'Don't be ridiculous. Of course it was for me.'
'It was for me,' she said firmly. Strong, she thought. Strong face, strong eyes, strong hands. Not a picture in a magazine, or a white knight fantasy. A strong man, with strong needs. 'You were so careful, so patient. No one's ever been careful with me before.'
'I know.' Because he did, his hand was gentle when he lifted it to brush the golden curls of her hair. 'You don't have to worry anymore.'
'Don't treat me like a child, Devin.' Boldly she took his face in her hands, that familiar and compelling face. 'You were holding back. Every time, you were holding back. I've been too dazzled to realize it.'
'Cassie, you need tenderness.'
'Don't tell me what I need.' Her voice had a snap to it, there was a spark in her eyes. 'I've had enough of that in my life. Yes, I need tenderness, but I also need trust and respect, and to be treated like a woman. A normal woman.'
As carefully as he could, he wrapped his fingers around her wrists. 'Don't push me here, Cassie.' He pressed his lips to her brow, and infuriated her.
'Kiss me like you mean it,' she demanded, then crushed her lips to his. She felt his jolt, the burst of heat, then his struggle for control. 'Show me what it's like,' she said against his mouth. 'I want to know what it's like, what you're like when you stop thinking.'
With an oath, he devoured her mouth. It was like that first shocking kiss, she realized as her blood burst inside her veins. The first and the last time he had given her a glimpse of real hunger.
There was that surge of power again, that odd, whippy sensation that she could do or be anything. She strained against him when he tried to draw back.
'Damn it, Cassie.'
'Again.' Surprisingly strong, she dragged his dark head back to hers. 'Kiss me like that again.' Her eyes, slumberous, aware, stayed on his. 'Show me what it's like,' she murmured. 'I've waited my whole life to know.' She ran her hands over his chest, felt the wild beat of his heart, the rigid edge of his control. 'Take me. Don't be kind tonight, Devin. Just take me. That's what I want.'
His hands, shaking now, were tensed and rough as he wrapped her hair around them and dragged her head back. He plundered her mouth, ravishing it with lips and teeth and tongue. A part of him hung back still, waiting for her to object. He told himself he would stop—could stop—the moment he frightened her.
But as her taste seeped into him, he was afraid it was a lie. Just look at her, he thought, the sunbeam hair, the cloudy eyes, the rose petal skin.
'Cassie—'
'No. Just show me.' She was almost delirious with new knowledge, with the force of her desire and her utter lack of fear. 'Show me.'
He could have sworn he heard himself snap, heard an echo of brittle control breaking. The wildness overcame him, primitive, almost brutal, making all the years of patience nothing.
In his rush to taste her flesh, he ripped her blouse. The sound of the seam tearing would have snapped him back, but she moaned and wrapped herself around him. Instinctively he recognized the quiver of her body as desire, not fear. It clawed at him.
'I can't... stand it.'
'Then don't,' she murmured, thrilling when his arms clamped around her, when he lifted her off her feet so that she was pressed hard against him, heat to heat. 'Touch me.' She fisted her pale hands in his dark hair, amazed at the hunger that swarmed through her. 'I'll go crazy if you don't.'
Nearly stumbling, his mouth racing over her face and throat, he headed for the bedroom. But she wrapped her legs tight around his waist and shot new fire into his blood. By the doorway, he pressed her against the wall, using it to brace her. His desperate mouth clamped over her breast, suckling hard through her tattered blouse. Her response was to throw back her head and rock against him.
'More.' She couldn't believe what was coming out of her mouth, couldn't believe this vicious need had been in either one of them. With a groan, she reached down and tore her own blouse aside so that his mouth could take her.
She climaxed the instant his teeth closed over her, shocking herself with the power of it. For an instant she was like a moth, pinned, quivering helplessly, and then she was alive, bursting with life.
Mindless as coupling animals, they dragged each other to the floor.
She pulled at his shirt, he yanked at her slacks. Speech was impossible as they rolled over the floor in the narrow hallway, groping for each other. There were only gasps and moans. No sighs now, no murmurs, only hissing breath and thundering pulses.
Craving drove him, a craving long suppressed and denied. He yanked her hips high and ripped her practical cotton panties to shreds. And made her scream with his greedy mouth.
She bucked, then stiffened into a quaking bridge, her arms straining as her body arched up toward him. He drove her ruthlessly, relentlessly, until throaty growls rumbled in her throat.
'More.' This time it was he who demanded it, he who groaned, as her nails scraped up his back and dug crescents into his shoulders. When her hand closed around him, his vision grayed, and the drumbeat of his pulse scrambled.
She was moving under him, writhing. Her eyes were nearly black, and blind with pleasure, when he fused his mouth to hers again. It was greed, rather than control, that kept him from ending it, that had him sliding sleekly down her body again, tasting and taking and touching until they were both mad.
He reared up, clamped his hands over hers, then plunged into her. Beyond all reason, he pumped and thrust, angling her rocking hips so that he could immerse himself in her, deep, then deeper. His mind had gone dark, leaving only snarling sensations as he rammed into that hot, wet pleasure with a feral force that had them both gasping.
She couldn't hold on. She tried, for him. How could she have known he needed like this? That she was capable of needing like this? How could she have known until he finally showed her? But she was being tossed too high now to fight her way back. Her hands slid off his damp skin, rapped hard on the wooden floor. She gave herself willingly to the last savage stab of pleasure, going weak as he continued to hammer himself into her.
Then that wonderful hard body heaved, went rigid. She saw him throw his head back as if in pain, saw with wonder that it was he who was lost. When he shuddered, shuddered and cried out her name, she wept with the joy of it.
He felt the tears against his shoulder the moment his sated body collapsed on hers. He would have levered himself away instantly, but her arms came around him.
'Don't. Please don't move.'
'I'm sorry.' There was nothing he could say to her that would be good enough, nothing he could say to himself that would be bad enough. 'I hurt you. I promised I wouldn't.'
'Do you know what you did?' Her lips were curved, but he couldn't see. All he could see was his own careless treatment of the most precious thing in his life. 'You forgot.'
'Forgot?' Again he tried to shift, again she held him tight.
'You forgot to be careful, you forgot to worry, you forgot everything. I didn't know I could make you do that. It makes me feel—' a long, satisfied sigh '—powerful.'
'Powerful?' His throat was bone-dry. He wanted to lift her up off the floor. God, he'd taken her on the floor. He wanted to tuck her into bed and soothe her. But the word she'd used, and the tone, baffled him.
'Strong, sexy.' At last she lifted her arms, stretched them above her head in a long, lazy movement. 'Powerful. I've never felt powerful before. I like it. Oh, I really like it.' Eyes closed, lips curved, she hummed in her throat.
And that was his first glimpse of her when he lifted his head, the smug smile and erotic glow of a woman who'd just discovered a dangerous and exciting secret. His blood stirred all over again. She looked... triumphant, he realized. Just who, he wondered, had ravaged who?
'You like it,' he repeated.
'Mmm... I want to feel this way again. And again and again. I want to feel cherished, too, the way I do when you're gentle. I want to feel everything. I made you forget.' She opened her eyes again and laughed when she saw the stunned and sated look in his eyes. 'I seduced you. Didn't I?'
'You destroyed me. I tore your clothes.'
