Public Secrets

burn out despair in passion, she was there for him.
She took control as she hadn’t known she could, pulling him down with her, letting her hands excite, her mouth demand. He had always loved her before, gently, patiently. There was no room for that now, and no need. If his passion was dark, hers could equal it. If his desire was urgent, she would match it.
This time she would chase away his demons.
She rolled with him, over him, dragging the towel aside, giving herself the pleasure of driving him, feeling his body tremble and heat and tense as she raced over it. No hesitation, no fears, no doubts. To pleasure herself as much as him, she stroked with fingertips, slow circles, teasing lines.
The lamplight glowed over his skin, tempting her to taste with quick flicks of her tongue, with long strokes of her lips.
Power, just discovered, rocked through her like thunder.

He felt himself pulse, wherever she touched him. Though his hands weren’t idle, she shifted away. Wait, she seemed to tell him. Let me show you. Let me love you. Linking her hands with his, she slithered down his body, her mouth burning frantic arrows of pleasure into his flesh.
He could hear the patter of rain on the glass, feel the sheet heat under his back. In the slanted light he saw her, long, pale hair streaming down her shoulders. Her eyes dark, depthless as they met his.
Rearing up, he dragged her close until they were thigh to thigh. With the need pumping through him, he tugged at buttons, wanting to see her, desperate to feel her.
Her teeth nipped into his shoulder as he ripped her blouse. Here was a violence she could understand, and relish. Savage without brutality. And the turbulence in him was a storm within her. Equal. Interchangeable. She found that love and lust could tangle gloriously.
As he tore at her clothes, her low-throated moan had nothing to do with surrender. How could she have known that all of her life she had waited to be wanted this way? Desperately, exclusively, heedlessly. Nor had she known that she had waited to feel this same wild recklessness.
He wasn’t gentle now, and she reveled in the furor. He wasn’t controlled, and she pushed him further to the edge. When his fingers dug into her hips, she knew he wasn’t thinking of her as frail and fragile and in need of defending. When her name tore from between his lips, the need was there, for her. And only for her.
She rolled over him, arching her back with both triumph and release as she took him into her. The first stunning climax ripped through her, but didn’t weaken. It was his hands that slid from her, that groped blindly for hers. With their fingers linked, she set the pace, fast and frantic.
Even after she felt him explode inside her, she rode him, driving him, demanding more. She brought her mouth back to his, insatiable, until his lips grew hungry and his breathing shallow. Her tongue slid along his throat where his pulse began to throb. He murmured something, dazed and incoherent. But she could only moan as she felt him harden inside of her again.

Half mad, he reared up, gripping her arms in tense fingers, covering her mouth with hot, crushing kisses. Then she was beneath him and his body was like a furnace, pumping and plunging into hers.
Long and limber, her limbs linked around him. Her eyes were open and on his. He could see them begin to glaze. Watch her lips begin to tremble. Pleasure rippled through him as he felt her body shudder over a new peak. Then he saw her lips curve, slowly, beautifully.
It was the last thing he saw before passion dragged him under.

Chapter Forty-Three

I T INFURIATED EMMA that she kept looking over her shoulder. Almost a week had passed since she’d settled back into the house on the beach—since Michael and Conroy had unofficially settled in with her. A rehearsal, she sometimes thought, for the future she was beginning to believe in. Living with Michael, sharing her bed and her time with him, didn’t make her feel trapped. It made her feel, at long last, normal…and happy.
Yet no matter how content she was, Emma couldn’t shake the sensation of being watched. Most of the time she ignored it, or tried to, telling herself it was just another reporter looking for a new angle. Another photographer with a long lens looking for an exclusive picture.
They couldn’t touch her, or what she was building with Michael.
But she kept the doors locked and Conroy close whenever she was alone.
No matter how often she told herself