“Yes, please,” she said. “You going to deliver or not?”

He laughed low in his throat. “Now she says the ‘please,’” he said, apparently to no one in particular. Then he met her gaze. “I can deliver.” This was a low, husky, confident vow.

She shivered in anticipation. “You keep saying stuff like that, but I’m still standing here waiting for you to prove it.”

“Our first kiss wasn’t proof enough? Or our second?”

She shrugged, feeling overheated and uncomfortably aroused and a little bit like he was just teasing her. “A kiss is a kiss. They’re all the same to me.”

“Liar.”

She felt herself flush, the heat rising all the way to the roots of her hair. Caught. Because she knew exactly how good it’d been when he’d taken her in his arms and kissed her. She couldn’t forget a single second of any of it, all indelibly imprinted in her brain, every brush of his mouth, every touch of his fingers, every rough male sound of appreciation torn from his throat.

She started to turn away, but he pulled her back to him, her spine to his chest, her butt to his crotch.

He was still hard, deliciously so, and she couldn’t help but wriggle into him.

He whipped her around to face him, and his eyes were dark and flickering with something much more than amusement now. Challenge and heat, both of those things licking along her every nerve ending. “Let me show you,” he said, and lowered his head. But he surprised her when he spent a moment nuzzling at her jaw, murmuring softly against her ear. “We’re doing this.”

She clutched at him. “Yes.” God, yes.

Wrapping his hand up in her ponytail, he gently but firmly tugged until she lifted her face to his. “If I’m going to be in your bed, Sophie, you’re mine for the duration.”

And hell if that didn’t set back her inner feminist when her entire body quivered at the thought of being his. “But not in a Fifty Shades way, right?”

He flashed a grin. “Scared?”

Terrified. “You should know a few things about me,” she said. “One, I really am good at shoving a guy’s balls into his throat.”

“Duly noted,” he said. “And two?”

This was the hard part. She swallowed. “I’m really pretty vanilla.”

His eyes softened and he kissed her gently. “One of my favorite flavors,” he murmured.

Something inside her melted. “One more thing.”

“Name it,” he said.

“It’s going to have to be your bed. Mine’s too small.”

He smiled a very naughty smile. “Then I guess that makes me yours.”

She quivered at the thought. “Tell me you get hot water in your shower.”

“The hottest.”

“Jacob?”

“Yeah?”

“Hurry.”

Chapter 9

Sophie barely registered Jacob taking her hand, pulling her from the boat, the both of them moving up the dock, across the beach to his cabin.

Remembered nothing of the interior of his place or how they got to his bedroom. Remembered nothing but him kicking the door closed and pushing her up against it and kissing her.

He was hers, she thought with dazed marvel. Hers for the duration. A thrill raced through her as she fought to get even closer to him. Oh, the things she wanted to do to that hard, lean, perfect body holding her to the door, starting with licking him from chin to the waistband of those sexy board shorts and beyond. Just thinking about it had needy whimpers escaping while their mouths tangoed.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered roughly, his teeth scraping her throat as his hands slid down her thighs and lifted her up so that she could wrap her legs around him. “I’ve got you.”

She had no idea what that meant exactly, but she was racing to her first orgasm in far too long and she was very busy trying to get her hands beneath his shirt, needing his heated skin on hers. Her fingers danced over the sculpted landscape of his sleek back and then came around to his chest, where she could once again feel the beat of his heart, not nearly so steady now. With a soft sigh, she went up on tiptoes and nipped his lower lip between her teeth, tugging at it before letting go.

His dark eyes blazed with promises of the retribution she wanted. She wanted him so badly she was shaking, wanted to be held, and for just a little while, wanted to lose herself. And she wanted the same for him, wanted him to be able to lose himself in her too.

Their bodies strained to get closer, but a sheet of paper couldn’t fit between them. Her racing pulse throbbed so loudly in her own ears she couldn’t hear anything else. But then Jacob smiled that incomparable smile and she did hear something, her inner voice saying “uh-oh” in a dazed voice. You’re going to get more than you bargained for. Remember, every good thing that’s ever come into your life has cost you in blood, sweat, or tears…