Can't Help Falling In Love (The Sullivans #3)(39)

Bigger.

And so much scarier.

Too scary to go there alone.

“Please,” she gasped out.

Gabe lifted his eyes to hers, sweat dripping from his forehead to hers as he stilled. “Anything,” he told her, his voice as raw as hers.

But he couldn’t give her anything. He couldn’t become a man who went to a safe office every day and promised to come home in one intact piece every night.

And she could never ask him for that.

All she could ask for was this moment, this pleasure.

“Gabe.” She lifted one hand to his cheek, cradled him there as her whole world came down to this man, this one moment, this desire that demanded to be sated. They wouldn’t get any more moments like this. All they had was now, these final moments of sweet perfection. “I need you here with me.”

“I need to be there, too.”

His words were as good as a caress, enough to push her to the precipice of a pleasure so intense she couldn’t even imagine what was on the other side.

For the first—and last—time, Megan opened herself up completely to Gabe, pushed down every wall, shoved apart every prison bar, and let him in, so deep that as he slowly slid into her, as he filled all of the empty places she hadn’t even realized were there, she could have sworn he touched her soul.

Again and again he rocked over her, around her, inside her, his arms strong, his heartbeat steady, his kisses sweet and demanding all at the same time as they climaxed together.

No one has ever loved me like this was her last thought before the prison bars started falling back into place, crashing down in a circle all around her heart.

Chapter Fourteen

Plain and simple, Megan blew Gabe’s mind. To the point where, even though he knew he must be crushing her, he couldn’t manage to move a muscle from where he lay, sprawled over her, breathing heavily into the damp crook of her neck.

She was breathing just as hard, and he wasn’t surprised, given that their lovemaking had been at least as physical as anything he’d done even as a firefighter.

Gabe thrived on putting out fires. His job was his calling and every day he went to work, he went with a deep level of satisfaction over the life he’d chosen. But no triumph over fire had ever left him feeling this elated.

Which was why, no matter how many times he’d tried to hold onto the idea of one night—and only one night—with Megan, his brain hadn’t been able to pull it off.

He hadn’t forgotten what they’d agreed on in her apartment, but that didn’t mean he could discount what had just happened here between them, either.

Slowly lifting himself up off her sweet, soft curves, he looked down into her eyes, still fuzzy from the aftereffects of her climax. He smiled at her, the beautiful woman he couldn’t get enough of, and said, “Good morning.”

Two short words were all the time it took for Megan to go from pliable and loose and warm to rigid and tense and cold.

The caveman inside of him wanted to keep her pinned there beneath him on the bed. Instead, he forced himself to let her scoot away from him.

She reached for the first piece of clothing she could find. He wasn’t sure she realized that she’d grabbed his shirt, that she was wrapping herself up in him. The only thing he was sure of was the fact that Megan was desperate to get away from him.

In the decade that Gabe had been taking women to bed, they had only ever tried to get closer to him. They’d tried to find ways to spend more time with him. They’d worked to seduce him. A couple had even hoped for a ring.

But none had ever tried to get away from him.

Until now.

When Megan had made it to the far corner of the room, her back up against the wall, clutching his shirt tightly closed around her, she finally stopped and stared at him with big, alarmed eyes.

“That can never happen again.” She shook her head, that hair he’d had his fingers buried in just seconds ago falling over her shoulders like crumpled silk. “Never.”

Gabe got off the bed and pulled on his boxers to give himself time to think before replying. Back in her apartment their discussion about staying away from each other made sense. Perfect sense.

But now...well, there sure as hell wasn’t anything perfect about keeping their distance.

After his jeans were back on, he turned to the beautiful woman watching him so warily and said, “Never’s an awfully long time. Especially after—” He gestured to the bed. “Seems to me instead of saying never we should be discussing things.”

The shock on her face was better than that wary fear. “What’s there to discuss?”

He wasn’t at all pleased to note that his name on her lips was no longer the almost-prayer it had been when she was coming beneath him. “Seems like there’s plenty, Megan.”

She all but flinched at the way he said her name, still a caress, as if they were still in bed together, rather than standing at opposite ends of the room throwing the word never around.

“No,” she said, her hands clutching even tighter at his shirt, “just because we—” This time she was the one looking at the bed. “Nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed.” He didn’t want to have to push her like this, but he sure as hell didn’t like the way she was pushing him.

“Yes. Okay. Fine.” Each of the words was clipped as they fell from her kiss-swollen lips. “We had sex. And it was great, but—”