Then his tongue slid over her, down her, into her, and flashed her to peak.

She moaned his name when her body went bowstring taut under his. Sighed his name as she seemed to dissolve under his hands.

He wanted, as he’d wanted in that stunning moment in his kitchen, to give her anything. Everything she wanted, all she needed, more than she could imagine.

He’d never known what it was to be offered unconditional love, to know it waited for him. He’d never felt deprived of it because he’d never known it existed.

And now he held the woman who’d given it to him.

She was his miracle, his magic. His key.

He pressed his lips to her shoulder, her throat, rode on the punch of these huge new emotions when her arms came around him.

Words tumbled through his mind, but none of them were enough. He found her mouth with his, cupped her hips, and filled her.

WARM and loose and sleepy, she curled into him. She was more than willing to cocoon herself in this lovely sexual haze, to drift in it to the sound of her own skin humming. Chores could wait, forever if need be. As long as she could snuggle here, feeling Flynn’s heart pound against hers.

She wondered why they didn’t just drift off to sleep this way, warm, naked, and tangled with the bloom of lovemaking covering them both like soft, silky clouds.

She stretched luxuriously under his hand when he stroked her back. “Mmmm. Let’s just stay here all night, like a couple of bears in a cave.”

“You’re happy?”

She tipped her face up to smile at him. “Of course I am.” She snuggled back in. “So happy I’m pretending there aren’t dishes waiting to be washed or leftovers to put away.”

“You haven’t been happy the last few days.”

“No, I guess I haven’t.” She settled her head more comfortably on his shoulder. “I felt like I’d lost my direction, and everything around me was shifting and changing so fast I couldn’t keep up. Then it occurred to me that if I didn’t change, at least open myself to changing, the direction didn’t matter. Because I was going nowhere.”

“There are some things I want to tell you, if you can handle some more changes.”

Uneasy, as his tone was so serious, she braced herself. “All right.”

“About Lily.”

He felt her tense, an instant tightening of muscles, and could all but feel her will herself to relax again. “This may not be the best moment to tell me about another woman. Especially one you loved and planned to marry.”

“I think it is. We knew each other casually for several months, then intimately for the best part of a year. We clicked on a number of levels. Professionally, socially, sexually—”

Her lovely cocoon was now in shreds, and she began to feel the cold. “Flynn—”

“Hear me out. It was the longest adult relationship I’d had with a woman. Serious relationship with long-term planning. I thought we were in love with each other.”