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Bear should have known that being with Lila would be like breathing in laughing gas—which he knew about only because a long-since retired Fangtooth Gulch dentist used it for his frontier procedures. Bear had gotten to experience it once, and it had felt like bubbles racing through his bloodstream.

This was so much better. Especially because Lila was making a goofy comedy skit out of it, pretending that her clothes were literally melting off her body while she tried to keep them in place.

“Somebody help, I can’t keep my sweater on! Make that man turn off his smile!”

He laughed out loud.

“That’s even worse! I stand no chance now. Oops, there go my pants.” She bounced onto her back and kicked her low-rider wool pants off her legs. Lila’s favorite type of outfit involved low pants and a crop top; he too was a fan of that look, except in winter. Lately she’d been adding a layer under her short tops—a button down shirt, for instance—or a long sweater over them. He’d missed seeing those flashes of skin, though he’d tried not to think about it.

Now he feasted his eyes on the bare skin revealed by her “panty-melting” routine. Whatever tan she’d picked up over the summer was gone, and her legs were winter-pale. Also long and slender and delicate. He rested one knee on his bed and caught one fine-boned foot as she finished kicking off her pants. Cradling it, he dropped a kiss on the inside of her ankle.

She shivered and leaned back on her elbows.

He brushed his lips across the small knob of bone, then traveled farther up her leg, tracing a path just inside her Achilles tendon, then to the swell of muscle at her calf. Her skin under his lips tasted like honeysuckle. He wanted more of that sweetness, so he scraped his lower teeth across the curve of her calf.

She gasped in mock surprise. “Do the Bears in Bear-landia bite?”

“Only if requested.”

“Mmmmm.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but he kept going, using his lips and tongue and the lightest touch of teeth here and there as he made his way to the crook of her knee. There ought to be a word for the back of the knee, and maybe there was, but all he knew was that the sweat that gathered there was like perfume to him. Lila perfume, the essence of her whimsical fairy self, with that punch of darkness she also carried.

You couldn’t see into the unknown without also seeing the dark side. Of course Lila saw that, and so much of it she kept to herself, determined to shine light instead.

He wanted to help her carry that burden, and right now, the best way to do that was to bring her the most basic pleasure he could. He gentled his touch as he kissed along the tendon that stretched from knee to groin. Her skin was so soft there, as if it was melting under his tongue. The closer he got to the delta between her thighs, the more sensitive she became—her soft whimpers told him that.

He felt her hands slide across his shoulders, then up into his hair. They were trembling.

With one of her slim legs hooked over his shoulder, he glanced up at her. “You all right?”

“I’m all right. Come here.” She changed her position, unwinding herself from him, ending up on her heels and knees, still mostly clothed from the waist up. “I think you need to be naked too.”

“You’re not naked,” he pointed out. “I haven’t even seen a nipple yet.”

“I haven’t seen anything yet, and it’s completely unfair, especially after all the time I’ve spent,” she broke off, then went on with a cheeky smile, “imagining it.”

The idea that he’d appeared in Lila’s magical brain made his desire for her crank up even higher. Without a word, he pulled his thick sweater over his head, then disposed of the thermal shirt he wore under that. He hoped she liked tattoos, because he had a few.

She traced one of them, a sprig of a blueberry with three small berries, which sat right on his rib cage. “What inspired this one?”

“Bears eat a lot of blueberries. You can see it in their scat.”

She burst out laughing. “So this is your tribute to your bear poop?”

He laughed too. “I have a real connection to bears. I’ve encountered ten bears in my life, and none of them seemed surprised to see me. I was never scared, not once, even the first time when I was six. A bear came onto my grandfather’s property while I was playing on a tire swing. I just watched him. We watched each other. My grandfather watched us both from the deck, with a gun at the ready. When I saw that, I cried and threw such a tantrum that he promised me he’d never shoot a bear. That’s when they started calling me Bear.”

Her hand paused. “Bear’s not your real name?”

“It’s my middle name and the only one I use.”

“Oh come on, you have to tell me your first name. Please please pretty please.” She climbed on top of him, knocking him onto his back, and started tickling him.

“Not happening.” He grinned and tightened his muscles to resist her tickling. It worked…until it didn’t, when he let out a bark of laughter and then couldn’t stop. They tussled with each other, laughing and panting, and at the end, almost magically, all of their clothes were on the floor and they were both naked, flushed and heated and out of breath.

She sat on top of him, her knees on either side of his hips, her nipples two rosy points of temptation.

He was pretty good at resisting temptation, but not in the form of Lila Romanoff. He rose up and licked at one nipple, then the other, then back to the first, where he spent time lavishing her breasts with hungry strokes of his tongue. He could do this forever, he thought, arousing those delicate peaks until they throbbed against his mouth.

But she wanted more. She scooted down his body and a moment later he felt her hot breath on his cock. God, it was almost beyond his imagination, the thought of the blond pixie who lit up his bar, now touching the tip of his arousal with her lips.

His hips bucked as she put her mouth on him. Goddamn, he could hardly bear the pleasure…he had to steel himself, fling up a wall between him and that sweet, sweet sensation. When it was too much, he flipped them around and braced himself over her. Then he picked up where he’d left off—her inner thigh, just short of her soft nest of hair.

And beyond.

So soft. So warm, so wet. He lapped at her until she was a writhing mess of need, until she was grabbing at his shoulders, begging, pleading. He took her over the edge, because he wanted more than anything to hear her climax, to feel her shake under his mouth and hands, to see her shatter.

It was everything, and yet still he wanted more. His erection ached to be inside her. But he waited until the haze cleared from her eyes. “You good?” he asked in a voice that sounded like hot gravel.

“God yes. Wow.” Her purple eyes met his, their expression so drunk on satisfaction that he felt another surge of heat in his pulsating cock. “So good, but we’re not through, are we?” She put a hand on his member and his eyes half closed, a hiss escaping from his lips. “Do you have anything here?”

“Drawer.”

She was closer to the head of the bed, so she rolled over and grabbed a condom from the box in his nightstand. He rose onto his knees so he could sheath himself with it, and caught the way she looked at him. As if she wanted to do dirty, hot, nasty things to him all night long.

God, being inside her was going to be…well, he didn’t have to wait a second longer to find out. Bracing himself with one hand over her, he moved his other to feel between her legs, making sure she was still ready for him.

“Come on,” she urged him, looping a leg around him to pull him closer. “I want to feel you inside me. I’ve wanted…oh.” She stopped as he eased inside her, using one hand to guide himself into the hot depths of her body.

He closed his eyes as pure sensation engulfed him. She was so soft, but so vibrant at the same time. The push and pull between them sent fireworks exploding over his head, stars dancing through his vision. He gritted his teeth, focusing on in-and-out, slow and steady, then hard and fast. But it was hopeless, because maybe that was part of making love to Lila. There would always be magic with her. He could either embrace it or run the other way.

For him, there was no question. He let loose all restraints and gave himself over to the vivid joy of losing his heart, body, and soul to Lila.