“Are you ready, Katie?”
Her voice got strangled in her throat, thick with need and desire. “Please, yes.”
His body tensed in anticipation as he teased his hardness along her entrance. She was slick and wet and swollen—so damned perfect. He closed his eyes and savored her body as he gently prodded her entry, inch by inch, slow and deep, releasing a growl of pure animal need. “Ahh, Kate.”
“Garrett,” she cried out and stiffened. A killer wave of red-hot ecstasy whipped through him, tensing his muscles that already strained for release.
He groaned when he realized he wasn’t wearing any protection.
“Kate...damn...”
She cried out when he dragged out, grabbing his shoulders and saying, “Don’t stop, don’t stop!”
He groaned in torment and eased back in, totally lost in her heat. The sound she released was slow and dark, as if the pain were morphing into pleasure. “Better?” he rasped.
He took her answering whimper in his mouth and kissed deeper until her body was writhing wildly underneath his.
He drove inside her once more.
Kate gasped, moaning out his name, and it was the sexiest thing he’d ever heard her say. And when she said, “More,” he snapped and began a frantic pace.
They kissed like crazy for several minutes, and then she clutched his hard shoulders and gazed up at him with cloudy blue eyes.
She was so damned beautiful like this—this was how he wanted to have her every night in his bed. Red hair. Coral lips. Rosy cheeks. Thickened, recently kissed nipples.
He didn’t even remember that his body hurt, that his throat was raw. All he knew was that Kate watched him, her breath rippling from between his lips as they moved together. All he knew was that he was shattering with pleasure as he gripped her waist and increased the pace. He thrust deeper, harder, lost in her grip, her heat, in her.
A knot of ecstasy pulled inside him and shot him off to outer space, and with three more thrusts, he pushed her past the precipice into an explosion that made her shout his name as he sank all the way home, spilling himself inside her.
For minutes they lay there, entangled and sweaty. He was breathless, sated and frankly, awed as hell.
He’d never felt so whole. He’d never made love like this. He shifted to look at her, then groaned at the sight of her languid body and dewy face, so beautiful and so taken.
“I’m sorry I lost control, Katie,” he murmured, kissing her cheek, loving how warm and loose she felt as she snuggled closer. “I should’ve worn protection. What day are you in your cycle?”
“I don’t know. Eight maybe,” she said, tucking her face in his neck, as if hiding from his prying eyes. “Please don’t worry, Garrett.”
“Eight. Is that even safe...?” Man. He’d been as careless and excited as an adolescent to touch her. Not using protection had been inexcusable, made his chest churn with disgust at himself. “Freckles, damn...”
She sat up and pushed his hands away, shaking her head. “Please just...please stop apologizing for it, Garrett. I wanted this to happen, so did you. We had fun, it was great, it’s done. There’s no need to get all serious about it, and there’s certainly no need for you to add it to your guilt bag.”
Garrett sat back, so stunned at her words, his mind came up blank. Guilt bag? So she thought he had a guilt bag?
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
“It means it was no big deal! It was just sex. You’ve had it with millions of women and I plan to do the same with other men in the future. I don’t want you to apologize and I definitely don’t want you considering...thinking that it could possibly...everything is all right here, okay?”
“I’m trying to be responsible. If there are repercussions—”
“Stop! Just stop! Even if there were...”
“If there were, I need to fricking know before I enter into any sort of agreement with Cassandra Clarks!” he angrily barked.
Kate stiffened. “What do you mean? What agreement?”
His lips formed a thin, angry line.
“What agreement, Garrett?”
He groaned and raked a hand through his hair, then let his hand fall. “She wants to marry me as a condition for selling us her share of Clarks.”
“Marry...you?”
A thousand expressions crossed her face, until hurt ended up on the forefront, and Garrett felt like an ass.
“You! How dare you touch me when you’re thinking of...I would never marry for anything other than love!”
He winced as she angrily jumped out of bed and searched for her dress.
He’d just had sex without a condom and honestly? He didn’t even care.
He wanted her. He just wanted her. If it meant taking responsibility and doing something about it now, he would. But now it felt like the last thing she wanted was to be tied to him.
She’d basically told him that she thought the worst of him, that she wouldn’t marry him if he were the last man on earth. Of course she didn’t want him. He’d mucked up her entire life, and if she got pregnant, he’d muck it up again, taking her dream of Florida away from her.
The realization hurt him so much, he could only watch her from the bed, wondering if he’d actually stayed away from her all these years out of duty, or because he was a coward and knew, deep down, that he just didn’t deserve her.
“Do you want some of the food I brought over, or should I just go home now?” she asked, and as if she’d already decided on the latter, she slipped back into her dress. Then she resumed searching on the floor for her panties.
He held them out to her with a scowl. “You were trembling in this bed with me, Kate. You. Begged. For me.”
“You’re right.” She covered her face with shaking hands, then plunged her legs into her panties. “I even started it.”
He was baffled. She looked very perturbed by the fact that she’d slept with him. He didn’t know what to make of it when he’d just felt her writhe beneath him, wet and wanton.
“No. I did, Kate. I started it,” he said, gentling his voice, standing up to embrace her. “Hell, I’ve been thinking about doing this with you since...”
Her eyes widened as though he’d just divulged something completely damning. “Since when? Since I said I was going to Florida? Ohmigod, are you trying to use sex to get me to bend to your will and stay here? Why else would you touch me when you haven’t your whole life!”
She suddenly looked enlightened, while he stared blankly at her, puzzled and confused. Her cheeks were reddening by the second, but Garrett was growing too angry at her accusation to care. “Kate, do you seriously believe I’m that cold and calculating?”
Did she think anything even remotely redeeming about him, and was there any chance in hell she could ever love him when she was holding their past against him?
“Of course I do! You’re a man who just confessed to be considering some sort of weird business marriage with some bimbo you barely even know!”
“She’s not a bimbo, Kate,” he said, just to be fair to Cassandra.
Kate’s cheeks went redder. “You still haven’t told me why you went behind your beloved’s back and slept with me.”
“Why don’t you first tell me why the hell you slept with me? Were you just horny or did you just pity me tonight, or were you apologizing for giving