Grand Passion

ago?”
    “Cleo…”
    “I just wondered,” she said softly. “I know how strong love can be because my parents were deeply in love. It's not the kind of thing a man like you could dismiss easily if he had experienced it.”
    That stopped him. He raised his head. “A man like me?”
    Cleo stroked his cheek with gentle fingertips. “You're like one of those paintings you say you collect. Very deep. Lots of layers. I think that if you ever fell in love you would stay in love for a very long time. Forever, probably.”
    “I'm not a work of art. Don't romanticize me, Cleo.” Max caught her fingers and held them against his chest. “I don't know anything about that kind of love. I don't think it really exists.”
    “My parents had it.” She smiled. “It's the kind of love I want for myself.”
    Max got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “You could spend your whole life looking for it and never be satisfied with what you find.”
    “That's what my therapist said.” She stirred against him. “So you really weren't in love with Kimberly?”
    “I think it's a safe bet that the kind of feeling Kimberly and I had for each other was nothing like the bond you say your parents had.” He slid his leg aggressively between Cleo's warm thighs. He could feel her responding to him, and the knowledge reassured him. Cleo might have an unrealistic view of love, but her body had a very pragmatic reaction to his. He intended to nurture that reaction until it was more important to her than the search for an elusive, mythical grand passion.
    “I don't understand.” Cleo braced her hands against his shoulders and searched his face. “What sort of feeling did you have for Kimberly?”
    Max tried to contain his impatience. He was thoroughly aroused, and Cleo was warm and sultry and ready for him. “Cleo, it's a little hard to explain. Kimberly represented a lot of things I thought I wanted at the time. I guess I thought that if I got her, I'd get those other things, too. I was wrong. She did us both a favor when she broke off the engagement.”
    “What things did you want?” Cleo whispered.
    “It doesn't matter. I don't want them any longer.”
    “Are you certain of that?”
    “Yes,” Max said. He moistened the tip of his finger with his tongue and then reached down to touch the taut little bud hidden between her legs.
    Cleo flinched in reaction and then lifted herself against his hand with a soft moan. He cupped her gently and eased one finger into her damp heat. She was burning for him. He couldn't wait to lose himself in her again.
    “What do you want now?” Cleo asked.
    “You.”
    She sighed in soft surrender and brushed her lips across his shoulder. “I want you, too.”
    A few minutes later when he buried himself deep inside her, Max realized he had spoken a greater truth than he had realized. He wanted Cleo in a way he had never wanted any other woman in his life. He did not question the need; he simply accepted it.

    The distant thuds brought Cleo up out of a dreamless sleep. She lay quietly for a moment, trying to identify the sounds. They stopped after a moment.
    She concluded that George, or perhaps one of the guests, had walked down the hall outside her room.
    Cleo yawned and tried to turn on her side. She realized she could not move because Max was pinning her legs to the bed. He had one muscled thigh thrown over her calves.
    In addition to being trapped, she was much too warm. The heat from Max's body made the quilt superfluous. Sharing a bed with Max was a very strange experience, Cleo thought. It was like sleeping with a blast furnace.
    The thuds started up again. They reverberated softly through the walls in a primitive, unrelenting, extremely irritating rhythm.
    Thump. Thump. Thump .
    Cleo came fully awake in a hurry. She jackknifed into a sitting position.
    “Good lord, Max. Someone's drumming down there.”
    “What's wrong?” Max asked from the depths of the pillow.
    “Don't you hear it? Someone's got a drum downstairs.” Cleo pushed aside the quilt and struggled to get herself free of Max. “He'll wake up everyone in the whole inn.”
    Cleo managed to get out of the bed. She raced to the closet and reached for a pair of jeans and a shirt.
    “Hold on, Cleo. I'll go down with you.” Max got out of bed, yawning.
    The distant murmur of men's voices mingled with the drumming. Cleo listened intently and then yelped in disbelief.
    “They've started chanting.” She grabbed her