No! Never again. "I'm not cleaning your room while you watch," she announced.

"Good. The room isn't dirty." His smile was dark, humorless. "I'm afraid you'll be cleaning something else."

He'd come to sleep with her? After everything that had happened between them? b.a.s.t.a.r.d! "If you say your body, I will smack you."

"As you can see, my body isn't dirty, either."

Disappointment poked at her, and it only made her angrier. "Then what?"

"What else?" He tapped his temple. "My mind is absolutely filthy. If you knew half the things I'm thinking right now...the things I want to do to you..."

"Of course you want s.e.x. You're incapable of meeting anyone's emotional needs."

Pain ravaged his features. He reached for her. "Harlow."

"No. I'm leaving," she said, nails cutting into her palms, drawing blood. "We broke up, and you started seeing other girls."

"I'm not seeing other girls."

"Too bad for you. Maybe I'm seeing other guys." She turned, grabbed the k.n.o.b.

He was behind her in a blink, planting his hands flat on the door, keeping her sealed inside with him. "You're not going anywhere, baby. Apparently we have ourselves a bit of a communication problem, and we're going to work through it here and now."

Too close! His body heat enveloped her. His scent invaded her nose, her every cell. "You're wrong. There's nothing to work through."

"If that were true, baby, I'd have no reason to go on."

She went still. He put his mouth at her ear, whispered, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I let you go. Sorry I didn't come after you. I was stupid, and I was wrong."

Tears in her eyes. "It's too little, too late, Beck."

"I refuse to believe that."

"Your women-"

"Nothing happened with them. I escorted them around town to make you jealous, and then I took them home. I hated every second, and I promise you, it will never happen again."

"I don't care."

"Are you seeing other men?"

"No. I'm no longer in high school."

His relieved breath tickled her nape. "I'm in uncharted territory here. I was bound to mess up."

Stay strong! "You don't see happiness in your future."

"Baby, I meant I have only ever expected doom and gloom. I was afraid to hope for anything else, but with you, I am happy."

"I... I don't care."

But he wasn't done. "When I told you I felt trapped, that I felt like I was in a cage, well, I meant it."

"I don't-" Oh! She reached back, grabbed a hank of his hair and tugged.

"Ow!" He pried her fingers loose, then picked her up and tossed her on the bed. He pounced on her a second later, pinning her down, clasping her wrists over her head and spreading her legs by hooking his feet against her ankles and pushing.

She tried to bite his chin. "Let me go."

He dodged, the action shaking his body against hers-she had to press her lips together to stop a whimper of sudden need.

"The cage refers to my feelings for you, baby, not you as a person," he said, and she once again went still, not daring to hope. "I don't want to care about you this intensely, but I do. I don't want to crave you this strongly, but I do. I don't want to depend on someone else for my happiness, but I do. And I think... I think you don't want to crave me this strongly or depend on me, either, but you do. We're both scared, baby, and we're looking for ways to protect ourselves. But I'd rather look with you."

The tears returned to her eyes, stinging. He had feelings for her. He truly had feelings. He cared for her intensely, craved her strongly and depended on her for his happiness. He was scared, he'd said, and honestly, he was right. She was, too. In the wake of his admission, she found the strength to face the truth. When she'd imagined having a family, she hadn't factored in the vulnerability she would experience, or the fear of one day losing all she'd come to love.

"All my life I've considered feelings for another person a prison." He released her hands to cup her jaw. "I will never be able to control how you feel about me. I will never be able to force you to stay with me, to accept what I have to offer, and it terrifies me."

"Beck..."

"I want you to give us another chance, Harlow. I need you to. Please."

"But we're both so broken." A relationship wasn't just about finding the right person but also being the right person. "How can we make anything last?"

"We make a decision to fight for what we have."

In a fight, someone always came out the loser. "Neither of us knows how to fight."

"I know I want you, and that's enough for me. We'll be honest with each other. We'll talk when we're feeling overwhelmed, and when we fight we won't walk away. We'll hash it out and make up in bed." He kissed the corner of her mouth. "With us, only one thing matters. And it's this. Am I enough for you?"

He gazed deep into her eyes, a moment charged with electricity, a moment of shocking intimacy, every emotion unveiled. Longing, relief. More fear.

And as he peered at her, she thought she even saw...love.

Suddenly, no answer had ever been clearer.

"Yes."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

BECK HELD HARLOW in his arms for a long while. Just held her, making no move to seduce her. He'd not forgotten her words. You're incapable of meeting anyone's emotional needs. He would meet hers if it killed him, and it just might.

He burned for her. But he also liked the intimacy of the moment. h.e.l.l, he loved it.

"Beck," she said. She'd pulled her hair into a ponytail, several tendrils having escaped confinement to frame her face. Her skin was free of makeup, her eyes glittering like diamonds, her lashes so long they curled into ebony fans. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips lusciously red.

She could have been dolled up, but it wouldn't have mattered. No matter what she wore, or didn't wear, she met a need he'd never expected to have. A need for her specifically. Her smile. Her scent. Her wit. Her warmth. Her thorns. No one else would do-now...maybe not ever. Once you'd had perfection, everyone else became a pale imitation.

"Yes, baby."

"I want you."

"No. There'll be time for that later."

"I need you." She reached up, toyed with the ends of his hair. She smelled faintly of disinfectant, but not even that could hide her innate fragrance of strawberries, surely driving him deeper and deeper into insanity, where only she existed. "I've missed you so much."

Killing me.

"Kiss me," she demanded.

The world could have been burning around him and he wouldn't have been able to stop himself from obeying. Nothing could have stopped him. He'd been without her too long, and while he could go several minutes without breathing, he couldn't go without this woman for another second.

"Beck... I've missed you so much."

"Baby, I've wanted to die without you."

He pressed his lips into her and like that, urgency rode him hard, lightning flashes of demand riding the tides of a desire he couldn't control.

His tongue dueled with hers, the taste of her sweet and luscious, better than he remembered. He nipped his way to her jaw, to the pulse hammering at the base of her neck. the softness of her skin enrapturing him, reminding him of all the other places she was soft as silk and hot as h.e.l.l.

"You are mine, and I am yours. I won't forget again." He lifted his head to peer down at her. The beard stubble he hadn't shaved this morning had left thin lines of pink around lips that were already plumped by his kiss, redder than usual, and velvet-soft-a fine wine guaranteed to go straight to his head.

Her pupils expanded until only a rim of ice-blue remained-still enough to drown in. "I won't, either."

Triumphant, he yanked her top over her head, tossed the material aside. The white cotton bra she wore had a front clasp, and he kissed his way down her chest to rip it open with his teeth. She gasped as he tongued one of her nipples, then the other, plumping and reddening them, too. Her hips began to writhe against him, the core of her instinctively seeking the fullness he'd taught her to crave.

He removed her shoes, tugged off her pants and panties, leaving her bare. Opening her slender thighs was a compulsion, one he obeyed. She was already wet, glistening, and he licked his lips in antic.i.p.ation.

"The things I'm going to do to you..." Weeks without her. Weeks of longing and imagining and cursing and dreaming. They would not be leaving this bed until they were both sated.

She placed her foot against his chest. "You doing things to me is great, but I'm going to do things to you, too. I want to be the best you've ever had." Confident words, belied by a tremor in her voice.

"You already are." Where her skin touched his, he sizzled, especially over his heart, the organ currently trying to beat its way out of his chest. He took her ankle, lifted and pressed a kiss on her calf. "All you have to do is look at me, and you surpa.s.s everyone else."

She breathed his name. "Stand up. Please."

He obeyed, and she moved to her knees. He cupped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her chest rising and falling faster and faster as she reached out and tugged at the waist of his towel. The moment the material loosened, she tossed it aside, baring his entire length.

"So hard," she praised, grazing her knuckles from the head to the base. "So big."

"That's what you do to me."

"Let's see what else I can do to you." She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood beside him. He fit his hands around her waist. If she desired another location, to another location they would go. But she pressed against his shoulders, urging him to sit.

As he gripped the comforter, she slowly lowered herself onto his lap and straddled his legs. Her core, hot and drenched, brushed against his shaft, and he hissed in a breath.

"I need you to move, baby."

"Like this?" She slid up, up languidly, then slid down, down slowly.

"Faster."

She went even slower.

He groaned, and she laughed with feminine power.

"I like seeing you tormented."

He bucked his hips up, trying to change her rhythm. When he failed, he rasped, "Faster, baby. You'll like it."

"I like it now."

"Baby..."

"Feel free to stuff any complaints into my suggestion box."

Deciding to fight dirty, he reached between her legs and speared two fingers deep inside her, drawing a gasp of pleasure from her. "This box?"

She gasped. Down, down she slid, slow, so slow, purring her delight.

He removed his fingers, the moisture she surrendered nearly his undoing.

"Beck."

With his gaze locked on hers, he licked his flesh clean.

Fire blazed in her heavy-lidded eyes. She trailed her hands up her stomach, kneaded her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, pinched her nipples, then burrowed through her ma.s.s of hair to remove her ponytail band.

Could come just watching her.

She lifted the dark locks high, higher, then dropped them, the ends falling over him, caressing. Ecstasy and agony.

She was a fantasy, her undulations growing more and more frantic. "I have to... Soon... Dying... Beck, please! It's been too long."

"I'll take care of you." He pulled her in for a soul-wrenching kiss, their tongues rolling, their bodies grinding together. He'd come soon, could already feel the first sizzle of satisfaction blistering the base of his shaft.

He twisted and tossed her to her back. A gasp from her, those slumberous eyes finding him and begging him to finish her. He was tempted, so d.a.m.n tempted to take her bare, something he'd never done with another.

"Are you on the pill?"

She shook her head, inky tendrils tangling together.

"I'd like you consider it." He swiped a condom from his bag, sheathed his length in latex. "I'm clean. I get tested every six months, was tested recently, in fact, but I'll get tested again. If you're on the pill, there won't have to be anything between us."