“And there’s no doubt I am, seeing as how I’d been off the horse for ten years before I jumped back on with a vengeance today.”

He closed his eyes again and took a deep breath. “I’m going to need a minute to get it together so it isn’t over before it begins.”

Emma shook with silent laughter.

“You think this is funny?” He pounced on her, pinning her arms to the bed and tickling her underarm with kisses that made her scream with laughter.

“Stop! I hate being tickled!”

“I hate being laughed at.”

“I’m very sorry,” she said, trying to look contrite and failing to fool him.

He grunted out a laugh. “You are not.” Taking himself in hand, he began to enter her, going as slowly as he possibly could in anticipation of her being sore from earlier.

She sucked in a sharp deep breath that didn’t sound like pleasure to him.

“Are you okay?”

“Hurts.”

“We don’t have to…”

When he would’ve withdrawn from her, she curled her legs around his hips. “I want to. Just go slow.”

He did as she asked, entering her in small increments and then retreating before doing it again and again and again until they were moving together effortlessly and all she could feel was the pleasure.

Then he curled his arm under her leg and pressed it to her chest, opening her wider to his deep strokes, and the pleasure became nearly unbearable.

“You are,” he whispered softly, his lips brushing against her ear, “so incredibly beautiful all the time. But you’ve never been more so than you are right now.”

Sensory overload. That was the only way to describe the emotions that assailed her as he made love to her with his words and his body. Linking their fingers, his gaze locked on hers as he picked up the pace. “Emma…”

He drove into her, touching a place deep inside that set off a massive orgasm that had her trembling and quaking from the power of it.

“Jesus,” he muttered in the second before he came, too. His head landed on her shoulder.

Emma curled her hand around his nape and her legs around his hips to keep him close to her. If you had asked her a week ago if a person could fall in love in three days, she would’ve said no way. Now…

Now she had reason to believe he had the power to change her life—and Simone’s—if she let him.

Chapter 10

Love is the answer, and you know that for sure; love is a flower, you've got to let it grow.

—John Lennon