River’s End

her breath. Surrender came sweet and unexpected.
    She was still the woman he’d fallen headlong in love with.
    His hands slowed, gentled, soothing trembles, inciting more. With a kind of lazy deliberation that sent her head reeling, he began a long, savoring journey. Pleasure shimmered over her skin, warmed it, sensitized it. She rose fluidly when he lifted her, cradled her. With a murmur of approval, she stripped his shirt away and reveled in the slick slide of flesh against flesh, of the surprising bunch of muscles under her hands, the comforting beat of his heart against hers.
    “More.” In that dreamy altered state, she heard her own breathless demand and arched back to offer. “Take more.”
    She was willow slim and water soft. The lovely line of her throat drew his lips over and down. The curve of her breast a fascination, the taste of it fresh and his. Her breath hitched and released as he closed his mouth over her.
    Need leaped in his belly.
    There was more. More to taste, more to take. As her skin and muscles quivered, his mouth grew more urgent. Every demand was answered, a moan, a movement, a murmur.
    He unhooked her jeans and when he skimmed his tongue under denim, her shocked jerk of response had dark and dangerous images swirling in his mind. He dragged them over her hips, and even as she reared up, took what he wanted. It was a hot, smothering swell of sensation, air too thick to breathe, blood roaring to a scream in her ears. With mouth and teeth and tongue he drove her toward a peak she wasn’t prepared to face. She choked out his name, fighting against a panicked excitement that threatened to swallow her whole.
    Then her hands were gripped in his, held fast. Heat pumped through her, dewing her skin, scorching through her system until pain and pleasure fused into one vicious fist. The pressure of it had her strangling for air, straining for freedom even as her hips arched.
    Then everything inside her broke apart, shattered into pieces that left her limp and defenseless.
    Her cry of release shuddered through him. Her hands went lax in his. Everything he wanted whittled down to her, this place, this moment. So he watched her face as he drove her up again. Again.
    Her eyes flew open, wide with shock, blind with pleasure. Her lips trembled as her breath tore through them. Sunlight scattered over her skin as she poured into his hand.
    Blood screaming, muscles quivering, he held himself over her. “Olivia.” Her name was raw in his throat and full of need. “Look at me when I take you.” His eyes were as green and deep as the shadows behind them. “Look at me when we take each other. Because it matters.”
    He drove himself deep, buried himself inside her. Even as his vision dimmed at the edges he held on. The woman, the moment, and his certainty of each. Clinging to that clarity for another instant, he lowered his brow to hers. “It’s you.” he managed.
    “It’s always been you.”
    Then his mouth took hers in a kiss as fierce as the sudden plunging of his body. She couldn’t move. Not only because he pinned her to the ground with the good, solid weight of a satisfied man, but because her own body was weak and her system still rocking from the sensory onslaught.
    And because her mind, no matter how she fought to clear it, remained dazzled and dim.
    She told herself it was just sex. It was important to believe it. But it had been beyond anything she’d ever experienced, and beneath the drugged pleasure was a growing unease.
    She’d always considered sex a handy release valve, a necessary human function that was often an enjoyable exercise.
    Orgasms ranged from a surprising burst of pleasure to a slight ping of sensation, and she’d always considered herself responsible either way.
    With Noah she didn’t feel she’d had a chance to be responsible. He’d simply swept her up and along. She’d lost control, not only of her body but also of her will. And because of it she’d given him a part of herself she hadn’t known existed. A part she hadn’t wanted to exist.
    She needed to get it back and lock it away again.
    But when she started to shift, to push him aside, he simply tucked her up, rolled over and trapped her in a sprawl over him.
    She wanted to lay her head over his heart, close her eyes and stay just as they were forever.
    It scared her to death.
    “It’ll be dark soon. I have to get the cook camp set up, a fire started.”
    He stroked a hand over her hair, enjoying the way