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She might kill him, and he’d enjoy every second. “Where?” he murmured against her busy mouth.

“Upstairs. I have condoms upstairs,” she managed to say between fervent kisses to his mouth, his jaw, his temple. Her hands tangled in his hair, and he wanted to do the same. Lose himself in every inch of her. Lose these horrible clothes keeping them apart.

“Upstairs it is,” he said, heading for the narrow staircase behind them, groaning as her body moved against his until he thought he might black out.

But he wasn’t about to do that. He was going to carry her up the stairs, and, then, he was going to have her. All of her.

“Oh, but you can’t carry me upstairs,” she said, again through a shower of her mouth against his skin.

“Like hell I can’t,” he returned, setting out to do just that.

Chapter Seventeen

A man had never carried her before. Not when she’d been a child, not up the stairs, and certainly not to bed. But Shane was doing all that as though it were easy as pie. As though she weighed about half of what she did. As though he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

She’d been worried there, for a second or two, when he’d been so adamant about taking her out, but she’d realized quickly that was so very Shane. To want to do things in the right order. To make sure he was taking care.

Right now, this was the only way she wanted to be taken care of.

“My room is the first one.”

He reached the top of the stairs, not even out of breath as his mouth streaked over her neck. He nudged the already ajar door open with his boot and stepped in, fastening his mouth to hers, lips rough, tongue demanding.

Oh, yes, there was something deliciously dirty underneath all that goody-two-shoes. He didn’t even put her down. She’d hooked her legs around his waist, and his hands cupped her ass as he moved her slowly against theveryimpressive erection in his jeans.

If it went on much longer she might shatter right there. Especially when his mouth lowered again, down her neck and then her chest over the fabric of her dress. He found the hard peak of her nipple through the fabric and closed his mouth over it, with heat and a little bit of teeth.

She arched, electrified, desperate, needy. “Let me get the condoms.”

“Are you sure you don’t feel like I’m moving you too fast?” he murmured into her neck, his tongue tracing some tendon there, eliciting a gasp from her.

God.Godhe was good at this. Too fast? “Shane, I’m not even half naked. This isglacial. Maybe childless women can dawdle, but a single mom has to take the chances she’s offered.”

He chuckled, something kind of dark and edgy in the sound, in him, and she wanted to revel in the fact that she brought it out. He lowered her to the ground, slowly, making sure her body slid against his erection as he put her on her feet.

She managed to unwrap her arms from his neck, her breath coming in short spurts from the sheer excitement of it all. “Just give me a second,” she said, quickly walking over to her bed and getting down on her hands and knees. She reached under the bed, pushed the two plastic bins out of the way, then dragged out the heavy gun safe where she kept all the things she wanted hidden from Micah.

She punched in the code, then lifted the lid. Inside was a wad of cash she kept stashed away just in case Stephen ever messed with her finances. A few art projects Micah had made in school she was afraid he’d throw away if he had access to, all the legal papers regarding Micah and Stephen in an unmarked folder, the little pistol she’d finally stopped carrying around out of fear, and a box of condoms she’d bought the other day, thinking of Shane specifically.

She grabbed it and snapped the safe back shut, turning to face Shane while she was still crouched by the bed.

“I . . . have never seen condoms kept in a safe before.”

“Well, you know what they say, gotta havesafesex.” She smiled when he laughed at the horrible joke. “Seriously, though, I can’t let my kid see I have condoms.”

“Yeah, I get that. You’re saving him from being scarred for life.”

“Oh, did you find your mom’s condoms once?”

Shane grimaced. “Well, everything inside of me just shriveled up and died.”

She pushed the safe back under the bed and got to her feet. “I bet I can fix that.” She dropped the condom box on her nightstand and reached behind her to unzip the dress, letting it flutter to her feet. She’d worn her laciest, sexiest underwear.

He inhaled sharply, his eyes roaming her body like a starved man at a buffet. “Crisis averted,” he murmured. “Christ,” he said on an exhale, grinning at her as he moved forward. “Aren’t you the prettiest thing?”

No one had ever said something like that to her before. Sure, a guy might say she was hot or sexy, maybe on occasion, and usuallybeforethey got her naked in an attempt to get her naked, but Shane . . .

Prettiest thing.