River’s End

you.”
    “How are you going to stop it?”
    “I already have.” Her voice went flat and cool now as she turned toward the door. “We’re done. I’ve given you all I can give you on the book. There’s no need for you to stay past morning.”
    He walked toward the door she opened. Her heart was bleeding as she shifted aside. Later she would tell herself she should have seen it coming, should have recognized the cool, reckless light in his eye.
    He gripped her wrist to move it away from the knob. Closed the door. Turned the lock. “If we play it your way and I go along with the idea that you can turn your feelings on and off as easily as I turned that lock, then all we really had between us was business—which is concluded-—and sex. Would that be an accurate statement?”
    He had her backed against the door, trapped there. When the first shock passed, she realized he frightened her. And along with the fear rode a terrible excitement. “Close enough. It’s better that way, for both of us.”‘
    “Sure, let’s keep it simple. If it’s just about sex—” He yanked the tie of her robe away. “Then let’s take it.”
    She jerked her chin up. forced herself to meet his eyes. “Fine.”
    But his mouth was already crushed to hers, tasting of fury and violence. His fingers plunged into her, ripping her over a brutal peak before her mind could keep pace with her body. She cried out, shock, denial, delight, and the sound was muffled against his ruthless mouth.
    He tore her robe aside even as he drove her deeper, faster, into the pumping heat.
    “It doesn’t matter. It’s just sex.” Hurt and anger speared through him, and he let the keener edge of desire rule.
    His hands were rough when he dragged her to the bed, his body hard and demanding when he pressed down on hers. He gave her no time, no choice. But he gave her pleasure.
    Her nails dug into his shoulders, but not in protest. Beneath his, her body shuddered and writhed, and the sounds in her throat were the low animal moans of mating. This was not the playful tumble he’d shown her or the gentle thoroughness of seduction. Heat instead of warmth, greed unbalanced by generosity. She tore at his clothes, and raked her nails down his sweat-slicked back. With oaths instead of promises, he jerked up her hips and slammed himself into her. She was hot and wet and fisted around him urgently as her body bowed up, a quaking bridge. Her skin glinted with damp in the lamplight, her eyes stared, dark with shock, into his. She couldn’t survive it. It was one terrified thought that raced through her spinning brain. No one could survive this brutal heat, these battering fists of sensation.
    She fought to swallow air and breathed out his name.
    The orgasm sliced through her, twin edges of pleasure and pain. It opened her. left her helpless and exposed.
    He hung on, like a man clinging to a ledge by his fingertips as the blood beat like thunder in his head, his heart, his loins. “Say it.” He panted it out, gripping her hips so that she had no choice but to take more of him. “Give me the words. Damn it, Liv, tell me now.”
    His face filled her vision. There was nothing else. “I love you. Oh God.” Her hand slid away from him to lie limply on the bed. “Noah.”
    He let go of the ledge, and when the last desperate thrust emptied him, he collapsed on her.
    He could feel her trembling, and the staccato beat of her heart against his. Who won? he wondered and rolled away from her.
    “I’m trying to be sorry for treating you that way,” he said. “But I’m not.”
    “There wouldn’t be any point in it.” She was cold, she realized, growing cold because he was moving away.
    “I won’t leave in the morning. I won’t leave until this is resolved. You’ll have to find a way to deal with that.”
    “Noah.” She sat up, then began to shiver. “The lack’s in me. It’s not you.”
    “That makes it just fine, then.” He rolled off the bed, scooped up his jeans. “I told my mother you were work. That’s not the half of it. You’re a battle, Liv. You’re a fucking combat zone, and I never know if you’re going to wave the white flag, attack, or just turn tail and retreat. And maybe you’re right.” He jammed his legs into the pants and dragged them up. “Maybe it’s just not worth it.”
    It was the first time in six years he’d hurt her, really hurt her. She stared, speechless as the shock wave of it shook through her. The words were lethal