so intense she couldn’t even imagine what was on the other side.

For the first—and last—time, Megan opened herself up completely to Gabe, pushed down every wall, shoved apart every prison bar, and let him in, so deep that as he slowly slid into her, as he filled all of the empty places she hadn’t even realized were there, she could have sworn he touched her soul.

Again and again he rocked over her, around her, inside her, his arms strong, his heartbeat steady, his kisses sweet and demanding all at the same time as they climaxed together.

No one has ever loved me like this was her last thought before the prison bars started falling back into place, crashing down in a circle all around her heart.

Chapter Fourteen

Plain and simple, Megan blew Gabe’s mind. To the point where, even though he knew he must be crushing her, he couldn’t manage to move a muscle from where he lay, sprawled over her, breathing heavily into the damp crook of her neck.

She was breathing just as hard, and he wasn’t surprised, given that their lovemaking had been at least as physical as anything he’d done even as a firefighter.

Gabe thrived on putting out fires. His job was his calling and every day he went to work, he went with a deep level of satisfaction over the life he’d chosen. But no triumph over fire had ever left him feeling this elated.

Which was why, no matter how many times he’d tried to hold onto the idea of one night—and only one night—with Megan, his brain hadn’t been able to pull it off.

He hadn’t forgotten what they’d agreed on in her apartment, but that didn’t mean he could discount what had just happened here between them, either.

Slowly lifting himself up off her sweet, soft curves, he looked down into her eyes, still fuzzy from the aftereffects of her climax. He smiled at her, the beautiful woman he couldn’t get enough of, and said, “Good morning.”

Two short words were all the time it took for Megan to go from pliable and loose and warm to rigid and tense and cold.

The caveman inside of him wanted to keep her pinned there beneath him on the bed. Instead, he forced himself to let her scoot away from him.

She reached for the first piece of clothing she could find. He wasn’t sure she realized that she’d grabbed his shirt, that she was wrapping herself up in him. The only thing he was sure of was the fact that Megan was desperate to get away from him.

In the decade that Gabe had been taking women to bed, they had only ever tried to get closer to him. They’d tried to find ways to spend more time with him. They’d worked to seduce him. A couple had even hoped for a ring.

But none had ever tried to get away from him.

Until now.

When Megan had made it to the far corner of the room, her back up against the wall, clutching his shirt tightly closed around her, she finally stopped and stared at him with big, alarmed eyes.