Raven's Prey

relationship between me and my plane, I am capable of a few other interests in life!”
    “Such as a good steak?” she challenged with a mischievous smile. “Or a glass of tequila?”
    Belatedly he saw the laughter in her and answered with a crooked smile. “Exactly,” he said very smoothly. “Shall we go into the restaurant and eat? I seem to have worked up an appetite.”
    “Is it such an effort to keep your fingers from going around my throat?”
    He grinned, a slow, laughter-filled grin that reached his eyes. “You know me so very well,” he murmured, getting to his feet and taking her hand.
    “They say you never really know a man until he’s tried to teach you flying,” she quipped.
    “Who says that?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Surely any number of women who have known pilots,” she answered vaguely.
    The mood for dinner seemed to have been established. Somehow the conversation began to flow more freely after that, enlivened by Honor’s natural propensity to tease and Judd’s equally natural tendency to react to her mockery.
    The words began to come so easily to him that Judd found himself wondering how he could ever have been worried. Hell, it was obvious that under the right circumstances he was a fantastic conversationalist. Almost as good as the guy in the three-piece suit. The right circumstances, though, seemed to be limited to being with the right woman. It was only Honor to whom he could imagine himself talking so fluently. He found himself telling her about his first solo landing, the times he had flown into incredibly narrow jungle landing strips, the strange people he had worked for off and on through the years and a lot more that he had never told anyone else.
    During the course of the evening his rampant curiosity about Honor led him, in turn, to ask one question after another. He learned more about the fierce independence that animated her, finding it an odd complement to the equally strong romantic side of her nature. She fascinated him, and at last he was beginning to understand some of the reasons why.
    It was after dinner that he remembered he had promised her an opportunity to dance in the lounge. He had a pang of regret at the rashness of the offer but then recalled that it would give him a perfect chance to hold her in his arms for a while. That thought consoled him as he wondered if he was going to make a fool of himself on the floor. It had been so long….
    Honor went into his arms without any such concerns. Any man as coordinated and intrinsically graceful as Judd Raven would just naturally have to be a good dancer. She was right. He held her a little too close but other than that there was no real problem. She wasn’t in a mood to try a lot of fancy steps anyway. The slow, romantic music was just what she wanted that night.
    Judd’s hand seemed to glide along the length of her spine, urging her closer with each step. Honor found herself relaxing against him, her head nestled on his shoulder and the warm, masculine scent of him filling her nostrils. Here on the floor, wrapped in his arms and the music, she found it was easy to forget the uneasy nature of their relationship. Why was it so simple to forget the past and the future whenever she found herself in Judd’s arms? It must have something to do with the limited vision of love. Or perhaps it was just that love set its own priorities.
    Conversation lagged again while they were dancing, but this time it was a comfortable silence. “Thinking about the Cessna?” she joked after a while. “Wondering if it’s all tucked in for the night?”
    “Actually I was thinking about what it would be like to tuck you in for the night,” Judd retorted gently. His hand slipped to the curve of her hip and he felt the tiny shiver that went through her. Instantly his grip tightened until she was pressed close against the hard line of his thighs.
    “But you’re not going to find out, are you?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light and wicked. “I seem to recall a certain vow you made to keep your hands off me for the next couple of days. And we all know about your amazing self-control… Oh!” She gasped as he came to a halt in the middle of the floor.
    “You should know by now that you have the power to make me forget all about my self-control,” he muttered thickly. His hands settled at her waist and he lowered his head to find her mouth.
    She could feel the imprint his strong fingers were leaving on her skin and the