Birthright

critic?”
    He slammed the door at his back. “Look, you only play that Jaws theme to annoy me. You know it creeps me out.”
    “I don’t think there’s been a shark sighting in western Maryland in the last millennium. You can sleep easy.” She picked up her bow, tapped it lightly on her palm.
    His eyes were sharp and green, that handsome rawboned face livid.
    He was, she thought smugly, hers for the taking.
    “Anything else?”
    He ripped the bow out of her hand, tossed it aside.
    “Hey!”
    “You’re lucky I didn’t wrap it around your throat.”
    She leaned in, the better to snarl in his face. “Try it.”
    He slid a hand under her chin, gave her throat a quick, threatening squeeze. “I prefer my hands.”
    “You don’t scare me. You never did.”
    He hauled her up to her toes. He could smell her hair, her skin. The candle she had burning on the dresser. Lust crawled along with temper in his belly. “I can change that.”
    “You know what pisses you off, Graystone? You never could push me into doing everything your way. It burned your ass that I had a mind of my own. You couldn’t tell me what to do then, and you sure as hell can’t tell me what to do now. So take a hike.”
    “You said that to me once before. I still don’t like it. And it wasn’t your mind that burned my ass, it was your pigheaded, ego-soaked streak of pure bitchiness.”
    He caught her fist an instant before it plowed into his gut. They grappled a moment.
    Then they fell on the bed.
    She tore at his shirt, ripping cotton as she yanked it impatiently over his head. Her breath was already in rags. He rolled, tearing her shirt down the front and sending buttons spinning. Her teeth were digging into his shoulder, his hands were dragging through her hair.
    Thank God, thank God, was all she could think when he flipped her, when his body pinned hers, when his mouth rushed down to take.
    Life spurted inside her, so bright and hot she realized she’d been cold and dead. She arched against him, her mind screaming for more. And her hands streaked over him to take it.
    She knew the line of bone, the play of muscle, the shape of every scar. She knew his body as well as she knew herown. The taste of his flesh, the quick scrape of stubble when it rubbed against her.
    She knew the single, shocking thrill of him.
    He was rough. She’d flicked a switch in him—she’d always been able to—that turned the civilized to the primal. There was a craving in him now, a hunger that bordered on pain. To mate, hard and fast, maybe a little mean. He wanted to invade, to bury himself in wet heat and have her plunging under him.
    Months of separation, of denial, of need gathered together inside him like a bruise until everything hurt. Everything ached.
    She was the answer. Just as she’d always been.
    He took her breast, with hands, then with mouth. She bucked under him, levered her hand between their bodies and fought with his zipper.
    They rolled again, gasping for breath as they fought off jeans. The momentum had them pitching off the side of the bed, landing on the floor with a thud. Even as the fall jarred and dazed her, he was driving into her.
    She cried out, a short, shocked sound, and her legs wrapped around his waist like chains.
    She couldn’t speak; she couldn’t stop. Each violent thrust fired in her blood until her body was a mass of raw nerves. She clutched at him, her hips pistoning, her vision blurring.
    The orgasm seemed to tear up from her toes, ripping her to pieces on the flight through loin, heart, head. For one instant she saw his face, vivid and clear above her. His eyes were nearly black, fixed on hers with the kind of intensity that always made her feel stripped to the bone.
    Even as they glazed, as she knew he was falling out of himself, they watched her.
    S he’d rolled over on her stomach and lay flat out on the floor. He lay beside her, staring up at the ceiling.
    A second-rate motel room, Jake thought, a senseless argument, mindless sex.
    Did certain patterns never change?
    This hadn’t been in his plans. All they’d accomplished was a temporary release of tension. Why was it they both seemed so willing to settle for only that?
    He’d wanted to give her more. God knew he’d wanted to try to give them both more. But maybe, when it came down to it, this was all there was between them.
    And the thought of it broke his heart.
    “Feel better now?” he asked as he sat up to reach for his jeans.
    She turned her head,