“You look… You’re stunning, Macy.”

A blush rose in her cheeks, and he couldn’t resist reaching up to caress them with his thumbs. Had no one other than him ever told her that before? It was most likely an idiotic assumption, but even so, it pissed him off. Any man she’d belonged to who neglected to praise her every damn day was a damn fool.

“Thanks. I feel kind of wilted after being in the car all this time.”

“Wilted, my ass. You’re in full bloom, baby.” He ducked as she laughed and swatted at him. “Hey, are you hungry? The city is our playground. I know we can find good sushi around here.”

“Mmm. Yes, I’m hungry,” she said, running her finger underneath his chin and getting an instant reaction from down south. “But the food can wait awhile.”

Damn straight it could. Somehow he made it through the next few minutes, waiting while she checked them in, unloading her bags for her, finding their room. It all passed in slow f**king motion. Lust had sucker-punched him. He hoped that woman knew what she’d signed on for, because he kept thinking he was going to go to hell for all the things he wanted to do to her.

“I can’t help but feel naughty about doing this,” she said as she fitted the key card into the slot. “It feels like some illicit affair, sneaking off from life, meeting up at a hotel…”

He grinned and hauled their overnight bags inside, dropping them by the door. “Then that’s what it is.”

“Secret lovers. That aren’t exactly so secret anymore.” She glanced around the room. It was nice, cool, dim from the closed curtains. Hell, he didn’t give a f**k about the room. He only gave a f**k about the bed and the woman in the room.

“Oh yeah? Who knows you’re here?” he asked.

“You know…no one, actually. I didn’t even tell Candace or Sam where I was going.”

“I hope there was no important reason for that, because Brian knows. So Candace probably does too.”

Macy muttered something that sounded like, “That isn’t necessarily true,” as she leaned over and tested the softness of the bed, but he couldn’t be bothered to ponder over it. All he could focus on was the way her blousy brown shirt cinched at her little waist and those f**king ass-bling jeans molded to her butt.

“Secret lovers, huh?” he said, moving toward her. She turned around and gave him a little smirk, taking a step back for every one he took forward. She wore her hair long and straight, and it spilled around her shoulders, inviting his fingers to sink into the heavy, lustrous silk of it. “That the way you want it?”

“No. I didn’t mean that. Like I said, we aren’t so secret now.”

And she didn’t mind. Jesus H. Could he love this girl the way she deserved? He could love her with everything he was, and still it wouldn’t be enough. He would f**k up somehow, because that was what he did.

She’d stopped her teasing retreat from his advance and stood still now, big hazel eyes watching his approach until she was looking right up into his eyes. Unflinching. Open. Her breath came a little quickly; her pulse fluttered at the side of her neck.

Would he ever get used to this breathless, speechless, f**king stupefaction she instigated when she was close to him? It all seemed so fragile… One wrong word, one wrong action from him and the whole thing would crack. He only knew how to really communicate with girls like Raina. Brash, in-your-face girls who knew why they were here: to f**k and fight and above all have a good time.

Not girls like Macy, who looked at him with expectations beyond what he could give them physically. Girls like that should know to go elsewhere to get those needs met. Brooke sure as hell had. She’d even known right where to go.

“Why’d you come here?” he asked, gently brushing back a lock of hair straying near her eye.

Confusion flitted across her delicate features. “What?”

“I’m sure it’s not about walking on the wild side anymore—hell, we never even really got there, did we? I’ve been a sucky tour guide.”

“Seth, you’ve said and done things to me no one else has. I’ve done things and thought things and said things I never thought I would. So, no, you haven’t been a ‘sucky tour guide’. You’ve been…perfect. For me, you’ve been perfect.” She took his hand, the one that hadn’t quite been able to stop touching her hair, and let her fingers slide through his. “I even talked to my parents and one of my old friends about racing again. Baby steps,” she added quickly.

Pride practically exploded in his chest. “Babe, that’s awesome.”

“Well, thanks for confronting me about it.”

“It’s all you. All I did was give you one little nudge.”

“Yeah, but…it was a nudge no one else would give me. And you did way more than that.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“I know I can be sort of a closed book sometimes. You get me to open up. You aren’t afraid to do that. It means a lot, that you would make the effort. At that moment, it was like you knew me and what I needed to hear better than anyone else ever has.”

Again, she was able to put something out there that strangled his heart in a chokehold and tied his friggin’ tongue up in knots. So he did the only thing he knew to do—pulled her in his arms and put his mouth on hers. If he couldn’t use it to speak to her right then, he could use it to make her feel good. To get closer to her.

A sigh escaped her, and he drank it up, drank her in, sliding his hands down to her ass to pull her tight against his aching cock. She whimpered against his lips, and her tongue slipped between his teeth, teasing and tempting his until he plundered her back. Her body trembled and heated against his, and when she pulled away to look up at him, her eyes were a little brighter, her lips a little fuller.

“Why didn’t you kiss me the first night we were together?”

Seriously? “Couldn’t give you everything up front.”

Her fingers curled around the back of his neck, warm and tantalizing. She wet her lips, and the knowledge that she tasted him there made his hands clench on her. “You gave me everything later.”

He leaned in, sliding his lips across hers. “Not everything.” When she parted her lips to invite the invasion of his tongue once more, he eluded her, instead trailing his mouth down her jaw and her sweet-smelling neck.

“Tease,” she chided, but he heard the tremor in the word. Chuckling, he reluctantly let go of her and stepped back, leaving her panting gently and staring at him in bewilderment.

“Undress for me,” he told her.

“What about you?”

“In due time.” He sat on the bed and leaned back against the headboard. “Do it.”

Expression unreadable, she regarded him for a few seconds, and he wondered if she might refuse despite the fact he’d seen her naked often enough.

“You’re feeling like a bad girl today, remember,” he prompted her. “You’ve run away from life to meet up with your clandestine lover in a distant city, and no one knows where you are. You’re his for the night. It scares you a little, doesn’t it.” Her quick intake of breath caused her br**sts to swell briefly, beguilingly. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, watching the effects of his words soften her body. “But it also gets you hot.”