The Perfect Neighbor by Nora Roberts

dabbed on to please anyone but herself, and had no idea why she would wear two gold hoops in one ear and a single diamond stud in the other.
    But it all combined into one fascinating package.
    When she turned back to reach into the bag again, he took her wrist with his free hand. “Are we on level ground now?”
    “Looks like.”
    “Then there’s something else.” He set the beer down. “I dream about you.”
    Now it was her mouth that went dry. And her stomach erupted with the crazed flapping of a hundred wings. “What?”
    “I dream about you,” he repeated, and stepped forward until her back was against the refrigerator. Her back against the wall this time, he thought. Not his. “About being with you, touching you.” Watching her face, he skimmed his fingertips over the tops of her breasts. “And I wake up tasting you.”
    “Oh, God.”
    “You said you felt something when I kissed you, and thought I did, too.” With his eyes still on hers, he ran his hands down her sides to her hips. “You were right.”
    Weak at the knees, she swallowed. Hard. “I was?”
    “Yeah. And I want to feel it again.”
    She strained back as he leaned forward. “Wait!”
    His mouth paused a breath from hers. “Why?”
    And her mind went blank. “I don’t know.”
    His lips curved in one of his rare smiles. “Stop me when you do,” he suggested, then captured her.
    It was the same. She was sure it wouldn’t be, couldn’t be the same fast, hot spin of heart and mind and body. But all those parts of her seemed to have been waiting, and poised to leap. Jody was right, she thought dimly. He’d ruined her.
    Bright, fresh, soft as a sunbeam. She was all those things. Warm, sweet, generous. All the things he’d forgotten to need were trembling in his arms.
    And he wanted them, wanted her with a quick punch of greed he hadn’t expected.
    On an oath, he savaged her throat. “Here. Right here.”
    “No.” It was the last thing she’d expected to hear come out of her own mouth when his hands were making her ache for more. Even as the need roared in her blood she said it again. “No. Wait.”
    He lifted his head, kept eyes that had gone the color of a storm at sea on hers. “Why?”
    “Because I …” Her head fell back on a moan when his hands, slow and firm, stroked up her body, awakening every pore.
    “I want you.” His thumbs circled her breasts, over them. “You want me.”
    “Yes, but—” Her hands opened and closed on his shoulders as she fought off a new spurt of longing. “There are a few things I don’t let myself do on impulse. I’m really sorry to say this is one of them.”
    She opened her eyes again, let out one more shaky breath. How closely he watched her, she realized. How sharply, even with desire clouding his mind. He could step back from it, look through it, and measure.
    “It’s not a game, Preston.”
    He lifted a brow, surprised that she’d understood his thoughts so clearly. “No? No,” he decided, because he believed her. “You wouldn’t be good at that kind of game, would you?”
    Someone had been, she thought, and was suddenly, brutally sorry for him. “I don’t know. I’ve never played it.”
    He stepped back, shrugged and seemed completely in control again while her system continued to jangle. Unconsciously, she lifted her fingertips to her throat where his mouth had aroused dozens of raw nerves.
    “I need time before I share myself that way. Making love is a gift and shouldn’t be given thoughtlessly.”
    Her words touched him and, for reasons he couldn’t understand, settled him. “It often is.”
    “Not for me.” She shook her head. “Not from me.”
    Because he had a sudden urge to stroke her cheek, he hooked his thumbs in his front pockets. Better not to touch again, he reasoned. Not quite yet. “And telling me that is supposed to make me content to step back?”
    “Telling you that is supposed to make you understand why I said no, when I want to say yes. When we