"Not knowing what you've got in the bag, but knowing it's going to be damn good, whatever it is, is killing me, sweetheart."

She looked at him, realized his knuckles were showing white on the gearshift. All because she'd gone in and bought a sex toy.

For him to use on her.

She closed the bag tighter. The balance of power had shifted between them. Yes, he'd all but ordered her to walk into the sex shop and buy a toy, something she never, ever would have thought she'd want her husband to do.

But now she knew better.

It was exactly what she'd wanted.

He hadn't just had her do it for him, solely for his own pleasure. Instead, he was forcing her to face her secret desires, so deeply hidden she hadn't dared admit them even to herself.

He'd done it for her pleasure too.

Once more he was pushing her outside of her comfort zone. Not to a place she didn't want to go--she already knew he wasn't the kind of man who would ever do that. Instead, he'd walked hand in hand with her to another, higher ledge and told her it was okay to jump.

Her body was already so aroused, so sensitive to the slightest brush of fabric against her skin, that she hadn't thought it would be possible for her feel more. But the swelling in her chest had nothing to do with sex--and everything to do with her heart.

A heart she'd vowed to protect at all costs back at the stadium.

* * *

Cole hadn't come this close to losing it in his pants since early adolescence. But from the minute Anna had walked out of the sex shop holding that brown bag, he'd been using every mental trick he knew to try to hang on until they were back at his house, when he could put his mouth, his hands on her. At this point, it didn't even matter what was in the bag. He just needed to possess her, to feel her warm and soft beneath him, to drive into the wet clench of heat between her legs and know that she was his.

Somehow he let her walk from his car to the house on her own, rather than just cavemanning her and dragging her in by her hair so that he could f*ck her like the savage he really was. But once the door clicked closed behind them, once she turned around with that look in her eyes that was part anticipation, part apprehension, he was lost.

Completely fu**ing lost to wanting her.

"Take your clothes off, Anna."

Each word was clipped, his teeth clenched together so tight he was on the verge of chipping them.

She looked around the empty living room. "Here? But I thought--"

She stopped at the look in his eyes, at his slow approach. "Take them off before I rip them off."

The brown bag dropped from her hands. "Okay, but shouldn't we--"

"Not fast enough." He didn't have a prayer of keeping his hands off her, of stopping himself from ripping her silky shirt straight down the middle.

"Cole."

He took her lace-covered nipple in his mouth even as his name left her lips, the single syllable melding with a moan. He lifted his head from her sweet breast and rasped out, "I can't make it another second, baby," the only warning he could give before he yanked apart the zipper on her jeans and tore them off her legs, her shoes coming off along with them.

Somewhere in the back of his head he heard her little yelp of surprise, but he couldn't stop now, not when he was so damn close to what he wanted.

To what he needed so desperately he was going crazy with it.

She was over his shoulder a second later, then flat on her back on his wide leather couch.

His hands moved without any help from his brain, ripping her panties and bra off, and then she was lying there, her eyes wide as she stared up at him, her thighs splayed open on the dark leather.

Cole could barely drag in enough oxygen as he stared down at the slick pink flesh between her thighs, her soft brown curls already slightly damp for him.

Maybe, he thought later, he would have been able to stop himself from taking her without any foreplay if he hadn't already seen the proof of her desire. If he hadn't known that she was just as desperate for this fu**ing as he was.

His zipper was down, his c**k in his fist a moment later.

He positioned his throbbing head in the center of her drenched pu**y lips and drove into her, high and hard, with such ferocity that she slid halfway across the couch.

"Cole!" Anna's scream ricocheted through the high-ceilinged living room.

He gripped her smooth, na*ed ass in his rough hands so that he could hold her where he wanted her, then drove into her again and again, harder and harder.

Lost to everything but the feel of her clenching heat around his cock, so damn tight he could already feel his balls pulling up tight, the buzzing sensation at the base of his spine moving around the front of his groin, it took him several seconds to realize that Anna's hands had come around his shoulders, that her fingernails were scratching down his back.

When had her legs come around his waist to pull him closer? When had she pulled herself up so that she could kiss him, driving her tongue into his mouth with the same pounding rhythm as his cock?

Her inner muscles contracted around him and then she was begging against his chest,

"Please, Cole, oh God, more, more!" and then her tongue and teeth were scraping across his nipple.

The feel of her teeth flipped a switch inside, the one that meant he couldn't hold back anymore, couldn't protect her from his too-strong needs, his too-big body.

But just as he was about to unleash everything he was into Anna's soft body, he looked down at her, her slim arms and legs wrapped so tightly around him, and saw just how small she was compared to him.

Fuck. He'd never taken anyone this hard. No matter how good the sex had been, he was always aware of how big he was. Knew how much damage he could do to a small, feminine body. Which was why, subconsciously, he'd always dated tall women, women that could handle him.

But Anna, his small, sweet Anna, was pushing him harder, and faster, than he'd ever let himself be pushed. His c**k had never been this hard, on the verge of total obliteration. Jesus, it was going to kill him to pull back. But he had to.

Because he couldn't hurt Anna.

Sweet, innocent Anna.

Stilling, he held her h*ps tightly in his hands. She tried to buck into him, but when he wouldn't let her move, she looked up at him, confusion warring with desperate desire on her sweat-dampened face.

"Cole?"

"So small and sweet." He had to lick at her lips, tasting the salt from her skin mixing up with her own sweet essence. "I don't want to hurt you."

He'd been saying the same thing to her since practically the first moment they'd met, and damn it, he didn't think he could live with himself if he ever hurt her, if he accidentally ripped her apart because he'd needed her too bad to think straight.

"Then why are you hurting me now?"

His chest clenched with instant regret. "Jesus, Anna, I didn't mean--too rough on--you're too small for--" He was trying to force himself out of her wet heat as word fragments fell from his lips, but fuck, even knowing what he was doing to her, he couldn't manage more than an inch.

"I love it when you're rough, Cole. I love it when you can't control yourself."

He blinked hard, his brain working to convince him that he'd heard her correctly. "But I'm hurting you."

"The only time you hurt me is when you stop."

And in that moment as he looked into her eyes and knew she wasn't saying what he wanted to hear, but was speaking the truth--he let the switch go.

All the way up.

The next heartbeat had him driving into her so hard that the entire couch slid across the floor. The knowledge that he hadn't imagined her answering smile of pleasure had him ravaging her mouth with his lips and teeth and tongue even as he ravaged her pu**y with a c**k that was as hard as steel and so thick that he could feel her sensitive tissue working to stretch around him.

And then, through his own crazy thrusting and pumping into her, he felt it...the telltale way her muscles all clenched around his cock, the way her ragged breaths came to a momentary stop, hitching in her chest, the way her nails dug in deep along with her heels, the way her thigh muscles tightened on his hips. Any other time he would have focused on her pleasure, would have made sure she hit her cl**ax before he did, but now that the beast was out, there was no locking him back into his cage.

Rearing up over her, he roughly cupped a breast in each hand, her hard ni**les searing the centers of his palms, and he rode her like he'd never ridden anyone. Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed tight as she held onto his forearms and let him take her, riding the wave that he'd become. And instead of pain or fear, in that moment when a gasp left her throat as she began to cl**ax and she opened her eyes and stared straight into his soul, he saw his own pleasure mirrored in those ocean depths.

A pleasure so deep that he wasn't sure how either of them were going to survive without it.

His roar shook the windows as he exploded, her muscles milking him, and if he might have thought that he should pull out, that they weren't really married and he shouldn't be shooting his come deep into her womb, he didn't hear it, wasn't aware of anything but riding out the biggest, strongest orgasm he'd had in thirty-four years.

* * *

Cole shifted them so that he was lying beneath her on the couch and Anna was plastered over his big, hard body, still holding on for dear life, still trying to figure out how to breathe, how to think. She was still trying to figure out how it was even possible for anything--or anyone--to make her feel so good. To feel so much.

If she were smart, if she had any sense of self-preservation at all, she'd be sliding off him, putting space between them, making sure she didn't let him take her over, body and soul.

But that last orgasm must have obliterated a huge chunk of her brain cells. Because she couldn't have left Cole's warmth, the comfort of his arms around her, if someone had been holding a gun to her head.

Not when she was finally right where she'd wanted to be for so very long, held in the arms of a strong man who knew exactly what she needed, even when she hadn't known it herself.

He pulled her tighter and she willingly curled into him, closing her eyes, her muscles relaxed, her breath coming more evenly as she realized just how much all of that crazy, extremely physical sex had worn her out.

* * *

Cole hadn't thought anything could top the wild sex they'd just had on the couch. He was wrong.

So goddamned wrong.

It didn't make any sense that anything could be better than fu**ing Anna, especially not when they repeatedly had the most explosive sex of his life.

But Anna's warmth, the soft press of her curves against him as she fell asleep in his arms

--holding the sweet trust of a woman he was starting to really care about in the palm of his hands--was good.

Too good.

Way too good.

So good that a man could lose his way if he wasn't careful.

Chapter Thirteen

Anna woke in Cole's big bed. He was stretched out beside her, watching, obviously waiting for her. Even though he wasn't touching her, she felt her skin come alive beneath his gaze.

He was na*ed now, too, and as she ran her hungry gaze down his tanned skin, over the deeply sculpted muscles over his shoulders and chest and stomach to the thick erection jutting out from his body, she realized what he was holding.

The dildo she'd bought.

Amazingly, in their frantic coupling in his living room, she'd forgotten all about it. Now, looking at the thick flesh-colored plastic penis she'd chosen made her blush. She reached out for a nonexistent blanket to pull up over her nakedness.

Cole's gaze was full of heat and such deep possession it stole her breath. "Why don't you put those hands above your head, sweetheart?"

It shouldn't be so tempting to follow orders. Her hands and arms shouldn't automatically be rising above her head, but the truth was, she'd already given up trying to make her reaction to this man fit into a tidy little box.

There was nothing tidy whatsoever about any of this. Not their quickie marriage, or the fact that instead of cursing the way he'd manipulated her into marrying him as a gift for his grandmother, she felt almost ... thankful.

"You look so pretty like that, Anna. Your skin all flushed, your sweet br**sts arching closer to my mouth." He bent over her then, his tongue a flat press of heat over one peak.

Anna instinctively moved her hands to thread into his hair and he lifted his head from her sensitive skin.

"Did I tell you to move your hands?"

She bit her lip. "No." When he simply held her gaze, but didn't say anything more, she realized he was waiting for her to put them back up by the headboard. She swallowed reflexively.

"Aren't you going to tie me up?"

"Oh no, sweetheart." He grinned at her, his eyes sparkling with humor in addition to that intense heat that never seemed to go away. "This time I'm going to expect you to keep your hands right there all on your own."

His words shouldn't have been a compliment, shouldn't have signified anything more than dirty verbal play, but they still felt like a big deal.

Like he was trusting her to own a heck of a lot more of her sexuality than she had during their first night together.

Searching within herself, she decided he was right--she wasn't going to freak out this time. Instead, she was going to trust herself, trust her body to know what felt good. Rather than fight it when it all got to be too much, she was going to relish every single sensation.

Moving slowly, sensuously, she moved her hands back into place, where he wanted them.

Approval lit the desire in his eyes. "Good choice."

Belatedly, she realized he was talking about more than the position of her hands. He was holding up the dildo between them, slowly moving it toward her chest, rubbing the soft plastic between her breasts, the head dragging along her breastbone.

She knew she should have been shocked as she lay there watching Cole caress her skin with the toy. The night she'd met him, she would have been. Even yesterday, she knew she would have made some protest.

But in less than forty-eight hours, Cole had almost effortlessly broken down walls she hadn't even realized she'd built.

Instead of being shocked at the renewed arousal throbbing at the tips of her breasts, between her legs, she reveled in the glorious heat.

Instead of being anxious about what Cole was planning to do with the dildo, she was practically panting with desperate anticipation, could feel herself creaming, readying herself for whatever he wanted, for whatever he was going to do.

Still, she wasn't prepared for him to lift the toy to her mouth, for him to say, "Lick it," or for her own tongue to automatically obey.