“Nothing,” she assured him, smiling, loving the play of light in his eyes when his gaze searched her face. Loving…him. “Just ready for round two.”

A sexy little smile curved those wickedly skilled lips of his. “Good,” he rumbled, bending forward to lick her nipples, pulling back to blow air over them.

Oh, for Heaven’s sake… The tips of her breasts tightened until the sensation was just this side of pain. But he didn’t stop there. He continued to pluck and suck, to lick and flick the tips with his tongue until she was writhing, nearly coming from that alone.

“Not yet,” he growled when her mewling and squirming alerted him to the fact that she was close to the edge. “The next time you come, it’s gonna be in my mouth.”

And if that wasn’t the sexiest, naughtiest, most delicious thing a man ever said to a woman, she didn’t know what was.

“Mac. Oh, God, that feels good.” She speared her fingers into his hair as he slowly kissed his way down her body, stopping to swirl his hot tongue into the hollow of her bellybutton. And she’d never noticed it, never seen it on any of her biology class diagrams, but there was obviously a nerve that ran from the navel straight to the clitoris. Her toes curled into the sheets, her hips lifted from the mattress.

She wanted his mouth on her, his tongue in her. She wanted to feel his beard stubble rasp against her most private parts. In the simplest terms, she wanted sex. All of it. Every which way. Until she couldn’t think. Until she couldn’t lament that this time, this one time, would be all she had…

“I love the way you smell,” he told her, kneeling between her legs, his broad shoulders forcing her thighs wide. “I love the way you look.” His eyes were on her. Drinking her in. “And,” he said, palming the globes of her ass in his warm, rough hands, lifting her hips, pressing one all-too-brief kiss to her heated core, “I love the way you taste.”

“Mac…” His name was sigh, a prayer, a curse… But then all thought escaped her. Because his tongue lapped up the length of her, tapping against the distended bud of nerves at the top of her sex, and her center pulsed, becoming a throbbing void of yearning. Of hunger. And then…

Oh…he wrapped his lips around her clitoris and started flicking his tongue in a rhythm that drove her straight to the edge. Two fingers filled her, pumping, rubbing. His growls of triumph and pleasure echoed in her ears.

She strained. Strained toward release and away from it at the same time. She wanted an end to the glorious misery. And yet she wanted it to go on for eternity. Stretching out to infinity.

Her head thrashed on the pillow. She plucked at her own nipples. Mac bit her, ever so gently, catching the nerve-bundle between his teeth. And that was it. She exploded. Her orgasm hitting her with the force of a runaway train.

She screamed…something. She didn’t know. She didn’t care.

Divinity. She’d heard the word. Knew what it meant. But never had she experienced it until this moment. The sensations Mac pressed on her as he continued to coax more and more from her were divine. Mystical. Spiritual.

This was making love. This was what it was supposed to be like. She never knew. Oh, God, she never knew…

“Again,” Mac told her when the last pulse of orgasm ran through her. He pressed up on his knees, grabbing his shaft by its thick base and angling his plump head toward her entrance. “Do it again just like that. With me inside you.”

* * *

Mac had lost his mind. His body was in control now. And it wanted to devour Delilah, claim her, mate her, leave its mark on her until she’d never be able to look at herself in the mirror without thinking of him. Of them. Of this time together when their two bodies became one in what had to be one of the most phenomenal, cosmic couplings since the beginning of time.

He was so hard he could barely bend himself enough to press into her tight channel. With a growl, he adjusted his position, letting go of his shaft in order to plant his palms beside her head. He used his knees to spread her thighs wider. Ducking his chin, he thrust forward, watching the raging head of his cock separate her silky folds. Watching himself grow shiny with the evidence of her passion. But just when he gathered himself, tensed his hip muscles in readiness to flex forward, she tilted her hips, changing the angle.

He moaned. In frustration. In unspeakable, horny delight when she grabbed him, rubbing herself against him before pressing the head of him tight against her throbbing little clit. He was nearly cross-eyed, but he could still see her mouth fall open on a gasp of pleasure when he pulsed against her.

“You like that, don’t you?” he asked, rocking back slightly, supporting himself with one arm so he could grab his shaft and tap his tip forcefully against the hard bundle of nerves guaranteed to send her to the moon. She sighed blissfully, her knees falling to the sides. He kept up the motion until he thought he’d come, until he thought she’d come. Then, in one smooth stroke, he plunged home.

Delilah climaxed instantly, writhing against him, scratching his back, neck arched in a lovely bow. With gritted teeth, he held on until she finally quieted. Then he began to move. Slowly, steadily, the tension in his balls, the pleasure along his shaft building with each glorious glide.

“I want you to come again,” he told her, pressing kisses into the damp hair along her brow, breathing in the scent of her. “And this time,” he reached down between them so he could rub her tiny nub with the pad of his thumb, “I want you to take me with you.”

“Yes,” she breathed, fisting her hands in his hair, claiming his mouth as she drew her thighs higher along his sweating flanks. “Yes, Mac. Oh, oh, yes.”

He rode her then. Drove into her over and over again. Staked his claim. Marked her. And when she began to shatter, he went with her, holding himself deep, flooding her with his passion.

When it was over, he lay atop her, body spasming, breath sawing from him and ruffling the ends of her fiery hair fanned out beneath his face on the pillow. Finally, he gathered enough strength to pull back, and he choked out a laugh.

Delilah…was asleep. Eyes closed. Lids fluttering every so often. A soft little snore grumbling from between her lovely, kiss-swollen lips.

Holy smokes, he’d screwed her unconscious. And if he wasn’t such an evolved guy, he might just slap himself a high five.

Then it hit him. Just how exhausted she must be. How scared. How…vulnerable.

Shit. Had he taken advantage? Had he made a mistake?

Slowly, with infinite care, he rolled off her. She murmured her dislike of his sudden absence, the desertion of his heat, shivering slightly when the air from the window AC unit raised goose bumps all over her body. Her nipples tightened and, in response, his spent cock jerked with interest.

With a frown, he admonished Little Mac for being a witless wonder. Then he pulled her close, brushing strands of fragrant hair away from her temple so he could press a kiss there. Brave Delilah. Strong Delilah. Wonderful Delilah…

He didn’t want her to regret this. Didn’t want her to hurt because of him.

Daring Delilah. Charming Delilah. Beautiful Delilah…

She was the kind of woman to make a good dog break his leash. And she made Mac wish everything was different. She made him wish he was different. A man with fewer emotional scars, a man who didn’t know better than to lay it all on the line and give it a go. Sweet Lord almighty, she just made him…wish.

And wishing was a dangerous business. After wishing came hoping. And after hoping came what the hell; let’s try. And after what the hell; let’s try came—

Jolene! That broken cry from that ravaged voice echoed in his head. He could still feel the unfathomable ache in his chest.

As he looked down at Delilah, so pretty, so…everything a woman should be, he knew he could fall, if he let himself. Perhaps he had fallen…just a little. And that right there was enough to scare some cotton-pickin’ sense into him.

This is a one-night stand, asshole. Nothing more. You’d do well to remember that.

Good advice. Great advice. And since it was just a one-night stand, he’d be damned if he wasted one single, solitary moment of it.

“Darlin’,” he murmured, rubbing his burgeoning cock against her silky hip, thumbing one of her delicious nipples to rigid life. “Wake up. I want you again.”

Her pale lids fluttered open. Her eyes impossibly green in the lamplight spilling across the bed.

He wasn’t sure she was fully awake, but she turned in his arms, eagerly offering her lips. He took them like the heartless, ravenous bastard he was…

* * *

Delilah would say this for the man, he was certainly thorough.

She’d fallen asleep on him twice, and twice he awakened her to wild positions and mind-blowing sex that shattered her psyche and decimated her body. He’d bent her over the bed, forcefully thrusting into her from behind while his fingers did things to her clitoris that made her scream. He’d had her on her knees, murmuring titillating commands to her on just how she should suck him, stroke him, cup him. He’d even taken her up against the wall, heaving into her over and over and over again until she shattered into a million tiny pieces and couldn’t remember her own name, much less his.

What wonderful delights would he show her next?

Without opening her eyes, she reached for him, her outstretched fingers searching the rumpled sheets next to her. The linens were cool, and…empty…

She bolted upright, pushing her hair from her eyes. A quick glance told her two things. One, she’d been asleep for a while because the sun was sliding toward the western horizon, sending tendrils of golden light through the slats of the aluminum blinds, highlighting the dust motes dancing in the air. And two, Mac wasn’t in the room.

“Mac?” she called quietly, her heart giving her rib cage a quick kick. She ignored it. He was just in the bathroom.

Mmm. Sex in the shower. That was one they hadn’t tried yet. Water, slippery soap, their bodies slapping together. Yes. She could go for some of that.

Sliding from the bed, she smiled at the little twinges and aches that were proof her body had been well-used, well-loved. Bending to grab her panties and T-shirt from where they’d fallen to the floor—fallen? More like been hurled—the memory of his fervor caused a shiver to race up her spine. She hoped he’d be just as anxious to undress her again. With a little giggle, she shimmied into the garments.

“Mac?” she called again, padding to the bathroom, knocking hesitantly on the partially closed door. It squeaked open under the pressure of her knuckles, revealing…nothing. Just the standard motel shower, sink, and toilet. But no Mac.

No Mac…

It was then she realized. True to his word, he’d given her one gloriously decadent afternoon. And that was it. Done. Finished. Over.

She slumped against the doorjamb, biting her lip as tears instantly filled her eyes. Thoughts spun through her head like tornados, threatening to destroy everything in their path. That ball of broken glass was back, tearing at her lungs, scraping against her heart, shredding her until the sob she held at the back of her throat broke through.

The sound was pathetic, even to her own ears. Desperate. Devastated.

You made the bargain, the voice whispered.

But that was before I realized I loved him! she argued in her own defense, then covered her mouth with a shaky hand because she knew that wasn’t true.

She’d known she loved him. Hell, if she was honest with herself, she’d known she loved him for years…

In fact, she’d fallen in love with his chin dimple and crooked nose the very first time she laid eyes on him. A few months later, when Ozzie told some raunchy joke and he tossed back his head, belly laughing, she’d fallen in love with the crinkles at the corner of his eyes. Then there was the day he valiantly came to the rescue of a woman whose husband was pushing her around out in the alley behind the bar, and she’d fallen in love with his courage. Fast forward to just a few months ago, when he held her close after she lost Buzzard, and she’d fallen head-over-heels in love with his compassion.