Breathless, she broke away, and the smolder in her eyes as she looked up at him nearly sucked the oxygen from him in turn. “My bedroom is…over there.” She nodded to an open door across the room from them.

“Yeah? What awaits me in there? A genuine cow skull?”

She snickered. “Maybe. But most importantly, a really big bed.”

“Mmm. In a hurry, are you?”

Judging from the glint in her eyes, the flush in her cheeks, she was. He’d never noticed before that she had freckles, just a light dusting under her eyes and across her nose. Her fingers stroked down his nape, sending gooseflesh down his back. “Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?”

“Good point.” He stepped back slightly and swept his arm toward the door. “After you.”

He’d been the last person she’d had sex with, and it had been the better part of a year. That was the longest she’d gone without having sex since she started having sex. Was that why she couldn’t stop trembling? Should she say something before he got the wrong idea?

She’d never been this excited, this aroused. It couldn’t all be him.

Taking the plunge, she tore her gaze from his and walked toward her room. She sensed him moving behind her, following closely. Between her legs, she was already slick and needy from his kiss, and if she didn’t get out of this damn constrictive bra, she was going to scream. She needed his hands on her, soothing away the aches.

One lamp had been left on in her room for ambiance. Big ugly scar or not, she wasn’t a lights-off kind of gal.

Some crazy compulsion made her turn around to close the door after he came in behind her—she didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if someone would be in the living room to overhear them. It just felt more…intimate. More—

The breath rushed out of her as his hard body pressed her roughly against the closed door. He swept her hair aside and fastened his hot mouth to the side of her neck, sucking hard. The outline of his c**k branded her ass. Her heart rate soared out of control.

“Oh God,” she gasped, grinding back against him. The movement gave him enough room to slide his hands under her sweater, up her quivering belly, and cup both of her br**sts, kneading them with a gentleness that belied the hard-and-rough everywhere else. She only wished she were already naked for him. “Take it off,” she pleaded.

His hands slid around to her back and deftly unfastened her bra. He lifted his mouth from her neck and sought her lips. She turned her head back and drank in his kiss like a starving woman as his fingers journeyed back around and played with her bare ni**les beneath the loose bra cups. Dammit, she wanted the thing gone, but this was better than nothing.

It was all too much, and she couldn’t get close enough. She couldn’t see enough. He gave her space to shed her sweater and her bra; then he planted her right back in place, raining kisses over her shoulders and the back of her neck as his fingers worked the button on her jeans. She wriggled her hips as he stripped them down her legs. Thank God she hadn’t worn boots or complicated shoes—she kicked off her flats and couldn’t step out of the denim fast enough.

That left only her panties. Just as he’d promised on the phone last night.

Seth’s breath gusted hot against her shoulder as his hand brushed the small of her back. Judging from the movements, he was unfastening his belt, wrenching at the button and—oh God, yes—yanking down his zipper.

“Let me see.” She tried to turn, but he moved up so close behind her there was no way she could, not when every lean inch of his body pressed her against the door. And he was strong enough to stop any further efforts on her part. Not that she tried very hard.

“You’re shaking,” he murmured. He leaned into her, his nose nestling in her hair. She heard him inhale, felt his chest expand at her back.

There was no refuting his observation. No explaining it either. She shook as if it were twenty below in the room, but she was burning up.

His hands slid down her spine, fingertips grazing the thin seven-inch ridge of flesh nestled in the indentation. It had never had much sensation since it healed, but now…oh, it did. She felt his touch there more intensely than any other she’d ever known. Amazingly, she wasn’t self-conscious about it, not with him. She opted out of bikinis these days, but Seth…in a way he carried his life story in his skin, right? He believed in that. He would merely see her scar as a little piece of hers.

His hands came to rest at the waist of her silk panties. Without conscious effort to move, she pushed back against his groin again, feeling the hard, smooth length of him press against the bare skin above her waistband. If she couldn’t see him, dammit, she would feel him.

She gasped as the tip of his c**k rubbed silkily across the flesh above her panties. The head was tipped with something cooler and even harder than his turgid flesh.

Her knees nearly gave. His piercing. She still didn’t exactly know her feelings about it. But she did know it felt damn good.

He chuckled, a sound that made her think of a serial killer about to slip a garrote around her neck. “What’s the matter?”

“Your…nothing.”

“Hmm? My what?”

“Your piercing. It’s…different for me.”

“Different isn’t always bad.”

“No. It’s just different.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, honestly I might run screaming if—”

“Macy?”

“What?”

He thrust his hardness between her legs so the bead rasped her clit. “Shut up.”

His methods proved effective. She even spread her legs to give him better access, her forehead pressed against the door as she panted.

“Wait a second,” he said. “Holy shit. What are you wearing?”

Until that moment, she’d almost forgotten. After his turbocharged fantasies of leaving her panties on, she’d donned a pair of crotchless. “I thought you might appreciate it.”

“Appreciate it? I think I’m in love.”

It was said in jest, but an odd pang went through her.

“So wet for me,” he murmured, keeping up the delectable movements that drew even more wetness from her core. One motion, one thrust from those powerful hips, and he could be inside her. So easy. She was almost mindless enough to beg him to do it. “Goddamn,” he whispered as she undulated against his tip. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“I’d rather be full of you.”

He chuckled, and his teeth nipped her shoulder. She gasped. “Don’t move,” he said. “I mean it.”

She’d never had a man take the upper hand the way he did. All of her lovers had been obsequious. Maybe that was what she’d always gravitated to, guys she could control. It wouldn’t fly here. But she wanted to try, wanted to test him, to see just what he’d do if she disobeyed. Instead, she clung to the door and trembled as she felt him moving behind her.

There was the crinkle of a foil packet. The unmistakable sound of him unfurling latex down his c**k with quick strokes. She moaned when his heat pressed against her again and two of his blunt fingertips zeroed in gently on the enflamed passage between her legs. She rose on her tiptoes when he pressed inside, testing, stretching. Her inner muscles had felt like liquid, but they gripped his intruding fingers with a strength that surprised her. His breath was ragged against her ear.