Never in his life had he wanted a woman this much.

"Please," he heard her whimper. Her hips began to circle a bit faster and he smiled, keeping his fingers just on the outside of where she needed them, aware that he was teasing her.

It was time to end at least some of her discomfort.

He adjusted his touch, slowly pushing down into the liquid heat, and let his middle finger make contact with her stiff little clitoris.

Emma groaned low and deep. Thomas brought his lips to her ear as he let his finger flick over her slippery heart-beat. "I've been dying to get close to you, put my hands all over your body, make you come. I think you're going to come a lot for me, aren't you, baby?"

She moaned.

He wanted her to wait. He wanted her to go higher. He wanted it to be exceptional for her. He wanted only truth between them, right now and always.

He pulled his hand away, and with gentleness he picked her up and turned her around so that she sat on the edge of the bed again. He kneeled before her, pleased to see that she looked dazed by desire-sleepy and drugged and trembling with anticipation.

"Now you know how I feel about your little blue dress and what goes in it," he said, trailing a finger down her kneecap. "And you know exactly what I am and what I'm not. So what happens now?"

Emma exhaled, shuddering from his hot touch and his words and the intensity of her desire and sorrow. "I'm so sorry you can't have children."

Thomas looked up into her wet blue eyes, her face and breasts framed by the fall of all that glorious, dark hair. She put her hand on the top of his head, like a benediction, and he let his chin drop to his chest in heavy relief.

"You really thought it would matter-that I wouldn't want you?" she whispered.

He nodded.

"Oh, Thomas." Emma reached for his chin and tipped it up. His eyes were closed and his face was tight with emotion. She leaned down and kissed the little semicolon scar, then his eyelashes, his temples, the golden skin over his cheekbones, his dimples, his lips. "I want you, more than ever, because you trusted me enough to tell me the truth. Thank you for that."

He nodded, his eyes still closed. "Can you forgive me for paying your fee?"

Emma let her hands stroke his soft, short curls. She cupped her hands around the hard curve of his skull and dropped a soft kiss to his forehead. "I forgive you."

"I want you, Emma."

"I want you, too. I want to know everything about you. I want to experience everything with you. I want more than I've ever had."

Thomas jerked as he felt Emma's small hand close around his erection.

"And man, oh man, do I ever want this bad boy." She swirled her tongue along his earlobe and then bit him, feeling the shiver course through his body.

"You're a sexy, funny, complicated man, and I've wanted you from the very first moment I saw you. I couldn't help myself."

"Oh yeah, Emma-"

She smiled with pleasure-the pleasure of hearing him say her name in that deep, resonant voice. In Thomas's voice, the two syllables of her ordinary name sounded like desire itself.

She drank in the vision of the man on his knees before her, head thrown back, eyes closed, jaw clenched.

She removed her hands from his erection and caressed his muscled ass, roamed up his back, slid her hands to his shoulders. It was a bittersweet place-a great ledge of muscle and sinew that seemed to be the home of both his strength and his sorrow.

"If she left you, she must not have loved you."

Thomas opened his eyes and looked right up into Emma's face. "I was closed off. Unwilling to commit." He shrugged, his body rippling under her hands. "Finding out I was a spermless wonder made it easy for her to move on, and I don't blame her."

Emma moved her palms to cover the rounded muscles of his chest, lacy with blond wisps and dotted with silky, pink nipples.

"Did you love Nina, Thomas?"

"I realize now that I didn't."

She let her hands flutter down the ridged surface of his abdomen and ran a finger along the edge of the flat, smooth navel.

"Have you ever been in love?"

His stomach quivered and he breathed faster. "Just this once, I think-I'm still trying to figure it out, Emma."

Her heart skipped a beat.

"And you? Did you ever love anyone besides Aaron?"

She moved her hands over the sweet indentations near his hipbones and down into the darker, springy thatch of hair, then clasped him at the root.

"Only you."

He groaned and threw his head back. Emma stared in wonder at her woman fingers on the man flesh made red-purple and hard with blood. Without a doubt, it was the most shockingly beautiful sight the world had to offer.

She wished she were an artist and not a scientist, someone who could capture the graceful lines of him on canvas or in clay-the aching perfection of the physical. But she wasn't an artist. She was just a woman who had the privilege to touch him, see him.

Love him-if he'd let her.

Thomas's erection twitched in her hands, and she smiled. She brushed her fingertips over the plump head and its swollen, velvet edge, then let her fingers slip down to the rigid flesh again. Veined. Hard. Thick.

And it occurred to her that the man's penis was soft on the outside and steel on the inside-the exact opposite of the man himself.

"I'm sad, Thomas. I'm so sad about the babies." She leaned down to rain kisses along his cheeks and beard stubble and under the ledge of his jaw. "But it doesn't affect how I feel about you. It's scary how much I want you. I've never felt anything like it in my life."

She reached beneath to cup his testicles, and his eyes shot open.

"It's all right, Rugby Boy." She smiled at him, gently exploring his heavy sac in one hand while stroking his length with the other. "I know everything now. There's nothing to hide, right?"

Thomas shuddered, and Emma watched him flex his back and bring his hands up to hover before her-then tenderly claim her breasts. It was the first time he'd touched her there since the front porch.

And for a long moment they simply closed their eyes and cradled each other, savored each other.

Until it wasn't enough.

Thomas was the first to move. He dipped his mouth to one of Emma's nipples and swore he heard a sizzle on contact with his wet tongue. Her flesh hardened and elongated in his mouth, begging him to suckle and tease and nip, first one, then the other, until both nipples were rock hard, glistening, and ruby red, and Emma was groaning.

Thomas widened his mouth to feed on as much of each glorious breast as he could. She was heavy with arousal and the flesh seemed to melt in his mouth.

Her breasts were perfect. Perfect for his mouth to suck and lick and bite. Perfect under his hands. Perfect for him. And he never wanted to stop making love to them.

Emma let go of him and leaned back on her hands to support herself. She threw back her head and cried, "I'm so sorry I yelled at you and called you names!"

It was difficult to keep the suction going while laughing, so Thomas moved his kiss to the hot and tender skin of her throat. While he did this, his hands came down on her inner thighs.

Emma rose up to look at him.

"Spread your legs for me, baby," he said.

She whimpered, and let her legs fall open.

"Wider. All theway." He looked from the tender juncture of her thighs back to her eyes, and saw the sweet female vulnerability in both places. "I need to touch everywhere, Emma. I need to see everything. Do everything."

He lowered his head. When his fingers spread her open, Emma sucked hard on her bottom lip to stop from screaming. Then his tongue lapped, slicked around, probed, while he slid the tip of his middle finger inside her. Right about then, she gave up trying to be quiet.