It wasn’t the first time Kate had been kissed; it wasn’t even the first time she’d been kissed by a man she cared about, and yet, absurdly, she started to cry.

He tried to pull away when he noticed her tears, but she wouldn’t let him. One moment they were on the sofa, making out like teenagers; the next thing she knew, she was on the floor in front of the fire, naked.

He knelt beside her, still clothed. Shadows concealed half his body and highlighted the sharp angles and hollows of his face. “Are you sure?”

“That would have been a good question before my clothes came off.” Smiling, she angled up and began unbuttoning his shirt.

He made a sound that was part desperation, part surrender, and let her undress him. Then he took her in his arms again.

His kisses were different now, harsher, deeper, more erotic. She felt her body responding in a way it never had before; it was as if she became nothing and everything, just a ragged collection of nerve endings. His touch was her torture, her salvation.

Sensations became everything, all that she was, all that she cared about; pain, pleasure, frustration. Even her breathing wasn’t her own. She was gasping, choking, crying out for him to stop, and not to stop, and to make it go on and make it go away.

She felt her body arching up, as if the whole of her were reaching for something, needing it with a desperation that made her ache, but she didn’t even know what it was.

And then he was inside her, hurting her. She gasped at the suddenness of the pain but made no sound. Instead, she clung to him, kissing him and moving with him until the pain dissolved and there was none of her left; there was only this, the feelings of them where they came together, the sharp, aching need for something more . . .

I love you, she thought, holding him, rising to meet him. The withheld words filled her head, became a soundtrack to the rhythm of their bodies.

“Katie,” he cried out, thrusting deep inside her.

Her body exploded, like some star in space, breaking apart, floating away. Time stopped for a moment, then settled slowly back in place.

“Wow,” she said, flopping back onto the warm carpet. For the first time in her life, she got what all the hype was about.

He stretched out beside her, his sweat-dampened body tucked in close to hers. Keeping one arm around her, he stared up at the ceiling. Like hers, his breathing was ragged.

“You were a virgin,” he said, sounding frighteningly far away.

“Yes,” was all she could say.

She rolled onto her side, slid her naked leg over him. “Is it always like that?”

When he turned to her, she saw something in his blue eyes that confused her: fear.