Give It All (35 page)

“Oh yes,” she said, smiling at her busy hands. “Now, this is it.
This
is my gift.”

“Better than a diamond bracelet?”

“To me it is.”

He’d returned that outlandish token during his trip to San Diego. The money would be far better spent downstairs.

“Done?” he asked when she set the machine aside.

“Nearly.” She ran a hand towel under the tap, and when she returned to him, she straddled his hips, skirt gathering between their middles.

“Why, hello.”

“Hello.” The cloth was warm, cleaning away the last of the extra ink. In a bright, physical rush, Duncan wanted her. His entire body was flushed, cock warming, muscles tensing, mouth dry. He grabbed her waist, pulling her against him.

“Is this my tip?” she asked, grinning.

“I’m not stingy.” He moved against her, letting her feel his excitement. She answered with her own motions, and he was panting in seconds.

“This is wildly unprofessional,” she whispered, even as her hips stroked their centers together, friction burning bright.

“Tell that to the old Duncan. He might be idiot enough to care.”

“Hang on. Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way.” She escaped his groping, swabbed the tattoo, rubbed it with ointment, and dressed it with a neat gauze square framed in medical tape.

She snapped her gloves off, jacking Duncan’s pulse. “Now, where were we?”

“Somewhere rather unethical.”

She rinsed her hands, then twined his fingers with her damp ones. “Come.”

And as she led him through the apartment, it was strange to think this bedroom had ever been anything but
theirs.

Yours and mine. Ours.
Her covers, and now his overpriced
sheets, full of scents and memories belonging solely to the two of them.

He pulled her down onto the bed, let her straddle him.

“Say it again,” he murmured, holding her waist.

She lowered herself to her forearms, smile growing wicked. When their noses touched, she whispered, “I love you, Duncan Welch.”

He shut his eyes and let those words warm him. Her breast glanced his bandage, and the tenderness it triggered felt so precisely, startlingly right. He held her tight, stroked her hair.

“Say it back,” she whispered.

“I love you.”

She sat up, smiling, and traced the tape framing the gauze with her fingertip. “Good. Now show me.”

And he rolled her onto her back, showed her with his body every thrilling thing she made him feel, with the window open and the sun burning bright, for that entire, endless blue desert sky to see.

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Since she began writing in 2008,
Cara McKenna
has published more than thirty romances and erotic novels with a variety of publishers, sometimes under the pen name Meg Maguire. Her stories have been acclaimed for their smart, modern voice and defiance of convention. She was a 2010 Golden Heart Award finalist and a 2011 and 2013 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award nominee. She lives with her husband, with their feet in New England but their hearts in the Pacific Northwest. Cara loves hearing from readers! Email her at [email protected].

Visit Cara McKenna online:
www.caramckenna.com
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Hard Time

Desert Dogs
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Lay it Down
Give it All