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He lowered her slowly to her feet, right beside the bed.

She looked up at him and everything he’d wanted to see was in her eyes.

Desire. Need.

Him.

Still, he had to hear the words.

“Tell me what you want,” he said softly.

“You,” she whispered without any hesitation. “I’ve wanted you for weeks and weeks and wee—”

Her admission, the words he’d been desperate to hear, beat through his blood. He kissed her, his hands in her wet, tangled hair, kissed her until the taste of her was a part of him.

Then, slowly, he began to undress her.

He unbuttoned her denim jacket. His denim jacket. Slid it from her shoulders, from her arms, and let it drop to the floor.

There were buttons on the jacket of her linen suit, too, and undoing them was more difficult because they were small and his fingers were big. She would have helped him, but he caught her hands, brought them to his lips and kissed the palms.

“Let me,” he said, and the rough heat in his voice almost made her knees buckle.

Her jacket fell beside his.

There were more buttons on her blouse, more indescribably small buttons. By the time had them undone, his hands were shaking.

Her pants had yet another button, but it was easy to undo and then—mercifully—he saw a zipper. He pulled the tab down slowly, slowly. As much as he wanted her, he also wanted to prolong these moments. She had never yet taken her eyes from his face and he loved seeing the hunger building inside her.

Hunger and… Was that trepidation? Was she afraid of him?

He caught her face in his hands. “Baby,” he said urgently, “don’t be afraid. I’d never—”

She rose on her toes and pressed her mouth to his. “Chay.” Her voice shook. “Don’t make me wait.”

Excitement spiked in his blood.

To hell with his determined need to be as gentle and slow as he had been rough and fast the last time.

She wanted him the same way he wanted her. The realization was almost more than he could take.

He pulled her pants down. She stepped out of her shoes, those eminently sensible flats.

All that separated them now was her bra. White again, but with a pattern of tiny pink flowers. And her panties, white with those same pink flowers.

He fumbled with the bra. He, the man who’d opened more bras than he could count since he’d turned sixteen, and she batted his hands away, reached behind her and undid the hook herself.

The bra fell to her feet and he groaned at the sight of her breasts. Small. Uptilted. The color of cream tipped with pale pink nipples and, God, he had to taste them, tongue them…

She cried out, and the world spun.

He said her name, sucked one nipple into his mouth and she cried out again, sobbed his name and, Jesus, could a man come from this? Only this?

He had to get inside her.

Now.

He was moving too fast. All his self-made promises to take her slowly were vanishing the way he’d seen a late-spring Dakota snow vanish under the golden heat of the sun.