“I know, baby. Can I put my hands up your dress?” he rasped, his palms already kneading the backs of her thighs, his beard stroking back and forth over her distended nipple, and sending a rush of wet to the apex of her thighs. “Piper.”

“What?” she breathed, head spinning. “Whatever you said. Yes. Yes.”

Those busy hands moved faster than lightning, clutching her ass so roughly, the air evacuated her lungs. He drew her forward so he could pant directly against her belly, his hands never ceasing to massage, squeeze, and lift the flesh of her bottom, his calloused fingers tangling in her thong in his haste to touch, to mold.

“Y-you’re an ass man, I guess,” she stammered.

He shook his head. “No, Piper. I’m a this-ass man.”

“Oh,” she simpered.

That was oddly romantic. And possessive. And she liked both of those qualities too much. She needed to regain control somehow, because she’d severely miscalculated how quickly Brendan could pull her under. This attraction was even more dangerous than she’d originally thought. “Brendan,” she managed, taking hold of his broad shoulders and using every ounce of her strength to push him back into his chair. “W-wait, I . . .”

“I’m sorry,” he said between breaths. “It’s not just that it’s been so long for me, it’s that you had to be the sexiest woman on the fucking planet.”

Had Piper heard him right? She shook her head to clear it, though most of the lust fog remained in place. “Wait, I know you wore the ring, but . . . no sex? At all? Knowing you, I should have assumed that, but . . .” Her gaze traveled down the front of his body, stopping when she reached the outline of his painful-looking erection. It protruded against the fly of his jeans, large and heavy. His own hand crept toward it, his sexual frustration obvious in every harsh line of his face.

There was a way to wrestle back control of this push and pull between them and make him feel good—and she suddenly couldn’t help herself. “Oh, Brendan.” She went down on her knees and pressed a kiss to the thick bulge. “We need to take care of this, don’t we?”

His head fell back, chest lifting and plummeting. “Piper, you don’t need to.”

She cupped his big arousal, massaged him through his jeans, and he moaned through his teeth. “I want to,” she whispered. “I want to make you feel so good.”

She flicked open the button at the top of his fly and lowered the zipper carefully, sucking in a breath when his shaft grew impossibly larger inside his briefs in the absence of confinement. Brendan’s knuckles were white on the arms of the chair, but he stopped breathing altogether as she drew down the waistband of his briefs and saw his erection up close. Male. There was no other way to describe the unapologetic weight and steel of him, the thick black hair at the base, the heavy sac. He was long and smooth and broad, veins wrapped around him like lines on a road map, and wow. Yes. She’d been telling the truth. She really did want to make him feel good. So badly, her inner thighs were turning slick with her own need. Wanted to be on her knees, giving pleasure to this man who’d been celibate so long. This man who’d treated her with care and respect and got nervous about her tasting his cooking.

Furthermore, she could establish up front that this was just sex.

Just sex.

“Look at you, Piper,” Brendan said hoarsely. “Christ, I didn’t stand a chance, did I?”

With a sympathetic pout, she gave his shaft a tight pump. And another one. Waited until his eyes started to glaze over, then she dragged her tongue up the meaty underside of him, closed her mouth over the velvet helmet on top. Making her tongue flat and stiff, she teased the salty slit, the sensitive ridges, before tunneling him in deep, deep, right up to the point where tears pricked her eyelids. God, he pulsed on her tongue, great, quick surges of life that her femininity started to echo, making her groan around his hard flesh.

“Goddamn, baby, that mouth,” he groaned, one of his hands fisting her hair, urging her faster, even as he barked, “Stop. Stop. I’m going to come.”

Piper let him slide from her mouth with a swirl of her tongue, her right hand working him, thickening him with every stroke of her fist. Yeah, he wasn’t going to last much longer, and there was something so hot about it. How much he’d needed the relief. “Where do you want to give it to me?” she whispered, taking his sac in her hand and juggling him gently, leaning in to curl her tongue around the purpling tip. “Anywhere you want, Captain.”

“Fuck,” he gritted out, his thighs starting to vibrate. Instead of answering her pretty, pressing question, he closed his eyes, nostrils flaring as he took in a drag of air. “No.”

Then the unexpected happened.

Right on the verge of his well-deserved orgasm, Brendan surged forward, wrapping his hands around her waist and lifting her up onto the dining room table. She teetered, dizzy from the rapid ascent, but she snapped back to reality when Brendan dropped to his own knees and stripped off his shirt. “Ohhh,” she said in slow motion. “Heyyy, looook aaaat thaaaat.”

Dude was yoked.

She’d known, on some level, that Brendan was built like a motherfucker. His arms always tested the seams of his sweatshirts, his chest ridged with muscle, but she’d been unaware of the definition. The chiseled planes of his pecs ended in a tight drop-off; then it was a mountain range of abs. But not the obnoxious kind. They had meat on them. And hair. All of him did. He looked like a real man who worked in the wild, because that’s exactly what he was. And not a single tattoo, which was so Brendan, it made her throat feel weird. Of course he wouldn’t want to deal with the fuss of all that or waste his time getting one done.

Come back to earth, Piper.

“Wait, I was . . .” She pointed at his erection. “You were—”

“Don’t worry about me,” he rasped, dragging her to the edge of the table. “Open your thighs and let me see it, Piper.”

Her inner walls clenched, delighting in his bluntness. “But—”

“You think I’m going to get sucked off and leave town for two weeks? Not going to happen. You’re getting off, baby, or nobody is getting off.”

As if on autopilot, her thighs squeaked wide on the table. Oh, this wasn’t good. She didn’t even know which part of her was in command. Her head, her heart, her lady business. Or maybe they all were, three bitches hitting the switches of her control panel. She only knew Brendan needed to stop revealing positive sides of himself.

Now they were adding generous to the mix?

The hem of her delicate dress in his boat captain’s hands made her whimper. He lifted it, and God only knew what he was seeing. Her thong was sheer to begin with, but she’d never been this wet in her ever-loving life. Not to mention, his impatient hands on her butt had tugged it askew.

He stared hard at her juncture, the grip on her knees flexing, a curse issuing unsteadily from his mouth. “Yeah, I have to be an idiot leaving you without my attention for two weeks.”

She panted. “Are you calling me high maintenance?”

“Are you denying it?” He tugged aside the strip of material shielding her core, which thankfully she’d waxed clean as a whistle right before leaving LA. “Fuck me. You can be as high maintenance as you want, honey. But I’m the only one who does the maintenance.” He ran his thumb down the seam of her sex. “Understood?”