Is that what motorcycles did? Turned you on? She couldn’t remember feeling this sexually charged in a great many years. Which was sad, since she wasn’t even thirty yet. Here she was, wordlessly straddling a motorcycle with a good-looking, caring man in front of her, who was showing some serious restraint.

Erin moved her hands high on his thighs, almost to his hips and back down.

He blew out a breath and swiftly unblocked the strap under his chin and removed his helmet.

It dropped to the gravel drive.

She didn’t stop touching him, and he didn’t turn around. “What are you thinking?” she asked, surprised at the huskiness of her own voice.

“I’m thinking that if you reach those hands any higher you’re going to realize exactly what I’m thinking.”

She smiled, and her thumbs twitched in that direction.

He held his breath.

One touch won’t hurt . . . will it?

Matt stopped her hand before she could touch him. His sudden movements made her flinch, but not in the way that said she was scared, more like excitement. “Erin?” Her name was a question.

“You don’t want me to?”

That’s when he shifted on the bike and looked at her. He unsnapped her helmet, removed it, and held it loosely in his hand.

His pupils were wide, feral with desire or adjusting to the night, she couldn’t tell. Maybe a little of both.

He wanted her. She could see it, smell his need thick in the air.

“I want you to touch every part of my body,” he whispered. “And I want to worship every inch of yours.”

Yup . . . her heart couldn’t beat faster without needing medical attention.

She wanted him, and he obviously wanted her. So what was stopping them? Erin licked her dry lips.

“Damn, Erin. I don’t want to scare you.”

She inched her fingers high on his thighs. “Do I look scared?”

A small shake of his head. His gaze dropped to her lips. “You look like you want to swallow me whole.”

“Am I that obvious?”

“Yeah, babe, you are.”

She inched closer, his mouth a breath away.

He hesitated. “If you get scared, need me to stop . . . I don’t care how far we take it, I’ll stop.”

Was that even possible? The question must have been on her face.

“Watermelon,” he said out of the blue.

“What?”

“It’s your safe word. You say watermelon and I’ll stop.”

“I don’t know if we need that,” she told him.

“We don’t know if you do.” He was serious. And the fact that he’d actually thought about this moment enough to give her a safety net made her want him even more.

“You’re right. We don’t know. But I’d like to find out.” Erin stretched the final distance and pressed her lips to his. She tasted surprise, and it was scrumptious.

Matt fiddled with the helmet in his hands before she heard him cuss under her kiss and it dropped to the ground.

The twisted position he was in on the bike trying to kiss her became a source of irritation. He broke their kiss long enough to crawl off the bike and returned with an even bigger fever.

Erin reached for the back of his neck and closed her eyes. Every time they’d kissed before, touched before, there had been people around. Not this time. This was all them, permission slips signed. She smiled under his kiss with the thought.

She was still on his bike, one leg over each side, and wishing he was between them. Erin wasn’t sure how to crawl off without tipping the thing over while he was finding all the sections of her mouth with his tongue.

Matt was very talented with his tongue.

“We need to . . .”

“Yes,” he said over her lips. “We do.”

Without effort, he placed a hand under one of her thighs and the other under her butt and lifted her off the bike. “Hold on,” he instructed before he went right back to kissing her.

Erin wrapped her legs around his waist and did just that. Suddenly, the sheer strength of the man was nothing to fear, and everything to enjoy. He carried her, kissed her, and managed to get them both to the front door of her house. He wiggled the knob to the locked door.

Instead of letting her down, he pressed her back against the outside of the door while she fiddled with her purse and searched for a key by feel. The very hardness of him pressed against the softness of her and shot distant stars in her head.

The keys . . . she felt the . . .

He pressed into her again.

“We’ll never get inside at this rate,” Erin said.

“No one is home,” he said as he kissed the length of her neck.

“Got ’em,” she said, removing the keys from her purse. For a second, it felt like he was going to drop her, she drew in a sharp breath and squeezed her thighs harder. All he was doing was shifting positions and taking the keys from her hand.

While he attempted to open the door, she ran her fingers through his hair and kissed the side of his mouth and grazed her teeth on his jaw.

Three times he attempted to put the key in the slot while not letting her go.

“You can put me down,” she said with a laugh.

“I’m not a quitter.”

Now she was really laughing, and he was trying hard to kiss her and work the key. Finally the door opened, and they both nearly fell into the room.

Matt kept them upright and kicked the door shut as the burglar alarm blared.

He walked her to the kitchen counter where the keypad was and only then did he set her down. Butt on the counter, she kept her ankles locked around his hips.

Free of her weight, Matt roamed his hands up her thighs, much like she had done while they were on the bike.

She pressed in the four-digit code to stop the alarm and set the monitor aside.

The feel of his thumbs pressing along her hipbones and tracing the curve of her ass shot her awareness to full throttle. He was firm but gentle as he explored her through her cotton pants, his fingers pulling the fabric away from her skin.

He was making good on his promise of worship. His pursuit was slow even though his kisses were urgent with need and desire.

The heat of his jacket became too much, and she leaned away and tried to shrug it from her shoulders.

Matt’s hands stripped it from her body, and his lips pressed into her collarbone and the open V of her shirt.

So this is what real passion feels like, she told herself. And for one dark moment she felt her brain comparing when there was absolutely nothing comparable about what Matt was making her feel and what the monster she’d been married to had convinced her she felt.

“You okay?” Matt asked.

Her dark thoughts fled. “Better than okay.”

Those soft eyes bore into hers. “No discussion of your produce needs?”

Erin reached for his chest and slowly dropped her hands past the waistline of his jeans. “Is this a banana in your pocket . . . or are you just excited to see me?”

He pushed into her hands and she gripped him through his clothing. “I’m in trouble.”

With slow, measured movements, Matt played with the neckline of her shirt and worked on the first button. Once it was unhooked, he kissed the spot his hands had caressed and moved to the next.

She wondered briefly if Matt took his time opening gifts and enjoyed the discovery of them, or if he tore into them with frantic abandon.