"What if I want to say no?"

"Then say it. Just know, you'll kill me."

"And what if I say… take me right here, right now, Will. Only love me like no one has ever loved me, or don't mess with me at all."

He muttered a curse word. Or a prayer. "Not a smart thing to say if you want a guy to stop, Kel."

"No?"

"No. So don't say it to any other guys. Ever. Okay?"

Well, hell. He didn't give her a chance to answer. Next thing, he was walking her backward down the dark hall, stopping once to yank his shirt over his head, then to heel off his other shoe. Eventually they bounced off enough walls to pass the bathroom, past all the rooms she'd seen before, into one that she definitely hadn't. Still, even in the dark she knew it was his bedroom. It smelled like his soap. Like the fresh air blowing in the cracked window, like…like him.

Like an exotic, sexy, unbearably masculine man. A fantasy man.

A lover.

She didn't get naked easily. There'd only been Jason for her, and it had taken him four years to talk her out of all her clothes. Her procrastinating hadn't been about morality so much as prudishness. She liked her clothes on. She didn't like messiness.

All in all, she'd long figured out that she just didn't have that big a sex drive. Everybody couldn't, after all. She thought sex was important-like meat and potatoes. A staple of life. Needed. A serious thing.

But certainly nothing on a par with cyclones and tsunamis.

Yet that seemed to be how it was with Will. All explosive risk and wicked need and unbelievably soft romance.

He kissed a slow path all the way down to her toes, then trailed back up again, lingering between her thighs-and embarrassing the devil out of her. He gave her no time to work up a royal prudish fit, which she'd always been very good at.