His hand shook. He’d have thought it mortifying if he could think at all. He could only want, and want. When the key shot home, he pushed her into the room, barely had the presence of mind to lock the door behind them before they fell on the bed, into the canopied bower.

“Leave the stilts on,” he told her.

She managed a laugh, started to pull him to her. The laugh tumbled into a grateful gasp as he yanked the thin dress down to her waist.

His mouth, his hands, his weight, his scent. Everything she wanted, everything she so desperately needed. She wanted the thrust of him, hard, strong, crazed inside her more than she wanted to breathe.

“Yes. Yes.” She turned her face into his throat. “Anything, everything, everywhere.”

The tidal wave swarmed over her, roared through her, at last. The heat, the pleasure, the quick spikes of panic and madness. Hard hands on her flesh; a hungry mouth on her breast. Taking, feeding, destroying.

More. More. More.

He felt her hands on his belt, working, tugging, and her breath hot on his throat, against his ear. Everything blurred, the feel of her—smooth as silk and soft as water, and hot as lava. Her voice on a cry of release when he shoved up her dress and found her. Movement, all movement, her hips, her hands, her legs.

Her mouth found his, fixed greedily as her hips rose, ground to him. Knives of need tore through his body when she shoved his jeans down and closed her hand around him.

And her legs locked around his waist. They took each other in a kind of madness, all speed and desperation breaking on pleasure so keen it sliced.

She clung to him while her body quaked, while the glory of those aftershocks trembled and shook. Then weak, her hands slid away. Spent, he collapsed onto her, and lay there waiting for his mind and body to make a connection.

She’d . . . annihilated him, he realized. And that was a first.

He understood, dimly, he still wore his boots, and his jeans were somewhere down around his ankles while her dress was a fragile bunch at her waist.

Not exactly the way he’d planned it. And a far, far cry from what he’d expected of her.

At length she let out something between a moan and a sigh. “God. God. Thank God.”

“Are you praying or thanking me?”

“Both.”

He managed to roll off her so they lay side by side as they were, still mostly dressed, dazed, and utterly satisfied.

“I was in a hurry,” she said.

“Tell me about it.”

She sighed again, closed her eyes. “I’ve been in the desert where sex is concerned. It’s been more than a year.”

“A year? Jesus, I’m lucky to be alive.”