Raven's Prey

was reacting fiercely to his love-making. Her breasts felt swollen and taut as he moved his palm slowly across the tips. A slow tendril of desire was uncurling deep in her loins.
    “You feel so good,” he breathed, burying his lips against her throat. “When you came up out of the water the other day in the stream your shirt was clinging to your breasts and I could see the outline of your nipples. It was all I could do not to reach out and take you right then and there.”
    She shuddered beneath the impact of his words and her body curved invitingly toward him. “Please, Judd…” Without a word he took her hand and guided it to the buttons of his own shirt. In slow, aching silence she began to undress him while he watched her face in the moonlight.
    Once or twice during the mornings she had seep him bare from the waist up and had refused to allow her gaze to linger on the crisp, curling expanse of hair that covered his broad chest. But now, tonight, she could indulge herself to her heart’s content. As she slipped the shirt from his shoulders Honor caught her breath at the primitive picture he made in the shadowy light
    “What is it, honey?” he murmured as she hesitated before touching him again. “What’s wrong?”
    “You frighten me a little, Judd. There are so many things we don’t know about each other and you…can be very intimidating.”
    “I told you earlier not to be frightened. Of me or anything else.” He unclasped his belt, standing up abruptly to finish removing his clothes. She watched the smoothly muscled, lean length of his body appear and felt a rush of painful awareness at the sight of his uncompromisingly aroused masculinity.
    “You look as if you’re on the verge of changing your mind, Honor,” he said as he sat back down beside her. “You look as if you’re having thoughts about running. But you can’t run away now. You know that, don’t you? I couldn’t let you go tonight.”
    There was an absolute certainty in his words that told her he meant them. There was no way she could escape what had begun there in the small shack. And deep down Honor admitted to herself that she wouldn’t have been able to run from him anyway. She felt overwhelmed and overtaken. There was no longer a choice to be made. It had been made the moment he had taken her in his arms.
    As if he sensed her implicit surrender Judd lowered his head to kiss her breasts as his hand unzipped the fastening of her jeans. Impulsively reacting to the feel of his sensitive tongue on her aching nipples, Honor clenched her fingers into the raven darkness of his hair and cried out softly,
    “Yes,” he growled in return. [_”Yes!” _]Then he slipped his hands beneath the waistband of her jeans and pushed them down over her hips, stripping her completely in one fell swoop. He did not even leave her the flimsy barrier of her panties as protection.
    This was the way he had wanted her all along, Judd realized with primitive exultation: open, vulnerable, needing him. With a sense of wonder and rising hunger he put out a hand to cover the dark, tangled thicket at the apex of her thighs. The feel of her was doing incredible things to him. It would be hard to make the passion last because his body was clamoring so loudly for satisfaction. But he wanted it to be good for her.
    No, he thought savagely, he wanted it to be the best for her. So unbearably perfect that she would never again think of another man. He wanted to blot out any flickering dreams of romance and love she might be harboring in her feminine fantasies. He wanted to fill her thoughts solely with images of her surrender in his arms.
    “Judd?” Her nails began to bite into the flesh of his shoulders and her legs curled and uncurled restlessly on the cot. When he looked up he saw that her eyes were tightly closed and in the moonlight he could read the strain of passion on her face.
    “You want me, Honor, don’t you? Tell me that you want me!”
    “Oh, yes, Judd. So much.” She gasped for breath as he began to explore the dampening heat between her thighs. “I never dreamed it could be this way!”
    He stretched out beside her, tangling his legs with hers and finding an intense pleasure in the contrasting textures of their skin. She was so soft, so warm and inviting, Judd thought dazedly, how had he managed to keep his hands off her for the past three nights? Why hadn’t he taken her that first night? Then he could have spent the rest of the time in