She closed her eyes, blotting out the sight of his shadowed face, the merciless blue eyes narrowed at her and the mocking twist of his mouth. His hand slipped over her breasts, caressing them beneath the cotton nightgown.

“I don’t want to stop, love. And if you were being honest with yourself, you’d admit that you don’t really want me to stop. This is the one thing we’ve always had between us, this obsession with each other. Christ, I fought it long enough, tried to pretend it didn’t exist, but I was only fooling myself. I want you, Ginny. I always have.”

Half despairing, knowing that she was fighting a losing battle, that her body would override her anger with him, she made no protest when he kissed her, a long consuming kiss that roused her to unwilling passion.

“Damn you,” she said again, but it sounded like an endearment even to her own ears. Steve laughed softly.

“Yes, I’m damned, but so are you. We’re both damned. It’s our natures. Open your eyes, Ginny. Look at me. Yes, like that. I want to watch you while I make love to you….”

Her gown was gone suddenly, pulled away to land in a white drift on the floor. Steve sat back, legs bent under him, his eyes half-narrowed with desire as he stared down at her. His voice was hoarse. “God, you’re so beautiful—so goddamn beautiful.”

“Steve…” Feeling choked by emotion, she lay still as he touched her, his hands dark against her palely gleaming body, caressing her small breasts, the flat of her belly and then the red-gold curls at the juncture of her thighs. For a moment he was a stranger again, the man who had taken her virginity so long ago, the same man who had abducted her, tormented her, loved her with such violent intensity for nine long years. The breath caught in her throat painfully and her chest rose as she dragged in air.

She wanted to protest, to demand answers to the questions plaguing her, but suddenly his tongue was in her mouth, seeking, ravaging her senses and driving out every thought but the rising need to be one with him. Relentless hands on her body, cleverly finding her secrets, touched her intimately, sliding inside her to thrust with lingering strokes that summoned gasps. Then he pressed her thighs apart and pulled her legs over his shoulders while she lay in helpless surrender and need….

Looming over her, his face shadowed, fickle light from the lamp casting a subdued gleam on his shoulders and highlighting him against the gloom beyond, he held her with his hands on her breasts, palms shaping them, his lean fingers teasing her rigid nipples into hard knots. When she was gasping, writhing under his touch, he bent, his tongue searing into her like a hot iron.