She started talking fast, faltering over words that weren’t cohesive enough to be understood. “I wanted... I can’t sleep... The circumstances... If you wanted... I mean, you could join me...if you want... I’m not even sure... I...”

“Whatever you would like,” he told her, smiling slowly.

He was looking down at her with a crooked smile on his face that might have annoyed her at one time but now seemed like the most seductive come-on.

She dropped the towel.

He wrapped his arm under hers and literally swept her off her feet and carried her into the guest bedroom, laying her gently on the bed and leaning above her. He smoothed back a lock of her hair and asked, “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

He kissed her. She wondered if he was especially good or if she was just woefully inexperienced. But she wasn’t really: she had lived, not promiscuously, but she had dated, been in a few relationships deep enough to care, to become intimate.

It was the tension...

Her fear. And it was Dan.

She forgot thought; she gave way to sensation, the sweet, wet, fire of his lips and tongue, the feel of his hands, masculine and large and a bit rough against her flesh...

Touching him, feeling the pulse and rope of muscles beneath her fingertips.

The air in the room was cool against the growing heat of her flesh. A drape was just slightly open, allowing in a tiny stream of moonlight that seemed to dance over them as he slid out of his jeans. His mouth moved against her throat and her breasts and down her torso, and she gasped and drew her fingers down the length of his body, loving the power in every twist and turn of it. She writhed against him, twisting and turning, took in the sweet, salty taste of his flesh, and she teased and kissed him.

She felt his stroke against her thighs. His movement as he thrust into her, so slowly at first, a tease even there that seemed to elicit an even greater longing until they were locked as one and moving in an electric wave of energy that was sensuous and wild.

He held her, rolled with her, moved with her. Their lips met and their tongues parried and broke away. And it was forever...and it ended too soon, and she lay beside him, still ecstatic at first, heart pounding, breath coming at a million miles an hour...

And then...

What the hell had she done?

She wondered if the trickle of the moonlight showed that she was blushing red from head to toe, so embarrassed she had all but presented herself on a silver platter to him in the hallway.

She couldn’t think of a single thing to say.