Lover Beware 03 - After Midnight

hers, she burned.
    He framed her face, his palms warm and calloused against her skin. "I nearly went crazy thinking about the two of you in bed."
    The confession was startling, even though she'd known he'd left his wife for her. Abruptly, a feminine confidence she thought she'd never feel again warmed her, along with knowl-edge, as solid and real as Rider. Despite the passage of time, After Midnight
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    despite the doubts that had eaten at her, in all the ways that counted he was hers. "It didn't happen," she said flatly. "I couldn't."
    Some of the tension left his body. His breath stirred against her cheek. "Thank God for that. I wouldn't wish what happened to Patrick on my worst enemy, but..."
    He had wanted Patrick out of the picture. The unspoken words hung between them, as raw and uncomplicated as Rider's weight pressing her into the wet ground, the heat pouring off his skin, the hot, stirring pleasure as he moved inside her.The pitch of the wind altered, adding a keening edge to the building savagery of storm. He dipped and his mouth closed over one nipple, and her body shimmered out of control again as hot, dissolving pleasure gripped her.
    He lifted his head, his face slick with rain, his gaze fastened on hers as he shoved deep, and she felt the hot liquid pulse as he held himself deep inside her. The moment was primal and extreme, and she was fiercely glad he hadn't worn a condom.
    She wanted his penis naked inside her. In an utterly female way, she quite simply wanted him, and had done so from the first time she'd laid eyes on him.
    At a primitive animal level, the coupling was preordained and logical. She was a female who had been cordoned off and alone for years, and he was a strong, dominant male in his prime. The fact that he could impregnate her, and probably already had, didn't terrify her. She wanted his semen. Planning didn't come into it. She'd been locked in deep freeze for years, the chill mired deep in her bones. Getting involved with Rider was the equivalent of stepping into the heat of a blast furnace.
    He was wild and risky and unexpectedly vulnerable, and she was certain of only one thing: She wanted more.
    Her arms wound around his neck and she stretched and arched beneath him, glorying in his weight pressing her into the ground, the continued penetration as he kept her beneath him, and the delicious throbbing wetness deep inside.
    Experimentally, she gripped him more tightly and felt him twitch and thicken.
    "More?"
    She lifted her face to his, studied the taut line of his jaw, 222
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    the sharp cut of his cheekbones. "Much more," and then the liquid glide started again, and she couldn't think, could barely breathe. The thrusting seemed to go on for a long time, although time was hard to measure; it slipped away in the darkness and the roar of the wind, the rain slicking their skin, the heat that built in waves, stretching the tension tight until it was close to unbearable.
    His teeth fastened on the tender flesh at the join of her neck and shoulder, and the small erotic nip sent her spinning over the edge, heat and darkness lapping at her as she clung to his shoulders.
    She caught the edge of a short, harsh word, then his mouth locked on hers and he shoved deep and she felt him come inside her again, the pulsing shiveringly deep and prolonged.
    They lay in an exhausted tangle, until finally, Rider moved, pulling her up with him. They made it to the kitchen with its lamp still glowing softly on the table. Rider slammed the door, framed her face, and lowered his mouth to hers, the kiss long and drugging.
    Before she was able to feel the vulnerability of being naked while Rider still had his jeans on, he walked her back three steps, lifted her onto the table, parted her legs, and stepped between them. She looped her arms around his neck as his mouth moved over hers again, the kiss intense and oddly sweet as the rain pounded on the windows, violent and tropically heavy.
    He lifted his head, and when he spoke his voice was dark, and faintly hoarse. “This time I want you to watch, I want you to know who's making love to you."
    Her gaze snagged on his, and she wondered that she'd ever thought his eyes cold. "I know who you are."
    His hands tangled in her hair, his forehead dropped to hers.
    "Sometimes I wondered if you even knew I was alive."
    She cupped his face, and suppressed a smile, feeling as giddy as a teenager. "I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, Rider, but you're