He seemed to be waiting for her, one hip lounging casually against the wooden table. He looked dangerous and a bit disreputable with his sleeves pushed up to expose corded, tanned forearms, his thumbs hooked into the gun belt riding low on his hips. A rough stubble shadowed his lean cheeks, while his skin seemed very bronzed. He exuded raw male attraction, every hard male inch of him.

Heather felt her pulse leap with sexual awareness, while all her senses honed to him. The air was suddenly fraught with dark undercurrents of passion.

He watched her, his ice-blue eyes intense, as he slowly unbuckled his guns and dropped them on the table. Her mouth went dry.

“Janna asleep?” he asked, his voice low, husky.

“Yes. I just put her to bed.”

“Good. Come here.”

That was all he said, all he needed to say. Her heart alive with excitement, she went to him. Almost roughly Sloan drew her into the hard cradle of his thighs. In response, hunger flared inside her, fanned into instant life at his touch. The heat of his body seared her through their clothing.

Heather closed her eyes, savoring the smell of horse and man rising from that seductive heat. Eagerly she raised her mouth to his.

Sloan held himself back for only an instant. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to attack her the minute he got home, but for the last ten miles, all he could think of was her naked body, pale and frenzied as he took her. He wanted to be locked deep inside her, feeling her heat, making her moan for him. He wanted her clawing at his back and arching her hips for him.

His arousal was hot and throbbing. He could feel his cock pressing against the rough denim of his pants, a pleasure-pain.

“I’ve been hard since I left you,” he muttered.

“And all day today…” He pressed her hand to the straining fabric of his jeans. “I’m so hard now, my guts are hurting. I want to be inside you.”

“Yes,” she breathed in reply.

His lips seized hers in a kiss as darkly intimate as the mating of their bodies had once been, while his fingers fumbled with the buttons of her shirtwaist. Her clothes were in his way. He wanted to strip every stitch of them from her body. He needed to get between her long legs and make her feel things she’d never felt before. He needed to make her as hungry for him as he was for her.

He managed to pull her blouse down over her shoulders and free her flesh from the top lacy edge of her corset. Her jutting, naked breasts rose above the tight whalebone, bared to his heated gaze. His fingers closed over the pale, high-swelling curves like they were his property. She was so damn beautiful that looking at her made him ache.