“Do you want a drink?” Ava asked as she shut the door behind them. She’d eaten dinner before he arrived at the store that night, but maybe he hadn’t. “Or something to eat? Did you have dinner?”

“Not hungry,” he said, and she heard the drop in his voice, the way he infused it with a hunger for something else.

Ava turned and found John watching her, a predatory appetite in his gaze as he moved her way. The long, lean strides of a man who knew what he wanted. A man who promised nothing but pleasure, with the cocky assurance that he could deliver on that promise and then some.

“Oh,” she said, the sound escaping her mouth almost involuntarily as her whole being seemed to warm and melt for him.

“Your arm,” she said, when he reached her.

“Will be fine,” he said.

He wasn’t speaking in full sentences. She liked that she seemed to do that to him. Like his mind couldn’t focus on holding a conversation. Like all of him was focused on one thing right then.

His look telegraphed what that thing was, his eyes dropping from her face to roam her body. She almost felt that look, as though his hands were on her, trailing across her body to tease and arouse.

And then they were. He’d tossed off his sling at some point and was using both his good and bad arm to stroke her hips and pull her to him. Heat pooled and spread out, and she rose on tiptoes to kiss him, wrapping her arms around him.

The kiss he’d given her in her office had stayed with her, taunting her through the rest of her shift. Now his mouth was on her again, and it was hot and tasted like him. There were no words for how he tasted.

Right. That was it. He simply tasted right to her.

She ran her hands over the rigid muscles of his shoulders and down biceps that were impossibly large. Need and want coiled within her. She knew, on some level, she was getting too close to John, wanting too much with him, from him.

She didn’t want to stop it, though. She wasn’t honestly sure she could. It would hurt like hell if he ended this. Or if he figured out she was starting to have feelings for him that went well past what they’d agreed to and broke things off because of that. But knowing those things and being able to do something about them were two different things.

John cursed as he fumbled with the buttons of her blouse with his bad hand. One look from him told her what he was thinking of doing.

Ava glared and took over unbuttoning her top. “Don’t you dare tear it.”

“Faster,” was the one-word command she got in response.

Ava took a step back and slowed her pace, toying with the buttons as she teased him.

“Ava.” The word was a low growl. A warning. One laced with heat and arousal. God, she loved what this man did to her.

She spun and walked toward the bedroom. “Patience, John. It’s a —”

She didn’t get further than that. He wrapped his good arm around her from behind, lifting her a few inches off the floor and all but running to the bed.

She was laughing when he set her down, and she crawled across the bed, watching him strip his clothes off.

She put her hands to her waistband and slid her pants and panties off in one move. She had her red blouse on still, but the buttons were undone, exposing the navy lace bra she’d worn under it.

John stood naked, his eyes drinking her in. He was glorious. That was the only word she could think of, looking at him. Muscles and tan lines, scars that wrote the story of his service across his skin.

Her hands shook as she pulled her blouse off and tried to undo the clasp of her bra. But then he was there, his mouth on her nipple over the lace, murmuring words of sweetness and beauty. How was it that this man was both so hard and so soft at once? Hardened cop to the world, tender man in her bed?

She couldn’t stop the emotion that swamped her as he laid her down and made love to her. She couldn’t keep herself from wanting more from him. From dreaming of a lifetime with this man. She couldn’t protect her heart. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to.