I turned to face him, wrapped my arms around his neck, looked up into his eyes. “I thought you were dead,” I told him. His hands were up under my T-shirt now; his thumbs grazed my bare nipples.

“So you said,” he murmured, and nibbled at my mouth.

“No, I mean really dead—”

Tucker hoisted me off my feet, and if I’d been the kind of woman who worries about such things, I might have been embarrassed at the way I automatically wrapped both legs around his hips.

“You’re about to find out how really not dead I am,” he said.

Fortunately, the bed wasn’t far away; Tucker made the trek with me entwined around him, and we fell to the mattress together. The bedsprings creaked so loudly that I was glad Bad-Ass Bert’s was closed until further notice; I wasn’t tracking at the moment, or I would have been ashamed of such a thought, given what had happened.

Tucker was lying on top of me, and this was one of those times where there wasn’t going to be any foreplay. He felt so good, everywhere we were touching, and the way he kept kissing me almost brought on the big O well before the fact.

He sampled my breasts, simultaneously tugging down my sweatpants, and I was beyond ready for him when he suddenly lifted his head and looked into my eyes. “I didn’t bring—”

“I don’t care,” I said.

Tucker came into me with a long, hard thrust of his hips.

My eyes rolled back; damn it, I was coming. Already. My entire body seized around him, buckling with a release so sudden and so ferocious that I couldn’t even cry out. I was too busy falling apart.

Forget the long, slow build—I’d been working on that ever since the last time we’d made love, more than three weeks before.

Tucker was a man focused on the job at hand; his body moved rhythmically on and within mine. I was already starting another climb, and when I could focus again, I noticed the half smile quirking his mouth. He was taking his time, shifting his hips slightly, from side to side.

The friction was delicious.

I clawed at his back. “Oh, damn, Tuck—”

“Slow and easy, babe,” he rasped.

I exploded again three seconds later, and when I came out of the daze, breathless and slick with perspiration, he was still setting his own pace.

We climaxed together the next time, and it was so intense, so powerful, that I yelled. Tucker went deep, and closed his eyes, and I saw the muscles tighten in his face.