Eclipse Bay

separated her thighs and kissed the exquisitely soft skin he found there.
    She shivered again. Her nails dug into his shoulder as she tried to pull him up along the length of her. But he was not yet ready to be lured into the climax.
    He drew a fingertip along the tight nub hidden in the silky thatch of hair and felt her quiver in response. She was clawing at him now.
    He bent his head and touched the tip of his tongue to her full, taut clitoris. She tensed.
    “Rafe.” It was a plea and a protest. “Wait. Don’t do that.”
    “Come for me.”
    “I can’t. Not like this. It’s too— Rafe .”
    “Come for me.” He kissed her again, intimately, and simultaneously eased two fingers into her, stretching her gently.
    Her hands twisted in the sheets. “No, wait. I want—”
    “Come for me.”
    “I…Oh, no. Oh, yes. Yes! ”
    He felt her climax take her. The sensation was so intoxicating he nearly went with her.
    He held himself together until the tremors had begun to subside. Only then did he shift his position to lie on top of her.
    “Open your eyes,” he whispered. “Look at me.”
    Languidly she raised her lashes and smiled at him, a dreamy smile that was somehow smug and all-knowing and filled with invitation.
    He plunged into her body, driving himself to the hilt. She closed around him and took him deeper still, straight down into uncharted depths and unknowable waters.
    “Come for me,” she said into his mouth.
    He gave himself up to the tides of a mysterious sea.

    A long time later he roused reluctantly from the cocoon of warmth that enveloped them, levered himself up on his elbow, and looked down at her.
    “I just want to know one thing,” he said.
    She raised her lashes halfway and yawned. “What?”
    “Are you sleeping with me because you’ve got some kind of kinky thing about finding out what it’s like to do it with the kind of guy your parents would hate?”
    “That would be extremely immature.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Hartes do not act out just for the hell of it, nor do we take risks merely for the sake of novelty. We are not immature. We’re the logical, reasonable, rational ones, remember?”
    “Yeah.” He kissed her breast. “So why are you sleeping with me?”
    She studied him with an enigmatic expression. “You had all the answers earlier.”
    “Earlier I was trying to talk you into bed.”
    She punched him lightly on the arm. “We are not amused, Madison.”
    “I’m serious. I know why I’m sleeping with you. I want to know why you’re sleeping with me.”
    She searched his face. “Is it that important to you?”
    Anger stirred deep inside him, dissolving much of the warm afterglow that had enveloped him. “Hell, yes, it’s important. You think I’d be trying to get through a stupid conversation like this if the answer wasn’t important?”
    “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” she said. “I’m certainly not doing this because I still have a teenage-type crush on you or because you’re the guy my parents always warned me about.”
    He rolled onto his back, put one hand behind his head, and gazed moodily up at the dark ceiling. “So what’s the reason?”
    She rose partway off the bed and leaned over him in the shadows. When she spoke, her voice was low and steady.
    “I am sleeping with you because, among other things, I am a mature, unattached adult who happens to be physically attracted to you and also because—”
    An eagerness that bordered on desperation swept through him. Get a grip, he thought. “And also because—?”
    He sensed that she was on the verge of saying something crucial. But in the next heartbeat the intense, important thing disappeared beneath a breezy smile.
    “And because my dog likes you, and I trust Winston’s judgment implicitly,” she said demurely.
    So what the hell had he expected her to say? He wondered. “Sonofabitch.”
    “Yes, but we do not refer to him in those terms in his presence.”
    “Huh.”
    “In my experience, Winston is never wrong in these matters.”
    He thought about that for a while. “Winston didn’t like the ex-fiancé, I take it?”
    “Winston was civil, but he never warmed up to Doug.” Hannah paused. “There was an unfortunate incident one evening toward the end of the relationship that more or less summed up his opinion.”
    “What sort of incident?”
    She cleared her throat. “Winston mistook Doug’s leg for a fire hydrant.”
    “Winston and I are pals,” Rafe said. “I don’t