‘‘I’m sorry.’’ A pitiful phrase, he thought, but he didn’t have any other words. ‘‘God, Grace, I’m sorry.’’

Her blood was still flowing hot, and that wonderful, terrifying need aroused to screaming. She shifted, reached out to touch his face. ‘‘Ethan—’’

‘‘There’s no excuse,’’ he said quickly, sitting up so she wasn’t touching him—tempting him. ‘‘I lost my temper and I stopped thinking straight.’’

‘‘Lost your temper.’’ She stayed where she was, sprawled on the grass that now seemed too cold, her face lifted to the moon that now shone too bright. ‘‘So you were just mad,’’ she said dully.

‘‘I was mad, but that’s no excuse for hurting you.’’

‘‘You didn’t hurt me.’’ She could still feel his hands on her, the rough, insistent press of them. But the sensation then, the sensation now, wasn’t one of pain.

He thought he could handle it now—looking at her, touching her. She would need it, he imagined. He couldn’t have lived with himself if she was afraid of him. ‘‘The last thing I want to do is hurt you.’’ As gentle as a doting parent, he tidied her clothes. When she didn’t cringe, he stroked a hand over her tousled hair. ‘‘I only want what’s best for you.’’

She didn’t cringe, but she did, suddenly and sharply, slap his hand aside. ‘‘Don’t treat me like a child. A few minutes ago you were treating me like a woman easy enough.’’

There’d been nothing easy about it, he thought grimly. ‘‘And I was wrong.’’

‘‘Then we were both wrong.’’ She sat up, brushing briskly at her clothes. ‘‘It wasn’t one-sided, Ethan. You know that. I didn’t try to make you stop because I didn’t want you to stop. That was your idea.’’

He was baffled, and abruptly nervous. ‘‘For Christ’s sake, Grace, we were rolling around in your front yard.’’

‘‘That’s not what stopped you.’’

With a quiet sigh, she brought her knees up, wrapped her arms around them. The gesture, so purely innocent, contrasted sharply with the tiny skirt and fishnet stockings and made his stomach muscles tie themselves into hot, slippery knots again.

‘‘You’d have stopped anyway, wherever it happened. Maybe because you remembered it was me, but it’s harder for me to think that you don’t want me now. So you’re going to have to tell me you don’t if you want things to go back to the way they were before.’’

‘‘They belong back where they were before.’’