“I guess this is where I kiss you goodnight,” Gabe said.

We’d finished our meal and Gabe and I stood just inside the entrance to the restaurant. We knew when we stepped outside my car would be ready to take me home and this was the last private moment we’d have in a while.

Gabe’s finger traced the curve of my cheek and I tried hard not to close my eyes. I didn’t want to miss a moment of being with him.

“I wish you could do more than that,” I whispered.

Gabe’s finger stilled near my lips. “Are you saying what I think you are?”

His question hung between us like a feather that hovered without a breeze.

“Yes.”

Gabe dropped his hand and took a step back.

“You want me to be your first?” he said.

“Yes.” God, yes. “Why? Don’t you?”

He looked uncertain of himself and all the casual ease was gone. “You don’t want to know more about me?”

I almost laughed. Almost. “You make it sound like there’s something else I need to know.”

“What? No.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “No,” he repeated. “It’s not that.”

“You don’t want to have sex with me?”

He paled noticeably and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Chloe, trust me. I want to have sex with you.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

He stepped back to me and took my face in his hands. “Are you . . . are you using me?”

“What?” I gasped. “For sex?”

His lips quirked. “To be your first. You don’t want to be a virgin anymore, so I’m the safe option.”

“The safe option?” I sputtered. Where on earth did he get that from? When Gabe and I were in the same room there was nothing safe about our relationship.

“Yeah. You could have done it with Johnnie but he might have hurt you. I’m the nice guy.”

“You think I’m using you to lose my virginity?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know. You try some other guys?”

“Try some other guys!” It was probably just as well the restaurant was empty. I stepped in even closer and mimicked his position, putting my own hands on his rough cheeks. “The only guy I want to try is you. Until you, I never felt in a hurry to lose my virginity. There was no one who made me want to go there. But when I’m with you, it’s all I can think about. If you threw me over your shoulder right now and spread me on that table over there, you could do whatever you wanted to me. I’m yours.”

The silence between us was electric. Heat pooled in my stomach, in my toes, everywhere, and I couldn’t believe I’d just been so forward—but it was true. I wanted Gabriel da Silva in every way imaginable.

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” His voice was rough, pained.

I nodded at the table. “You don’t want to?”

He released a shaky breath. “More than you can know. But we can’t. Not here.”

“I know.” My cheeks were hot beneath his hands. It felt energizing to be so brazen. “Small issue that it’s not our restaurant and my bodyguard is outside.”

“Soon.” He kissed me then, slow, deep and irresistibly sweet until I didn’t care anymore about where we were or who was nearby.

The sound of a female clearing her throat brought us back to reality.

Harry stood at the entrance to the kitchen, a knowing smile curling her lips. “We’re going to head. Back door’s locked. Just make sure you flip the latch before you leave and hit that green button beside the door to activate the alarm.”

“What?” My voice was so breathless I wasn’t sure she’d heard me.

She shrugged. “Mila’s waiting in the car. Take a while longer if you want. We don’t care.”

“I—”

“See ya.”

She’d slipped back into the kitchen before I could say anything else.

I turned back to Gabe, wide-eyed. Funny. He didn’t look uncertain anymore, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe. He reached over to the front door and clicked the lock, then walked to the full-length windows and pulled the curtains closed.

I couldn’t move and my head was spinning from lack of oxygen.

Desire—at least I think it was desire, there was also some fear in there, too—pounded through my veins.

His smile was disarming as he approached me. “Relax. Your first time should be somewhere nicer than this but . . . ” His eyes took me in from head to toe, and I shivered. “How about dessert?”

“Dessert?”

“Yeah.”

“We had dessert.”

“Not like this.”

He took my hand and tugged me over in front of the curtains. Then he kissed me again, but it was anything but sweet. It was hot, so hot I longed to be rid of my clothes and pressed up against his bare flesh.

“Mmm.” He lowered his head and kissed the crook of my neck while his thumb danced a silent rhythm down my arm.

“Gabe.”

“Mmm.”

I pushed against him, pressing my breasts against his chest and my hips into his so I could feel his hardness, his arousal for me. He stilled.

“Gabe,” I said again. “I want my top off.”

In one swift movement he scooped my top over my head and I heard it drop to the floor. I reached around desperately to my back, clawing for the clasp of my bra.

“Here.” He leaned over my shoulder and my bra followed my top to the floor.

I sighed at the feeling of my breasts being released. They felt so heavy and full, in a way they never had before.

“Oh,” I sighed.

Gabe’s hands cupped me and I suddenly knew why they ached so much. This is what they needed, his touch, his hands caressing them, roaming over me.

A shudder I couldn’t control overtook me as his thumb and forefinger squeezed my nipple, teasing it to a taught peak. I threw my hands around his neck and clung to him, not caring how weak I might look. I didn’t care. I just wanted him. Here. Now.

“You’re so beautiful.”

Despite my daze, I didn’t miss the reverence in his words.

I pulled him up for another kiss, to taste his sweet, spicy mouth tinged with bitterness from the beer he’d been drinking.

As we kissed, his hands pushed my skirt up—and I was so glad I was wearing a skirt.

We stumbled and my back pressed against the curtain as he slid my panties to the floor.

“Are we . . ?” I thought he’d said we’d wait, but I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

He held my hips and stepped back with a deliciously wicked grin. “No. Like I said, dessert.”

He crouched down in front of me and my expression must have been worried or frightened because his grin disappeared. “Has anyone ever?”

I shook my head, caught between embarrassment and the urgent need for him to touch me again.

“Have you ever?”

I frowned. “Have I ever . . ?”

The wickedness returned. “Touched yourself.”

“Oh. Oh. Yes, of course.”

“Of course?” He was teasing me now. “Do you come?”

He was killing me. The sweet part of me wanted to squeal like a girl and the new Chloe, the bolder Chloe, wanted to grab him and make him touch me.

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” he repeated knowingly.

It was so strange standing above him like this. He could see me—all of me—yet I felt powerful looking down at him.

“Can you?” I asked softly.

“Can I what?”

“Make me come?”

He closed his eyes for a brief second and when they opened, they were startlingly clear. “I’d like nothing more.”

I cried out as the tip of his tongue found me. I thought he’d touch me first, use his fingers. I thought—I couldn’t think anymore. I dropped my head back against the velvet curtain. Strong and smooth, his tongue moved with astonishing agility, teasing me, stroking me, until I throbbed for him, burned for him.

I grabbed his shoulders and my fingers dug into him. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Don’t be sorry.”

I couldn’t believe I was doing this. I wasn’t that girl. I wasn’t the one who did this sort of thing, but for Gabe, I was starting to realize I’d do almost anything.

I arched back against the window, the heat building, sparking. His hands left my waist, slipped underneath my skirt until they were cupping my ass. It felt so dirty, but so good, but it wasn’t enough.

“I want you,” I moaned.

He paused, his eyes were all that I could see. “Not tonight,” I heard him say.

He let go of my ass and I stiffened as one of his fingers gently entered me.

“I can stop,” he said. “If it’s too much.”

“No. Please.” I wasn’t sure what I was begging for. Too much felt like a good thing right now. I was tight but the presence of his finger was exquisite.

He lowered his head again and I was lost. His tongue on the outside and his finger slowly moving inside me—I writhed against him, tingling heat doing a dangerous dance all over my body. But most of all the heat was inside of me, burning, desperate to get out.

When he slipped a second finger inside me and increased the pace, I broke. Shattered into a million pieces like shards of crystal scattering all over the floor, playing a sublime melody as they fell.

I heard a woman moan and cry out, and it took a second to realize it was me. That was me making those carnal noises and I didn’t care. All I cared about was the man kneeling between my legs who was treating me like I was a goddess—and right now I felt like one.

I slumped back against the curtain, knocked senseless.

I felt Gabe remove his fingers and he smoothed my skirt down then handed me my top.

I was still too overwhelmed to look at him.

“Hey.” He pressed a kiss to my thigh. “OK?”

OK? I wanted to shout. I was better than OK. This sweet, beautiful man had just made me come in a restaurant and I was . . .

He frowned, reading the shock on my face, and stood up. “What? What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

I shook my head and tried to cover my reaction. “No. I’m fine. You didn’t hurt me.”

“Then what it is it?”

The concern on his face made it even harder for me to mask my emotions.

“Didn’t you enjoy it?” he asked.

I grabbed him and kissed him, like my life depended on it. Because it kind of did. If I was forced to speak right now then I’d tell him the one thing that was even scarier to me than me losing my virginity: I was falling for him.

For real. This wasn’t some teenage crush.

And when I let him take my virginity, I was almost certain he’d take my heart, too.