Burning Up

hard as he thrust up.
    Her startled eyes met his. Her rhythm faltered.
    “With me,” he said harshly. He pressed up, gripping hard enough to bruise. She gasped and tightened around him.
    The connection shot him to the edge.
    Grimly, he held on, his blood roaring in his ears, as he drove into her, hammered into her, forging links of loneliness, heat, and need. The wet slap of their coupling filled the room. His lungs labored like a bellows. Her lips parted. Her eyes glazed, golden eyes burning to the back of his brain. Hot. Close. The pressure built in his balls and the base of his skull.
    So close. The intimacy nearly shattered him. But he did not want to go alone.
    He had never knowingly left a man behind. Or a woman, for that matter.
    Teeth clenched, he plunged inside her, clinging to consciousness like a dying soldier on the battlefield, until he felt her swell and surge, until he felt her spasm and shake, until she shuddered and came apart in his arms.
    Relief swept through him. A single thought spun with him into the abyss. Thank God.
    Relaxing his grip, he let the dark sweep over him and carry him away.
     
    T hat had not gone at all as she had planned.
    Morwenna sprawled over the man’s hard chest like seaweed on the rocks, the ripples of her release receding like the tide. Her body floated in delicious languor. Inside, she felt pleasantly tender. Relaxed.
    Uneasy.
    She raised herself on one elbow. The buttons of his coat were imprinted on her breasts, round red marks like love bites. Morwenna frowned. She was accustomed to wresting satisfaction from her human lovers. She did not tussle with them for control. But this one . . .
    She propped above him, studying him in the slatted light from the shutters. He had a pleasing face, she decided, strong and composed even in sleep. His brow was broad and faintly creased, his long jaw shadowed with stubble. A few strands of silver threaded among the brown, reminders of his mortality. With one finger, she traced the air above his face, following the etchings of pain beside his mouth, the lines of laughter lurking at the corners of his eyes.
    Not that she actually touched him. Her kind did not. Only to fight or to mate, to demonstrate power or possession.
    Yet as she hovered over him, absorbing his strength, breathing his breath, something in her stirred and swayed like kelp below the surface of the water.
    His body was broad and solid between her spread thighs. He was still half hard inside her. With very little effort, she could take him again. Warmth bloomed deep inside her at the thought.
    No. He had already served her pleasure. She was not a fish wriggling on the hook of sexual desire. Her body was her own. Her life, her own. She would not cede control of either to any male.
    Which was why she had sex with humans.
    The memory of the man’s face as he pushed hard inside her flashed across her brain, his dark, dark eyes, his hoarse command. With me.
    She shivered. Definitely not what she had planned.
    She slipped from the bed. Scooping the white dress from the floor, she pulled it over her head.
    “If you are cold,” his voice said, husky with humor or sleep, “I would be happy to warm you.”
    Blinking, she emerged from the folds of the dress. The man lay motionless on the bed, watching her with heavy-lidded eyes. She felt another inconvenient pull of attraction.
    “I do not feel the cold,” she said truthfully.
    Even in this body, her blood kept her warm. But she smoothed the dress down anyway, a fabric barrier between her and the man, taking care to cover the parts humans usually kept covered. She noticed he made no move to do the same. His heavy shaft lay quiet against his thigh. As she watched, it lengthened and stirred as if aware of her interest.
    She raised her gaze to his face. “You should go.”
    His dark brows drew together. “Go,” he repeated.
    She met his gaze, conscious of his seed wet between her thighs, the delicious tenderness of her own body. “Now,” she said firmly.
    He sat up in bed. “You are expecting someone.”
    Morgan.
    With a shock, she realized she had not spared Morgan a thought since leaving the beach. Yet she had called him. He would certainly come.
    “Yes,” she admitted.
    The man’s jaw set. “Another client?”
    She did not understand his question. “It does not matter. You must go.”
    “It matters.” He stood, the top of his head nearly brushing the ceiling. He tucked himself and his shirttails away, his