Something flashed into him. Perhaps it was rage; perhaps it was need. “I don’t give a damn how little we know each other or how little we understand each other. I know I want you.” He gathered her hair in one hand. “I only have to touch you to know you want me.”

Her eyes grew darker. Why did it always seem her desire was mixed with anger and, though she detested it, a certain weakness she couldn’t control? “Can you really believe it’s that simple?”

He had to. For the sake of his own survival, Cliff knew, he had to keep whatever was between them purely physical. They’d make love through the night until they were exhausted. In the morning, the need and the bond would be gone. He had to believe it. Otherwise … He didn’t want to dwell on otherwise. “Why should it be complicated?” he countered.

The anger and the longing flowed through her. “Why indeed?” Maggie murmured.

The room had lost its cozy ambience. Now she felt she’d suffocate if she didn’t escape it. Her eyes were stormy, his almost brutally calm, but she kept her gaze level on his while her thoughts raged. Why should she feel the need to rationalize, to romanticize? she asked herself. She wasn’t an innocent young girl with misty dreams, but an adult, a widow, a professional woman who’d learned to live with reality. In reality, people took what they wanted, then dealt with the consequences. Now so would she.

“The bedroom’s upstairs,” she told him, and, brushing by him, walked out of the kitchen.

Disturbed, Cliff frowned after her. This was what he wanted, he thought. The lack of complications. Yet her abrupt acceptance had been so unexpected, so cool. No, he realized as he started after her, that wasn’t what he wanted.

Maggie was at the base of the steps before he caught up with her. When she looked over her shoulder, he saw the fury in her eyes. The moment he took her arm, he felt the tension. This, he discovered, was what he wanted. He didn’t want her cool, emotionless agreement or a careless acquiescence. He wanted to build that fury and tension until the passion that spawned them broke through. Before the night was over, he’d draw it all from her and purge himself, as well.

In silence, they climbed the stairs to the second floor.

The rain fell, strong and steady, against the windows and the newly seeded earth below. The sound made Maggie think of the subtle rhythmic percussion she’d imagined in the arrangement of the song she’d just completed. There was no moon to guide the way, so she moved from memory. Darkness was deep and without shadows. She didn’t look when she entered the bedroom, but she knew Cliff was still beside her.

What now? she thought with sudden panic. What was she doing, bringing him here, to the single spot she considered purely private? He might learn more than she wanted before he left again, yet she might learn nothing more than she already knew. They wanted each other; it was unexplainable. It was undeniable.