“I w-was asleep. That doesn’t count.”

Her stammer drew a small smile from him. “You’re right. It doesn’t. This one does, though.” Ignoring the press of her hand against his chest as well as the way her eyes widened in shock and maybe dismay, Mac fitted his mouth over hers and sank into the satiny softness. He moved his hand from her arm to cup her cheek but kept his lips still against hers. He’d made the first move. Now it was up to her.

Mac thought he’d go mad waiting for a sign, a signal, anything to tell him she wanted more. Just when he was about to give up, he felt her uninjured hand on his neck and the first tentative brush of her tongue against his bottom lip.

Green light.

Mac devoured her with sweeping thrusts of his tongue into the sweet depths of her mouth, steeped in her addictive flavor. At first she seemed too taken aback by his ardor to respond, but when her tongue finally tangled with his, meeting him thrust for thrust, Mac fought off the urgent need for more.

Many minutes later, he pulled back from her, breathing heavily, feeling more spent by one sensuous kiss than he normally did from the full act. Opening his eyes, he found hers fixed on him. Unable to process all he saw, he took the coward’s way out by burrowing into the smooth column of her neck and pressing hot, open-mouth kisses to her heated skin.

“Mac.” She sounded as breathless as he felt.

“Hmm?” At the base of her neck, he found a sensitive tendon and rolled it between his teeth.

She cried out.

“Sorry.” Mortified by his overwhelming reaction to her, he rested his head on her shoulder and tried to regain control.

Her fingers sifted through his hair in a soothing caress that made him want to stay right there for a long, long time.

“It didn’t hurt,” she said after a charged moment of silence.

“No?”

She shook her head, and her fragrant hair brushed against his face, sending another surge of hot-blooded lust to his lap.

Encouraged, he ran his tongue lightly over the same spot on her neck.

A shudder rippled through her. “I don’t want to be what you expect me to be,” she said softly.

Raising his head, he found her eyes in the encroaching darkness. “And what’s that?”

“Easy.” Her quiet dignity touched him in places he normally kept walled off and unreachable. “Cheap.”

Mac chose his words carefully. “Sweetheart, I’ve had easy and cheap, and you’re neither.”

Incredulous, she stared at him. “How do you know that?”

“Gut instinct.”

“And your gut is never wrong?”

“Hasn’t failed me yet.”

“People in town will speak poorly of you if you get involved with me.”

“Maddie, I’ve never once given a crap what anyone thought of me, and I’m not about to start caring now.”

“That’s easy to say when you’ve been loved and adored your whole life. You have no idea how vicious people can be.”