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  He chuckled, still twitching with the remnants of his orgasm. His jerking compounded each time her thumb rubbed over his cockhead.

  “Are you suggesting that my hand is well acquainted with my cock?” he asked.

  She flushed. “I meant with sex in general.”

  “The amount of sex I have in general will never catch up with how much I experience in my head.”

  Beau emitted a loud, sharp bark, and Melanie jumped. She winced and peered over her shoulder at the pair of Labradors gazing at them with obvious curiosity. “Were they watching the entire time?”

  “I was too busy enjoying myself to notice.” Which was partially true. He had noticed them toward the end there, but refused to let a couple of dogs ruin his good time. “I did have an idea for a new sex swing while you were giving me the ride of my life.”

  She lifted an eyebrow at him. “Do you always find the capacity to think when you’re in the middle of the act?”

  “I wouldn’t call it thinking,” he said, stroking both hands up her smooth back beneath her shirt. “More like sparks of inspiration. But to answer your question . . .” He bent to kiss her neck because she was every distraction he needed in his currently chaotic life. “Inspiration doesn’t happen often. I just find you particularly stimulating.”

  “Are you going to tell me about this new idea of yours?”

  “Mmm,” he murmured, kissing a path to her ear and nipping the lobe. She shuddered in response. “I’d rather build the prototype and give you a demonstration.”

  “Not sure if I should be intrigued or worried,” she said.

  He wondered if she were thinking about the prototype he’d been hoping to unveil the last time she visited. They’d had to postpone its debut when it malfunctioned, but he’d got it working late last night. Tinkering took his mind off his troubles, but not nearly as well as Melanie did. And tinkering for Melanie? With Melanie? Well, that might just get him through this mess he called a life with a big smile on his face. He was tired of being angry. Tired of trying to fix problems he had no control over. Tired of feeling like his opinions didn’t matter.

  His arms tightened around her, and while he didn’t share all the thoughts and feelings swarming through his turbulent mind, he did say, “I’m really glad you came.”

  “That was quite an orgasm,” she said, her tone teasing.

  “I meant—”

  She squeezed him. “I know what you meant,” she whispered. “I’m glad I came too. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to find my shorts so your dogs will stop ogling my bare ass.”

  “Some dogs have all the luck.”

  Chapter Four

  Melanie knew she was staring, but she couldn’t help herself. It was true that Gabe was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in profile—surpassed only by when his face was turned in her direction—but that wasn’t the only reason she couldn’t take her eyes off him as he drove. After making love on the porch swing, they found the rest of their evening quite normal—preparing and sharing a perfectly ordinary dinner accompanied by perfectly ordinary conversation, cuddling up on the couch with two giant dogs to watch a movie, telling each other stories about their pasts, falling asleep in each other’s arms. All of it had made her heart ache with longing. She wanted this kind of life with him—ordinary, tame—and he would give anything to go back to his life as a rock star. Recognizing that he was everything she wanted in a man ignited far more than her passion. It ignited feelings she could not ignore.

  I’m in love with him. She smiled as she identified the feelings within her thoughts. I’m madly in love with him.

  After Gabe had made arrangements for his dogs to be spoiled in his absence—she couldn’t help but think that guys who were good with dogs made great future fathers—the two of them had started north to visit Nikki. Most guys would have deemed her best friend too high maintenance to deal with. Melanie’s last boyfriend had broken up with her for that very reason. He couldn’t deal with Nikki or with Melanie dropping everything to help Nikki out of another mess. But not Gabe. Gabe cared enough about her to drive ten hours to visit the woman whose reckless behavior had already put a strain on their tender new relationship. Either Gabe was a glutton for punishment, or he cared about Melanie’s happiness. Genuinely cared. Or maybe he was just antsy for a road trip because he was supposed to be touring with his band this summer.

  “Take a picture; it will last longer.”

  He gave her a sideways look that made her toes curl.

  She flushed. So he had noticed that she was gawking at him.

  “A picture might be worth a thousand words,” she said, feeling particularly sappy—maybe it was hormonal—“but it would never do you justice. A picture wouldn’t smell like you, sound like you, feel like you.”

  “Taste like me?” He gave her a hopeful look.

  She giggled and leaned across the small interior of the Volkswagen to kiss him. He’d left his Texas-size truck at home and opted to take Nikki’s car back to Topeka, assuring Melanie that he could fix her temperamental sedan without a problem.

  “A picture wouldn’t kiss me back either,” she said. “So I wouldn’t ever take a picture over staring at the real you.”

  “You’re so obsessed with me.”

  She laughed at his teasing, but he was closer to the truth than he could possibly know. “I think it’s called being in love.”

  “What?” he said, his eyes widening.

  “I love you, Gabriel Banner.” Maybe she should wait for him to say it again—after all, he’d been the one to promise he’d tell her how he felt as often as she needed to hear it, and he hadn’t repeated the sentiment since their hasty love confession over a week ago. But this morning her feelings were bubbling out of her like the head on an overflowing beer mug, and she couldn’t contain them. She leaned into his line of sight because he was singularly focused on the road in front of him. “Does it scare you? That I love you?”

  The car jerked, tires screeching as Gabe stomped on the brakes. They were on a lonely stretch of interstate somewhere in Oklahoma, so he didn’t even earn a horn blare from a disgruntled driver as the Bug shuddered to a stop. Melanie pried her fingernails out of her thighs and glared at him.

  “What are you doing? Are you trying to kill us?”

  She jerked around in her seat to see that the road behind them was empty, but it wouldn’t stay like that forever. A semi might mow them over at any moment.

  “Why did you stop?” she asked, turning her attention to him.

  His face had gone pale. Even his lips had lost their color. “Did you just say . . .”

  “That I love you? Yes, I said it. And I’m sorry if that upsets you, but I can’t help it. I love you. It’s not like it’s the first time you ever heard me say it.” The second time, but not the first. “Now will you please go so we don’t commemorate this heart-baring moment with our deaths.”

  The car started forward, slowly at first, and then went faster and faster until they were cruising at least thirty miles per hour over the speed limit.

  “Gabe?”

  He was in some sort of trance. She wasn’t sure that he’d even heard her call his name. She touched his knee, poked his cheek, licked the side of his neck. Nothing. He did come out of his daze when flashing red and blue lights came up behind them and the state patrolman squawked his siren.

  “Shit,” Gabe said, finally coasting to a sane speed and then braking smoothly to pull over and stop on the highway’s wide shoulder.

  Gabe leaned across her and fumbled with the glove compartment. “Please tell me that Nikki has insurance on this thing.”

  Melanie couldn’t help but wonder why he was avoiding looking at her, and why he was digging through the glove compartment instead of asking for her help, and why he was acting so weird just because she’d said those three little words. She’d assumed—apparently wrongly—that he still held the strong feelings he’d confessed to after their one and only huge argument, especially after
asking her to move in with him last night. But maybe he was having second thoughts. Maybe she should have waited for him to tell her how he felt again before opening her big mouth. She knew how skittish some guys could be over the word love. She just hadn’t realized Gabe was such a guy. Had she completely fucked up this relationship with premature word ejaculation? Damn it!

  “She has insurance,” Melanie said, though she didn’t want to discuss fucking insurance at the moment. She wanted to discuss Gabe’s inexplicable cold feet. “I should know. I pay for it.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  She shook her head, but he still wasn’t looking at her, so she reiterated. “No joke. She’s a bit short on funds at the moment. She can’t hold a job. Keeps screwing around with coworkers, her boss, the janitor.”

  “Is she a nympho? I mean, not just promiscuous, but legitimately has a mental condition that makes her need sex all the time?”

  “No, she’s not a nympho. Her shrink says she wants to belong to someone, and it’s easiest for her to get that feeling by sleeping around. Of course, the feeling doesn’t last long, because no one sticks around after they use her for sex.” Jacob Silverton being a perfect example. Melanie crossed her arms over her chest.

  “I get why you enable her.”

  Melanie did enable her, and she knew it. She refused to apologize for caring about someone who had no one else to look after her.

  Gabe continued, “But I’m not sure it’s in her best interest.”

  “You’re enabling her too! Who decided we should go see her today?” She lifted her eyebrows at him, but he was focused on retrieving his driver’s license from his wallet.

  “Would you please find the proof of insurance for me?” he asked, dropping the subject.

  Not unlike the way he’d dropped the subject of her love confession.

  So she’d gotten a bit mushy on him. She hadn’t realized he’d freak out so much over her utterance of three simple—or not so simple—words, especially since she’d told him once before. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he’d started to doubt her feelings because she didn’t say it often enough. But he was as guilty of that as she was.

  “And registration,” he added. “Not sure if we need it in Oklahoma.”

  “And we’re just going to ignore what I said a few minutes ago?”

  “That you pay Nikki’s bills?”

  She waved a hand at him, but he still wouldn’t fucking look at her. He was now holding his license between his forefinger and middle finger while staring at the side-view mirror.

  Melanie huffed out an exasperated breath and after finding the little wallet with the appropriate papers—Melanie knew they were in there because she’d put them inside herself—she slapped it none too gently on his thigh.

  Gabe rolled the window down, and a hot blast of Oklahoman summer air entered the car.

  “Can you shut off your engine?” the police officer asked in a calm but authoritative voice.

  Gabe complied, and the air conditioning cut off as well. Ugh, it was already hot. This was going to be hell. Why had he been driving like a maniac? Trying to off her so he didn’t have to break her heart? If he’d been joking about shacking up and if he didn’t return her love, he should just tell her. She was a big girl. She’d been dumped more than once. It wasn’t ever fun, but it hadn’t ever killed her either. This oppressive heat, on the other hand, just might do her in. She tried rolling down her window, but the ignition was completely off, so the glass stayed shut tight. She lifted the heavy mass of her hair off her nape and held it against the back of her head as she used her free hand to wave hot, thick air into her face.

  “License, registration, and proof of insurance, please.”

  The officer’s voice drifted down into the car. Melanie couldn’t see anything but the man’s middle, which included a holstered pistol.

  Gabe handed the cop the required documents. “How fast was I going, sir?”

  Melanie scrunched down so she could see the officer’s face. He was a bit thick around the waist, but not overly fat. A pair of dark sunglasses hid his eyes, but when he glanced at Gabe’s license, Melanie saw him do a double take before he looked down at Gabe. He even held the license next to Gabe’s face to make sure it was the same guy. Apparently he’d never seen a highly tattooed, Mohawk-sporting hunk of a drummer driving a melon-orange VW Bug before.

  Gabe took off his ball cap, revealing the dragon tattoos on his scalp that must be visible on his license. They didn’t allow ball caps in Texas driver’s license photos, not even Texas Rangers ones. “Yep, that’s really me.”

  “I see that. I clocked you at ninety-six.”

  Ninety-six? Holy shit!

  “Huh,” Gabe muttered. “I had no idea this little car could go that fast.”

  “Just because there’s no traffic doesn’t mean you should test the limits of your—” The officer choked on a laugh as he eyed the adorable Bug. “—vehicle.”

  “That isn’t what I was doing,” Gabe said. He flicked a hand in Melanie’s direction. “She just told me she loved me.”

  So he had heard her.

  The officer leaned slightly to peer into the car. Hot in the face, Melanie offered him a little wave.

  “Does your daddy know who you’re dating?” the man asked.

  Her slight embarrassment turned into heated outrage.

  “My daddy has no say in who I love,” she snapped.

  Gabe giggled and pressed the backs of his fingers to his nose. It was a sound Melanie hadn’t realized he could produce, and one she never wanted to hear from him again.

  The officer flicked the car’s registration against his thigh. “I’ll just run this to make sure everything checks out and write you a very large ticket. Are you Nicole Swanson, ma’am?”

  Melanie shook her head. “No, that’s my roommate. She let me borrow her car because mine’s in the shop.” Technically it was sitting in the parking lot of her apartment building collecting bird poo, which in her opinion was all it was good for at the moment.

  The officer returned to his vehicle, and Gabe sat stone still, staring straight ahead as if she were a T-Rex who wouldn’t notice he existed if he didn’t move. Was the thought of her telling him she loved him really that terrible? Did he find her feelings humorous or just pathetic?

  “Gabe, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “I’m not uncomfortable.”

  “Then why won’t you look at me?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “I feel like my heart is going to explode as it is. If I look at you now, I don’t think I’ll survive.”

  “It’s not like I’ve never said it before.”

  “But that was after an argument. It doesn’t count.”

  What the hell? So when he’d returned her hastily spewed loved confession after their argument about Nikki, he hadn’t meant it? Her heart twisted so hard, she covered her chest with a fisted hand.

  “It counted,” she said, her voice tight with a mix of hurt and anger. “Of course it counted. I don’t say such things to every guy who comes along, you know.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “I just . . . I believed it more this time. Last time it felt like we were just trying to soothe wounds inflicted by arguing.”

  “So you’re not upset that I said I love you?”

  He emitted a slight whine. “Please don’t say it again until we’re alone in a relatively safe location. I’m dying to pull you into my arms and show you that I feel the same way.”

  Her heart lightening with relief, eyes brimming with tears of happiness, she said, “I know we were planning to drive the entire way to Topeka in one day, but I’m a bit tired. I think we need to find a nice hotel soon.”

  “I’m a bit tired myself.”

  “Ten hours is much too long to sit beside you without you buried inside me.”

  He cleared his throat and nodded, still not looking at her. “I completely a
gree.”

  “Will it be okay for me to say I love you when our bodies are one?”

  He bit his fist and groaned.

  She laughed. “I do love you, Gabe Banner.”

  He turned in his seat to check out the state trooper behind them. The officer sure was taking his sweet time.

  “How big will my ticket be if I leave for the nearest hotel right now?”

  She slid a hand over his thigh to nestle between his legs. Though she wasn’t close to touching his cock, he squirmed beneath her touch.