Raven's Prey

go!”
    “Honor, stop fighting me. Please, stop fighting me,” he muttered hoarsely and then with a low groan he bent his head and stilled her abruptly by taking her mouth with his own.
    The shock of his warm, hungry mouth on hers washed through Honor like a tidal wave. Once again she felt the depths of his desire and her resistance faded in the face of it. He wanted her in a way no man had ever wanted her and there was no way she could ignore what that primitive passion did to her senses. No wonder she had longed for the physical relationship to mean something far more important to him. It had meant so much to her that her heart had refused at first to believe the feeling wasn’t mutual.
    “Let me have you, sweetheart,” he growled against her lips. “Give yourself to me. I want you the way you were in Mexico, all soft and warm and clinging.” He filled her mouth with his searching, exploring tongue, urging a response from the dark, warm depths of her. His legs stretched out alongside hers, the denim fabric of his jeans rough against her bare skin.
    Honor felt her senses begin to spin and her emotions vacillated wildly from passion to anger and back again. “What do you want from me, damn you?” she cried, her head moving restlessly on the sheet,
    “What does it look like?” he rasped. Then he buried his lips against her throat.
    “You can get your sex from someone else. Leave me alone!”
    “You don’t understand! You didn’t understand the morning we left Mexico and you don’t understand now! But I’m going to show you what I mean this time.”
    She heard the resolute determination in his voice and knew, as she had known from the moment she saw him at the foot of her bed, that she was lost. He wasn’t fighting her for the embrace, nor was he hurting her. Judd was simply intent on arousing her and she knew him well enough by now to know that there was little one could do to stop this man once he had set himself a course of action.
    She was aware the instant he treed her hands to stroke the line of her thigh. She tried to push at him but already her body was succumbing to the demands of his. How could she resist the man she had thought herself falling in love with such a short time ago? How could she resist the desire in him? It reached out to envelop her, making her senses sing. She didn’t hate Judd Raven. She could never hate him. He aroused her passion and her anger and even, at times, her compassion, but she would never be able to hate him. Especially not when he held her like this and made slow, intense love to her.
    Slowly, slowly she stopped struggling, giving herself up to sweeping desire. He wanted her and she wanted him. Why did she have to look beyond that point? For now she would ignore the future and the past. Only the present counted.
    She knew her implicit surrender must have been signaled immediately to Judd. Honor sensed the sigh of[_ _]longing and satisfaction that seemed to emanate from deep in his chest as he gathered her closer.
    “You won’t regret it this time, sweetheart. This time you’ll [_understand!” _]His hand slid along the naked length of her thigh, pushing up the hem of her cotton nightgown. “So soft, so sweet…”
    Honor shuddered and her fingers lifted to twine themselves in the depths of his black-and-silver hair. The feel of it was excruciatingly exciting and she moaned softly. Everything about him excited her. The musky, warm scent of his body was intoxicating and the^; ^roughness of his unshaven cheek made her twist with a new kind of restlessness.
    “Judd, I shouldn’t let you do this to me. Not again.”
    “This time it will be different,” he vowed thickly. “God, I’ve been wanting you so, Honor. Did you really think I could let you go? When I saw you with that other man tonight I wanted to break his neck!”
    “And me?” she dared, driven by her own rising passion to taunt him as she had done so often down in Mexico. “What were you going to do to me?*’
    “Exactly what I did do. Kidnap you and bring you home with me. Hell, lady, you have the power to drive me out of my mind!” He shifted abruptly, tearing impatiently at the buttons of his dark shirt. His eyes burned into her face as he stripped the garment from his body and then reached down to unfasten his jeans.
    A moment later he lay naked beside her, his hand playing with the skirt of the nightgown while his lips explored the curve of her shoulder. Honor shut her eyes letting