He stopped suckling only to tease her with the tip of his tongue. “Not yet,” he murmured. Then he opened the snap on her jeans, eased his hand inside and found the core of her femininity.

As he enjoyed her breasts, he stroked her with his fingers, teasing her endlessly. Mercilessly.

And when the next orgasm seized her, it was so powerful that it didn’t make Brynne whimper, like before. It made her howl.

After that cataclysmic release of tension and pent-up longings, things happened, at least for Brynne, in a dreamlike sequence.

Beyond the fact that Eli carried her to her bed, she would remember sensations, sweet chaos, an unrelenting hunger for this man she wanted so fiercely, so ferociously, and was so very afraid to love.

AFTER THE LOVEMAKING, Eli was exhausted—this time, in a good way—but he didn’t allow himself to sleep. Long after Brynne drifted off, soft and sweet in his arms, he simply lay there, holding her, reveling in her warmth and her presence.

Beyond the boundaries of that rumpled bed, the real world waited to pounce, and Eli didn’t want to go back and tangle with it one moment before he had to make the shift from lover to lawman.

Not that the word lover covered the subject, because it didn’t. It was far too casual to define what he felt for this woman.

He’d loved her for a long time, he knew that now, but tonight, when they’d joined, over and over again, with all the force of two fiery meteors colliding in outer space, new things had come into being, intangible and, at the same time, elemental.

It was as if they’d created a brand-new universe, complete with galaxies and black holes, moons and planets, a vast, uncharted expanse that existed only between, and for, them. Exploring even a small part of this invisible but very real microcosm would take a lifetime, if not several of them.

Eli wound a tendril of Brynne’s silver-blond hair gently around one finger.

He wanted to say it. I love you.

But he wouldn’t, couldn’t. Not yet.

Because, while Brynne had certainly been more than ready for lovemaking—by far the best Eli had ever had—she wasn’t prepared to deal with the full force of his love for her.

She was still fragile. Could she still be hung up on Clay Nicholls?

Yes, she’d made love like a tigress.

But that didn’t mean she’d had the same deep, life-changing experience as he’d had.

So he would wait.

He would take things step-by-step, breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat.

Holding himself back would be like trying to round up a herd of wild horses, single-handed, and drive them into a corral, but he would manage it.

Somehow.