She felt a shudder to answer her own move through his body as he stretched out beside her, the kiss unbroken. A primitive, silent whimpering pounded through Shay and she was glad that Mitch couldn’t hear it. She wriggled to lie beneath him, needing the weight and pressure of him as much as she needed the ultimate possession they were moving toward.

He groaned at this and ended the kiss, but only to slide Shay’s sweater upward, baring her inch by inch. She felt the garment pass away, soon followed by the skimpy bra beneath. She wondered why she’d worn that bra, when she’d dressed to fend off just what was happening now. Or had she dressed to invite it?

“Oh,” she said, gasping the word, as Mitch’s mouth closed boldly around her nipple and drove all coherent thought from her mind. His hand found the junction of her thighs, still covered by her slacks and panties, and the skilled motions of his fingers caused her hips to leap in frenzied greeting. Just when she would have begged for closer contact, he gave it, deftly undoing the button and zipper of her slacks, sliding them away into the nothingness that had taken her sweater and all her inhibitions. Her panties and sandals were soon gone, too.

“God in heaven,” Mitch muttered as he drew back to look at her. He stripped off his own clothes and returned to her unwillingly, as though flung to her by forces he could not resist.

Mitch’s hands caressed and stroked every part of her, until she was writhing in a tender delirium, searching him out with her fingers and her mouth, with every part of her. Finally he sat back on his muscled haunches and lifted Shay to sit astraddle of him, and she cried out as they became one in a single, leisurely stroke.

Even at the beginning, the pleasure was so great as to be nearly unbearable to Shay; she flung her head back and forth in response to the glorious ache that became greater with every motion of their joined bodies, and her hair fell from its pins and flew about her face and shoulders in a wild flurry of femininity.

All that was womanly in Shay called out to all that was masculine in Mitch and they moved as one to lie prone on the tangled sleeping bag, their bodies quickening in the most primal, most instinctive of quests. And then there was no man and there was no woman, for in the blinding explosion of satisfaction that gripped them and wrung a single shout of triumph from them both, they were one entity.

Afterward, as Shay lay trembling and dazed upon that sleeping bag, she tried to brace herself for the inevitable remorse. Incredibly she felt only brazen contentment. It was fortunate, in her view, that she didn’t have the strength to talk.

Apparently, Mitch didn’t either. He was lying with one leg thrust across hers, his chest moving in breaths so deep that they must have been carrying air all the way to his toes, his face buried in the warm curve where Shay’s neck met her shoulder.