With Ryan’s help, I clean the kitchen and dining room in record time.

He sticks a detergent tablet into the slot and closes the dishwasher as I finish wiping off the island in the middle of my kitchen.

“What’s left?”

“Nothing with the way you eat,” I tease.

He smirks. “I saved room for you.”

My cheeks heat. “About that. You don’t have to... spend the night if you don’t want to.”

Moving to me, he wraps his muscular arms around me and molds my body to his. “I came prepared.”

I take a sustaining breath. “How prepared?”

“Brought my toothbrush and deodorant.”

A giggle escapes my mouth. “No pajamas?”

“Thought I’d wear you to bed instead.” He winks, and my heart flutters in my chest.

“Oh, my.” Heat pools between my legs. “Well, I thought I’d wear you out, then go to bed.”

“Are you issuing a challenge, firecracker?”

“Afraid you can’t keep up?” I ask, lightly trailing my fingers along the collar of his shirt. His skin is hot, and he smells so good.

“No, ma’am. I’m a professional athlete. We train for nights like this.”

I break away from his embrace, casting a sultry look over my shoulder while hoping I don’t do something dumb like trip over Bluebelle. “Why don’t you show me?”

Please let him follow me.

A second later, Ryan scoops me up in his arms and I smile. “How’s this for a first play?”

“It’s a good start.”

He lays me on the bed and crouches over me, his gaze roaming over my body. I touch his face, rubbing my hand over his five o’clock shadow.

“You’re beautiful,” he says.

I glance away. “I’m not.”

He captures my chin in his hand. “Never argue with someone who’s twice your size.” Straddling my legs, he begins to work at the buttons of my blouse. “Repeat after me, ‘I’m beautiful.’”

“I’m beautiful,” I whisper, feeling foolish. The material parts, baring my demi-cup bra to him.

“And I’ve got the greatest pair of tits the world has ever seen.”

“And I’ve got the greatest pair of—Ryan!” I punch him in the shoulder. “I am not saying that.”

He leans down, blowing lightly on my lace-covered nipple. “I will. I’ll shout it from the rooftops.”

“Don’t you dare!”

Peering at me through his ridiculously long lashes, he says, “How about if I whisper it?”

“No.”

“Sing it?”

“Oh my Lord.”

“You want me to pray about them? Maybe even thank God for them?”

I break out in helpless giggles. “No, you idiot. I don’t want you to do anything but admire them.”

“Normally, I’d be upset if the woman I’m in bed with is laughing and calling me an idiot, but I really like how the movement makes your breasts jiggle.”

Tears leak from the corners of my eyes. “Where have you been all my life, Ryan Shea Turner?”

His gaze is tender. “Waiting on you.”

Once again, his head dips to mine. His lips brush over my mouth in a tender kiss. I kiss him back eagerly. Greedily. I have to have him. With a fierceness I didn’t know I was capable of, I grab his button-down shirt and yank at the center.

Buttons pop and go flying. Ryan pulls back a little, a wicked grin appearing on his mouth. “Is that how you want it tonight?”

Rather than answering him with words, I unfasten the front of my bra. “Take off the rest,” I order.

Determination and lust glint in his dark eyes. He almost rips my dress off while I tug, unfasten, and pull at his jeans. Before I know it, we’re pressed skin to skin, his tongue in my mouth and my legs wrapped around his waist.

His thick cock brushes at my core, teasing and making me wish he could slide right in. Making me wish we didn’t need anything between us.

His hips surge against mine, and I moan. One of his big hands wraps around my thigh, and he pulls it up and over his arm.

“Much better,” he murmurs, staring down. He slides his cock between my curls, where I’m wet and slick and hot for him, over and over again until my entire body feels as though it’s about to go up in flames. “Feel good?”

“Yes,” I all but shout.

He laughs low in his throat and runs a hand over my breast, pinching and rolling my nipple between his fingers. Then he takes it in his mouth, sucking and nibbling until I beg him to end the torment.

“I’m just getting started, sweetness,” he says as he pushes my thighs wide. Then he leans up and kisses the side of my neck, nibbling on my ear and licking his way down my throat.

My body shakes as he rubs his jaw along my collarbone and cups my breasts in his big hands. He kisses the skin under them, then licks a pattern across my stomach.

“Seven,” he says. “That’s how many times I plan on making you come tonight.” He cants his head to one side. “For starters.”

“I can’t come seven times in one night,” I protest.

Paying me no mind, he just keeps kissing, tonguing, and nibbling at my body. He licks my clit once... twice, and I cry out his name as I go over the edge.

Again and again.

He’s like a machine, a machine made of flesh and intent on drawing out every last bit of pleasure from my body.

I cry out his name, my fingers digging into the mattress.

“How many are we up to now?” he asks from between my thighs after I shatter for the third time—or is it the fourth?

“I don’t know,” I say, even as my body yearns for more.

“If you’re still talking, then I’m not doing my job.” He lowers his mouth, spreading me again. “Prettiest, wettest pussy I’ve ever seen.”

He touches and strokes me everywhere, even at one point turning me over on my stomach to kiss the cheeks of my butt.

“Every inch of you is perfection,” he says, dragging his cock along the inseam of my bottom. I tense up slightly. “Don’t worry, baby. We’ll save that for another time.”

“Will I like it?” I ask.

“You’ll love it.”

“But what if I don’t?”

“Then we don’t.”

I exhale. That wouldn’t have been Dean’s answer. Ever. His motto had been to keep trying until I caved in and resented him later, then he’d make me feel guilty for being upset.

“Don’t think about him,” Ryan says, flipping me over. His face is serious, slight jealousy clear on it. “We’re the only two people in the room, and you’re the only woman on my brain. Let me be the only man on yours.”

“Sorry,” I whisper.

He cups the side of my face before pressing a heated kiss to my lips and sliding inside of me. “Who’s in you now?”

“You.” I let out a gasp. “Oh, God. You are...” My body bows off the bed at his erotic invasion.

Withdrawing slightly, he thrusts forward again. “That’s right.” He withdraws again and slides forward, over and over, until he’s deep inside of me.

“So deep,” I moan.

He kisses the tip of my nose. “So tight.” He palms my butt, lifts my hips slightly, then thrusts home. “How’s that?”

“Do it again.”

My breasts bounce with each of his measured thrusts. I writhe under him, wrapping my legs around his waist and begging him to go faster.  Harder.

Letting go of my butt, he grabs the headboard and pins me to the bed with his lower body. Then he begins to drive into me so hard all I can do is take it. Take him. With every thrust, his skin rubs my swollen clit.

“Touch yourself,” he growls. “I want to watch you come. Want to feel you milk me.”

I’m not sure what to do at first, so unused to someone talking during sex.

“C’mon, sweetness. Show me how you liked to be touched.”

His gravelly words do for me what nothing else can. They give me the confidence to try. Our skin is slick as I reach between my thighs, as I find my clit and begin to rub firmly. In no time at all, I’m spasming helplessly around him.

“Fuck,” he mutters. “I need to come.”

I trail my hand slowly up my body, circling my nipple.

He lets out a curse, then pumps furiously inside of me. His head drops into the pillow as he slows, his arms falling from the headboard to pull me to him as he rolls to one side.

“I put on a condom,” he mumbles. “Right before...”

I smile sleepily against his chest. “I trust you to protect us.”

His hands coast down my back. “I’ll go clean up in a minute.”

“Take your time,” I say as he slides out of me. I wince a little. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good,” he says. “’Cause neither am I.”