Ford gave her a wicked grin as he pulled her inside and closed the door behind them. “If you think this part of the bus is nice, you should see the bedroom.”

Mia had never been the nervous virgin type. She didn’t blush or giggle or play coy. And yet, though she and Ford already knew each other intimately, being alone in his bus while he stood beside her in a T-shirt that was damp enough to outline each incredible ridge of muscle along his chest and abdomen, made her heart race and her breath come too fast.

After he buzzed his driver to let him know that they were ready to head out, Mia decided she needed to take back control. After all, she’d already abruptly left work in the middle of the day, chased Ford to Oregon, then jumped him in the middle of a crowded backstage area. Now that she was finally here and they had hours of driving ahead of them to get back to Seattle, there was no way she was going to let him hold her at arm’s length again for the rest of the night.

She reached for his hand, loving the way he always tugged her against him. “Do you still have the same post-show ritual?”

She could see the combination of desire—and his attempts at control—as they moved across his face. “Yes.”

“Good.” She smiled up at him, certain now that they weren’t too far at all from finally getting naked with each other again. Thank God. “Let’s get into the shower, Ford.”

He groaned as he moved the hand he was holding behind her back to immobilize her against his hard muscles, then slid his other hand into her hair to kiss her. All her thoughts of control, of trying to lead him where she was so desperate to go, fled as the pleasure of his tongue slicking hot and needy against hers filled her. Just being with him like this made it feel like the ground was moving beneath them...but then when he drew back, she realized the ground was indeed already moving at a steady clip beneath the tires of the bus.

“You tempt me.” He traced the swell of her lower lip with his tongue. “So much.” He gently sucked it into his mouth. “Too much.”

She slid her hands beneath his T-shirt to the muscles that jumped against her fingertips. “Let me tempt you tonight, Ford.” She licked at his mouth just the way he had with hers, loving the way his hands tightened on her. “And,” she whispered against his lips, “you can tempt me, too.”

“A shower.” He started to slip the small buttons along the front of her silk shirt out of their holes. “That’s all we’ll do tonight, Mia.” Lust fought with determination in his voice as his unbuttoning revealed the lacy edge of her bra. “Soap,” he said in a hollow voice, as if he was trying to remind himself what one usually used in a shower. He looked momentarily lost as to what else might be in there until he finally said, “Shampoo.”

“And naked skin,” she reminded him in a husky voice. “I can’t wait to be naked with y—”

The rest of her sensually teasing words fell away as he reached out to brush the very tip of his finger over the exact spot on her chest where the swell of flesh met lace.

“Beautiful. So damned beautiful.”

Mia couldn’t shake the feeling that he was looking at her as if he’d never seen any other naked woman before, as if she were his first. His only. He was a rock star who could have any woman in the world and, rationally, she knew she wasn’t even close to his first. He wasn’t for her, either. But it had never been like this for her with any other man. And as he said again, “You are so damned beautiful,” she didn’t need him to tell her that it had never been like this for him with anyone else, either.

Not when she already knew the truth in every kiss he gave her, in every caress.

She was surprised to realize his hand was shaking slightly as he traced skin and lace from one side of her chest to the other, then back again. She’d assumed by now that if and when they were going to get naked together, it would happen in a race to tear off clothes and get at each other.

But yet again, Ford was surprising her with reverence where she’d expected only lust...and with sweetness where she’d worked so hard to tell herself all these years there had been only sin.

She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until he finally moved to undo the final buttons that held her shirt closed. It came out in a rush as he gently pushed the fabric from her shoulders, so that it fell to the floor behind her.

Taking a fistful of her hair into his hand, he tugged her head back so that he could put his mouth, hot and needy, into the curve of her neck. Her breasts, covered only in lace now, became even more aroused as she pressed them against his cotton-covered chest. And as he began to run kisses from her neck down across her shoulders, then over the upper swell of her breasts, she had to clutch at his shirt behind his back to hold herself steady.

Breathe. She needed to remember how to breathe. In. Out. In. Out. And as his lips and the bristles on his jaw moved over her skin, she almost caught the hang of it again.

That is, until she was rocked by the unexpected slick of his warm, wet tongue beneath lace and over one nipple.

“Ford. Yes. Please. More.” One pleading word after another fell from her lips as she arched into his mouth, needing him to take more, to run his perfect tongue over the rest of her. Thank God, he listened to her pleas as he found her other breast and made it just as damp and peaked as the other.

And then he was dropping to his knees, his mouth hot and desperate as he ran kisses over her stomach, dipping his tongue into her belly button before nipping at the soft skin just to the side of it.

“All night long,” he said against her stomach as she gasped with pleasure. “I could spend the entire night tasting you like this, every single inch of you.”

Oh yes, she loved that idea, of his teasing her with his mouth and hands all night long. But not tonight, not when she was going mad with the need to be skin to skin with him.

“I want to do that to you, too,” she told him, but he had on far too many clothes, so she grasped his shirt in her hands and pulled it over his head.

With Ford still on his knees in front of her, she could look down on his broad shoulders, his tanned skin that had been painted with intricate tattoos. She recognized some of them, remembered well the joy of tracing them with her fingertips as they lay together in his hotel room, and her fingers were drawn to do the same thing now.

But before she could do more than skim her fingers over his warm muscles, he took her hands in both of his and kissed them. “If you keep touching me, we won’t make it into the shower, Mia.”

“That’s okay with me,” she whispered as he held her hands over his heart and she felt how hard it was beating. Nearly as fast as her own.

“No.” He shook his head. “No,” he said again as if repetition could somehow convince both of them that a shower could be enough. “Okay isn’t good enough.” His eyes were dark with desire and with emotion. “I don’t want okay with you. I don’t want good or good enough with you. I want everything. I want even more than that.” She could see him working for his control as he suddenly said, “I don’t think I ever told you that I was fourteen years old when I lost my virginity.”

“That’s pretty young,” she murmured, wondering where he was going with this information that had seemingly come from out of the blue.

“By today’s standards, not so much. But back then, yeah, it was pretty young. See, there was a girls’ school across the river in Boston, and it was a badge of honor to come back to the guys and tell them you’d scored.”

“And they believed you?”

“They did when you had the panties as proof in your pocket.”

“Teenage boys are scum.”

“In more ways than you can imagine.” He shook his head. “The thing is, I didn’t know anything about friendship or love back then. I wasn’t trying to get anything from those girls but their panties and to hopefully be the one to pop their—”

She held up her hand. “Picture already painted, thank you.” Mia knew she had no reason to be even the slightest bit jealous of any of those girls, but reason didn’t always come into play where Ford was concerned.

“Every single woman I was with from fourteen on was exactly the same. None of them meant anything to me. Not until you. And when I felt like I couldn’t hack it as a boyfriend instead of just a hookup, it was easier just to let the sex take over with you until it buried everything else we could have had. But the stakes are too high this time, Mia. You’ve given me a second chance, and I’m not going to blow it by screwing up everything we’re starting to build.”

She knew in that moment that he didn’t just want her heart. He wanted her soul, too. And, oh, it was so tempting just to tell him that he had them both. Because then he’d stop holding back, stop keeping his vow to hold himself in check with her until they’d created something truly solid.

But she could still hear the way he’d asked her that morning in her office, “I want to be the best friend you’ve ever had. But I’m not yet, am I?”

Just as she could still hear the echo of her own silence.

She’d driven to Eugene to see him because she’d missed him all day, because she’d thought about him every single second of it, because she simply couldn’t have made it through another night without him...and because she was still looking for answers. Answers that she knew wouldn’t just come from sex alone.

“I promise I won’t push you to make love to me tonight,” she told him, “but I need more than just kisses.”

Instead of answering her with words, he undid the button of her jeans and unzipped them. The heat of his breath over the lace of her panties made her legs tremble, especially when he quickly stripped the denim completely away. She was shaking from the force of her need and it was only the steady strength of his hands on her hips as he pressed his mouth to the top of her pelvic bone that kept her upright.

Mia had always been a strong woman, but whenever Ford touched her, even if it was just the slightest press of his mouth against her skin, she melted. Once upon a time, she’d hated herself for this weakness. But tonight, as he transformed her reality by spinning it into the sweetest fantasy she could ever have dreamed of, she finally understood that it wasn’t weakness.

No, not weakness at all. Because when she and Ford came together, it was the biggest, boldest force she’d ever known. One that only a truly brave man or woman could withstand.

They hadn’t been strong enough five years ago. But now?

More and more, she was beginning to wonder if they might be...

The scrape of his teeth on her lower abdomen had her releasing her breath in a gasp while he dragged her lace panties past her sex, then stopped with the fabric still at the base of her hips. She heard him take one deep breath, then another shaky one, before he groaned and pressed his lips to her bare skin.

A low sound emerged from her throat and echoed back at her from the walls of the bus as he pressed a soft kiss between her legs. It was so good that she was already nearly coming apart.

“Ford!”

His tongue was magic, even though he was just barely flicking against her. His shoulder muscles flexed beneath the tight grip of her hands and all it would take was the next slick of his tongue over her and she’d be free-falling out over an edge that had never seemed quite so steep.

But the next thing she knew, instead of ripping her underwear all the way off and tasting more of her, he was back on his feet and lifting her into his arms.

“Why are you stopping?”

“Has anything changed from this morning?”

She’d never seen his eyes this dark. This intense. This hungry. This desperate for her to tell him what he needed to hear.

She knew what the right answer would get her—all of him—but she just couldn’t lie to him. “You’ve become important to me, Ford. Really, really important. I know that much.”