“Oh, yes, Steve…please…?”

He answered her plea with his body, as he had so many times before, their joining one of mutual need and passion.

He kissed her. Then the delicious friction of him sliding insider her was a vivid reminder that this was Steve, the man she had loved for so long, the man she had never been able to forget for even a day.

For the first time since she had met him, she was confident they could work through anything—their doubts and fears, even anger with one another—and manage it in a way that wouldn’t destroy them.

Later would come the true test; now, there was only Steve, his hard, lean body over hers, his hands teasing her breasts, exploring her everywhere.

This was familiar, the aching tension inside her that escalated to an almost unbearable pitch before he eased it, before he took her from twisting, panting need to a sweet, exultant release that made her forget everything for the moment but how much she had always loved him….

Drowsily replete at last, she took a chance, risking it all to murmur her love for him over and over, in French, and Spanish and English, her lips moving against the damp skin of his neck and shoulder until he said it back, the words a harsh groan against her ear.

“Green-eyed witch, don’t you know I’ve always loved you?”

It was true, and Steve recognized it with resignation. She was in his blood, as he was in hers. No other woman had ever excited him like Ginny, or intrigued him, or infuriated him as she did.

He loved her for her courage, for her dignity even when her back was to the wall. He wanted to kill Luna all over again, watch the lights fade in his eyes as he died, for what he had done to her.

He could see the emerald sheen of her eyes in the soft shadows that enclosed them, the lustrous color faint but still recognizable…remarkable eyes, cat’s eyes, that haunted his waking hours and even his dreams. he scraped his palm up her body, over her flat little belly to cup her breast, felt a shiver ripple through her at his caress.

“Such soft skin…like satin…Ginny, you should know by now that I’ll never let you go. Don’t you?”

A fierce surge of need to protect her nearly swamped him, made his hands clench tightly in her hair, that glorious mass of copper fire that had tantalized and tormented him since the first day he had seen her.

“She is an obsession with you,” Paco had once told him, and he’d been right, known it then even though Steve denied it.