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  Ike had taken her fences and burned a hole right through them, giving him complete, unrestricted access to her. There were ashes all around her, and she didn’t care. She’d think about that later.

  Knowing only that she wanted desperately to get even closer to the heat, Marta rose up on the tips of her toes and wound her arms around his neck, her body cleaving to his.

  She felt his arms embracing her, felt his mouth leaving her lips to anoint her jawline, her throat, her soul. Pulling her farther and farther into a vortex. Her pulse began to race as if trying to outrun the sensation. To outrun it and hurry back to the starting line where her common sense waited. But someone had erased the starting line.

  She didn’t care. Her heart rejoiced with a surge that overwhelmed her.

  When his hands dipped beneath her sweater and cupped her breasts, Marta sucked in air. This was where she should call a halt to everything, her brain ordered.

  But she didn’t. Instead, she arched into his touch.

  With that one small act, she surrendered to him. Became his prisoner.

  His jailer, Ike realized, his mind barely able to form coherent thoughts. The only way he could have walked away now was if she pushed him away. She would have to be the one to call a halt to what was happening, because, on his own, he knew he couldn’t.

  That had never happened before.

  No one enjoyed lovemaking as much as he did, but he’d always been able to hold back before, been prepared to stop at a moment’s notice. That power wasn’t within his grasp anymore.

  He found himself completely unprepared for what was happening to him. And praying that she wouldn’t suddenly change her mind.

  Still, it was only fair to give her a chance to stop—or continue. To know that what was happening was happening because she wanted it to, not because he was silently pressuring her, manipulating her.

  Though his body begged him not to, he drew away. And looked at her face. “Marta?”

  Had he called her darlin’, she might have summoned the strength to pull away. Somehow found the energy to search for a mind that had suddenly vanished, taking her common sense hostage in the wake of the onslaught of his lips.

  But he’d said her name and it had made all the difference in the world to her.

  It softened her heart.

  “Yes,” she breathed. “And don’t you forget it.”

  Her hands framing his face, Marta brought his lips back to hers. And destroyed any chance that this might end before it began.

  Ike had less choice than a leaf being swept up in an autumn wind.

  The urgency of his kisses increased as he drew her sweater away from her body. With one swift tug, he pulled it over her head and discarded it. In his eagerness, he’d almost tossed the garment into the fireplace and the dying fire that graced the hearth.

  Eager. That was the only way he could begin to describe what he was feeling. The sensations ricocheting through him took him entirely by surprise. He couldn’t remember ever experiencing this degree of excitement coursing through his body, except, perhaps, for the first time.

  This was like the first time.

  The only thing was, he wasn’t an inexperienced fourteen-year-old boy anymore. He was a man who had known women. Known that there was no mystery to them, only degrees of intensity.

  But there was a mystery now. A mystery as to why this one small woman with her sharp tongue and perfect mouth could undermine him so. Could make him feel so completely at the mercy of his passions. A mystery as to why he felt like a clumsy schoolboy with her.

  He wanted this to be spectacular for her, to be memorable beyond all other times that she might have had and would have to come.

  He wanted—

  Only her.

  His arms tightened around Marta almost possessively as his lips raced along her face, her chin, the swell just above her bra. He hardly knew himself.

  Marta’s lungs seemed to be incapable of holding more than a thimbleful of air. Why else was she gasping for breath when all she was doing was standing still?

  That was just it, she wasn’t standing still. She was vibrating. Vibrating so hard that if it were any faster, she was in danger of slipping into another dimension entirely.

  Her head was whirling and her body all but screaming out for him. Not for release, not for fulfillment, but for him. For Ike. For the culmination of everything his kisses, his touches, silently promised her.

  She knew he couldn’t possibly live up to it, no man could, but she didn’t care. She wanted whatever it was that he could give her. And wanted it now, before she found herself exploding in anticipation.

  Or before reason came to ruin everything.

  Her skin tingled as she felt her jeans drop from her body. Somewhere along the line in between, although she couldn’t pinpoint when, she’d stepped out of her boots, standing on the toe of one while drawing her foot out of it, then reversing the process.

  And once his lips left hers, once they began forging trails along her throat, her shoulders, her breasts, she wasn’t capable of performing even the simplest of tasks. That would take some semblance of a thought process and all her thoughts were centered on the delicious sensations urgently chasing one another through her body.

  Belatedly, just before she sank into complete euphoric oblivion, Marta realized she must seem like a submissive, limp rag doll to him. Receiving when she should have been sending. Taking when she should have been giving.

  The word survive screamed through her head.

  She hadn’t managed to survive by submitting. By being passive. Passive people were soon forgotten, left behind.

  Abandoned.

  The single word rose up in front of her closed eyes, slicing through the hot haze that enveloped her.

  She’d been abandoned, not once, not twice, but so many different times by so many people who had marched through her life. By families. And a lover.

  Abandoned.

  The word echoed in her brain, galvanizing her.

  Not this time.

  It was, Ike thought, as if someone had suddenly set a match not to a fuse, but to the dynamite stick itself. Marta’s body tensed against his, snapped to attention. Before he could ask her what was wrong, he suddenly found himself under siege.

  Marta splayed her fingers over his chest, coming in contact with the buttons on his shirt. Trying to still the shaking within her, she quickly undid them, tugging his shirt out of his jeans.

  As she pulled it from his shoulders, Ike inclined his head, grazing her neck with his lips. It just increased the wild sensations battering her body. She felt like a driven woman, afraid that if she stopped, all this would abruptly fade away. End. She couldn’t let that happen, not yet.

  The level of her response overwhelmed him. He wanted to take her here, now, this second, without a moment’s hesitation.

  But this was so fierce, so sudden, that he had to be sure this was what she wanted. His heart pounding harder than a miner’s jackhammer, he struggled to do the decent thing. To give her an opportunity to say no even though everything she was doing to him screamed yes.

  Though he knew he might live to regret it, Ike caught her hand just as she began to undo the snap on his jeans. She looked at him with dazed confusion in her eyes.

  “Are you sure?”

  Her throat suddenly felt as if it had been dragged behind a galloping mustang for twenty miles, then cut loose. She stiffened. “A little late to be asking that, isn’t it?”

  “Never too late,” he whispered against her hair, breathing in the scent of her. Because she’d stiffened, Ike drew back, searching her eyes. The anger caught him off guard.

  Marta felt completely shaken. She’d been tottering on the brink, ready to throw not only caution but everything else away because he’d undone her so, and the bastard was obviously calm enough to walk away from her. She’d had less than no effect on him.

  She jerked free of his hand, looking for her sweater. What had he done with it? “So you
can just turn this off? Like some damn faucet?”

  Like the survivor of a hurricane, unceremoniously dumped on the ground after a whirlwind ride, Ike could only stare at her. He felt as if his brain had been numbed. “What?”

  How dare he look at her as if she were talking some foreign language? Marta saw her sweater next to the fireplace and snatched it up. “Did you even feel anything?”

  Crossing to her, he turned her around to face him. “They haven’t come up with the words yet to describe what I’m feeling.”

  “Right.” She jammed her arms through her sweater and started to pull it over her head. “That’s why you can just stop at the drop of a hat.”

  Catching her sweater, he pulled it back up over her head. “Not at the drop of a hat. At your word.”

  Now what did he think he was doing, playing musical sweaters? She tried to reclaim it, but he held the sweater high over his head. Incensed, she glared at him. “My word?”

  He threw the sweater aside. When she started to go for it again, he grabbed her wrist and held her in place. Ike struggled to control a temper that rarely surfaced. She was going to listen to him, not storm out.

  “If you don’t want this to go further, then it won’t. It’ll stop here and now.” Because she wasn’t looking at him, he took her chin and gently but firmly directed her eyes toward him. He wasn’t going to let her think she was just a number, or a warm body. He didn’t operate that way to begin with, and never less than now. “I’ll probably self-destruct, and Jean Luc’s going to find himself Celine’s guardian.” He swept back her hair from her eyes. He’d never seen green so brilliant before. “But I won’t force you, and I won’t force myself on you.”

  “Force me,” Marta echoed in disbelief, struggling to make sense out of what he was saying. He was doing this for her? “Is that what you think is happening here?”

  Ike searched her eyes again. The fire was abating, but there was still doubt there. Doubt he had no idea how to erase. He only knew that he wanted to. “That’s what I want to know.”

  “And if I said stop—?”

  “Then it’s stopped,” he answered, his voice thick with feeling.

  It took everything he had not to run his hands up along her bare arms, not to draw her close to him and seal his mouth to hers, abandoning all conversation. But he had a feeling that somehow this was about abandonment. He didn’t want her to feel as if her needs, her feelings, were being left abandoned while he merely satisfied himself with her and went on.

  “For me.” Skepticism scratched at Marta, warring with feelings for which she knew she had no basis. There was no reason to believe that this man burned more brightly when the lights were out, that he wasn’t at bottom thinking only of himself. That he wasn’t trying to confuse her.

  That all this wasn’t just for effect.

  And yet…

  “For you,” he answered softly. Ike touched her face, his palm caressing her cheek. “It’s not any good if you don’t want it as much as I do.”

  Marta could feel her body quickening, her loins yearning. He was good, she thought. Very, very good. No matter how much she might want, on some other level, to hang onto her anger, she was outnumbered. Because she had thrown her lot in with his.

  “Then it’s good,” she whispered, her lips temptingly close to his, her meaning clear. “Because I do want it as much as you do.” Maybe more. At the very least, she was meeting him on this misty battlefield as an equal partner. And if there were regrets for being so honest, she would deal with them later. Now wasn’t the time for them.

  It was all Ike wanted to hear.

  His mouth covered hers, doing away with the need for any more talk, any more soul-searching. All that could be sorted out later, when he was more able to reason. The slight break had only caused his desire to surge forward.

  The white lacy underwear Marta wore, which had turned him on so much, quickly became superfluous layers. He tried not to be rough as he pulled them from her and discarded the flimsy garments on the floor. If things were different, if urgency’s rapier had been just a little less pointed, he could have dallied, taken his time. Drawn them from her inch by inch, and excited them both.

  But he was miles past that sort of foreplay. Needs were battering urgently at him, pleading for release. It was all he could do to move as slowly as he did.

  His own clothing followed a moment later.

  Divested of barriers, their bodies sealed against one another like two lips pressed together. Heat surged from each of them, mingling, exchanging, fueling.

  She made his head spin.

  Kissing her over and over again, unable to sate himself, his hunger for her growing, Ike lowered her to the floor. To the warm, dark bearskin rug that had once been such a source of pride and storytelling for his grandfather. His body pulsing, he raced his mouth over her body, kissing, teasing, suckling. Determined to know every inch of her. Arousing himself almost past the point of endurance.

  The rug felt soft beneath Marta’s back as she sank deeper and deeper into it. Deeper and deeper into the swirling light show that Ike was creating for her sole pleasure. His mouth was making her insane with each pass over her body.

  Marta moved urgently against him, absorbing each sensation as it burst upon her, forgetting her vows to reciprocate the favor and drive him as crazy as he was making her. Forgetting her promise never to allow any man to possess her so completely that she lost all sense of time, all sense of direction.

  She had lost it now.

  There was only a kaleidoscope of sensations that repeatedly collided within her, making rainbows in the snow.

  She wanted, so badly, to murmur words of endearment to him, to tell him what she was feeling. To share not only her body, but her soul with him.

  She knew she couldn’t, and it was the only thing that marred the moment for her. All her life, she’d looked for love in all the wrong places, given it to the wrong people only to have it thrown back at her, unused, unwanted. She wouldn’t let it happen again. Would never say the words again.

  No matter how much she wanted to.

  This was almost beyond human endurance. If they gave medals for this, Ike would be at the head of the list. Maybe even be up for a Nobel prize. But even men with iron resolve had their limits, and he knew he couldn’t hold himself back any longer. Her body was moving too eagerly against his—rubbing, arching, offering. He couldn’t continue to refuse the gift, to hold himself in check while he explored and memorized every part of her. It just wasn’t possible. The demands that were slamming into him with the force of a derailed freighter couldn’t be denied any longer.

  Invoking almost superhuman strength, he struggled mightily for just half a second more.

  “Look at me,” he told her hoarsely.

  Dazed, Marta realized that her eyes were squeezed tightly shut. With effort, she forced her lids open, trying to focus.

  Her pupils were huge, dilated. Ike felt something in his chest tightening at the sight of her.

  “I want you to look at me,” he repeated to her. “When I take you, I don’t want you to remember any other man, to think of any other man making love with you, but me.”

  Marta’s mouth curved then in a half smile she would have sworn she didn’t have the energy to form. “Branding me?”

  “Wanting you.” The words whispered along her skin, teasing her, arousing her. Making her his, even when she knew it was foolish to let them.

  With his eyes holding hers and his palms pressed firmly against hers, fingers linked, Ike slowly lowered himself into her.

  He caught his breath as he felt her sheathing him, tightening as the rhythm took hold. Rhythm that passed from him to her.

  Or maybe it was the other way around. Ike couldn’t say for sure. All he knew was that it was there, and that it caught him up firmly in its grasp as she moved with him. At first slowly, as if she were lost in the wonder of the joining, and then faster and faster, until there was nothing left but to ride to the
top of an ever-rising summit, taking it, conquering it.

  And being conquered.

  He tasted her muffled cry within his mouth, along his tongue, and his heart quickened. He hadn’t reached the final crest by himself.

  Satisfaction drenched him, mingling with the perspiration between their sealed bodies. Having her there with him, purged and exhausted, made it all the sweeter.

  With the last of his quickly ebbing strength, he gathered her to him and held her close, comforted by the beat of her heart. The rhythm matched his own.

  Just as the rhythm of her lovemaking had.

  Ike buried his face in her hair, breathing in the fragrance. Content to remain this way for a very long time.

  Wishing he could.

  The next moment, a loud knock on the door shattered all hope of that.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Ike, are you in there? Ike, it’s Shayne.”

  Springing up from the floor, tense, alert, Ike grabbed Marta’s hand and quickly pulled her to her feet. There was no time to notice the graceful curves he had been memorizing with his hands, no time to drink in how simply beautiful she was, no time to consciously realize that even now, spent and under siege, he wanted her all over again. They had a very immediate problem on their hands.

  With an economy of movement, he scooped up her clothing and shoved it into her arms, along with her boots. Marta clasped them to her, as Ike silently pointed to the other room where the baby was. His message was clear.

  Marta fled and closed the door behind her.

  Grabbing his underwear, fervently hoping he’d get an opportunity to put them on before he left the building, Ike pulled on his jeans. He’d managed to throw on his shirt and finish buttoning it as he heard Shayne walking into the apartment. He was going to have to remember to start locking that door.

  “Ike?”