His mouth moved over hers with a wild abandon that touched the deepest part of her. Within a heartbeat her traitorous body began to respond, and desire, hot and long-slumbering, awoke with a vengeance. She could hardly breathe, her knees threatened to buckle and her mouth opened willingly under the sweet, gentle pressure of his tongue.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she was making a horrid, life-altering mistake, but she didn’t care. For the moment, she only wanted to close her eyes and drown in the seductive whirlpool of his taste, his smell, his touch.

With a moan, she started to wind her arms around his neck. Then, as his fingers toyed with the hem of her T-shirt, she realized that she was falling into the same precarious trap that had snared her ten years earlier.

He used you before.

He’ll use you again.

He never loved you and never will.

“I—I can’t,” she managed. “W-we shouldn’t . . . Oh, Lord, this—this isn’t a good idea,” she whispered, lifting her head and feeling dizzy. Her eyelids were at half-mast, her blood flowing like lava.

“I know.” He kissed her—a soft, teasing brush of his lips over hers.

She melted deep inside. “I don’t think—”

Another feather-light kiss to the corner of her mouth. “Don’t think.”

Sweet heaven, how she wanted him. Her legs turned wobbly. “Listen, Mason, please, l can’t do this.” Forcing the unwanted words over her tongue, she pushed him away with all her strength. She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling with each breath, her anger pulsing in her ears. “What we had was over a long time ago. I thought you understood that a few minutes ago, but if you missed the message let me give it to you loud and clear, okay?” Somehow she found the strength to say what her heart so vehemently denied. “I don’t believe in reliving the past.”

“How about changing the future?”

Her heart stopped for a crazy minute and in her mind’s silly eye, she saw herself walking down an aisle in a white dress, swearing to love him for the rest of her life, becoming his wife and bearing his children. Mason’s babies. A part of her heart shredded when she remembered he already had a child, one that had nothing to do with her. Tears touched the back of her eyelids and she said dully, “We have no future.” And that was the simple truth. They both knew it. “Look, don’t . . . don’t you have an oil well to drill, or some tractors to sell, or some livestock to brand?”