felt her stiffen with alarm and he pressed his mouth to the inside of her knee. "Trust me, sweetheart...."
She shouldn't. He was a stranger to her. She knew nothing about the last six years of his life and, dear God, there was so much about her that he couldn't even imagine.
But his hands were so strong and warm against the tender flesh at the tops of her thighs and it had been so long since she'd felt like a woman.
She moved as if in a dream. The percale sheets felt cool against her belly and breasts and she pressed her face into the pillow, her pulse hammering in her ears, all but drowning out her soft inarticulate cries.
He was a magic man, a conjurer of fantasies. He brought her to aching life each place he touched. Calves...the backs of her knees...the rounded swell of her buttocks.
"Lift up, Meggie," he whispered, his mouth pressed against her shoulder. "Slide this pillow under you."
She felt wickedly sensual, wild with desire, as his lips found the sensitive base of her spine.
"Oh God," she moaned, "Jake...."
He slid his hands beneath her thighs then found her with his fingertips. His touch was light at first, an insinuation. She moved restlessly against him, her blood sounding a call older than the stars.
Her heat, her smell, the sound of her cries were pushing him to the end of madness.
He rolled her onto her back. "Hang on, Meggie. This is one ride we're taking together."
But first there was something he needed to take care of. For both of them.
Moments later she opened her thighs for him. Her excitement matched his own. He lowered himself slowly, testing his self-control, until he was poised against her heat. Her fingernails raked his buttocks. "Now...." Her voice was high, her tone urgent. "Now...now...now...."
She welcomed him, drawing him more deeply into her body than he would have imagined possible. She was tight and hot, her muscles working in tiny, mind-shattering contractions around him.
He was gathering speed, climbing faster and faster, moving inexorably toward the release his body demanded.
"Open your eyes, Meggie. I want to watch you when it happens."
She knew it was wrong, that it was dangerous, that nothing would ever be the same again, but a thrill of dark pleasure rippled through her body at his words. At that moment she would have done anything he asked. He was her only reality, her only safety.
She let her hands slide along the sinewy muscles of his arms, feeling his veins, rich with blood, beneath her fingertips.
"Ride with me, Meggie," he urged. "We're almost there...."
The fire grew hotter. She could see the flames. Feel them urging her toward the inferno.
She wrapped her legs around his hips as he pinned her arms over her head. Sweet bondage...then even sweeter release.
Megan shuddered around him. He was part of her, could feel what she felt, even as his own climax exploded. Her pleasure was deep, shattering--he saw it in the startled look in her wide green eyes, the high color in her cheeks, the way her full lips parted. Nothing in his life, no experience, no fantasy, came close to the primitive thrill he found watching the woman he'd once loved find paradise in his arms.
Chapter Five
Jake was the first to break the silence. "We always were good together."
She couldn't deny it. Not with her body flushed and damp with passion, with him still inside her, and the smell of their lovemaking in the air. "Were you surprised?"
He moved against her, his laughter low. "Gratified."
"This doesn't mean anything, Jake," she warned. "It was just this once."
"For old times' sake."
"Something like that."
"Nothing more?"
"I don't still love you," she said bluntly, "if that's what you're implying."
"Love's never had much of anything to do with what happens between us."
His words stung and she found herself blinking away sudden and embarrassing tears. "Then we both understand what this is about."
"Settling old scores?"
She looked at him. I did love you once, Jake. I was just too young and selfish to know what it meant. "Putting the past behind us," she said after a moment.
"Some people might say it's the same thing."
There was something in the tone of his voice, a certain ironic spin that sent a small frisson of alarm up her spine. "I know the difference between sexual chemistry and love, Jake."
An odd smile crossed his face. "And this was--?"
"Sex," she said, her tone sharp. "Animal magnetism. Anything you want to call it."
He moved away from her until they were no longer