Tyler sucked her clit into his mouth and rubbed his tongue back and forth, which took her right out of her head and into the pleasure. She’d been about to say she didn’t like receiving oral. Well, that was going to change. He would change her mind about every goddamned thing in the next seventeen days.

How it was possible that beautiful, sexy, contrary Charley Abbott had never had a real boyfriend was beyond him. She was the hottest woman he’d ever met, and he was determined to make her his forever. But it wouldn’t be easy. He would have to overwhelm her on every level so there was no chance she would walk away from him.

And there was no time like the present to get started with the overwhelming, he thought as he slid two fingers into her, curling them forward until he found the spot that made her detonate. There was simply no other word for the way her body exploded under his lips, tightening around the fingers he drove into her repeatedly, riding the wave of her orgasm.

Hottest. Fucking. Thing. Ever.

“Do we need protection?” he asked as he withdrew from her to remove his boxer briefs, kicking them off impatiently. Her eyes opened, and he saw a curious mix of desire and fear in them that put him immediately on alert. “Charley.”

She blinked him into focus.

“Talk to me.”

“I . . . I’m on long-term birth control.” She pointed to a bump in her arm he hadn’t noticed before. “And I’m clean. I’ve never had sex without a condom.”

“Neither have I.” He leaned toward the bedside table.

“Tyler.”

The tone of her voice had him turning toward her, curious to hear what was on her mind.

“First time for everything?” she asked with a small smile that filled him with an unreasonable amount of hope. Not to mention what her words did to his already hard-as-a-rock dick.

“Are you sure?”

“We’re in a committed seventeen-day relationship, right?”

“We are.”

She reached for him. “Then I’m sure.”

“Ah, Christ, Charley. First time with you and first time without a condom, too? You’re not going to get my best work here.”

She snorted with laughter that went straight to his overly committed heart. Dear God, he loved her. He loved every freaking thing about her, and he was determined to prove to her that she could count on him to be there for her long after their seventeen days were up.

“Your leg . . .”

“Is fine. Just be careful.”

“I’ll always be so careful with you.” He started all over again with deep, desperate kisses that had her clinging to him. And when she sucked hard on his tongue, he saw stars and had to remind himself he wasn’t allowed to come yet. Not until he’d blown her mind a few more times. His heart beat fast and hard, the way it did when he ran uphill. The metaphor wasn’t lost on him. He was running an uphill race with her as the prize, and he was determined to win.

If he could focus on the things that worked particularly well between them, he could gain an edge. The physical connection between them was nothing short of incendiary, so he used every tool in his arsenal to his advantage—lips and tongue and teeth and hands and fingers and hard cock rocking against soft, wet woman.

Her fingers dug into the dense muscles on his back, letting him know his efforts were having the desired effect. “Tyler . . . Please. Please.”

Nothing in his life had ever been sexier than the sound of Charley Abbott begging him to make love to her.

He lifted her good leg around his hips, opening her. Giving her just the head of his cock, he watched her face. “Is that what you want?”

“Yes.” Her eyes widened when he pushed in deeper, her lips parting and her face flushing from the arousal that eased the way for him.

“God, Charley, you’re so tight. You’re on fire.”

“Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

Since that was the last thing he ever wanted to do, he continued to push into her in small increments until she’d taken all of him. Her internal muscles fluttered around him, milking him. To be surrounded by her tight heat with nothing between them but desire . . . Tyler couldn’t begin to process it all in the moment, not when she was squirming beneath him and making mewling noises that had him wanting to hammer into her. Since he couldn’t do that and keep his promise not to hurt her, he slid his hands beneath her to grasp her gorgeous ass, squeezing her cheeks as he began to move, slowly at first and then faster as her hips met his every thrust.

“Charley,” he said on a long, tortured groan.

Just when he thought she couldn’t turn him on any more than he already was, she reached down to where they were joined to finish herself off. “Fucking hell,” he muttered the second before he joined her in the most explosive release of his life. It took every ounce of self-control he could muster not to tell her—right then and there—that he loved her, that he would always love her, no matter what happened at the end of their time together.

Thankfully, he managed to contain the rush of words that wanted out. She wasn’t ready to hear them. Not even as her body quaked with the aftershocks of multiple orgasms. Not yet. He would save that for when he really needed it, and he had no doubt at all that at some point, he would really need it.

Her hands caressed his back, soothing trembling muscles.

Tyler raised his head so he could see her face, and the sight of her closed eyes, flushed cheeks and small, satisfied smile left him dumbstruck. He touched a soft kiss to kiss-swollen lips. “That was incredible.”

“Mmm. Yeah.”

“Charley.”

“Hmm?”

“Look at me.”

Her eyes opened slowly and looked up at him.

“Just making sure you remember who you’re doing this with.”

“How could I forget when you’d never let me?”

The husky tone of her voice had him hardening again, as if he hadn’t just come so hard he saw stars. For a second, he thought she might stop him, but she didn’t. Instead she began to move with him, showing him the second benefit to bareback sex—no time out between sessions. He could get used to this very quickly.

Okay, so sex with Tyler had been amazing. Or she should say it is amazing because apparently it wasn’t over yet. She’d never been with a guy as big as he was, and had to give props to the person who coined the phrase bigger is better. But it was more than his size. It was everything about the way he absolutely possessed her, touching her heart as well as her body. It was his sweetness, his tenderness and the careful way he touched her, as if he were afraid to hurt her in more ways than one.

He was weakening her defenses, and seventeen more days with him weren’t going to make anything easier. It would only make it harder to walk away. She’d been walking away for most of her adult life. Old habits died hard, but as Tyler made sweet love to her again, she began to wonder if it wasn’t time for new habits.

For the first time since Michael crushed her heart and destroyed her belief in love, she felt a kernel of hope blossoming inside her. And as quickly as the hope appeared, her protective impulse kicked in to quash it before it could take root. She’d made promises to herself years ago—promises she intended to keep, no matter how wonderful Tyler might be.

As he moved above her, beautifully sexy and strong and intense in his devotion to her, Charley wished she were someone different, someone who could accept the things he wanted to give her. But that woman had died on a cold February night as she sat in the university library and overheard a sobbing woman tell her consoling friend that her boyfriend Michael Devlin was a cheating scumbag.

This was not the time for those memories, but they intruded despite her fierce desire to keep them in the past where they belonged. Charley’s past was never far behind her, and she’d learned a long time ago that it was pointless to try to outrun it. The painful memories always caught up to her, no matter how far or how fast she ran.

“Where are you right now?” Tyler asked, jarring her out of her thoughts with his gruffly spoken words and the scrape of his whiskers on her neck.

“I’m here,” she said, tightening her arms around him.

“You went somewhere else for a minute there, which makes me think I’m not doing this right.”

“You’re doing it right.”

He raised himself up on his arms and picked up the pace, hammering into her with much more abandon than he’d shown her the first time, making it impossible for her to think of anything—or anyone—but him.

She lifted her good leg and curled it around his hips, wishing she could fully participate. It would be a while before she could do that, but in the meantime, he was more than compensating.

His fingers pressed against her core, and Charley arched her back, seeking the release that grew with every deep stroke of his hard cock. “Tyler . . .”

“I’m here, honey. Let it happen.”

She came with a broken cry that was ripped from her chest. The powerful sensations brought tears to her eyes and took her breath away. He was right there with her, pressing into her and finding his own release.

“Charley . . . God.”

The wonder she heard in his voice was matched by the wonder she felt after having the best sex of her life. Didn’t it figure that she’d held him at arm’s length for so long when they could’ve been doing that all this time?

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m great. You?”

“Never better. That was . . . I can’t think of the right word.”

“Fantastic.”

“That’s a good word, but not quite what I had in mind.” He withdrew and moved to her left side, away from her injured leg, but kept his arm around her. “Life changing is more like it.”

“That’s two words.”

“They seem to fit the occasion.”

“Tyler . . .”

“I know, I know. You told me I’m not allowed to change your life, but you can’t blame a guy for trying, can you?”

She forced herself to look at his handsome face, which was even more so when flushed from exertion. “If I were going to make changes for anyone, I’d do it for you.”

“I wish you’d tell me who hurt you and why you feel like you’re not capable of being with me this way long term.”

“I’m just not. It’s not how I’m wired.”

“Wiring can be upgraded, fixed, changed.”

“Hard wiring can’t be.”

His hand moved over her body in a tender caress that told her how much he cared. This wasn’t only about sex for him, and she had to keep that in mind over the next few weeks. Trying to take the conversation in safer directions, she said, “Tell me about your business.”

“What about it?”

“How did you start it?”

Pausing, as if he wasn’t yet ready to abandon the other conversation, he finally said, “It actually started when I was in high school. I took an elective class that covered investing and the stock market. That Christmas, I asked for a subscription to Money magazine, and I’ve been addicted ever since. When I was in high school and college, I had a landscaping business cutting lawns, shoveling snow and doing odd jobs for people. I invested every dime I ever made, and over time my portfolio grew and multiplied.”

“What about the crash a few years ago?”

“I saw it coming and made adjustments ahead of time. I was untouched.”

“So you’re crazy good at it?”

“I guess you could say that.” He glanced at her. “I can see your wheels turning. What do you want to ask?”

“Just how much money have you made in the stock market?”

He hesitated but only for a second. “About two hundred.”

“Thousand?”

Laughing, he said, “Million.”

Charley felt like she’d been electrocuted. “You’ve made two hundred million dollars in the stock market?”

“Thereabouts.”

“Oh my God, Tyler! That’s insane.”

“I’ve given a lot of it away to charitable causes.”

“How does no one know this about you?”

“Because I don’t tell anyone. My family knows, and now you know, too. But that’s about it.”

“Surely you’ve gotten attention from the industry.”

“Some, but I keep it low key. I don’t want to be defined by money. If people know, then suddenly that’s all they see when they look at me—dollar signs.”

“Aren’t you in hot demand by other people who want to capitalize on your expertise?”

“My expertise isn’t available to the public. I’m not a licensed broker, so I technically can’t advise other people. Managing my own portfolio is a full-time job. I don’t have the time to take on outside clients, and I don’t want to anyway. The way it is now, I work when I need to, and I don’t work if I don’t have to. I don’t answer to anyone, set my own schedule and follow my own rules. It’s a pretty good deal.”

“I’d say so. My mind is officially boggled.”

“Is this going to change the way you look at me?”

“Are you afraid I’ll see dollar signs when I look at you?”

“You wouldn’t be the first. I’ve never told another woman the full extent of what I’ve made in the market, but when people hear what I do for a living, they jump to their own conclusions. It changes things . . . They treat me differently when they realize there’s money, even if they don’t know how much.”

“I’m not going to look at you differently, but I am completely amazed by what you’ve accomplished.”

“Thanks. It’s been fun—and challenging. But mostly fun.”

“I want to hear everything—how you got started, when you knew you were good at it, when you started making real money. Everything.”

So he told her, starting with his initial investments in high school, through his one year of cooking school before he transferred to Dartmouth to pursue his true calling as a finance and economics double major, to turning down offers from all the top banks on Wall Street after he graduated, to running his own business for the last ten years.

Charley hung on every detail, realizing as he spoke that he was freaking brilliant, a prodigy of sorts. “I’m suitably astounded.”

“I’m happy to brag about my financial prowess if it impresses you,” he said with an adorable grin. “Anything I can do to further my cause.”

As she returned his smile, Charley was unnerved by the admiration she felt toward him. Most of the guys she’d dated in the past had barely warranted anything resembling admiration.

“I can’t believe your mom works as hard as she does in our bakery when her son is fabulously wealthy.”

“My mom loves that job. She says it keeps her busy and active and engaged in the community. She doesn’t do it for the money. I took care of my parents and siblings a long time ago. None of them have to work, but they all do anyway. We were raised with a healthy work ethic. I’ve been working since I was fourteen and started cutting grass and shoveling snow for the neighbors.”

“And you’re still working even though you don’t have to.”

“I’m too young to retire. I’d go out of my mind with boredom, and besides, my portfolio requires daily maintenance to remain profitable.”

“So what do you do now that you couldn’t do before you had the money?”

“Not much. My life is pretty similar to what it was before. Other than the house and a significant investment in the technology needed to run my business, I haven’t really spent a lot on myself. I like to scuba dive, so I try to get to the Caribbean a few times a year. But like I said before, I give away far more than I’ll ever spend on myself. If I have a family someday, my kids won’t know we have money until they’re adults. I refuse to raise overly privileged children.”

Though Charley’s heart fell at the word children, she admired his approach to parenthood.

“Why did your eyes just go dim when I talked about my future children?”

“Why do you have to watch me so closely?”

“Because there’s nothing I’d rather look at than your gorgeous face.”

She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, making him laugh.

“Sorry, still gorgeous. Stop dodging and tell me why you don’t want kids.”

“I don’t know. I’ve just never had that burning desire to procreate that some women have. Probably because I grew up in a madhouse full of kids, and I’m permanently scarred.”

“Nah, I don’t think that’s it at all. I’ve seen you with your siblings, and you love them. I think it’s something else altogether, something you refuse to talk about with me or anyone, something that eats at you and has for a long time.”

“Stop it,” Charley said, far more harshly than she’d intended. She turned away from him, bracing for the pain as she swung her legs to the side of the bed, looking to escape while she still could.

“Charley. Wait. Let me get your crutches.”

He got up and came around the bed with the crutches.

Charley took them from him, trying not to look at him in all his naked glory.

But of course, he didn’t let her get away with that. His fingers on her chin forced her to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Why do you feel the need to lie to me?”

She wrenched her chin out of his grasp and hobbled to the bathroom, feeling naked in more ways than just physically. Reaching the bathroom, she slammed the door behind her and immediately felt stupid for overreacting. So he struck a little too close to home. Nothing like confirming he was getting too close for comfort by acting like an ass over it.

Charley was in way over her head in this situation, and getting in deeper all the time now that she’d had sex with him. She never should’ve agreed to this temporary boyfriend arrangement of his. There was a good reason why she didn’t have boyfriends, and it was because she didn’t want all the drama that went along with commitment. She didn’t want someone else knowing her better than she knew herself.

After taking care of business, she hobbled to the sink to splash cold water on her face and to brush her teeth. She ran a trembling hand through her hair, attempting to restore some order.

Tyler had left a T-shirt on the counter so Charley wiggled her way into it, only to be assailed by his familiar sexy scent. She sighed deeply, the confusion making her crazy. On the one hand, she enjoyed spending time with him, and she’d certainly enjoyed the multiple orgasms. Enjoyment wasn’t the issue. When she’d set her life rules for herself, she hadn’t banked on a guy like Tyler coming along who would upend her orderly existence and want more than she was willing to give.

He’d asked for a fair chance, and she’d agreed to give it to him. But at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day, she was done. She could only hope he would accept her decision and abide by her wishes.

Charley emerged from the bathroom to find Tyler wearing basketball shorts and sitting on the end of the bed.

He stood when the door opened. “Charley, I’m sorry if what I said upset you. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“I know,” she said without looking at him. She crossed the room to the side of his bed that had become hers and lowered herself to the edge.

He took the crutches from her and propped them against the bedside table where she could reach them during the night.

She got into bed, realizing that it was finally getting easier to move around, which was great news.

Tyler got in bed and turned on his side to face her. “Can we talk about why what I said upset you so much?”

“I’d rather not.”

“I get that, but if you help me understand, I could make sure I don’t upset you that way again.”

Charley sighed with frustration and a tinge of aggravation. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to tell me what makes you hurt.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that you can’t fix what’s wrong with me?”

“I’ll never be able to fix it if you don’t tell me what it is.”

“There are some things money can’t buy, Tyler.”

“Wow,” he said slowly, drawing out the single word. “Low blow.” For the first time, he sounded truly angry. “I’m not looking to buy you, Charley. I want to understand you, that’s all.” He turned off the bedside light, casting the room into darkness except for the night light he still left on for her.

Charley blinked back tears. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have, but I forgive you. If you want to tell me what’s got you convinced that you’re not wired right, I’d be happy to listen.”

She’d never told anyone what had changed her forever, and lying in the darkness with him by her side, her body still replete from his intense lovemaking, she wanted to tell him. She wasn’t prepared to tell him everything, but she could give him the gist, and maybe that would help him to understand.

“There was a guy. Once.” Her words were halting and stilted. She wondered if he could hear the hesitation in her tone. “He made promises he didn’t keep. It made me see that certain risks are too big to take.”