“I know.” Oh, Lord, now tears were burning against her eyelids but she forced them back. She’d wasted too many tears on this man years ago. “Believe me, Mason,” she said, lying through her teeth again as anger overcame sadness, “it doesn’t matter. It wasn‘t that big a deal. If you think I spent years or even months pining for you, you’re dead wrong. I went home to Seattle, pulled myself up by my bootstraps and was dating Todd Wheeler not long after you finished saying ‘I do.’ So don’t flatter yourself into thinking I cared a whit about whom you married or even when.”

She tried to pull herself from his grasp, but his fingers clamped possessively over her arms. His amber gaze—hot, wanting and intense—pinned hers. No, she thought desperately. No! No! No! This was wrong. So very wrong, and yet, despite the denials screaming through her brain, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could only stare at his lips—blade-thin and hard. It took little effort to imagine what they would feel like against hers, how his mouth would open and his tongue would slide so easily past her own lips and teeth, searching, seeking, touching . . .

“If I could do things over—”

“What?” she asked, tearing her gaze from that sexy slash that was his mouth. “What are you saying, Mason? That you’d change the past? How? Sneak around so that I wouldn’t find out about Terri? Keep me from riding out to the ridge in the storm?” Make love to me like I begged you to? Oh, God. “What?”

“No, I—”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Now she sounded like a spoiled teenager, but she didn’t care. She had to find a way to break away from him, away from the sweet seduction of his touch. This was all happening way too fast and much too late. “Look, Mason, as I’ve said, it just doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Like hell.” Their gazes clashed—innocent blue and rugged gold. Like metal striking metal.

“No—Oh, Mason—”

He dragged her against him and as she gasped, his lips crashed down on hers. Urgent. Wanting.

She voiced a soft moan of protest that went unheeded. His mouth was hard and warm and molded so effortlessly against hers. He smelled of leather and aftershave, musky and male. A part of her let go—after ten long, heart-wrenching years.

His lips were as sensual and insistent as they had been years before, and she was just as lost to him now. In the warm interior of his office, a decade had melted away.

Don’t do this, Bliss. Don’t let him use you again!

But she couldn’t stop herself.