The couch cushioned one of her legs as Dean moved lower, his tongue dancing across her belly. The desire to tear into his clothes and have him naked and covering her clouded her brain. Equal parts of her wanted to feel him, all of him, deep inside her while her body craved the teasing kisses and scrapes of his teeth.

He wiggled her out of the linen slacks she wore. Her barely-there panties were moist already when he kissed around the straps holding the material together. “I love how you smell,” he told her, running his tongue around the edge of her panties. “How you taste.”

Her body clenched.

As he moved lower to sample her, she held him away.

“I want to taste you,” she told him.

His eyes twitched. “Later,” he said.

But she didn’t want to wait. Her body was so fired up, he could look at her and she’d explode. It was time to welcome him home.

Katie pushed up and ran her hands down his chest before finding the clasp of his jeans.

“Now.”

Dean lifted his hands as if in surrender and helped her relieve him of his clothes.

His thick erection strained against his stomach and her mouth watered. Katie moved so he could lie on the couch before she ran her fingertips along his hip.

The tips of her hair brushed against his penis and he said something under his breath. Katie smiled, kissed his hip, and let her cheek rest against his desire. She teased him as he had done her when they’d made love before.

With only her lips, her tongue, she tasted. His hand fell to her shoulder as he moaned. She smiled around him and took as much as she could manage.

“Fuck.”

She giggled. “Not yet.”

“Oh, darlin’.”

Yeah, she knew the feeling. So she kept going, taking him, and ignoring her own empty body. Dean would take care of her no matter how far he allowed this to go.

A tiny taste splashed on her tongue and Dean pulled her away.

“C’mere,” he groaned.

She crawled up his body and kissed him.

Dean pushed her panties off and ran his hand along her butt with a playful squeeze.

His wet kisses stilled long enough to say. “Condom, back pocket…wallet.”

Instead of reaching for his jeans, she nudged his legs between hers and opened wide for him. “You of all people know there’s no need.” They’d already talked about their health, and that wasn’t a concern. If moving in wasn’t a sign of commitment, Katie wasn’t sure what else there was.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She felt the tip of him slide against her. “I want to feel you…all of you, inside me.”

He grinned and she sank onto him.

On top, she set the pace. The small confines of the couch made for different angles and sparks of pleasure from different places.

There was no energy for talking as they both plunged, kissed, and licked their way toward climax.

He was the only man she’d ever felt safe enough with to enjoy making love without a barrier. The heat of him and the feel of him making her slicker deep inside brought on a swift and powerful orgasm. She hardly settled into a pace when he thrust faster and tumbled her over the edge.

The warm gush of his seed filled her and God help her, she peaked again.

Katie lay limply in his arms as the world returned. The deep thud of his heart against his chest met her ear and took its time slowing down.

“We’re throwing the condoms away,” she told him.

“We are?”

“Yeah…we are.”

His chest rumbled and she closed her eyes and simply enjoyed a few quiet moments in his arms.

As it turned out, neither one of them really cooked. Dean had the barbeque thing down. He was down-home Texas that way. But when it came to dishes off the grill, they were painfully dependent on the microwave.

Not that he expected Katie to know her way around a kitchen. He knew the life she’d lived before, and it wasn’t full of domestic chores. There had always been a housekeeper at her father’s ranch and a cook at the hotel.

Dean didn’t care. He happily moved the guest bed out of the extra room and they set up a proper nursery for Savannah. After only a couple of nights in his home, Savannah was sleeping for six solid hours. A blessing according to Katie.

As a welcome home gift to her, he framed a picture he’d taken of Savannah and Katie together and wrapped it pink paper.

For a woman who understood four-hundred-dollar dinners in five-star restaurants and whose shoe collection alone could feed a small country…it was the small things she was taking pleasure in now.

She loved the gift and set it on his fireplace mantel along with other family photos he had displayed.

“This one was all of you as kids, right?”

He and his siblings had been dragged to plenty of photographers growing up. His mother had given him this particular picture when he moved away. All four of them were under the age of seven, his youngest sister barely old enough to sit on her own. In fact, she leaned against Dean in the picture and the photographer managed to get her smiling.

Dean glanced between the photos and noticed the same round cheeks, and same button nose, between Savannah and Ella.

It was natural to see your own face in that of a child…a child you wanted as your own. At least that’s what he told himself.

Unable to stop himself, later that night he dug into an old box of photos and found more childhood memories.

He realized that he and his siblings all had the same nose. Funny how he hadn’t noticed it before. Even his nephew had the Prescott button as a baby. He shook aside his thoughts. He’d come to terms with Katie’s inability to have his child long ago. He’d give up his ability to have a child who looked like him to keep Katie in his life any day.