Author: Bella Andre

With him.

“Mom, look who’s here! I told Karen we’d probably be out here today and to come find me.”

Megan yanked her hand out of Gabe’s so quickly her glove almost came off in his hand. One of the girls from Megan’s soccer team lifted her goggles.

“Hi, Ms. Harris.”

The girl’s mother was a few seconds behind on her skis and after Gabe helped her up, Megan quickly made the introductions. Fortunately, she knew Julie was happily married, so the appreciative gleam in her eyes when she looked at Gabe weren’t anything more than being a normal female.

Damn him. Megan had to admit he really was irresistible, looking just as good in snowboarding gear as he did in jeans or his fire gear.

She couldn’t bear to think how good he’d look without anything on at all.

“Karen hasn’t been able to stop talking about a sleepover with Summer all day.”

Megan’s brain stuttered away from the imagined picture of a naked Gabe to what Julie had just said. “A sleepover?”

“Sorry,” the other woman said, “I should have asked, is there any chance I could steal your daughter for a night of staying up too late and eating too much junk food at our cabin? I know the girls would just love it.”

Normally, Megan wouldn’t have blinked at the offer. Summer and Karen got along great and while she didn’t know Julie that well, she wasn’t at all worried about leaving Summer with her for the night.

What she was worried about, however, was the thought of being alone again tonight. And not just for a few hours. All night long, just her and her lonely bedroom, with Gabe one floor away, all alone in his bedroom.

It was a recipe for disaster.

“That’s really sweet, but—”

Summer and Karen had boarded over by then and the combined “Please!” and “Pretty please!” from the two girls wasn’t something Megan could selfishly ignore just because she didn’t trust herself not to do something reckless with the gorgeous man beside her.

“You know what, I’m not going to be able to do much more than soak in the bathtub tonight anyway,” she said, gesturing to the snowboard at her feet. “I’m sure the girls will have a lot of fun.”

After they arranged for Julie and Karen to pick up Summer at five, and Summer followed them down the mountain, Megan was working to prepare herself for one final run down the hill when Gabe said, “So you’ve got a big night in the bathtub planned, huh?”

She couldn’t miss the husky note in his voice, especially when he pulled off his glove and reached out to slide away a lock of hair that had blown in front of her mouth.

And when she trembled at his touch, Megan made a quick calculation and decided it was far safer to hurtle down the hill on the snowboard than it could ever be to risk letting him touch her like that again.

Or worse, beg him for more.

Chapter Eleven

Gabe let Megan turn down his invitation to dinner that night, knowing she was right. One night alone together had been barely manageable. One more just might push them over the edge.

Especially since he couldn’t push the fantasy image of her in the bathtub, the warm water and soap suds sliding over her naked curves, out of his head.

Nine o’clock found him sitting in the bar with a couple of guys having a burger and drinking a beer, listening to them talking about the girls they’d been hitting on out on the slopes that afternoon.

“Hey,” one of them said after they’d all gotten another refill from the well-endowed waitress that both of his buddies were clearly hoping to get it on with later, “Did you know Zach is doing house calls now?” At Gabe’s frown, Dick explained, “I dropped by to have my tires rotated and while we were shooting the shit, he was talking about some girl he’d met the night before who had the same tires. Got a flat so he went by her place to fix it for her.”

Gabe stopped with the beer halfway to his mouth. He’d forgotten all about his brother’s offer to fix Megan’s tire.

“Jesus,” their other friend John said, “she must have some great ass for Zach to head over to her house to change her tire.”

Gabe slammed the beer down so hard on the table it sloshed out onto his hand. They all knew what a dog his brother was, that the only reason he’d go change a woman’s tire was as some kind of screwed-up foreplay.

Seconds later Gabe was in front of Megan’s hotel room door. He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t see anything but Zach pulling Megan into his arms and seducing her.

Oh, hell no.

She was his.

He slammed his fist into the dark brown wood and when she opened the door, he stepped inside, caught the edge of the door in his hand, and pushed it shut behind him almost before she could register what had happened.

“Gabe?”

She was standing in front of him wearing nothing but a towel, her hair wet, her shoulders and arms still covered in droplets of water.

“You can’t date my brother,” he growled. “Any of my brothers.”

“What are you talking about?”

He advanced on her even as she backed up to get away from him. “Zach. He went to your house on Sunday.”

“He fixed my flat tire.”

“I’ll bet that’s not all he wants to fix.” He had her almost pinned against the wall by then. “He’s going to ask you out. The answer is no.”

Surprise turned to outrage in a flash of her green eyes. Instead of continuing to retreat, she was the one advancing on him this time.

“I’ll say yes if I want to.”

“Like hell you will.”

She moved a step closer. “Just because you saved my life doesn’t mean you can tell me how to live it.”

Everything went still for Gabe. “Do you want to say yes? Do you want to date my brother?”

Megan stopped, too, right where she was, her eyes wide, her breath coming in short pants against the towel she was gripping closed at her throat.

“No.”

The breath he hadn’t let himself take came rushing through him in a flood of relief. “I swear,” he said, hearing the pure raw need in his voice and knowing he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it, “I tried to have self-control.”

Megan’s lips were wet where her tongue had just come out to lick at them. “Me too,” she admitted in a whisper.

As he reached for her hips and took a handful of the towel in each hand to pull her body into his, Gabe admitted to himself that jealousy over Zach changing her tire was just the final excuse he’d needed to take what he wanted all along.

Megan.

He wanted Megan.

And tonight he was finally going to have her.

* * *

Megan stood in the circle of Gabe’s arms, knowing everything she wanted was just a breath away—and that, at the same time, it could all be gone just as fast. He’d kissed her before and still left.

Right or wrong, she knew that if that happened tonight, she’d be left needing, wanting, without him.

She’d never been a woman to trade on her looks for anything in her life. Just as she’d never deliberately acted against what she knew she should do. She shouldn’t seduce Gabe into staying. Not when she knew better. Not when a whole lot more than just one hot night could end up on the line.

But there was a first time for everything, she was starting to realize...even listening to that wily and seductive little voice in her head that told her everything would be all right, that it wouldn’t hurt anyone or anything for her to take this one night and enjoy every single second in his strong arms until the sun rose again in the sky.

Maybe if that sensual woman buried so deep inside of her hadn’t been lured out little by little over the past few days by this beautiful man, she might have been able to ignore the voice. The need.

But, for one night, desire insisted on getting its due.

She lifted her gaze from Gabe’s mouth to his eyes just as she loosened her grip on the towel. She felt him still against her as he realized what she was doing. And then, he was shifting his grip on her hips to give her the room to let go of the towel completely.

White cotton fell away from her damp skin and landed in a heap on the ground...leaving her completely naked before Gabe.

“Sweet Lord, you’re beautiful.”

His reverent whisper ran over her, through her, caressing the nerve endings at the peaks of her breasts, the throbbing heat between her thighs, all the way into that spot in her heart she’d vowed to keep safe from a man like Gabe.

She waited to feel his hands come back around her hips, naked skin against naked skin. She knew what would happen now, that in a matter of moments she’d be beneath him on the bed and they’d be going after each other without any preliminaries necessary.

But a moment later, as his hands slid gently into her wet hair, she realized her mistake. Gabe Sullivan wasn’t like other men, who would have gone straight for the ultimate prize.

On the contrary, he was surprising her with—oh my!—a sweeter kiss than any other man had ever given her.

His mouth covered hers, molding her lips with his so softly she almost couldn’t feel anything at all. Just warmth. And so much pleasure as he deepened the kiss, as he found the curves of her lower lip with his tongue and slowly slid across it, that she couldn’t hold back a whimper.

“Gabe, please.”

She didn’t realize that she was begging—already, with nothing more than just a soft kiss—until he said against her mouth, “Slow, baby. That’s how we’re going to do this tonight.”

“I don’t know if I can do slow,” she said, her body reinforcing her words by moving closer to him so that her bare breasts were pressed into his chest.

The rough gauge of his long-sleeved wool shirt rubbed so deliciously against the already hard points that she gasped at the incredible sensation of rubbing her naked body up against his fully clothed one. There was something so deliciously naughty about it all. Megan had only ever been naughty, had only ever let herself get that close to danger and the adrenaline that came with it, in her private fantasies.

But something about Gabe made her suddenly want to see all those dangerously seductive fantasies come to life.

“Megan.”

He groaned her name, sounding like a man lost, just as lost as she knew she already was to him. His hips ground against hers, backing her up against the wall, her thighs opening to let him in. And oh, how she loved the way the thick bulge behind the zipper of his jeans pressed into just the right spot.

She shouldn’t be this close to the edge, shouldn’t be only the barest touch, the slightest caress away from coming apart for him. But the truth was that every moment they’d spent together not touching, not kissing, trying to keep their distance from each other, had been foreplay. Some of the most intense foreplay of her life.

“I could take you now, could be inside of you in seconds.” His voice was rough at her ear, his words blunt and oh-so-sexy, making her heart race with wanting what he was describing. “Just like this, up against the wall, your legs wrapped around my hips, with you coming around me as I take you hard and fast.”

Yes! That was what she wanted. What she needed.

Only, instead of doing any of those things, he stilled his hips against hers and lifted his face from that spot beside her ear where he was filling her head with naughty visions. His blue eyes seared her with heat.

“But that’s not how we’re going to do this tonight, Megan.”

Her eyes widened at the confident statement. “But what if that’s what I want?” came from between her lips, barely above a whisper.

“You’ll want this more,” he said, and then he was bending his head to lick into the hollow of her shoulder.

She arched her neck into his sweetly sensual kiss, her skin trembling beneath the tender onslaught.