Then tension in his stomach dissolved. "Darcy." Struck by a wave of tenderness, he lowered his mouth and kissed her, long and deep. "What do you think?"

"I stopped being able to think." Her eyes opened slowly, glowed into his. "Everything got jumbled. I always imagined that I'd remember all the details, sort of step-by-step. But I couldn't pay attention. There was so much to feel."

"Sometimes…" He wanted her mouth again, and took it. "Thinking's overrated."

"Thoughts just slide out of my head when you do that." Her hands stroked down his back as she floated on the kiss. "And when you started to touch me, everything got so… hot."

He groaned against her mouth, then swallowed her gasp as he hardened inside her. "You don't have to pay attention," he told her. "Just let me have you."

Her breath came fast and thick, shattered on each long, slow stroke. She came on a moan and a shudder that ripped through him like claws. He gripped her hips, lifted them. "More. Give me more this time," he demanded, and drove deep, dragging her over the edge with him.

Later, when she was alone, she caught her reflection in the mirror over the bed. Her eyes went wide with shock at the image of herself, hair tousled, face glowing, her naked body sprawled over a tangle of sheets.

Could this be Darcy Wallace? The dutiful daughter, the conscientious librarian, the shy and pitiful doormat from Kansas?

She looked… ripe, she decided. Aware. And oh, so satisfied. Then she bit her curving lip as she wondered if she'd have the nerve to look up into the mirror the next time Mac made love with her.

The next time.

Overcome with joy, she hugged a pillow and rolled. He wanted her. She didn't care what the reasons were, it was enough that he did. There had been simmering promise in the kiss they'd shared before he'd left her. He'd asked her to have a late supper with him in his office.

He wanted her.

Was it so impossible to believe she could find a way to make him keep wanting her? And to find a way to turn that wanting into love?

Curling into the pillow, she rested her head. It would be a gamble. She would be risking what she had now in the hope for more. Because he'd been right, she admitted. What he'd said in the rooftop garden had been a bull's-eye. She did want marriage and family and permanence. She wanted children. She wanted, desperately, to be able to take this love that threatened to flood right out of her heart and give it.

And for once in her life, she wanted to feel loved in return. Not the lukewarm affection of duty, not the kindly indulgence of affection, but the hot-blooded and dangerous love that sprang from passion and lust and blind need.