A tiny flicker of danger hissed through her bloodstream whenever his mouth settled on hers and didn’t let go. Danger… She never feared that he would hurt her, but she sensed that the power he held over her was as primitive as the oldest male-female battles. Griff was the stronger, his flesh smooth as metal, his rough, drugging kisses demanding her own response…

“Please…” she murmured.

His hands slid between them, grazing her stomach, sliding up to lift both breasts from the water. The valley between them glistened with droplets; water streamed over the satin orbs, so heavy in his hands. He bent to taste, but his lips would reach only so far without his breaking the melding of their lower bodies. Not for heaven or hell would he break that union. Frustration sent a single low growl from the back of his throat. He wrapped his arms around her, loving the feel of silken slipperiness where his chest rubbed against her more tender skin, and he rocked her, his face buried in the hollow of her neck, his lips dipping into every inch of her sensitive skin.

“Susan,” he whispered roughly.

“Hmm.” She arched back, welcoming his kiss as she would welcome the warmth of sunlight. His teeth teased at her lower lip, and his tongue slipped inside her mouth again. Then out.

“Why the hell didn’t you warn me ahead of time that the tub was too small?” he growled unfairly.

She smiled, but barely had time to comment before he reluctantly withdrew from her. In seconds, she was encouraged to stand on legs that had the tensile strength of marshmallows. Griff flicked open the drain, then surged up out of the water like some streaming bronzed giant. He hastily brushed a towel over himself, and another swallowed her up; then he lifted her, higher, higher…

She felt like booty to his pirate as he swung her out of that luminous light and carried her through the chilled black hall. He paused only once, as if suddenly realizing that her face was totally covered by the towel. His chin nudged it aside. Gray eyes flecked with silver were waiting for him, still drugged by their sensual play, but dancing just a little. He brushed a quick kiss on the tip of her nose. “We’re getting a new bathtub,” he murmured. “A larger one.”

“Are we?”

He took three and a half seconds to dry them both off, then cool skin met cool skin: a new game. The mattress yielded to their combined weights, and all Susan could think was, Hurry, hurry. Nothing had ever felt as good as his full length against hers; the first rush of freedom to stretch and slide around him exploded a frantic desire within her. It wasn’t really her, of course. Susan was reserved, wary of intimacy… It was all Griff’s fault. From the very beginning, he’d cut through her shyness with a silken machete…

Moonlight suddenly played light and shadow on his face as Griff loomed over her. His own dark eyes on fire, he saw the soft, vulnerable gray eyes beneath his. Her skin was moist and seemed to glow in the dark. Firm, supple breasts ached against his chest, already well loved, cheek roughened and comforted with his tongue and lips. Her whole body talked to him: he knew her ribs, the slim span of her waist, the incredible erotic tension that could grip her thighs when a passion was released in her that she still didn’t understand…

They had years to go. Each time they loved, he had a searing need to show her that. She was so full of love; she gave and gave, yet always expected so little in return.

Her heart was pounding against his, her hands roving his back in increasingly restless movements. “Griff,” she murmured desperately.

He wasted no more time, taking her with exactly the sweet, fierce momentum she was asking for. Abandonment was her goal; she wanted only to present him with her richness, with a love he wanted to return to her tenfold. Her spine arched beneath him, and he cradled the shuddering explosion that took her body, a release all silver and satin, the essence of his life inside her.


***

Griff rested on his side. Beneath the comforter, he still held Susan captive, her warmth something he refused to let go of yet, even for sleep. Her tousled hair looked like dark satin on the pillow, and his calloused palm smoothed the sleek strands back, loving the serene, smooth beauty of her face after loving.

Her hands were nestled between them, one palm resting over his heartbeat, waiting for it to slow to normal. “Can you tell me about it now?” she asked softly.

He kissed her forehead. “Tell you about what, lovely one?”

She propped herself up, leaning on one elbow, and slowly stroked the hair back from his forehead before she tried to speak. “You were different this afternoon, Griff. Unhappy. Closed in a way you’ve never seemed before. I’m supposed to be the inhibited one in this relationship, remember?”

His dark eyes glinted up at her. “Not so that you’d notice,” he said gravely.

But she saw the quick, bleak sadness that touched his eyes again, and she didn’t smile in return. “What’s wrong, Griff?” she insisted quietly. “You’re so good with Tiger. He adores you. He’s a well-adjusted little bundle of energy…”

She waited, patiently. Griff was silent for a long time, but she could see the sudden tension in his profile by moonlight, in the eyes that darted away from her, in the tightness that was so rarely a part of him. Her perception came from feminine instincts that pursued him into those dark corners where he crouched away from her. Gently, her fingers stroked the furrow between his eyebrows.

“None of them took the divorce well,” he said finally. “Tiger’s the most resilient, but it hit him at a vulnerable time, too.”

She stroked, over and over, her touch lighter than a feather.

“I have always been against divorce where children are concerned,” he said flatly. “Maybe you make mistakes, even as an adult, but don’t, for God’s sake, take them out on innocents. The marriage had been wrong for years, but the kids didn’t know it. There were no arguments in front of them.”

“And you still feel guilty as hell,” she whispered.

“I am guilty as hell,” Griff corrected. He shifted a pillow behind himself and moved up; she knew he moved to avoid her touch. There were certain kinds of pain he was used to bearing alone. And in response to that, she shifted with him, pushing her pillow up, keeping her hand on his arm.

“Try telling me about her,” she suggested.

“Sheila?”

No, the lady in the moon. Susan was already too sensitive about his ex-wife, yet she knew Griff needed to say certain things out loud. He had coaxed her out of her own defensive shells, and she would coax him from his. “Just tell me,” she insisted.

“What do you want to know?”

“Talk, Griff.”

The muscle in his jaw flexed when he turned his head on the pillow. Dark eyes glittered on her softer gray ones. At this moment, Griff was not so very pleased with his too-perceptive wife. “She’s a good-looking woman,” he said flatly.

“That hurts. Naturally. Go right ahead, but when you’re all through-”

Aaah. He gathered her close, shutting her up, burying her face in his shoulder, arching a leg around her to drag her nearer yet. He kissed her hard on her temples, and Susan relaxed, silent, waiting.

“We married too damn young,” he admitted finally. “Sheila had been raised to ‘catch a man.’ That was the game. So she loved campfires and kids and quiet evenings, because those were the things I loved. Until she got the ring on her finger. Then she was so damned unhappy…” He took a breath. “Restless all the time. Moody with the kids, taking on causes with incredible enthusiasm, flitting from one thing to another… I don’t know what she wanted from me. I never knew. Oh…money, of course. The Anderson name…”

Susan wound her arms around his waist and snuggled closer, wanting desperately to cushion him from some of those memories. How many years had Griff been without love? But she knew, every time he touched her.

“For the kids, I kept trying. There was no love between Sheila and me, but I had the kids’ love, and the five of us were surviving. Until Sheila stepped out with someone else. Then something just clicked inside me, an awareness of how little I really did care. From that point on, I just couldn’t pretend with her anymore.”

He took a breath. “We called it ‘irretrievable breakdown of a marriage.’ I never mentioned adultery in court. Neither of us wanted to sling the kids through that kind of mud. But Sheila, for some reason, balked at the end and wanted the marriage to stand. The big fight came when we were talking custody in front of the judge. I wanted the kids, and I knew that she really didn’t. She was just worried that people might say she was a bad woman and a terrible mother if she didn’t fight for the kids. Maybe I could have won custody if I’d mentioned her affair to the judge. At the time, all I could think of was that we were hurting the children enough without bringing that up. I knew I’d claim my share of time with them, and since I had to work all week anyway and they were in school-”

“Which is all true, Griff,” Susan interjected.

His jaws clamped together and then relaxed slightly. “She doesn’t love them. She never did. She loves the child-support money, but she’s still off and running twelve hours of the day, never there. I’ve been back to my lawyer countless times, but there’s nothing I can take to court. I can’t prove she’s done anything that shows her to be an unfit parent. Hers isn’t the kind of neglect that shows… There was a time when I even felt sorry for her. She’s incapable of loving anyone. Even herself. But the point is what she’s doing to them-the kids. Tiger and Barbara and Tom. And I’m the one who initiated the divorce proceedings, who tore their lives apart.”