Once is Never Enough. Mira Kelly Lyn

for for three years. Longer than that if she was willing to look back. But she wasn’t. Not tonight. Not when this moment, right now—as the familiar stranger above her lowered his mouth to the hollow between her breasts—was too good to miss even one second of.

      Those blue eyes peered up at her as the corner of his mouth twisted into a mischievous smile. “This little bow here,” he murmured gruffly, “has been begging me to play with it all night.” Then, catching one loose string between his teeth, he tugged until the knot slipped free, taking Nichole’s next breath with it.

      She hadn’t thought of the peach cami as particularly sexy, hadn’t consciously drawn attention to herself for years. But at the rough sound of appreciation scraping from his throat as he used his hand to part the tiny expanse of soft cotton between her breasts just that much further, she flushed with the pleasure of knowing it was.

      His tongue swirled deep in the hollow there, wetting the skin first and then blowing a cool breath across it after, making her belly turn and twist.

      There wasn’t enough contact between them. Not for the way her body was beginning to ache. To heat. To need. He was above her on the bed, his weight supported on one arm and the knees that straddled her thigh.

      His tongue made another wet foray across the swell of her breast and then stopped within a warm, teasing breath of her nipple. So close.

      Arching into him, she offered the straining bud to his kiss, begging him to push her bra aside and take. But just as quickly he eased back, drawing another wet trail up to her collarbone, her neck and then to the decadent spot behind her ear that had never felt quite so sensitive as this.

      “I want you naked, Nichole,” he growled against the spot, making her heart skitter and pound.

      “You know my name,” she gasped as his palm smoothed over her belly to the hem of her shirt and pushed it up.

      Pulling the gathered fabric over her head, he tossed the shirt aside and stared down at her breasts, covered in a plain cream demi-cup. “And you don’t know mine.”

      She swallowed hard.

      It shouldn’t have been exciting. She only wanted to think of it as a safeguard, a defense against this man who’d stirred the first response her body had known in three years, and quite possibly the strongest ever. But there was no mistaking the playful taunt in his tone. This was sexy gameplay. Or maybe a second cousin to it. It had to be some relation based on the way the words alone and all their suggestive implications licked at the needy, achy places within her. Places she hadn’t thought existed.

      A flick of his finger and the front clasp opened. Another and she was bared to him. The peaks of her nipples tight and straining for a touch only he could give her. And now, watching the way that electric blue glaze zeroed in on them, she didn’t think she’d manage her next breath if he didn’t ease them.

      “Naked, Nichole.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      BACKING OFF THE BED he helped her out of her jeans and panties. Staring in blatant appreciation at her naked form spread out before him, he shed his shirt with a few efficient jerks and went to work on his belt.

      Nichole’s mouth went dry, her eyes wide. And then she was on her knees at the edge of the bed, pushing his hands from the wide length of leather and running her own up the steep plains of his chest. She’d felt the power in his shoulders when he carried her, seen the definition across his pecs when she’d opened his shirt, but this—nothing had prepared her for the hard-cut terrain of his shirtless form.

      He was like a work of art. A Greek god. A veritable playground of muscle and man. And he was only half undressed.

      “Naked,” she murmured, her fingers jumping the crest of each abdominal ridge as they descended back to his belt, tugged the stiff leather until the buckle freed, before moving on to his straining fly.

      He stood patient before her as she opened his zipper with trembling fingers. As if he sensed her need to be an active participant rather than a passive player. But still he touched her all the while, never breaking contact, his hands always moving, coasting over her bare shoulders, her neck and back as she pushed the denim low on his hips. His thumbs brushed the line of her jaw, the swell of her bottom lip, the hollow at the base of her throat as she eased the stretchy waistband of his white cotton boxer briefs over the thick head of his erection and saw for the first time his actual size.

      Big. Like everything else about him.

      Different. Than anything she’d experienced before.

      Exciting. In a way she’d never known.

      Unable to resist, she closed a hand over him, testing the steely length.

       “Nichole.”

      At the gruff sound of her name she lifted her gaze up, up, up until she met the blue burn of his. Intense. Barely contained. A shocking contrast to the light touch he’d treated her to. The look in his eyes said he wanted to throw her back on the bed and take her hard. Let the weight of his body hold her down.

      Wow. Okay. She was pretty sure she wanted that too.

      She gave him the space to toe off his shoes and discard his jeans, retrieving his wallet and the condom within in the process.

      Breathless with mounting anticipation, she waited for him to rip it open and roll it on … frowned as he tossed it onto the bed instead.

      Please don’t let him be one of those guys who only wants to wear protection at the very end. She was so excited, so caught up in the magic of what was happening, the wet blanket of a conversation about risks and necessity and protection really wasn’t one she wanted to need to have.

      At her questioning stare, his brow quirked.

      Okay—so, yes. She was going to have to have the conversation. “Umm, you’re going to wear that? The whole time, right?”

      The eyes above her looked briefly confused, then cleared completely. “I would never take that kind of risk, Nichole. Not with your life. Not with mine.”

      The conviction in his words was unmistakable, and left her with no doubt about his sincerity or commitment to their mutual protection. Which was incredibly sexy.

      Almost as much as when his mouth tipped in a way that suggested a secret lingered behind his crooked smile. One he looked forward to sharing with her.

      “What? You didn’t think the fun and games were over yet, did you?”

      She swallowed, unwilling to admit that in her experience the bulk sum of “fun and games” took place between the time the condom went on and came off. “I—I don’t know.”

      He leaned in closer, and then closer still, so the light pressure of his mouth against her ear and his bare chest at her shoulder guided her down to the bed. “Not even close.”

      Nervous laughter escaped her even as her inner walls clenched with unmet need.

      His hand moved between her legs, cupping her sex as he held her gaze. A single thick finger slid between her swollen folds and then inside her. Deep and deeper. Slow and steady. He withdrew to paint a light circle around that throbbing bundle of nerves—the callused pad of a workman’s finger adding sensation when she was already beyond what she’d believed she could take—his gentle, rough touch a decadent sensual contrast.

      Different.

      Every single thing about him.

      About this night.

      Another slow thrust of his finger and her hips rocked to meet him. Her back arched and the desire pooling warm and thick through her belly spilled free, making her slick, making her beg. “Please. I need—”

      “You need more?” A second finger joined the first, this one pushing a gasp from her lungs instead of words.

      Want coiled tight within her, making her