“Isn’t that hard for a man?”

“Impossible.”

“Painful?”

“Sometimes.” With you…most certainly.

She kicked her pants free and reached for the clasp of her bra. Her fingers trembled and the clasp fell away. The pink rosy tips of her br**sts stole his breath.

Sweet Jesus what was he doing?

He went rock hard in an instant. The loose material of his boxers left little to the imagination. Maybe he should have chosen cold water.

He helped the straps from her shoulders and tried to focus on the tiny freckles on her left shoulder.

The overwhelming feeling of embarrassment radiated from the woman standing in front of him. “You have nothing to hide, Amber. You’re beautiful.”

“I’m too thin,” she told him.

A woman was never happy with her own body. “Nothing that some food and exercise outdoors won’t help.”

The sound of the tub filling up brought his attention behind them. He stopped the flow of water and quickly shed his boxers.

“Oh, my,” she whispered at his side.

Her hand started to slide away and he clasped it tight. “Don’t get shy on me now, Amber. We’re nearly there.”

“Aye, but you’re…”

“Aroused? Yes. Like I said, you’re beautiful, and a man’s body will respond to that beauty. My brain can’t stop it, but I don’t have to act on it.” He lifted her then, placed her feet inside the tub. “You can remove your underwear under the suds. That way I can’t see.”

“But when we get out…”

“I’ll close my eyes if you like.”

She shook her head. “I’m such a child.” She surprised him by bending down and removing her panties. “I’m tired of being a child.”

Amber turned away from him, held his hand, and slid into the warm depths of the tub with a sigh.

With his back teeth grinding together and a tight grip on his emotions, he slid in behind her and sandwiched her between his legs.

Their skin touched everywhere in the small tub. The warm water was a pleasure to sink into, but the warm woman…now she was perfection. Only he couldn’t exactly touch her…not yet.

He released her hand and settled his back against the tub. The bubbles in the water couldn’t hide the soft texture of her hip against his leg, or the length of her lean neck as she brushed her hair in front of her.

Amber leaned forward, removed a bar of soap from a dish and a washcloth before scrubbing the two together. She was trying so hard to be brave, but he could feel the frightened girl under the sensual woman.

“Talk to me, Gavin. Your silence is killing me.”

He leaned forward then, removed the washcloth from her hand, and slowly washed the space between her delicate shoulder blades. “The first time I made love to a woman I was scared to death,” he told her.

She gasped, and graced him with a look over her shoulder. “Do I truly want to hear this?”

“You’re naked in a bathtub with a near stranger. Arguably the most embarrassing position you’ve ever been in, in your life…I think it’s only fair to share mine with you.”

She blinked and a small amount of moisture filled her eyes before she turned around.

“She was much older than I was,” he continued.

“How much older?”

Kincaid smiled and continued running the washcloth over her skin. “My best friend’s step-mother.”

Amber gasped, twisted again, a glimpse of her full breast made his mouth water. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“Why? It’s the truth.”

“Your best friend?”

He nodded. “At the time, anyway.” He twisted her around and continued washing her. “Mrs. Robbins wasn’t a mother in any way.”

“She should be horse-whipped for seducing a young man.”

“I wasn’t that young. Besides, I knew what I was doing. So did she.”

Kincaid watched the lucky bar of soap as it traveled up her arm and disappeared down the delicate skin between her br**sts. His erection pushed between them and it took every effort not to shift his hips closer.

“What possessed Mrs. Robbins to seduce you?”

“I was young…innocent, but unlike Mr. Robbins, I was moldable. I think she liked the challenge of teaching me what I’d only heard about from my friends.” He dipped the washcloth below the waterline to scrub her lower spine. His thumb brushed over a small knot on her back and Amber moaned. He abandoned the cloth and worked the area of her discomfort with his fingertips.

“Did she teach you that?”

He pressed harder and was rewarded with a sigh. “That was someone entirely different. No, Mrs. Robbins taught me I had a lot to learn about women.”

“That’s right, you said it was embarrassing. What happened?”

The memory flooded his mind. “How much do you know about sex?”

She stiffened with his question but he refused to acknowledge the shift in her body. “I understand the mechanics of it,” she finally said. “Lizzy told me it hurts the first time, but Myra told me it wasn’t bad. Does it hurt a man?”

“Ah, no.”

“I didn’t think so.”

Damn she was innocent in so many ways. “No, there wasn’t any pain with Mrs. Robbins. She didn’t even laugh when she barely touched me and I went off like a blast from a gun.”

Amber actually giggled. “That’s a bad thing…right?”

Her laughter kept him talking while he removed the band in her hair and tossed it to the side of the tub. “I was mortified. Mrs. Robbins didn’t look twice and in no time showed me how to please her.”

Amber tilted her head back when he filled his cupped hands with water and started to wash her hair. “Did you love her?”

It was his turn to laugh. “Mrs. Robbins wanted to be loved by many. Hard to grow attached to a woman like her. Besides, she was much older than me.”

“But you cared for her.”

He did…in a small way. He forgot for a moment who he was talking to and said the first thing that came to his mind. “It’s hard to not care a little for the first woman who gives you a blow job.”

Amber laughed. “A what?”

Kincaid squeezed his eyes shut and tried to throw the image of Mrs. Robbins bent over his c**k from his mind.

“No!”

He opened his eyes to find Amber watching him with stunned silence. He knew she’d read his mind and didn’t try to hide it. “I guess your sisters didn’t tell you about that.”