They hadn’t spoken during the short time it had taken Ryan to check in or during the climb to their second-floor room. He hadn’t said anything because he couldn’t. Right or not, fair or not, he hadn’t wanted to give her a chance to change her mind. Knowing that grated against his conscience, but nothing could stop the pulse, the beat, the flow of desire he felt for her.

She turned from the balcony, her bare feet making no sound on the carpet as she stepped back into the room. Lashes shuttered her eyes, those beautiful, vulnerable, soft brown eyes…

Her hair had dried in soft wisps, and her face was in partial shadow, half as fragile as cream, half shaded a muted gold. The room had that dusty stillness of late afternoon. The feeling of life focused around Greer, the texture, look, scent of her.

She raised her eyes to his, and he heard the tiny sound of her breath catching. Her eyelids closed, then opened. Slowly, she reached behind her neck to undo the straps of her halter top. Ryan didn’t breathe. The straps fell forward, revealing the smoothness of her neck and throat and a hint of swelling white flesh. She reached behind her again. The room was so silent he could hear the sound of her unlatching the clip at the back. The top fell, for a moment trailed in her hand and then slipped to the floor.

Though her skin had long been sun-dried, the suit had still been slightly damp. Her nipples were tiny, puckered, chilled. Her breasts were virgin-white next to her tan, all smooth, firm flesh, impossibly soft. She stood tall, just slightly shivering, looking at him. He still couldn’t move. He’d dreamed of her exactly like this, not just the nakedness but the beauty of her, the pride and softness, her sensuality, her vulnerability.

“Ryan-”

“Come here,” he murmured, but he was the one to take the four steps to her. Taking her had been the only thing in his head moments before. That fierce primal desire hadn’t diminished, but it had gentled. Now he reached out not to claim but to reverently touch, and not her body but her face.

The pads of his thumbs brushed along her cheekbones; his fingers whispered into her hair; he smoothed her eyebrows, traced the line of her chin. Her bare breasts were less than an inch from his chest; he didn’t move that inch. He wanted all of her. But slowly. He didn’t want to miss…anything.

Brown eyes met his. “Ryan? What’s wrong?” she whispered.

“Nothing. Nothing at all, love.” Did he look too grave? He smiled for her.

“There was, though. You were upset while you were checking in.”

“A little.”

“More than a little.” The very smallest smile curled her lips. He hadn’t realized until that instant that her smile had been missing. “You were about to belt the desk clerk when she looked around for our luggage. And you looked even more irritated when you signed in.”

He drew in a breath, admitting quietly, “I hate motel rooms. And especially…for you. The woman said nothing. But if she’d even looked at you sideways-”

“You were afraid it bothered me, checking into a motel for the express purpose of making love?” She tilted her head, as if determined to see the hidden emotion in his eyes. “I think it’s rather exciting, actually. Deliciously illicit. Wanton. All that stuff.”

“All that stuff,” he echoed faintly, and teasingly shook his head at her. She had the look of an innocent virgin testing out those words for the first time, but that wasn’t what moved him. It was Greer, worrying about his feelings more than her own. “Go ahead,” he whispered. “Tell me the place doesn’t matter.”

“The place doesn’t matter.”

“Nothing matters,” he agreed, “except you.”

His mouth lingered an inch from hers and then dropped, centimeter by centimeter, until his lips touched hers and sank in. To his surprise, she was suddenly trembling all over, and when her bare breasts grazed his chest, she breathed against his mouth in a hollow gasp.

He could feel her pulse quicken along with his own. Her skin warmed; so did his. She was already part of him. The only thing left was the claiming.

Blood beat in his throat in a steady dull throb. He discovered that her lower lip was irresistible. And that the shell of her ear could keep him entertained for hours. That her throat was softer than warm cream, that her nipples were infinitely sensitive to the slightest touch.

She kept trembling. Such fire…he’d never expected such fire. Where he wanted nothing more than to savor and linger over each new discovery, Greer was clearly impatient. He would have smiled, had there been time.

Her lips trailed feverish kisses over his face and neck. Her hips moved tantalizingly against him. When he stopped with ragged breath to look at her, she reached up for his mouth again. When his hands skimmed inside her suit bottom, she barely gave him the chance to take it off her before she pressed herself length to length to him, her eyes closed and her whole body still fiercely trembling.

He gathered her up, pushed back the bedspread and placed her on the pillows. For one stark instant, he caught a glimpse of something dark and haunted underneath the sensual glaze in her eyes. Then she raised her arms, urging him down to her.

He dropped his suit and slid onto the bed next to her. She instantly enfolded his body, her hands feverish, her long legs curling invitingly around him. The male animal in him could no more have held back a response than stopped breathing, yet the speed with which she was asking to be taken was not what he wanted. For her. “Easy,” he whispered. “Let me love you, Greer. Let me just…love you.”

She went still so suddenly he almost smiled. With exquisite care he bent his head to the swell of her breast, capturing the small tight peak with the swirl of his tongue. Leaving it moist, he played with the other, while one hand stroked her flat stomach, learned the roundness of her hip more intimately. His lips trailed down to her navel, believed it virgin, and let his tongue do a lazy, thorough deflowering. Her skin…nothing had ever tasted as good as her skin.

His own was burning. He had never wanted a woman as much, but the process of knowing her this first time could easily have taken him years. He would not have guessed her nipples were so sensitive. He could not have known that she would tremble, that her eyes would take on such darkness, that her fingers would curl and uncurl on his skin… There were a thousand things he needed to know if he was to be a good lover for her. There was no way he could have known any of them ahead of time. Knowing a woman as a lover was different from knowing her in any other sense.

Every instinct told him to be careful, slow, gentle, because she was Greer, because she had taken a very long time to accept the love that was growing between them…every instinct except that primal hardness pressed against her, which teased unmercifully when she writhed against him. And when his fingers slowly dipped between her thighs, Greer moved, her hands pushing him away, her pelvis cradling his in unmistakable demand. “Easy,” he whispered.

Easy? Greer thought in despair. Suddenly nothing was easy. What had been natural and wonderful moments before was going desperately wrong. Still, she whispered, “Now, please, Ryan.”

“Not yet…”

“Yes. Please. Please…”

She knew what he wanted. Every womanly instinct told her he wanted a seductress, an uninhibited lover who took and gave pleasure with ease. And for a while, she’d almost believed she could be that woman for him.

When they kissed in the pool, incredibly powerful emotions had surged through her. The feelings hadn’t diminished when they’d come up to the room. When she removed her top, she’d felt proud of her body for once, proud to offer herself to him, glad that she felt no shame in wanting him.

Those emotions had been as real as the lush surge of desire she’d felt when bare skin had touched bare skin, as real as the love she felt for him. But old ghosts had intruded from nowhere. From an awareness that it had been a long time since she’d been with any man, that she might be awkward. From an awareness that the tepid sexual relationship she’d shared with her ex-husband was not the sort that Ryan would settle for, that he would not be fooled. And inside, deeper, she still bore the scars of an adolescent girl who’d fought the sexual side of her nature. She’d had to, to survive.

Her present sexual feelings were confused by the memories. Greer had a sudden terrible need simply to be held, to explain, to tell him she needed to go slowly, that she was uncertain. But she couldn’t ask that. Ryan would surely feel contempt for a twenty-seven-year-old woman who wanted only to be held.

She was trying so hard to be a cream-lace-on-pink-satin kind of woman, but she couldn’t stop trembling. Pleasing him mattered so much. She loved him. Too much.

“Greer?”

She heard the question in his voice, but she could also feel the beat, the warmth of him pressed against her belly. “Now,” she whispered. “Don’t slow down, Ryan. Not for me. Please…”

She felt a slight hesitation in him and wound her arms tighter around him, whispering something, she didn’t even know what. Her body arched, her fingers whispered over his skin. With a low groan, he slid into her, surging deep, filling the yawning hollow inside her.

Her eyes closed in sheer unexpected pleasure. For a moment, all the ghosts went away. He felt…wonderful. She felt different, the way she’d felt earlier in the pool, high on the touch of him, high on his warmth and those incredibly powerful surges she felt when she was near him. For the first time, she glimpsed something huge, special, secret, inextricably linked to the woman in her. Her body was about to burst from some elusive force that was just out of reach but so close…