Secretive Stranger

He was better. Better than a dream. Better than any lover she’d ever conjured up. He inspired her to feel… need. Desire, like an avalanche. Her own power and sensuality, as if she were meeting up with her own Armageddon. Or his.

He peeled her off the wall, scooped her up. “Say no,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

A kiss, swift, sure. God knew where he was walking with her. He didn’t seem to know, either. The hall was dark. He never switched on a light, stumbled once-she thought they’d both crash and tumble. Instead, his knees connected with something, and then she bounced on the bed…and he bounced on her.

“Say no,” he advised her, urged her, one more time.

“Yes.” She twisted, until she was on top, bare. The mattress was hard, big as a room, the textures of down and chill-cool percale under her knees. But his body was warm, when she swooped down with hands and lips. His body, truth to tell, threatened to burn.

They roller-coastered together, playing tease, hide-and-seek, double dare. The room had no more light than charcoal dust-but his eyes picked up light, picked up her. Her laughter belled in the darkness, throaty, brazen… and his gruff chuckle turned into a roar when she accidentally tickled him.

She’d never heard him laugh before… not really laugh, not belly laugh. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d let loose with abandoned laughter before, either. At that moment, though, she just wasn’t Sophie. She was that wild girl that had been lost so long ago, never really gone, but just waiting for someone to turn the key on the rusty lock.

Cord had the key.

Cord was the key. Laughter died, the last time he knelt over her. She touched his face, invited with the shine of her eyes, and then arched her back helplessly when she felt his slow, deep intrusion. He filled her up, she wrapped her legs tight around him, and there it was, the gallop off into the sunset, on a ride as primal as heartbeats, as hope, as love.

“Yes,” he whispered, just as he felt her last climb, her last spin of a climax. He was only a blink behind.

She wasn’t aware of falling asleep, but the next time she opened her eyes, someone had transported her from Oz to reality. Defibrillators couldn’t compete with this kind of jolt. She seemed to be snoozing on the cushy carpet in Jon’s hall-how impossible was that? She also seemed to be naked as a jaybird-another shock. And most impossible of all, Cord was awake, lying just as naked as she was, balanced up on an elbow. Studying her.

The ambient light from some other room barely dented the dark hall. Still, there was enough for her to see Cord’s expression. The look in his eyes made Sophie want to glance behind her, certain there must be another woman in the room somewhere-the one he was studying with that tender, mystified, intense gaze.

“I fell asleep?”

“Just for the last few minutes. I don’t doubt you needed a nap to recover. Soph?”

“Hmm?” For just a moment, she forgot to be appalled and shocked at herself. He was so luscious naked. Not soft. Not pretty. But all those long, sinewy muscles and angles, all that rough hair, all that… whew. Her eyes shot back up to his. He’d caught where she was staring. His smile was full of male ego.

Still, he seemed determined to say a few serious things. He touched her cheek. “Do you have a clue what this was all about?”

“Well, I think it’s called making love. It’s been a while since I read the book my adopted mother gave me in fifth grade, but really, I’m pretty sure-”

A kiss shut her up, but he lifted his head immediately. Or almost immediately. “If you knew we were going to end up making love…I sure as hell didn’t. I knew I was attracted. I knew the kick of hormones was damn hard to ignore. But I wouldn’t have pounced, Soph, because I figured the last couple weeks were seriously traumatic for you. I don’t like the idea of taking advantage of your vulnerability.”

“You’re not vulnerable?”

“Guys aren’t vulnerable, didn’t you know? Besides, for us, sex cures everything.”

“Who knew?” she teased. But then she stopped kidding around and gave him a straight answer. “I didn’t plan this. I didn’t know or dream it was going to happen. And if you don’t want it to happen again, it won’t.”

“Then it sure as hell will, because you won’t find me saying no to a repeat of this, any time, day or night. Sophie…”

She didn’t know what he intended to say, but her heart rate instinctively started slamming. If he didn’t want to be with her in a more serious way, that would be unsettling and hurtful. But if he did want to be with her, that had some unexpected and scary implications, too.

Trying not to look as if she were suddenly in a blister of a hurry, she stood up and forced a quick laugh. “I see Caviar from the top of the couch, looking at us.”

“A voyeur cat?”

The mild diversion broke the intensity. A little awkwardly, she started reaching for her clothes-although she seemed to have forgotten where a few key items had landed. Still, she found her pants, found her bra, managed to cover herself.

“Um, Soph, if you were thinking about going back to your apartment tonight…it’s not happening.”

“I have a really early-”

“Yeah, I know that excuse. I usually have a ‘really early’ thing, too. Sometimes it’s even true. But you’re not going next door tonight, not after that break-in. My brother, God love him, has the best mattress I’ve ever been near-so heaven knows why we ended up on the floor. But I guarantee that a nice warm bath in his shamelessly sybaritic bathroom will make you sleepy. Particularly if you drink a glass of wine while you’re soaking. And then we’ll fold you into that big, fabulous bed.”

“Are you trying to make me an offer I can’t refuse?” Her voice was petulant.

“Damn right.”

“And is part of that plan sleeping together in that alleged big, fabulous bed?”

“Yeah, it is. But we can adjust that part of the plan, if you’ve got a concern with it.”

“I don’t. I just wanted to be sure we were talking the same language,” she assured him. Heaven knew how that came out of her mouth. It wasn’t remotely true. She wasn’t talking Cord’s language in any conceivable way.

Serious shock was sinking in. Her pulse was thudding with it, her heartbeat as skittery as a doe in the rutting season. All these years, she’d been a quiet, studious, cautious, ace-the-course good girl.

The Sophie she used to be-the girl-child Sophie, the selfish, fearless and uninhibited little girl-Cord had brought her out. The Sophie she once was. The woman she thought she’d turn into once upon a time-the kind of a woman who reveled in her sensuality, in her power with a man, trusting him at her most vulnerable moments…because she could. And still be safe.

Only in real life, Sophie knew better than to run with scissors.

She wasn’t as safe as she’d been that morning, not because of the break-in, but because of Cord. Being with him had ripped off layers that she’d counted on being glued tight. So she knew now…he was dangerous.

Deliciously dangerous, but it wasn’t so delicious to discover that she was dangerously vulnerable with him.

After the bath-in a tall malachite tub with seductive lighting and built-in music-she trekked around until she found Jon’s bedroom. As she could have expected, Jon had gussied it up the same way he had the rest of the place. Platform bed. Mirrors. Black sheets. Corny and dumb, but man.

When she climbed into that bed, the mattress really was incredible.

Not as incredible as the naked man in it, but still breathtakingly incredible.

“I get the left side,” she told him.

“We could flip a coin for it.”

“Or you could give in.”

“Or I could give in,” he agreed, scooched over and pulled up the down comforter, offering her an invitation to slide in closer.

As soon as she switched off the light, she did.

In the suddenly fuzzy darkness, he said, “Am I sleeping with the librarian Sophie or the Lorelei