“YOUR MOTHER IS SWEET,” SAID Sophie when Emerson walked back into the kitchen.

Her back was to him as she bent over to put her chili bowl into the dishwasher, giving him a spectacular view of her denim-clad ass. Heart-shaped with hips just wide enough to rest his hands on and legs that seemed to go on forever. Her feet were bare against the cold tile and the cherry-red polish on her toenails stood in stark contrast to his gray floor. He had a brief vision of what it would be like to have her pretty, slender feet rest on his shoulder, but he squashed the image before he embarrassed himself.

Maybe it was her age—hell, maybe it was his—but being around Sophie made him feel like a randy teenager. He thought about sex at the most inappropriate times. All the time actually. It was a constant balance trying to manage his blood flow so he had enough left to think with. It also made him feel uncharacteristically out of control.

“Are you hungry?” she asked, and the look in her eyes made him wonder if she could read his thoughts. “Your mom filled your already full refrigerator. The chili is awesome.”

He clenched his jaw, willing away the inappropriate images making him misread Sophie’s intentions. He’d been fighting the urge to devour her, and she’d been offering him chili. He was losing his mind.

“I’m okay. Thanks.” He wasn’t, but he’d had lunch. He wasn’t hungry for food. “I hope she didn’t interrupt your work too much. My asshole brother must have called her.”

Her face clouded for a moment, and he kicked himself for being insensitive. He was supposed to take care of Sophie and instead he’d spent his time picturing her naked and implied he didn’t want his mother to meet her. God, he was the asshole, not Gabe.

“I didn’t mean...”

“No, it’s okay. She’s fantastic. I had a really nice time with her. I’ll have to remember to thank Gabe the next time I see him.”

Ouch.

He had a feeling any explanation he offered would only make things worse, and he still had a bunch of uncomfortable questions to ask her.

“Could we sit down for a couple of minutes? Do you have time?” he asked, trying to give her as much of a choice as he could.

She nodded, and he followed her to the sofa, sitting beside her on the worn leather instead of taking the opposite chair. After seeing how warm and open she and his mother had been with each other, he had an irrational urge to be close to her.

“What’s up?” She shifted to face him, tucking her feet with their distracting pedicure underneath her.

“We’ve hit a bit of a wall.” He was going to tell her the truth and try not to scare her at the same time, which he had a feeling would be harder than his blood balancing routine. “I’ve dug into both of the attacks—the robbery and the shooting—and the only thing I can find in common is you. I’m out of obvious leads and with the situation with Rainier, things seem to be escalating.” He called it a situation instead of torture and murder, but from the expression on her face, he didn’t think she was fooled. “You said you don’t know why someone would want to attack you.” She opened her mouth, and he held up his hand to stop her. “I believe you. I do. But I still need to figure out the reason so I can eliminate the threat.”

“You came here from Australia, but you’ve got dual citizenship with the United States.” He ticked off the things he knew, hoping if he laid out what he found he could get her to talk to him.

“I was born in the States, but my mother took my brother and I back to Broome before my first birthday. I don’t remember any of it.”

She wouldn’t. He’d found her birth certificate and a record of her leaving the country at seven months old with her mother and brother. There was no record of her father and the trail he’d found disappeared once the small family got back to Australia. He could send a man there or go himself, but until he had some idea of what he was looking for, it felt like wasted energy.

“What happened to make you leave Australia?” He waited and when she still didn’t answer, he reached out to touch her knee.

It was an innocent touch that felt anything but. She met and held his gaze, her blue eyes burning into him the way her skin burned him through the denim. Watching her, he paused, simply letting his hand rest on her leg. If he’d gotten any indication she didn’t want his touch, he would have stood immediately and moved to the chair, but it felt like just the opposite. Like if he wanted barriers between them, he was going to have to be the one to erect them.

He wanted to touch her, but it was more than that. The way his mother talked to him and the way Sophie had shied away from talking about her past before, he had a feeling it wasn’t something she wanted to relive. He couldn’t protect her from that, but he could will her to take some of her strength from him. He could stay with her and make sure she knew he was there, right beside her. And he could keep everything else he was feeling to himself.

“My mother, my brother, and I lived on a pearl farm near Water Bank. My mum didn’t dive. She graded pearls and handled some of the sales to the local places in Broome. Just to the touristy shops, nothing major. Noah, my brother, dove a bit, but he never had much interest in the beds, and I was too young to do anything but help my mum. She taught me everything I know about pearls.” Her eyes took on a faraway look. “She died when I was fifteen. Pancreatic cancer.”

It took a Herculean effort for him to keep his hand still, not to squeeze her leg or pull her into his arms. He couldn’t imagine losing his mother at any age but especially not that young. He remembered his sisters as teenagers. Sophie would have been just a girl. Just getting to the part where she really needed her mother.

“Noah turned eighteen right before my mother passed. He took care of both of us.” She smiled when she said the words, and he could feel the love she had for her brother.

He didn’t have any trouble imagining what it would be like to be responsible for his sisters. Hell, even for Gabe. And he didn’t have any doubt how badly he would have messed it up at eighteen. Emerson wasn’t sure he wanted to know what came next. With the way Sophie clearly felt about Noah, something must have happened to keep her from reaching out to her brother when she got in trouble.

He moved his palm from her knee to reach for her hand, grateful when she twined her fingers with his in acceptance of his touch. He didn’t know how to comfort her, but he knew he wanted to try. Running his thumb back and forth over the pulse point at her wrist, he waited for her to keep talking.

“He did the best he could. I’d have been lost without him, awkward tampon purchases aside and the fact that he scared off every boy who got close to me. We had a little bit of money left from Mum and a tiny two room house. Noah was supposed to go to university, but he put it off for a year and then another. In the end, he waited until I was a senior to apply. He died in a car accident a year later.”

The set of her jaw was the only indication of how much it cost her to share the story with him.

“Oh sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” Stupid, ineffective words. He wanted to take her pain away, to hold her and tell her he’d do everything he could to make sure she didn’t get hurt again.

“There wasn’t anything left there for me, so I moved on.” She shrugged as if it were the most natural thing in the world for an eighteen-year-old girl to set off on her own with no family to help her.

“I hooked up with some backpackers moving through. They’d come every year to work the oyster beds. This time when they left, I went with them. The States were the obvious choice. I hadn’t realized about my dual citizenship until Mum passed and I found my birth certificate, but it meant I didn’t have to wait for a work visa or for my name to come up in the lottery.”

Here he was thinking she was an innocent who didn’t know anything about the real world and she’d lived through things he’d only imagined. She’d been on her own in a strange country at an age when he’d been skipping Statistics and staying out late pounding beers. He’d underestimated Sophie every step of the way, a mistake he didn’t intend to repeat. No wonder his mother wanted him to take care of her. She’d been on her own for so long.

“How did you survive once you got here?” He held his breath, not certain he wanted to know. It was turning into a recurring theme for him.

“The same way everyone else does,” she said, as if that explained everything. “I got a job waiting tables until I got my feet under me and then I used what I knew and applied at one of the bigger commercial jewelers. I’m an exceptional pearl grader and my color matching is flawless. You don’t need a degree or credentials to do that. I just showed them what I could do.”

He was starting to believe she really didn’t realize how extraordinary she was, how what she’d been through would’ve knocked most people on their ass. He didn’t bother to ask why she didn’t stay with the company she started with or end up working for someone like Seaton. He’d seen the jewelry she made. It might be perfect but it wasn’t about finding perfection. She’d never be happy spending hour after hour in the light-balanced grading rooms, matching pearls. Anderson Gems was a much better fit for her.

“It was easy to move from there to Connie’s store. I’ve been with her ever since. She pretty much lets me do what I want. The Seaton trunk show was the first big pearl thing I’ve done in years. She got the booking because of my work with the big jewelry house. Having someone on site who could handle matching, gluing, and drilling pearls in front of clients was a big deal. They said they were looking for something interactive since they stopped doing those crazy shell shows.” She gave a shudder when she said it and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, remembering the image of Rainier strapped to the chair, a bullet hole in his forehead.

“Rainier ran one of those shell shows. A very lucrative one until Seaton stopped doing them. We think that’s what made him break into the store. He was retaliating against Seaton.”

She went very still. “I don’t understand what’s going on. None of this makes sense.”

“I know. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I will.” He leaned closer to her, needing her to believe him. Pinning her with his gaze, he brought their joined hands to his lips. “I won’t let anything hurt you, Sophie. I promise.”

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SOPHIE’S HEART HAMMERED IN HER throat. Everything was circling around pearls and it brought up too many memories from her childhood. The smell of the seeding beds. The sticky ocean air and the cool, climate-controlled sorting shed. When she started the day, she hadn’t intended to tell anyone about her past. Instead, she ended up sharing part of the story with Sarah Southerland and all of it with Emerson. It should make her uncomfortable. She’d never copped to the whole tragic past thing. She’d lived through the heartbreak, and she missed her mum and brother every day. She didn’t need to carry the tragedy around with her.

But instead of wanting to close herself off, telling Emerson made her feel free. He touched her and she felt safe, as if he were somehow sharing his strength with her. It was a feeling she could get used to—not that she expected their relationship to last beyond a couple of weeks. It didn’t stop what she was feeling. He brushed his lips to the backs of her fingers, and her breath hitched in anticipation. Uncurling her hand, she pressed her fingertips against his lips and watched his eyes go dark. She didn’t care if she was playing with fire; she was ready to burn.

She was tired of feeling anxious and on edge, tired of worrying about things she didn’t understand. She wanted to spend a few hours—a few days—in Emerson’s arms, losing herself in the feel of him. She was done waiting.

“Sophie,” he said, his voice sounding strained.

He was going to tell her they couldn’t. That he was too old. She was his client. He’d have a dozen other reasons why they shouldn’t give in to this thing between them. She didn’t want to hear them. Taking a chance, she shifted to her knees and leaned into his touch.

“Please,” she said, needing so much more than his lips on her hand.

“Please what, Sophie? If we’re going to do this, I need to hear you say the words.” His expression looked pained. If she hadn’t known it was because he was trying to hold back, she might have stopped. But she knew he wanted her too. She’d felt it over and over again when he tried not to touch her, tried and failed to keep the distance between them.

Nerves and want made her shiver. She couldn’t ask him to make love to her. Love wasn’t the path they were on. But she couldn’t bring herself to say fuck either, not when her heart was already engaged. What they were doing might not mean picket fences and happily ever after, but it meant something.

“Touch me.” She breathed out the words, amazed she could make a sound past the tightness in her throat. “Let me touch you.”

She saw the moment he gave in, the instant his iron-hard control began to crack. He reached for her wrapping his hands around her waist and pulling her to him until she straddled his lap. She felt the thick, hard length of him and her hips rocked against him, her body taking the lead. She gasped in pleasure, and he groaned, gripping her hips tighter with his fingers, holding her in place.

“I can do that. I can touch you,” he said, catching her lips with his. Teasing and tasting, nipping gently until she opened for him and let him in.

His tongue met hers and her world narrowed to the feel of him: his mouth on hers, his hands holding her, his erection wedged against her sex, so close to where she needed him. He kissed her, breathing her in and giving her back so much more. So much anticipation. So much heat.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, tangling her fingers in his hair, tracing her fingertips over the surprisingly soft skin at the back of his neck. Emerson slid his hands from her hips to her ribs and higher to rest against the underside of her breasts. She arched into his touch, aching for him, needing more, needing him. His thumbs brushed the tight peaks of her nipples, and she gasped against his lips. Even through the soft cotton fabric of her shirt, his touch pushed her closer to the edge, closer to what she’d wanted and never had.

Reaching between them, she gripped the hem of her shirt and stripped the fabric over her head, leaving her bare except for the white lace of her bra. Emerson kissed her one last time before leaning back against the leather of the sofa to watch her. His gaze held so much heat, it was as if a simple glance was enough to make her skin flush. Trailing his fingers along her collarbones, he traced a path over her shoulders to hook her bra straps, dragging the narrow bands down her arms and leaving goose bumps in the wake of his touch.

She arched her back, and the lace edge of her bra cup slipped, baring the dusky pink edge of her nipple. Emerson’s lips parted, and she froze, watching him, not sure how to communicate what she wanted. Not sure she had enough breath left to say anything at all.

“God, Sophie. You’re beautiful.” The words came out almost like a prayer, as if he were a supplicant and touching her was something sacred. Reverent.

His fingertips brushed the swell of her breasts, skimming the edge of her nipples. With each pass, he pushed the lace lower, until her small breasts slipped free of the cups. The bunched fabric pushed them up, held them like an offering for him. His strong hands gripped her ribcage, anchoring her in place while he bent his head to her breast. For a moment, he simply breathed her in, the delicious scrape of his stubble against her skin a promise of the pleasure he could give her.  And then his mouth found her, his lips circling her nipple, drawing the tender flesh into the heat of his mouth.

Her world fractured, realigned with the pleasure of it, every delicious tug of his mouth on her tender flesh forging a path between her nipple and her aching clit. She tangled her fingers in his hair, holding him to her, too caught up in the feel of him to care if she seemed needy. Demanding. A whimper slipped past her lips and she felt his answering growl against her nipple.

When he pulled away, she thought she’d cry from the loss of his mouth, driving her higher, and then he shifted his attention to her other breast and the want and desire spiraled in on itself, coalescing low in her belly. Making her hips rock, riding the long, hard length of him through too much denim. As soon as she had the thought, her priorities reordered themselves to her hands on his naked flesh, getting rid of every single thing between them until there wasn’t room for breath, wasn’t room for anything but him.

“That’s it, sweetheart. Take what you need.” He kissed his way from her breast up the slender column of her throat, lighting a fire with his mouth as she rode his body, so close and still not quite enough.

She stripped off her bra and then reached between them. Gripping the waistband of his jeans, she fumbled for the button, only to have him catch her hand and stop her before she could reach her goal.

“Not yet. Not until you come first. Hold on to me.”

Her brain stuttered both over the promise and her uncertainty, and then he shifted, wrapping his arms tight around her and standing. Her legs went around his waist as if they’d been made just for that and she hooked her feet, determined not to let go as Emerson started down the hall toward the bedroom. This was the place she should tell him she hadn’t done this before. That she was a virgin. Beyond the obvious mechanics, she didn’t know much about how things worked, but she was pretty sure that was information he’d want to have.

She opened her mouth, intending to whisper the words against his ear. Before she could make a sound, he opened the door to his room and carried her to the bed, depositing her against the mountain of downy soft pillows. The look in his eyes held so much heat, so much hunger, the words died on her lips and she couldn’t think of anything beyond wanting him.

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EMERSON NEVER INTENDED this to happen. He’d tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to keep Sophie in the role of client, but she was so sweet, so beautiful, so innocent in her willingness, she worked her way past all his defenses. When he looked at her laid out on his bed, waiting for him to touch her, he realized they’d always been heading toward this point. From the moment she opened her beautiful blue eyes in that hospital room, everything had been leading them here.

Toeing off his shoes and socks, he paused long enough to tug his polo over his head before climbing onto the bed with her. He might be a decade and a half older, but if the honest appreciation in her eyes was any indication, the age difference didn’t matter to her.

Kneeling between her legs, he reached for the waistband of her jeans. He kept his gaze pinned on hers, looking for any sign of hesitation, any indication that she wanted him to stop as the back of his fingers brushed her stomach. He felt her muscles jump and tighten at his touch, but her hips rocked toward him, urging her body closer. He slid down the zipper, grateful his fingers didn’t do something stupid like tremble. He wanted her so much, wanted this. He couldn’t remember the last time—if ever—a woman made him shake with need. Tugging the denim over her hips and down her long legs, he bared her body to his hungry gaze.

Sophie was so beautiful, her long limbs lithe and strong, the gentle curves of her body the perfect blend of graceful lines and delicious swells. His mouth practically watered to taste her.

“The way you look at me...” Her words trailed off, and he heard the wonder heavy in her voice.

He pulled his gaze away from the promise of her beautiful body to meet her face. The trust in her eyes rocked him to his core. He had no idea what they would end up meaning to each other. Things had already gone so much further than his best laid plans, but whatever happened, he’d do everything in his power to try to be worthy of her. To be worthy of the faith she put in him.

“You’re so beautiful. You steal my breath,” he said and then he settled between her legs to try to steal hers.

He pressed a kiss to the flat plane of her stomach and felt the tremor against his lips. She was shaking, and they hadn’t gone far enough for it to be from pleasure.

“Sophie, are you sure?” He’d been the one putting up roadblocks all along. Now all he could think about was touching her. Tasting her. Claiming her. But not if she wasn’t one hundred percent sure it was what she wanted too. It would kill him to stop but he’d do it if she asked.

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Don’t you dare stop.”

He pressed his lips to her lace-covered mound and smiled. Hooking his fingers in her waist band, he tugged her panties over her hips and shifted just enough to get them off her legs, leaving her gloriously naked in front of him. Running his hand up the inside of her thighs, he spread her legs, revealing every inch of her delicate folds. He breathed in the heady scent of her, blowing over her damp curls as he exhaled. He lowered his head to kiss her, to use his mouth to wind her tight until she spiraled apart with pleasure. His lips hovered over her sex, his tongue darting out to flick the swollen bundle of nerves. Her fingers tightened in his hair, but instead of pulling him closer, she was trying to hold him back.

“Wait,” she said as his brain stuttered over itself, trying to make sense of what was happening. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

He rocked back far enough to be able to look up her body and meet her gaze. “Anything,” he said, meaning it. She hesitated for a moment longer, and he pressed a kiss to her inner thigh and sat up. “I will do whatever you want, sweetheart. You just have to tell me. Do you need me to stop?”

“No, please.” She blinked quickly and he was afraid she was trying not to cry. The very last thing he’d wanted to do was make Sophie cry. “I just...I’ve never done this before. I thought maybe you should know. But please don’t stop. I need you. I want this.”

Now that she’d started talking, it was as if she couldn’t stop. The words came out in a steady stream. He couldn’t tell if it was lack of blood flow to his brain or if something else was making it hard for him to understand her.

“Hold on, Sophie,” he said when he’d managed to piece things together. “You mean you’ve never had someone go down on you before?” The idea of being the first person to share that kind of pleasure with her shouldn’t make him so irrationally happy, but it did.

“No, never.”

He resisted the urge to fist pump. He could spend hours figuring out what she liked, how she liked to be kissed and licked. It was suddenly his new goal in life to share the joys of oral sex with Sophie, and he was more than willing to devote as much time as necessary.

“Don’t worry. You don’t have to do anything but lay back and enjoy yourself. I’ll take care of you. I promise.” This was one promise he was happy to keep.

He settled back between her legs, palming her ass so he could angle her sex toward him to give him better access. Before he could taste her, he felt her fingers grip his shoulder.

“That’s not the only thing. I haven’t had any kind of sex. I’m a virgin.”