“You really want to go, Erica? I’m talking about camping out, not a luxury vacation…” He put down his glass and strode forward to lace his arms around her neck, to nudge his forehead against hers. “Let’s see how it is with us there. Alone, Erica…”

In principle, she wanted to stiffen when he touched her. Passion would only cloud the unresolved issues between them, and she hadn’t forgotten how he’d rejected her love and loyalty. In the back of her rational mind, she knew Kyle still felt attraction…but she doubted his love. She’d had too many ups and downs; Kyle had too much power to hurt her. She’d meant what she told him a few nights before, that if he no longer felt love, she just wanted to be left alone.

That was in principle. Reality was the mood he’d spun with the image of the two of them alone on a deserted beach. Another reality was the fruity taste of the wine that lingered on his lips as they touched hers. Once. Twice. Like an alcoholic, she wanted more of that taste, denying its effect as an intoxicant. She could always pull back in a moment. She was thirsty, that was all.

They were both thirsty. It seemed like a year since she’d felt the touch of his fingers in her hair, roughly brushing back the red-gold strands, cradling her head. A century. His lips rubbed on hers, then his teeth grazed her lower lips. She seemed to have caught a fever. Her breasts were suddenly swollen and too warm, aching against his sinewy chest. Everything ached. Her knees felt too shaky to support her. Her throat arched as his kiss deepened. “Kyle…”

“Don’t tell me we don’t have this,” he whispered roughly. “You make your damn choices, Erica, but don’t ever forget what we do have. I told myself I would give you all the space you needed, but that just won’t work, sweet. I’ll be damned if I’ll ever spend another night like this one. Waiting, thinking…”

The pressure of his mouth hurt her. It was the most delicious hurt. Her limbs tightened in familiar anticipation and her heart slowed down to savor it. Her head registered his strange choice of words, striking a single swift, painful chord of fear; for that instant, she thought he meant waiting for her because of Morgan, because he guessed…but he couldn’t possibly have guessed what Morgan had done. It didn’t make sense.

The feel of his springy hair beneath her fingers made sense. She felt sad and frightened and a little angry that he could pull her in so helplessly…but his holding her made sense. He was the cause of trouble…and its solution. Her heart found that perfectly rational; her heart had responded exactly that way from the moment she met him. They were standing in the kitchen; it didn’t matter. Moonlight touched the hollows of his face through the open window; his eyes were indigo and soft and deep, hovering over hers as he pulled her closer. The more he touched, the more she felt like liquid inside, like a stream that wanted to flow in, through, all around him, drown forever the problems they could not seem to solve between them.

Before she could think, they were on their way upstairs. She was standing by the bed; his knuckles were grazing the sides of her breasts as he unbuttoned her blouse. The material fell away; before she could breathe, he had slid the straps of her bra off her shoulders, loosened the clasp. Moonlight cast a warm glow on her bare breasts…and then his hands covered them as he lowered her to the quilted bed.

In seconds, he had taken off his clothes, then he finished that job for her as he pulled off her jeans. She closed her eyes, feeling the weight of his body sliding down next to hers, feeling a little more of her sanity slip away. Soft kiss followed soft kiss. His lips finally deepened on hers, his tongue probing the inside of her mouth, talking to hers in that sweet, silent language of intimacy.

For an instant, he stopped and just looked at her. Turquoise eyes met topaz. And then his lips lowered again, hovering at the sensitive spot behind her ears before touching down again. Nape, neck, throat. She found her voice.

“Listen,” she said weakly.

“I’m listening.”

“This isn’t going to solve anything.”

“It certainly isn’t,” he agreed. He kneaded her breasts together so that he could kiss both of them at the same time, concentrating on the furrow he had created directly over her heartbeat. She was trying very hard to remember exactly why it was such a terrible idea that they make love… Because it clouded up everything else, that was it. Because he thought so little of her love and loyalty; because at core she believed he no longer loved her, because he had been trying to push her away. Because passion was a mockery without commitment…

He shifted just a little, his palm lazily teasing the length of her, over breast and down to the smooth silk of her flat stomach, to the slim roundness of her hip, to the long expanse of her thigh. She could feel the helplessness invade her like sweet heat in her bloodstream.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he murmured.

“Pardon?”

“Do you want me to stop, Erica?” he asked gravely.

She heard that somber note in his voice. Her eyes flickered open. His were just above her, full of the very devil. He knew exactly what he was doing to her.

“Let’s discuss it…in a little while,” she suggested, just as gravely. “Like nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

He smiled, his touch softening, his hand gently combing her hair. “Erica. If you really…” he said seriously.

He deserved a little of his own medicine. Her fingers inched up to his chest, to his broad neck, to the silky thickness of his hair. Gradually, her hands found their way back down again, taking in the long slope of his shoulders, the way his supple flesh lent itself to kneading in her hands. She loved his skin. She loved the way his body responded to her simplest touch. She loved the way he was made, his thighs as taut as iron, his hips so narrow, the spirals of hair covering his chest. She knew exactly what to do to send this man over the edge, and she loved doing it.

Something changed along the way. Kyle had never been happy unless he was active. His hand found its way to the soft skin of her inner thighs, fingers seeking secrets, finding them. His mouth covered hers and didn’t let go. She found herself holding on, off-balance, her breathing hard and erratic; she had the sensation of being halfway through a roller coaster ride where the next slope was dizzyingly in sight. It was forever before he ended that kiss, something started in exquisite tenderness blending with a fierce erotic pressure that demanded her response. Demanded…yet coaxed.

Gradually, his mouth left hers again, and his palm slid back up the length of her, a fingertip smoothing her bruised lips, which his own had just left. “I really don’t think you want to do this,” he murmured huskily. “You wouldn’t have been sleeping alone if you wanted to do this…”

She reached up to silence him with her lips on his. Finally releasing his mouth, she said, “You said something disgustingly similar the first night I woke up next to you.”

“You were a virgin.” He nibbled at her neck. “God knows how you had maintained that status.” He nibbled at the other side of her neck. “Actually, it scared the hell out of me.”

“You never told me that.”

“What if I had hurt you? The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you, sweet. I just wanted to make love to you. Twenty-four hours a day.”

“You did,” she commented idly, loving his smile. But he didn’t really mean that smile. They were both trying to prolong a pleasure that could have erupted too easily and been lost. Part of the sweetness of marriage was knowing each other that way, and that well. There was a time for a fifteen-minute love session, and a time for lovemaking that took hours. “Kyle…”

She didn’t want to wait for hours. She wanted him at that moment more than life. He shifted over her, crushing her swollen breasts to his chest. Her hands were feverish up and down his back, the longing an insistent rhythm, a bittersweet anguish of need. His skin was so warm, both familiar and brand-new, his arousal like fire between them.

For one last instant, he drew back to look at her. The teasing in his eyes had been replaced by an intensity that burned as he surveyed the restless color in her cheeks, the luminous gold in her eyes, the moonlight burnishing a gold on the cream of her skin. For a moment, they were both still, and Erica felt a shiver that trembled all through her. Suddenly she was unsure. They both knew what was to happen; it wasn’t that. It was the sudden fierce possessiveness in his eyes, a need so stark it seemed almost desperate… Instinctively, she reached up to touch his cheek in the darkness. “Kyle, you didn’t force me here. I wanted to be here, with you…like this.”

“God, I need you. I don’t know how to tell you, Erica…”

There was no more play, no more languid, sensual climb. The urge was to join, a mutually primitive drive as basic as breath…as love. Their mating was how she had always understood their marriage at core. He was the stronger, with powers distinctly male, his control dominant and deliberate in love as it was in life…but it was when he lost his control that Erica burst inside.

She complemented him perfectly. Her powers were distinctly feminine. She could cloak his strength inside her softness, take his fierce drive within her. She gave him everything; it was her nature. She drew from him his strength, his power, his control, his protection. Her trust was total, and had been from the beginning; she felt cherished in his keeping, which was the reason he was able to take her so high, the reason she felt freed in loving…

He brought tears to her eyes, a cry from her lips…and then he simply held her, their bodies still joined, their hearts beating in the same triumphant rhythm, gradually slowing at the same pace.