I also didn’t think of the sated but remote look in his eyes that I caught before he left me in his bed. Nor did I think about how he said not a word after we shared the most intimate thing a man and woman could share before he took off to go deal with the condom.

This last was his way. He’d done the same thing at my house.

Though at my house, when he’d come back, he’d teased me about my girlie bathroom, focusing on the pink wire basket shelves on the wall filled with corked bottles of girlie pamper stuff and thick wash clothes and natural sponges and loofahs and pink cotton balls.

I had a feeling I couldn’t tease him about his bath salts.

I watched him come back, semi-hard, condom free, all beautiful. He flipped a switch on the wall during his return, which put out the canister lights in the ceiling around his kitchen and pendants that hung over his island, lights he’d dimmed before he’d taken me to bed.

Dempsey followed him, and Johnny gave him a distracted head scratch as he watched me while he finished walking back to me. When he made it to the bed, I scooched away. He lifted the sheet and slid in.

Dempsey took a hint and wandered off.

Johnny dropped the sheet, settled back against the pillows with his shoulders high against the headboard, and only then did he reach for me, hauling me up so I had a cheek to his chest.

I slid an arm around his stomach and rested there.

I didn’t snuggle in. Johnny wasn’t mine to snuggle.

But when he pulled me to him, I allowed myself to relax into it.

“You okay?” I asked softly.

“I tell you to stop sucking my cock, babe, you stop sucking my cock.”

I blinked at his chest.

His fingers were trailing on my lower back, light, sweet, even tender but his voice had been mildly ticked and very firm.

And it continued that way as he carried on.

“I went for your ass. I felt it even before you said no. I asked, you said no. I stopped. I tell you to pull me out, you pull me out.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, now not feeling his fingers lightly, maybe even tenderly trailing. Only feeling the burning ball of humiliation that was blazing through my body.

I didn’t know what to do. I’d never done something so wrong in bed and then been called on it like that. I didn’t know how to proceed.

And worse, I’d loved what I’d been doing and thought he had too.

But apparently, he had not.

I stared beyond his chest at my clothes on the floor and I whispered, “Maybe I should—”

“You’re thinking of bailing and I’m just saying it like it is. No need to get sensitive about it. Just don’t do it again.”

“Okay, I’m sorry.” I was inching away. “But I still think maybe I should go.”

Johnny stopped trailing his fingers along the small of my back, yanked me up his chest, took one look at my face and went completely still.

“I really . . .” I stopped and started again. “I didn’t think about it, but I have to wake up even earlier to get home and see to the horses and get ready for work, so maybe I shouldn’t spend the night.”

“Christ, Iz,” he murmured, still staring at me.

“So I’m just gonna do that, go home, I mean,” I said, bracing to push away from him.

I saw his hand heading my way like he was going to cup my face at the same time I saw the gentleness settle in his expression.

But I now had a plan, which was mostly a mission that didn’t include allowing Johnny to be gentle with me, to touch my face in a way he never had and wasn’t allowed to do with who we were. So I darted up a hand and pushed his away at the same time I shoved into the bed to launch myself over him.

However, in the midst of this, I somehow found myself on my back in the bed with Johnny on top of me, and that hand I’d pushed away was tenderly cupping my face.

“Izzy, baby, I’m so sorry. I should have found a way to deliver that more gentle,” he whispered.

“No, that’s okay. I mean, no . . . you should feel free to be frank with me. But just to say, you know . . . again, that I probably should get going.”

“That was spectacular,” he said softly.

“I’m glad you thought so. Now, I know you get mad when I get like this but this time I really kinda need to go.”

“The way you took me, Izzy, it was so beautiful, watching my cock sink into your pussy that was so goddamn wet, it was sleek. Your face, Christ. Your face. You’re so damned pretty but when you get like that for me you’re unbelievably beautiful. I wanted to claim all of that. I wanted to be inside you every way I could. So I went for your ass.”

“It’s okay. I mean, that’s all very nice and thank you for that, it means a lot and it means a lot too that you listened to me during, you know . . . what you were going to do with your thumb and felt I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I didn’t give you that when you were communicating about what you didn’t want but now I need to—”

Johnny cut me off. “You swallow?”

The question was so bizarre, for a second I forgot my mortification and stared at him.

“Sorry?”

“Cum. Do you swallow?”

Oh dear Lord.

“Um . . .”

His eyes got even softer.

“I didn’t think so,” he murmured.

“Johnny, I—”

“Ten more seconds of your mouth, babe, you wouldn’t have had a choice but to swallow.”

I felt my eyes get big. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” His lips hitched. “Oh. You do know that’s what happens when you give phenomenal head?” he asked.

“Phenomenal?” I breathed and his eyes warmed.

“Baby, you knelt between my legs, worshipping at my cock. You were so into it, never had that in my life. It was beautiful. Top that, you got talent. So yeah, but maybe phenomenal doesn’t cut it. Outstanding. Superior. Stupendous. Unbe-fucking-leivable. Take your pick.”

“I wanted to watch,” I whispered.

“What?” he asked.

“I wanted to . . . not, um, with my mouth. I was going to finish with my hand and I wanted to watch.”

His eyes warmed a different way, his body shifted on mine and his voice sounded kind of growly when he asked, “You wanted to watch me blow for you?”

I nodded.

“And who was going to take care of you?” he inquired.

“I hadn’t . . . well, thought of that part, but it was kinda going the way that it would have, um . . . happened naturally.”

He gave me his sexy grin before he bent his head, flicked my earlobe with his nose, kissed my neck, lifted his head and caught my eyes again, but when he did he was a lot closer this time.

“You think you could come just by watching yourself make me come?”

“Evidence was suggesting that,” I told him uncomfortably.

Another sexy grin. “How ’bout, if we do that, you kneel to the side so I can get a hand between your legs and help with that?”

“I think that sounds . . . doable,” I breathed.

It was then that something slid over his face that wasn’t sexy or warm or sweet, but seemingly alert, like he’d just remembered something. Then uneasy, and if I read it right, it ended remorseful before he bent in to touch his lips to mine and pull away.

“Dogs need to be let out before we settle in?” he asked quietly.

“I think Swirl’s down for the night but Dempsey probably could take a wander,” I answered then began to make an impossible move, the impossibility of it being me lying under him. “I’ll do it.”