“Mom troubles?” Dallas asked.

“Like always.”

“The boys went to get ready for bed just now,” he said, taking a step forward.

“Okay.” Why did I feel shy all of a sudden? “Are you leaving?”

“Not yet.” He took another step. “I’ve missed seeing you.”

He missed me?

I gulped. “I live across the street.”

“I know, Di,” he replied with a smirk on his pink mouth. “I’ve been trying to give you some space to think about things.”

“Think about what?” I gulped again, watching him slowly creep closer to me.

“What happened in my truck.”

Luckily, I knew that the wrong thing to ask was “What happened in the truck?” Instead, I had this deer-caught-in-the-headlights look on my face and muttered, “Oh. That.”

His eyebrow went up. “That?”

“Yeah. That.” Stupid, stupid, stupid, Diana.

Dallas took two more striding steps forward until he stopped directly in front of me, so close the upper part of his stomach brushed against my breasts. One of those big hands came up to my face and he pet my cheek again with the backs of his fingers, his voice low and steady. “I’m gonna kiss you again.”

I sucked in a breath as he dipped his head closer to mine. There were a million things I should tell him. Maybe even two million things. But instead of telling him I wasn’t sure where his mind was at or what he wanted from me or telling him that I thought he’d hung the Milky Way, all I did was nod.

I didn’t even ask him why he liked me or since when. When?

What I did do was stand there as his hands curled over my hips and his breath hit my skin.

His lips brushed across my forehead from one temple to the next and back again. I swallowed hard.

The soft skin of Dallas’s mouth went from my temple down along my ear and halfway across my jaw. Gentle. Barely a touch. I held my breath.

When he went up the path he’d come down, back across my forehead and down the same route along my ear on the other side, I closed my eyes and still didn’t breathe.

The hands on my hips tightened, and either Dallas took a step closer or he pulled me to him because our lower bodies were suddenly pressed against each other. And then, and then, his lips hovered over mine for all of a heartbeat before they covered my own. From one instant to the next, his mouth slanted over mine and the gentleness was nowhere to be found because it had gotten replaced by something I could only call hunger. Starving, I-can’t-get-enough-now-and-it-feels-like-I-might-never-get-enough hunger.

Dallas’s tongue dueled mine, and I wasn’t about to let him win. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken a breath, but I didn’t give a shit.

It was me who pressed my hips against his, a rock, a roll. But it was Dallas with the hard thing between us, hot and like a pipe against me, right above my belly button.

“I love the way you kiss,” he whispered when he drew his mouth away from mine just an inch.

I said it. I told him. “I like everything about you.” Because it was the truth.

This choking, groaned noise bubbled in Dallas’s mouth and I could feel the heat of his stare on my face, but I could only talk myself into looking at his mouth. His slightly parted, swollen lips inches away. And it was only because I was looking at his mouth that I knew it was being redirected to my cheeks, to my jaw, to two spots on my neck, and then I couldn’t see at all as his hips rocked into my stomach again, his cock harder and so warm through my clothes. Dallas pressed that soft mouth to my collarbone as his hands slid up from my hips to my waist to just directly below my breasts, so that the undersides rested on the curve of his hand between his thumb and index finger.

“I knew it would be like this,” he murmured into my collarbone, nipping at it with those flat, white teeth.

I was panting. I couldn’t talk.

One of his thumbs took a detour from my ribs and went up, swiping over my nipple, which I wasn’t surprised at all was hard. Dallas was breathing roughly as his thumb did it again. His mouth kissed the patch of skin my button-down shirt couldn’t cover and he whispered, directly into my damn heart, “I’ve thought about doing this with you in here a hundred times—a thousand times—”

“Buttercup! Are you gonna tuck me in?” came a shout that had me jerking back to reality.

But it didn’t have Dallas going anywhere. It didn’t have his hands moving from where they’d taken residence. And that thick shaft across my stomach didn’t go anywhere either.

It was only Dallas’s head that rose until his face hovered just above mine, that beautiful pink mouth brushing my own. He focused those green-brown-gold eyes in on me and kissed my lips, just a peck, one, two, three, four, five times. Then he touched his mouth to one of my cheeks and then the other, pausing right in front of me as his gaze bounced from one of my eyes to the second and back.

“Buttercup!” Louie yelled again.

His hands moved over to my arms and down to my wrists before cupping each of my hands in his palms. He brought them up between us and against his hard, flat belly. “I’ll let you put the boys to bed, but we’ll talk tomorrow. I’m not gonna keep putting this off, Diana.”

And I answered with the only word my stupid, stunned brain could come up with. “Okay.”

“Buttercup!”

“Poo face! Give me a second!” I hollered, shaking my head as I held Dallas’s gaze.

“Bring Mr. Dallas!” the little boy shouted back.

This beautiful, perfect man who had just finished kissing me smiled softly at Louie’s request. “You mind?” he had the nerve to ask.

“You know I don’t.” I waved him toward me. “Come on.”

Dallas nodded and took a step forward as I turned my back on him. I managed to take maybe a couple of steps before two arms wrapped around my shoulders from behind in a hug that lasted all of a squeeze and what I could only assume was a kiss to the back of my head. I stood there and took it.

A giant part of me wished he would do it again and again.

It wasn’t until he dropped his hold on me way too soon, that I reached back without looking at him and took his hand. I laced my fingers through his and felt his pads curl over the fine bones below the outside of my wrist. We walked the fifteen feet to Louie’s room holding hands, not saying a word. Sure enough, his blond head was the only thing peeking out from over the top of his Iron Man covers and he was grinning that grin that lit my entire world up.

“I like this,” Louie confirmed as I took a seat on the bed furthest away from the door and Dallas took the opposite spot as we let go of each other’s hand.

Snorting, I started tucking his comforter in around his legs and let his comment go. “Did you brush your teeth?”

“Yes.”

“What story do you want to hear today?” I asked, still tucking him in.

The little boy made a humming noise as his eyes bounced to Dallas. “What do you think, Mr. Dallas?”

“What do you usually hear? Only stories about your dad?”

“Yeah,” he answered like he was saying “duh.”

Dallas made his own thoughtful noise. His hand went to the top of where Louie’s foot was and he gave it a squeeze. “What about one of your mom?”