Molly had no idea what she was doing.

  For years, she had been afraid of doing anything that might remind her of what she had realized in adulthood must have been her mother’s promiscuous behavior. Molly had once asked her mother who her father was, only to be told that Sarah had absolutely no idea, that she had been involved with several men at the time of Molly’s conception.

  Molly had never been sure whether Sarah was telling the truth, because there had never seemed to be a shortage of money to pay for her mother’s alcohol, cigarettes, and the designer clothes she liked to buy, and which had filled the long wall of wardrobes in her bedroom. Had, because Molly had discovered those clothes were all gone when she returned home from school that day and then never seen her mother again.

  As an adult, Molly had wondered if her mother had demanded maintenance from all the men she had been involved with at the time of Molly’s conception. Without them knowing about each other, of course. As none of them had shown the slightest interest in being present in Molly’s life, Sarah’s subterfuge would never have been discovered.

  It would certainly explain why, when Sarah had never worked a day in her life, she’d always had so much money to spend.

  Whatever her mother’s machinations might have been, Molly had never wanted to be like her. In any way.

  Which meant that not only was she still a virgin, but she had absolutely no sexual experience whatsoever.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Rufus had absolutely no idea where Molly’s thoughts had gone, but nor was he going to ask her questions about them. He’d almost lost her the last time he did that.

  Whatever Molly was thinking or feeling, she was an adult and, as she had so firmly told him, capable of making her own decisions. He liked her enough to respect her and that claim.

  “Shall we come down for him later, or would you prefer to take him with us now?”

  Molly turned to look at him inquiringly, color blazing in her cheeks when she saw he was looking at the first kennel where Angus sat watching them with bright and expectant eyes.

  Rufus chuckled. “Once Mia told me how fond you are of Angus, I realized why you were so lacking in warmth toward my remark about possibly adopting him.”

  Molly looked stricken. “Do you think Mia knows I take him up to my apartment with me in the evenings?”

  Mia had already told him that she knew. “If she does, she isn’t concerned by it.”

  Molly winced. “He’s just so cute and affectionate, and I—well, I’ve appreciated having his company at night.”

  He grimaced. “I’m not sure if this helps to make you feel safer, but some of my men check the premises twenty-four-seven for intruders or any other security breach.”

  “They’re your men I’ve seen creeping about the grounds at night?”

  “I— Well, yes, I suppose they are— Hey,” he protested when Molly slapped him on the chest. Not because it hurt, but because he had absolutely no idea what the hell he’d done to deserve it.

  Molly’s cheeks were flushed. “I’ve been keeping a wary eye on them for weeks! I thought they were drug buyers or sellers, at the very least! Maybe even Mafia, as they all wear dark suits!”

  Ah.

  “You dick! You absolute dick!” Her voice broke emotionally as she slapped his abs for a second time. “Some nights, I’ve been in fear for my life.” Tears began to fall down her cheeks.

  Rufus easily caught hold of her wrists to stop her from hitting him again. “You’ve never told Mia about that. If you had, she would have told me or Darius.” He felt a chill down his spine imagining if those men actually had been drug dealers and had discovered Molly watching them.

  “I didn’t want to worry her in her condition,” Molly choked.

  “In future know that those men you’ve seen outside are here for your protection as much as the shelter’s.”

  Molly continued to tremble against him, despite those assurances.

  “I’m so sorry.” Rufus held both her slender wrists in one of his hands so that he could cup a hand beneath her chin as he bent to kiss her. “I’m sorry, Molly. So sorry. Forgive me. Please,” he murmured in between kissing her salty-tasting lips.

  How could Molly resist such a heartfelt plea?

  She couldn’t, obviously, as she began to return his kisses. Once Rufus had released her wrists, her arms moved up about his shoulders to hold him closer.

  Kisses that very quickly became deeply passionate, arousing a hunger inside Molly that she was absolutely sure only Rufus could assuage.

  “They were your men. Unbelievable,” she murmured self-disgustedly long minutes later, her neck arched as Rufus continued to kiss along its length, occasionally pausing to explore the sensitive hollows in her throat. “I seriously thought of calling the police on a couple of occasions. Despite the fact that the police and I do not have a good history.”

  Rufus raised his head to look at her with dark eyes. “Because they were the ones to remove you from the only home you had ever known all those years ago?”

  She nodded. “They and social services. It’s made me wary of asking any of them for help since then.”

  “That’s understandable,” he acknowledged. “But know in future that it’s my men outside, and they will deal with any suspicious behavior on or near the shelter.”

  Molly smiled ruefully. “It would have been nice if you or Mia had told me that before I moved in… Mia doesn’t know about them,” she realized from the guilt she discerned in Rufus’s expression. “Does Darius?”

  “Darius, yes.” His thumb caressed lightly along her jawline as he stared down at her intently. “He understood and accepted my need to protect Mia once I’d explained I would never risk losing her again. For any reason. What is it?” he prompted sharply when Molly’s gaze lowered to his chest. “Do you think I’m being too obsessive about her safety?”

  No, that wasn’t it at all.

  But there was no way Molly could explain exactly why she related to his pain as deeply as she did. Not without losing him completely.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” she encouraged softly. “I’ll come down for Angus later.” After Rufus had left.

  One more day. That’s all she would allow herself. Then she would have to leave here and never see Rufus, Mia, or the rest of their family ever again.

  One more day, and tonight, when she could be with Rufus.

  It would have to be enough.

  Even though it never could be.

  Because she was in love with this man. Hot, soul-deep, achingly in love with him.

  “Having second thoughts?” he prompted huskily when she hesitated after entering her bathroom. “You can, you know.”

  “No second thoughts.” Because she had passed second thoughts and gone quickly on to third and fourth ones. None of them good. She turned on the water in the shower cubicle. “I just realized this shower isn’t big enough for two.” Especially when one of them was six foot four inches in height with a chest and shoulders an American footballer would envy.

  “We’ll make room.”

  “But—”

  “You, my darling, are wasting time when we could be devouring each other.” Rufus gently turned her to face him. “Are you nervous?”

  “Of course I’m nervous!”

  “You shouldn’t be. I would never hurt you. Never,” he repeated before lowering his head and claiming her slightly parted lips with his own.

  It was what Molly had been waiting for, hungering for, and she reached up to grasp hold of his shoulders as he pulled her closer still and devoured and claimed her lips and mouth.

  As they continued to kiss, she could feel the heat of his cock against her. That hard flesh pressed, grinding against the nubbin between her thighs. Causing her to gasp, which in turn allowed Rufus’s tongue to plunge deeper still and in the same rhythm as his hips rolled in circles against her swollen and aching clit.

  Molly was so lost to that pleasure, she was barely aware of his fingers unfastening her jeans before pushing them down. One of his hands slid into the back of her panties to take a firm grasp of one of her bottom cheeks, holding her in place as his other hand moved smoothly inside the front of her panties.

  She gasped, drawing air into her suddenly starving lungs, as those long fingers pressed against and stroked her slippery clit. She was so aroused, so mindlessly focused on the pleasure of being touched so intimately that it took only one stroke, then two, before she toppled shamelessly over the edge of that pleasure.

  She came hard.

  So hard that for several long minutes, she was completely lost to that heady pleasure coursing through her body and the kaleidoscope of colors bursting inside her head.

  “All okay?” Rufus finally murmured to the collapsed and heavily breathing woman he held in his arms. Molly still shook in the aftermath of her climax.

  He had no idea how long he had kissed and touched Molly or enjoyed watching the expressions of arousal and then pleasure flitting across her face.

  Long enough that the bathroom had filled with steam, he realized self-derisively.

  Long enough that the thick length of his cock jutted heavy and throbbing, aching to be released and taken into the softness and heat of Molly’s mouth.

  He needed to be patient, he told himself. Molly was a virgin, and skittish as a mare when presented to a stallion. Too fast, too demanding, and she would shy away and possibly never return.

  He kissed along the length of her neck, pausing to lightly bite the lobe of her ear. “That was one,” he murmured softly.

  Molly raised her head to look at him. “One what?”

  “Orgasm.”

  Her cheeks colored a fiery red. “Please tell me you aren’t going to count each of them?”

  He grinned. “I’m not sure I can count as high as I intend going.”

  “Modesty is not your middle name,” she teased as she pulled out of his arms.

  “No, my middle name is Thomas, after my father. We have a tradition in my family of using the name of our father as our middle name. My father’s name was Thomas Edward, for my grandfather,” Rufus kept talking over the embarrassment he could see in Molly’s face as she self-consciously pushed her jeans and panties down her slender legs before stepping out of them.

  Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Your son, if you have one, will have Rufus as his middle name.”

  “If I ever have one, yes.” He had never even considered the idea of having more children.

  Until recently, he realized.

  Until he met Molly and could so easily imagine having a son or daughter with her raven black hair and those beautiful sky-blue eyes.

  Would it be difficult for him to have another child?

  Yes.

  Would he live in fear every minute that they, and their mother, might be taken away from him?

  Yes.

  But…

  There had never been a “but” in those thoughts before. Before Molly.

  Because the thought of Molly growing heavy and round with his child, of making love to her every day as her pregnancy and hormones demanded he could, filled him with euphoria rather than fear.

  A dangerous combination of images and emotions he refused to linger on right now.

  Especially when Molly had now removed all her clothing and he was able to feast his eyes on her slender perfection. Small, sloping upward breasts tipped with deep-rose-colored nipples. A slender waist curving out to shapely hips. There was a dark triangle of hair between her thighs, slightly damp from the release of her juices as she climaxed against his fingers.

  Rufus held Molly’s gaze as he now lifted those fingers to his mouth, drawing in the heady scent of Molly’s release before opening his lips and sliding those fingers into the heat of his mouth. The taste of Molly’s release, salty and musky, exploded on his tongue.

  Molly couldn’t look away, felt mesmerized, as Rufus licked her juices from his fingers, heat building inside her as her arousal began to rise for a second time.

  It took every effort of her will to finally drag her gaze away. “Shouldn’t you be undressing too?”

  Rufus didn’t answer her as he instead unbuttoned and removed his shirt. Revealing a tanned and muscled chest, with a light smattering of dark hair across his pecs, narrowing down over his abdomen before disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers. Which he unfastened next and allowed to drop to the floor before stepping out of them.

  Molly’s breath caught in her throat, her gaze fixed on the way his black boxers clung to every lithe line of his hips, the bulge of his arousal on full display beneath the thin cotton.

  She stopped breathing altogether when he pushed that material down, allowing the nine inches, at least, of his heavily veined cock to jut free.

  He stepped forward until their naked bodies were almost but not quite touching, one of his hands lifting to cradle the side of her face. “There’s no pressure to do anything. None. Do you understand?”

  She swallowed. “But what if I can’t⁠—”

  “I think we’ve already established that you can,” he teased gently.

  She huffed. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I know you didn’t.” He chuckled. “But there’s a lot for us to discover before A goes into slot B.”

  Molly burst out laughing, as she was probably supposed to.

  But Rufus’s teasing had certainly eased a lot of the awkwardness she’d been feeling.

  So much so that she was able to enjoy the two of them washing each other beneath the hot spray of the shower, learning each other’s bodies and what gave them both pleasure.

  Rufus’s cock was hard and aching by the time he’d washed each of Molly’s breasts and down the slope of her abdomen. Instead of continuing downward, he dropped to his knees to gently part Molly’s legs so that he could move in between them.

  She drew in a hissing breath when, with a growl of satisfaction, he lowered his head to take another taste of her renewed wetness, made all the sweeter because it was from her glistening pussy lips.

  He held those pussy lips apart as he lapped and licked with his tongue, drinking down that heady sweetness, feeling the tremors taking over Molly’s body and feeling how stiff and sensitive her clit had become.

  He was loath to enter her channel with anything more than the tip of his fingers, stretching that tightness, but leaving her virginity intact until they both felt comfortable with him taking that gift from her as well.

  His tongue continued to circle and press fully against the throb of her clit, feeling Molly’s pleasure rise, and then rise again, before her body exploded into a climax more violent than the first one.

  Rufus had every intention of ensuring she experienced many more of them before morning.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Molly woke slowly, taking several minutes to gather her thoughts before turning to look at the bed beside her. Which was when she discovered that the warm weight on the duvet beside her was Angus and not Rufus.

  Well, of course it wasn’t Rufus.

  He’d orgasmed the life out of her—she’d eventually lost count—as he’d said he would. On the last occasion, he had tightly gripped his own cock and stroked himself to climax at the same time as Molly reached hers.

  After which, Molly had fallen into an exhausted sleep and Rufus must have decided it was time to leave.

  That’s how purely sexual relationships worked, she believed. A brief hookup, and then the one whose bed it wasn’t simply left and went back to their own home.

  The fact that Molly had now realized she was in love with Rufus had absolutely no bearing on his behavior. In fact, if Rufus had realized how deep her feelings for him went, he probably wouldn’t have agreed to them having even that one night together.

  Well…part of a night together, because he had still been here when Molly fell asleep, but had left sometime afterward.

  One more day, she reminded herself. That was all the time she had left here, and she was only staying that long because she knew Mia was depending on her to manage the second open day at the shelter.

  Would she even see Rufus again before she left, or was last night all she would ever have with him?

  The fact he had gone down and got Angus before leaving, bringing the dog up here to keep her company this morning, seemed to indicate the latter.

  She intended to see Mia and the baby one more time before she left, and there was a possibility Rufus might be there at the same time she was, but otherwise, Molly knew there was no reason for them to ever meet up again.

  “No point lying here feeling sorry for myself,” she told a now-awake Angus as she threw back the bedcovers. “We have lots of work to do today, young man.”

  Angus accompanied her as she went through to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, leaving it to percolate as she took the dog downstairs before letting him out into one of the runs. She stayed long enough to put out a bowl of food and some water for the little dog before going back to her apartment to enjoy a mug of freshly brewed coffee and then taking a shower.

  All the time she was doing those things, she refused to allow thoughts of Rufus to intrude to disturb or upset her.

  They had spent an evening and part of the night together. The most memorable time of her life, admittedly, but now it was over.

  She had never allowed herself the time for regrets in the past, and she wouldn’t do so now either over Rufus.

  She didn’t see the note he’d left on the pillow beside hers until after she’d showered and dressed and began to straighten the bedclothes.

  Molly,

  Sorry to leave without saying goodbye, but there’s a work emergency I need to deal with.

  Rufus.

  Call me on this number when you wake up.

  He’d written his cell phone number next to that request.

  Molly’s hand instinctively clenched into a fist after reading the note, crushing the scrap of paper in her hand. Longing and practicality warred inside her for several long minutes before she took aim and threw the brief letter, and Rufus’s cell phone number, into the bin in the corner of the kitchen.