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And he watched her get more and more frustrated until she pushed at him, trying to tip him over. He laughed and let her do it, flopping onto his back.

Then it was her turn to teach him the meaning of the word agony.

She let her hair trail over his oversensitized skin, and Dallas had to clench his jaw to keep from hoisting her up and slamming her down onto the hardest part of him, because he wanted that more than he could bear. But he also didn’t want this to end.

Because he never wanted this to end.

Ruthie was meaner than he was, because when she finished kissing her way down his chest—over his pecs and his abs, tracing every ridge that she could find with her tongue—she looked up at him. She knelt there between his legs and kept her gold-green gaze on him as she slowly, lusciously, took him deep in her mouth.

He lasted all of four seconds before he had to pull her off.

“Not tonight,” he panted out. “It’s too much. It’s been too long.”

She looked entirely too pleased with herself. “How long?”

He laughed at that. “Eight years, Ruthie. I’m a married man.” And then he forced himself to ask a question he didn’t really want the answer to. “What about you?”

“I don’t remember dating anyone,” she said after a moment. A long moment, during which he wondered what had possessed him to ask. “I don’t think I did.”

He supposed that was the best response he was going to get.

But she laughed, crawling up over him so she could straddle him. “Though I suppose that if I did, that means I forgot it, which means it must have been traumatizing. So it couldn’t have been anything like this.”

“Thank you,” Dallas said, but he was grinning. “That’s both the very last thing I would ever want to hear and also oddly comforting. So.”

“So,” she agreed, with that smile of hers that made him want to catapult over mountains if that would make her aim it at him again. And always.

But then she was angling herself down and rubbing her breasts all over him. She was nipping at his neck, licking her way up and over his collarbone.

She was generally making herself a menace.

And Dallas let her. Hell, he loved it. If he died right now, he’d die happy.

But he had no intention of dying.

And then, finally, they were both clearly getting a little too worked up. He rolled her over and looked down at her, still somehow unable to believe that this was happening.

Because how could it be happening? How could this be real? He had honestly believed that he’d never lay eyes on her again, much less touch her. Much less touch her like this.

“I don’t have…” He shook his head. “Condoms or anything.”

Her eyes were big and verging on glassy. “I have an IUD.”

“Still?”

“I guess so.” She blinked. “Did I always?”

“You got it fitted very soon after we met.” He kissed her in between words, letting her chase his mouth. Letting her catch him. “We were concerned about our ability to be responsible.”

“Insatiable,” she whispered.

“Exactly.”

And then, for the first time in eight years, he found his way to that hot, molten center of hers and traced the shape of her with his fingers. He found her more than ready for him, hot and clearly aching.

He took his time. He played with her, shamelessly using every single thing he knew about her body already to drive her as wild as he could.

And just as he remembered it, she went wild.