First Impressions

his, but she became very still.
    Without speaking, he began to wash the few lingering traces of mud from her face. He worked in very slow, very deliberate circles, his eyes fixed on hers. Though his palm was rough, his touch was gentle. Shane’s lips trembled apart. With something like curiosity, Vance took a damp finger to trace their shape. He felt her quick, convulsive shudder. Still slow, still inquisitive, he ran his fingertip along the inside of her bottom lip. Under his thumb, the pulse in her wrist began to hammer. The sun broke briefly through the clouds, so that the light shifted and brightened before it dimmed again. He watched it play over her face.
    “You won’t run away this time, Shane,” he murmured, as if to himself.
    She said nothing, afraid to speak while his finger lingered on her lips. Slowly, he traced it down, over her chin, over the throbbing pulse in her throat. He paused there a moment, as if gauging and enjoying her response to him. Then he allowed his fingertip to sweep up over the swell of her breast and lie lightly on the erect peak covered only by the thin wet shirt.
    Heat and cold shot through her; her skin was chilled from the water; her blood flamed at his touch. Vance watched the color drain from her face while her eyes grew impossibly large and dark. Yet she didn’t draw away or protest the intimacy. He heard the sharp intake of her breath, then the slow, ragged expulsion.
    “Are you afraid of me?” he asked, bringing his hand up to cup the back of her neck.
    “No,” she whispered. “Of me.”
    Puzzled, he drew his brows together. For a moment he looked hard and very fierce. Though his eyes weren’t cold, they were piercing—full of questions, full of suspicion. Still Shane felt no fear of him, only of the needs and longing running through her. “An odd answer, Shane,” he murmured thoughtfully. “You’re an odd woman.” With his fingers, he kneaded the back of her neck while he searched her face for answers. “Is that why you excite me?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, struggling for breath. “I don’t want to know. Just kiss me.”
    He lowered his lips, but only tested hers with the same lightness as his fingertip. “I wonder,” he said softly against her mouth, “what it is about you I can’t quite shake. Your taste?” He dug his teeth almost experimentally into her bottom lip. A low moan of pleasure was wrenched from her. “Fresh as rain one minute and honey soaked the next.” Lightly, languidly, he traced her lips with his tongue. “Is it the way you feel? That skin of yours . . . like the underside of a rose petal.” He ran his hands down her arms, then up again, gradually bringing her to him until she was caught close. The thud of her heart sounded like thunder in her ears.
    “Why do you have to know?” The question was low and shaky. “Feeling’s enough.” They might have been naked, pressed body to body with only wet clinging clothes between them. “Kiss me, Vance, just kiss me. It’s enough.”
    “You smell like rain now,” he murmured, telling himself to resist her but knowing he wouldn’t. “Pure and honest. When I look in your eyes, I’d swear there isn’t a lie in you. Is there?” he demanded, but he crushed his mouth to hers before she could answer.
    Shane reeled from the impact. Even as she gasped, his tongue was probing and exploring. The anger she had sensed in him before was now pure passion. Hunger, the rawness of his hunger, thrilled her. The water ran swiftly, grumbling as it hurried on its way to the river, but Shane heard only her own heartbeat. She no longer felt the stinging cold, only the warmth of his hand as it ran up her spine and down again.
    He wasn’t content with only her lips now, but took his own wild journey of her face. It was still wet, tasting of the cold freshness of the creek. But wherever his kisses wandered, he was drawn back again to the soft, sweet taste of her mouth. It seemed always to be waiting for him, ready to open, invite, demand. Beneath the pliancy, beneath the willingness was a passion as great as his own and a strength he was just beginning to measure.
    Vance told himself he needed a woman. That was why he was so desperate for Shane. He needed a woman’s softness and flavor, and she was here. There was no exclusivity to it. How could there be? Yet there was something about her slight body, her fascinatingly different taste that drove every other woman to some dark corner of