“Can I help you?” he asked.
“I don’t know the location of anyone else’s room but yours,” she said, finally glancing at his face. “I didn’t want to go around knocking indiscriminately.”
Amusement etched lines in the corners of his amazing eyes. “By all means, let’s not be indiscriminate.”
At that sign of humor, her clutching stomach eased a little. “I need help.”
“What kind?”
Turning, she presented him with her back. “My hair is caught in the dress’s zipper.”
In a breath, he’d pulled her into his room and shut the door. She glanced around, and the low illumination from the bedside lamp revealed a massive four-poster, the lake view beyond French doors, the attached bath. The space smelled like him, that expensive, clean scent that reminded her of clear water and night air.
“I need to see better,” he said, and towed her toward the bathroom.
In there, he flipped on the overhead light. The mirror over the double sinks reflected her image—flushed cheeks and big eyes. Chase lined himself up behind her and studied the dress situation with a serious expression.
“How bad is it?” she asked, craning her neck to look over her shoulder.
“Pretty bad,” he replied. She felt his fingers at the midway of her back, the farthest point she’d managed to draw down the zipper before realizing her hair was caught in its teeth. As he worked on the situation, his knuckles bumped her spine and goose bumps broke out all over.
Chase stilled. “Really bad.”
“Oh, no.” She bit her bottom lip. “Tell me you don’t have to cut my hair.”
He cleared his throat and went back to fiddling with the zipper. “I don’t want to make any promises.”
She sighed, and tried not to squirm under the onslaught of his inadvertent touches. He doesn’t mean to do this, she told herself. He’s not intending to stir you up.
But she was stirred up anyway, heat and heaviness pooling in her body. Her breasts felt swollen and the tips were hard. Ashley’s free hand gripped the edge of the granite countertop, and she hoped he didn’t notice her state.
“You looked very beautiful tonight,” he said.
Oh, how glad she was that he’d noticed that! Trying to play it cool, though, she lifted one shoulder. “Um, thanks. I’m usually in jeans and T-shirts, so this was outside my realm of experience. As a matter of fact, everything that’s happened since I met you has been outside my realm of experience.”
“I made you cry last night.”
“What?” She glanced at him in the mirror. His focus was still on her uncooperative dress.
“I’m sorry.”
“But...” She tried to rein in her thoughts. “Before the zipper predicament, I was going to come to you and thank you for last night.”
He looked up now, and their gazes caught in the glass. “You were sad.”
“Yes, at first. But telling you...it made me feel better. I haven’t had to say the words before, did you know that? News travels fast in Blue Arrow. So it made me feel better to know I could tell you. It was liberating.”
“Okay. That’s good. But I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“Why not?” Ashley demanded. Then an unsettling thought occurred to her. “Was it a pity kiss?”
“Definitely not pity.” He grimaced. “I tried telling myself it was for comfort, but then...”
“Then it became very hot,” she whispered.
He nodded. “And it made you cry. I wanted to kick myself.”
“Oh, Chase.” She pressed her lips together because she felt like crying again. “I wasn’t sad anymore. Those tears...they were tears of joy.”
His eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Of relief, too. I was gratified to know I could respond to another man. It proves to me that I’ve made it to the other side of grief.”
A strange expression crossed his face and his gaze zeroed in on her face. Because she still had one hand holding up the bodice of her dress, she could feel how that look made her heart pound. It thrummed against the center of her palm, and she pressed harder, hoping she could keep it inside her chest.
Chase cupped her shoulders and drew her back against him. She could feel his bare skin against her spine. His mouth touched her temple. “You know I want you.”
She wanted him, too. So much. And it was her year, right? Her year of... “Yes,” she told him.
His hands tightened on her. Then he turned her to face him. His eyes studied her face. “You said your husband was your one and only love.”
“He’s gone now.” She traced Chase’s lips with her fingertips. “And I don’t want him to be my one and only love.”
“Then he won’t be.”
Her mouth turned down. “I’m still stuck in this dress.”
“I managed to free your hair. The zipper’s all the way down,” Chase said. He touched the back of the hand still plastered to her chest. “Let go, Ashley.”
* * *
LET GO. CHASE watched Ashley mouth the words, then her hand drifted away, and the dress dropped.
Hot blood shot like fire through his veins.
“Ashley,” he groaned, his gaze roaming all over her bare, creamy skin. Under the dress, she’d worn nothing but a pair of tiny lace panties. It made him crazy, thinking all night that she’d been just a few feet away, nearly naked.
His hand lifted and he drew the backs of two fingers along the gentle slope of her shoulder. Her lashes drifted down, casting shadows on her pink-tinged cheeks. So lovely.
His knuckles traced the outer curve of one breast and she trembled, but stayed in place as the circle spiraled, spiraled. When he touched the hard knot of her upright nipple, she gasped.
“Shh,” he soothed, leaning down to press his mouth to her temple, her cheek, the shell of her ear. “You smell so good.” He’d wake in the morning with her scent on his skin, he thought. It would be a pleasure.
But before that, other pleasures.
His palm brushed her nipple, back and forth, as the other curved under her bottom to fit her closer to him. Lips trailing across her cheek, he went for another kiss. She opened for him immediately, and he tasted her deeply, his tongue moving forward in dominant surges.
Just like sex.
But then he slowed himself. Think of her, Bradley. If he’d understood her right, she’d had only one other man in her bed. Not that he cared about numbers. But he cared about Ashley, and if this was her first time being with someone in four years, he had to make it good. Great.
One of her arms wound around his neck and her other hand slid between them. Hell! He jerked into the touch, his body disconnecting from his mind.
“No,” he said against her mouth, and grabbed for her wrist.
“No?” She arched against him, and he felt her hard nipples against his chest like tiny brands.
“Okay, yes.” Yes, yes, yes. “But later.”
“What now?” She drew her bare heel up the back of his calf and thigh to twine his hip with her leg. On tiptoe, she pressed against the placket of his pants. The heat was scalding-good. “What can I do now?”
Chase