Jim ran his eyes all over her. She was huddled in his beat-to-shit leather jacket, her face turned down, her long hair falling over her shoulder and curling up into her cleavage. She might have come across as a seducer, but the truth was she was a good girl who was in over her head.

“Do you want to talk?” he said, because she deserved better than what he wanted from her.

“No.” She shook her head. “No, I want to do…something.”

Okay, Jim was definitely not kind. He was a man who was a palm’s reach away from a beautiful woman, and even though she was giving off vulnerable vibes, playing therapist with her was not the sort of horizontal he was after.

As her eyes lifted, they were orphan sad. “Please…kiss me?”

Jim held back, her expression putting the brakes on him and then some. “You sure about this?”

She swept her hair over her shoulder and tucked it behind her ear. When she nodded, the dime-size diamond in her lobe flashed. “Yes…very. Kiss me.”

When she held his stare and didn’t look away, Jim leaned in, feeling ensnared and not minding in the slightest. “I’ll go slow.”

Oh…God…

Her lips were every bit as soft as he’d imagined, and he stroked her mouth carefully with his own, afraid he would crush her. She was sweet, she was warm, and she trusted him to set the careful pace, welcoming his tongue inside of her, then later shifting back so that his palm could ease down from her face to her collarbone…to her full breast.

Which changed the tempo of things.

Abruptly, she sat up and took off his jacket. “Zipper’s in the back.”

His rough workman’s hands found it quick, and he worried about marring the blue dress as he drew the fastening downward. And then he stopped thinking as she took the top from her breasts herself, revealing a satin-and-lace bra that probably cost as much as his truck.

Through the fine material, her nipples were peaked, and in the shadows thrown by the dim light of the dash, they were feast-for-the-starved spectacular.

“My breasts are real,” she said softly. “He wanted me to get implants, but I…I don’t want them.”

Jim frowned, thinking that whatever pig asshole had come up with that one deserved an eye operation—performed by a tire iron. “Don’t do it. You’re beautiful.”

“Really?” Her voice wavered.

“Truly.”

Her shy smile meant too much to him, piercing through his chest, going too deep. He knew all about the ugly side of life, had been through the kinds of things that could make a single day feel like it lasted a month, and he wished her none of that. Seemed, though, she’d had plenty of hard cracks herself.

Jim reached over and turned the heater on to warm her.