“Ryder...”

“Don’t,” he said. He unbuckled his seat belt, scooted away from the driver’s seat, then hauled her up onto his lap. She was straddling him, her blond hair covering both of them like a curtain. “Don’t make a joke out of this. Don’t make light of it.”

He pressed his thumb against her lips. “I can’t wait,” he ground out. “I have to be inside you. I waited for you for seventeen years, and once wasn’t enough. It’s never going to be enough.”

She blinked, surprise and something else glistening in her eyes. “Ryder...”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know this isn’t you. I know you do things a little bit different. But I can only be me. And I’m... This is why I let you leave. Because I’m not cool. I don’t have any chill when it comes to us. When it comes to this.”

“I’m glad,” she whispered. “I’ve never... No man has ever looked at me the way that you do.”

“Because no man has ever felt for you what I do,” he said, the words a vow of certainty. “I know it.”

“How?” she whispered.

“It’s impossible. Nobody could ever feel this.” He wrapped his hand around her wrist, pressed her palm against his chest. Let her feel the way that his heart was raging, utterly and completely out of control. “Nobody,” he said.

“Ryder...”

“Kiss me,” he said.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SAMMY WASN’T BIG on obeying commands, and he knew it, but she did obey this one.

Those lips made contact with his, feather-soft at first, until he angled his head, and she seemed to sink right into him. He could feel the heat between her thighs blazing against his arousal, could feel the desperate need as she slid her tongue against his. He could feel it in the little whimpers that she made, the way that she arched her body against his.

And he was wild. Wild in a way he could never remember being, because nothing had ever been this. Nothing had ever been her.

Sammy.

He stripped her top up over her head, pushed her skirt up so that her thighs were exposed.

She didn’t have a bra on.

It drove him absolutely crazy when she did that. And he had spent years pretending not to notice.

“Do you know what a damned achievement it was to be around you when you were like this?” He pressed his thumbs against her nipples and slid them over the tightened buds. “And not spend the whole time staring at you. For years, Sammy. For years I wanted nothing more than to touch you here. Like this. To taste you.” He pressed his palm against the center of her back, brought her body closer to him and sucked one nipple deep into his mouth, proving his point. She gasped, wiggled restlessly.

She was panting, tugging at his shirt, trying to get it up over his head, but she couldn’t because he was latched onto her.