Shiver

in her life, and it ignited a wildfire inside her that was like nothing she had ever experienced. The intimacy of what he was doing to her, the heat of it, the sheer, mind-bending pleasure of it, was shocking and incredible and so intense that she came just like that, digging her fingers into the mattress and crying out.
    After that, she was wild and wanton, willing to do whatever he wanted, to let him do whatever he wanted. When he thrust inside her at last, she was on fire for him. He was huge and hot and hard, and just what she had always wanted. Woozy with helpless pleasure, she kissed him and wrapped her legs around his waist and moved with him as he took her with a carnality that had her writhing and gasping and crying out at the sheer wonder of it.
    When she came again, it was earth-shattering.
    When he came, with his arms locked around her and his face buried in the curve between her shoulder and neck, he shuddered and called out her name.
    For a long moment afterward he didn’t move. Neither did she. She simply lay in his arms, boneless, mindless, totally spent in the aftermath of so much well-satisfied lust.
    About the time that it occurred to her that besides feeling warm and solid and deliciously masculine against her he was also as heavy as a cartload of bricks, he shifted slightly, sliding onto his side just enough to take most of his weight off her and, she thought, his injured leg. At that point she opened her eyes. And realized several things.
    The lamp had been on the entire time. The bed was bathed in a soft yellow glow that left absolutely nothing—like his big hand still wrapped around her breast, and his long, hard-muscled thigh that was still purple with bruises and adorned with a ridiculously small Band-Aid curved on top of hers—to the imagination. The covers had gone the way of her robe and his boxers, disappearing somewhere over the side of the bed so that they were both naked with no defenses. Her head was pillowed on the hard bulge of his upper arm, giving her a good view of most of his body. He looked even better out of his clothes than he did in them, all sculpted muscles with just the right amount of black body hair stretched over a tall, athletic build. His skin was tan all over except for his bathing suit area, and she thought it was supersexy that his small, tight butt—she could just see the uppermost curve of it—was a couple of degrees paler than everywhere else. And, oh yeah, even at half-mast as he was at the moment, the man was ridiculously well endowed. And when he wasn’t at half-mast—well, even exhausted as she was, she felt herself starting to tingle just remembering.
    He had just rocked her world.
    The bad news was, it wasn’t only the sex.
    Impossible as it seemed, she had fallen head over heels, crazily in love. With a guy whom, after tonight, she was probably never going to see again.
    To her dismay, at the realization Sam felt tears start to leak from her eyes.
    “Sam?”
    Oh, my God. His eyes were open and he was looking at her. She shut her eyes quickly, willing the tears to go away.
    “Sam, open your eyes. Look at me.”
    She didn’t want to, afraid of what he might read in them. The last thing she wanted was for him to guess how she felt. She didn’t think she would be able to bear it if he did.
    “Sam?”
    Okay, he wasn’t going away. Because the tears had stopped, because she was strong, because she could deal, she opened her eyes and met his gaze defiantly.
    She was still on her back and he was lying on his side facing her. His arm and leg were still draped possessively over her. He’d snagged a pillow from somewhere and tucked it beneath his head. With her face turned toward his, she found herself looking directly into his eyes. At first they were heavy-lidded and slumberous, looking as sated with passion as she felt, but as they moved over her face she saw heat gathering at their backs and then they started to gleam. When they met hers a second time they were hot for her all over again.
    “Great sex,” she said, proud of how cool and casual and gee-that-was-fun-but-really-no-big-deal she sounded.
    “What’s the matter, baby doll?” He brushed a wayward strand of hair away from her face, smoothed the unruly mass that spilled over his arm.
    It was the tenderness that did it. Nobody was ever tender with her. She was unprepared.
    “Don’t call me ‘baby doll,’” she growled, and then shocked herself by bursting into tears.
    “Sam.”