She loved that he was a man of such deep contrasts. So sweet, so gentle…and yet so full of passion and desire. Desire that she could feel him barely holding back, barely controlling.
All because he wanted her with the same ferocity as she wanted him.
“Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
Grace felt hot and tingly beneath her clothes. And from the first moment she’d seen him, she’d wondered about what he had beneath his. Any woman with a beating heart would have. Now was her chance to stop wondering and find out.
Forcibly pushing away any lingering thoughts that she was forgetting all of her hard-won lessons and the vows she’d made not to repeat her mistakes, she reached for the hem of his shirt and quickly pulled it up. He was more than happy to help, drawing back and lifting his arms so that she could take it all the way off.
Grace obviously wasn’t a virgin. Not even close, if that slightly wild year she’d had back in college counted. But…oh my…there wasn’t a man alive who could have prepared her for the way Dylan Sullivan looked without his shirt. Tanned and muscular. Lean and honed from daily sails and woodworking.
Perfect.
She didn’t think, couldn’t think anymore, could only lay her hands flat on his chest. His skin was so warm and his muscles jumped beneath her fingertips as she explored his incredible male beauty. She was a terrible painter—putting words together was the only art she’d ever been good at—but if she could draw, she’d want him to model for her.
But it wasn’t enough just to look, to touch. She had to put her mouth on him, too. Her lips had only just touched his shoulder when a low, rough sound rumbled from his chest. She barely had a chance to slick her tongue against him when she found herself lying back against the arm of her couch with Dylan’s hands in her hair and his kisses stealing her breath.
Every taste she took of him, instead of sating her the way she’d expected, only made her more ravenous. Every kiss they shared only made her want more. More of his tongue tangling with hers. More of his teeth nipping into her lower lip. More of his heady need for her.
She’d been wanted before, but never like this. And never by a man so beautifully put together or so in tune with how to give a woman pleasure. It was perfectly natural to fall deeper and deeper into his kiss, and to relish how good his hands, big and rough from working with wood and rope and tools all day, felt moving over her skin. The way he was gentle and yet powerful all at the same time—barely skirting that edge of control—made Grace melt into his touch.
Loving the heavy weight of his body over hers, she instinctively wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer. She wanted more. More. More. But then, suddenly, she felt him shift farther away, rather than closer.
As she blinked up at him through eyes gone blurry with lust, while he ran his hands over her face, shoulders, and then the full lengths of her arms until he reached her hands, where he threaded their fingers together, she thought she knew why. Dylan wasn’t stopping because he didn’t want her. She could see, could feel, just how much he did.
The reason he’d reined them both in was because he was afraid of pushing her too far.
Because he cared.
He could easily have continued to seduce her with kisses and caresses until she was too mindless to be able to think at all. Until she wasn’t able to make choices, only soak in sensation. Until it was too late for her to realize that they were crossing the line between feeling blissfully alive and feeling regretful.
But the truth was that stopping here, stopping now, when they hadn’t gone any further than two teenagers necking on the couch—that was something she’d definitely regret. Especially if this was her one and only chance to allow herself the wonder of Dylan’s touch.
She didn’t want to break the sexy spell, but she needed to be completely honest with him right now, or moving forward wouldn’t feel right for either of them.
“I can’t have sex with you tonight.” Because for as good as it would be, and she had no doubt that her body would rejoice, her mind and heart weren’t even close to being ready for such intimacy. “I don’t know when I’ll be ready for that again. But—” She licked her lips, watched his hungry gaze shift momentarily to her mouth before they locked on her eyes again. “I do want this. I want you. I want your body against mine. I want your mouth, your hands on me. I want—”
It was scary to say all of these things, scary to even think them after she’d put herself into a safe freeze for so long. But Grace knew with utter certainty that it would be far worse to turn back rather than take a risk. And no matter what happened after tonight, if they decided to keep slowly moving forward or agreed to step all the way back from each other instead, she refused to regret rediscovering pleasure. Rediscovering herself. Not when she’d only just realized that here was yet another thing her ex had tried to take from her—her confidence in her natural sensuality, her healthy feminine responses to being touched, kissed, wanted.
She wouldn’t let her ex keep taking that from her. Couldn’t let him.
“I want to feel like a woman again, Dylan. I want to remember what it’s like to feel sexy. To be desired. To let myself go, even just a little bit, for a little while. And I want to go there with you.”
She had barely finished speaking when his mouth covered hers again. In his kiss—one so sweet, yet dangerously sexy all at the same time—she felt his promise to give her everything she needed.
* * *
For all that Dylan loved his boats and the ocean, women had always trumped both. He loved hearing a woman laugh. Loved seeing the flash of fire in a strong woman’s eyes. But nothing he’d ever experienced came close to how good it felt to have Grace in his arms, her heart racing in time with his, her mouth sweetly seductive against his as they kissed.
He’d wanted her at first glance. He’d liked her as soon as she’d stood in his boathouse and tried to persuade him to do the interview. And now, from nothing more than a handful of minutes making out with her on her living room couch, he knew that he’d crave her for the rest of his life.
Their hands were still linked as she slid his beneath her shirt, over the soft skin of her stomach, past her rib cage, finally stopping at her bra. “Touch me,” she breathed against his mouth barely a beat before she laid his hands over her full breasts. “I need you to touch me.”