Paige’s heart galloped like a racehorse as she tugged Wyatt’s zipper down. She asked herself a million questions all at once. Things like: Am I ready for this? Is it really what I want? Am I crazy? What if this makes it awkward between us? What if I like him too much? What if he doesn’t like me? What if it’s only physical?

But then the zipper reached the bottom and his dick pressed against his underwear and all thoughts fled as she palmed him. He was hot and hard, and her insides melted.

She glanced up, met his eyes, and her lungs stopped working for a long moment.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

“So are you.”

His gaze dropped and her nipples tightened. “You have no idea the things I want to do to you.”

“I’d like to find out.”

One corner of his mouth lifted in a sexy grin. “Then today is your lucky day.”

He caught her to him, fused his mouth to hers. She’d wanted to be in control, wanted to slide his jeans off his hips and then reveal his body slowly.

But he was having none of it.

She should have known. He was a SEAL. A hardened military man accustomed to being in control. There was no way he was ceding that territory to her.

Paige sighed as she gave herself over to it. To him. He would take care of her. Cherish her, at least for this. He wasn’t going to be rough or fast. Not this time.

She might like fast and rough with him sometime, but first they had to take it slow and get to know each other.

He lifted her like she weighed nothing and set her back on the bed. Then he came down on top of her, still fully dressed except for the vee in his jeans where she’d pushed them open.

She, on the other hand, only had on a pair of panties. It was sensual and exciting to lie beneath him with the roughness of his clothing on her naked skin. To feel like she was utterly at his mercy but also that she was safe and protected.

He kissed her until she was a puddle of happiness, and then he trailed kisses down her neck and chest until his mouth fastened on a nipple. She thought she would come unglued with a single tug on her sensitive flesh, but she miraculously didn’t. He licked and sucked until she was a mass of nerves, until her fingers curled into his shoulders and her breath came in little pants.

When she thought she couldn’t take the anticipation anymore, he moved over and did the same to her other nipple until she was ready to sob with need. Finally he continued the journey downward until he was running his tongue along the waistband of her panties.

“You want me to keep going?” he asked.

She couldn’t breathe. “If you don’t, I’ll record your negative review and distribute it to news outlets. I’ll skip the website entirely. You’ll never work again.”

He snorted. “I’d love to challenge you on that one, but the truth is you won’t have to.” He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her panties and dragged them down her hips and over her ankles before throwing them on the floor. “I have every intention of going here,” he said, skimming his fingers over her heated flesh.

He teased her first, kissing and licking everywhere but the place she wanted him most. Finally, when she was wound tighter than a spring, he touched his tongue to her.

“Ohhhh,” she groaned as sparks flared behind her eyelids.

Wyatt spread her with his thumbs as his tongue pressed against her clit. Paige squirmed as he circled and nibbled and sucked. She could feel the crisis building, but it wasn’t happening.

It wasn’t happening because Wyatt seemed to know it was coming and he did everything he could to prolong it.

“Please,” she finally begged. “Please.”

“You want to come?”

“Yes!”

He slipped a finger inside her. And then he performed a full frontal assault on her body with his tongue and teeth and fingers, strumming her into a quivering, aching mess.

Paige didn’t slip over the edge. She hurtled over it, screaming the whole way down, gasping for air as her body imploded. She landed in a mass of nerves, her body still zinging, her limbs going limp with pleasure, her heart racing as if she’d run up the mountain.

She thought he would strip now, slide his way into her, pump them both to another pinnacle. He didn’t. Instead, he began the slow buildup again, licking his way to her center, spreading her open with his thumbs, lightly touching her still-sensitive clit.

“No,” she moaned. “I can’t.”

“I think you can.”

He took his time, but he proved that she could. This time when it was finished, when her limbs refused to work and she lay against the pillows and thought about a nap, he stood and reached for his T-shirt hem with one hand, dragged it up and off until that magnificent chest was on display.

Paige perked up. She was still suffering the aftershocks of his sensual assault, thinking she couldn’t possibly have another orgasm for hours, when the sight of his chest set off a new current of desire within.

When he shoved his jeans and underwear down his hips, her breath caught. His penis sprang free, hard and beautiful, and Paige thought she’d never wanted a man so much in her life. Especially since she was already perfectly satisfied.

But oh, he was lovely. She wanted to lick him. She sat up, reaching for him, but he backed just out of reach.

“Not this time. I want to be inside you.”

He produced a condom from his wallet, and she thanked God for men who came prepared. Then he rolled it on and sank down on top of her again. He didn’t let his body touch hers yet, however. He held himself up on those strong arms of his, hovering over her, and she shivered at the heat in those eyes.

She ran her hands over the muscles of his arms, over his pectorals, marveling at how gorgeous he was. How amazing his body. These muscles weren’t carved in a gym, though he probably kept them honed in one.

No, these muscles had been carved during intense military training. She couldn’t imagine everything he’d seen. Her heart ached as she thought of what he’d told her earlier about his friend.

“Wyatt,” she breathed, because her heart was full and she couldn’t say anything else.

“I need you to know something, Paige. I need you to know that I haven’t spent the past few months in Eagle’s Ridge picking up women and screwing around. You’re my first since I left the Navy. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s the truth.”

She threaded her fingers into his hair. “Thank you for telling me.”

But part of her wished she didn’t know, because it made this more special than it should be. For her, anyway. She didn’t want to get attached to him, but she was. She already knew it.

He lowered himself slowly, by degrees, and then he took her mouth. She opened to him eagerly, her mouth and her body, lifting her hips and wrapping her legs around his thighs.

He pressed against her entrance, solid and large, and then he kept on pressing until he filled her. Until they were joined together in the most intimate way possible.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I will be.” It was the truth. He was big and it had been a long time, but her body was quickly adjusting.

“You ready?”

“Yes.”

He began to move, withdrawing slowly and then pushing back in. Sensation streaked through her at every movement of his body inside hers. She didn’t remember sex being so thrilling, but with him it was. At a certain point, with anyone else, it had seemed like something you had to do in order to get the reward.

With Wyatt, sex was the reward. An orgasm was merely icing on the cake.

It didn’t take long before he was moving hard and fast, hips rising and falling into her again and again. Paige couldn’t stop the low moans coming from her throat as he slammed into her, drawing all the nerves in her body into that one tight point as the base of his cock rubbed against her clit over and over.

And then she exploded as she had before, but somehow it was more intense this time. Wyatt didn’t stop stroking into her, didn’t stop drawing every ounce of pleasure from her that he could get. When she was spent and trembling, he thrust one last time, groaning as he came deep inside her.

He propped himself on his elbows, his body still joined to hers, and kissed her leisurely. As if he had all the time in the world. Paige arched into him and gave him everything she had.

“That was amazing,” he whispered against her lips. Then he levered up and went to the bathroom. She assumed he was taking care of the condom.

She stretched and yawned. The sheets felt so sensual against her skin. The covers were warm, her body sated. Her belly growled, but who needed food at a time like this?

There was a meow on the other side of the closed door and then a scratch on the wood. Paige sat up.

Wyatt strode from the bathroom, his naked body on display for her viewing pleasure. He was so at ease in his skin whereas she’d drawn the covers up to hide her breasts. She wasn’t ashamed of her body, but she was shy now that they’d been intimate.

And she was confused, because what did it mean?

Does it need to mean anything?

No, it didn’t. She wasn’t typically a sex for sex’s sake kind of girl, but she often wished she was. Usually she needed to be in a relationship—so this was an unusual situation for her.

And yet the barn door was open and the horse had escaped. There was no rewinding this. She and Wyatt were lovers, and she intended to go wherever it led her.

He stopped on his way to the bed and frowned. “I hate to ask, but should I let that damned cat in?”

She didn’t mind that he called Fluffy a damned cat. Because no matter what he said about her kitty, he didn’t hate Fluffy. He’d had every reason to after the incident with his bed, but she’d seen him petting Fluffy whenever he twined around Wyatt’s legs.

Of course he also called him a little furry bastard. For some silly reason, she was ridiculously amused by that thought.

“Maybe we should.”

Wyatt stalked over to the door and opened it. Mr. Fluffypants streaked inside and jumped on the bed. Wyatt headed over and picked up his pants. Disappointment pricked her.

“Are you leaving?”

He glanced at the cat. “I don’t trust him around my package, you know?” He grinned. “But that’s not enough to make me leave a warm bed with you, Paige.”

“Then where are you going?” she asked as he dragged on his pants.

“To fix dinner.”

She lay back against the pillows again and stroked Fluffy’s soft fur while he purred.

“I could get used to this. Hot sex with a hot man who then fixes me dinner? You’re hired for as long as you want.”

He frowned and her heart skipped because she knew she’d gone too far.

“Let’s get something straight, princess,” he said. “I’m your protector because I’ve been hired to be. But nothing else that happens between us has anything to do with money or jobs. If you think that’s the case, then it ends here.”

Everybody had a price. She’d learned that early in life. She’d also learned that people only stuck by you when you had something to give them. When there was a benefit for them. But maybe Wyatt was different.

“I’m sorry, Wyatt. I shouldn’t have said that. It was a joke, but a bad one.”

He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “This is why I didn’t want it to get personal. It complicates things when I’m also hired to protect you. Judgments get clouded.”

“Are you saying you want to go back to the way it was before?”

“I am saying that. But it’s too late, Paige. You’re in my blood like a drug. I can’t quit you yet.”

Yet. Who knew that one word could hurt so much? Because he would quit her. It was just a matter of time.