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to struggle, but he groaned and his eyes closed. He shuddered. She stood very
still, her lips parted.
He looked down at her for a long time, his eyes dark with desire, his body rigid
with it. "My God," he whispered almost reverently. "It's been so long." His mouth
ground into hers with fierce delight. He was a man again, whole again. He could
hardly believe what he was feeling.
Arabella was drowning in him. His warm masculine body was making her ache
terribly, but she couldn't afford to give in.
"I won't love you, Ethan," she whispered, her expression tormented as
memories of the past wounded her. "I won't, I won't!"
His heart began to swell in his chest. So that was it. The secret fear. He smiled
faintly, letting his gaze fall to her soft bow of a mouth as he began to realize how
vulnerable she was, and why. "We'll take it one day at a time," he breathed as his
head bent. "Do you remember how I taught you to kiss with your teeth and your
tongue as well as your lips?"
She did, but it wouldn't have mattered, because he was teaching her all over
again. She felt the brush of his warm, hard lips over her own, felt them tug on her
lower lip and then her upper lip, felt the soft tracing of his tongue between them
and the gentle bite of his teeth as he coaxed her mouth to open and admit the
slow, deliberate penetration of his tongue.
A sound escaped her tight throat. Her body stiffened under his. The fingers of
her uninjured hand began to open and close, her nails making tiny scraping
sensations even through his shirt to his throbbing chest.
"Open my shirt," he said into her mouth.
She hesitated and he kissed her roughly.
"Do it," he bit off against her lips. "You've never touched me that way. I want
you to.''
She knew it was emotional suicide to obey him, but her fingers itched to touch
his warm, dark skin. She felt his lips playing gently against her mouth while she
fumbled the buttons out of the buttonholes until, finally, her fingers could tangle
in the thick dark growth of hair over his chest to find the warm, taut skin beneath
it.
Unthinking, she drew back to look at where her fingers were touching,
fascinated concentration in her soft green eyes as she registered the paleness of
her long fingers against the darkness of his hair-matted skin.
"Put your mouth against me," he said unsteadily. "Here. Like this." He caught
the back of her head and coaxed her face against him. She breathed in soap and
cologne and pure, sweet man as her lips pressed softly where he guided them.
"Ethan?" she whispered uncertainly. This was unfamiliar territory, and she
could feel that his body was rigid with desire. He was shuddering with it.
"There's nothing to be afraid of, Arabella," he said at her lips. "Let me lift you. .
.God, baby!" he ground out, shuddering. His hips pinned hers to the tree, but she
never felt the rough bark at her spine. Her arms went around him, both of them
trembling as the intimate contact locked them together as forcefully as a blazing
electric current.
She was crying with the sheer impact of it, her arms holding him even as his full
weight came down against her.
"You can't get close enough to me, can you?" he groaned. "I know. I feel the
same way! Move your legs, sweet. . . yes!"
His leg insinuated its powerful length between hers, intensifying the intimacy of
the embrace.
"I want you." His hands caught her hips, moving them with slow, deliberate
intent into his while his mouth probed hers. "I want you, Arabella. God, I want
you so!"
She was incapable of answering him. She felt him pick her up, but her eyes were
closed. She was his. Whatever he wanted, whatever he did, she had no desire to
stop him.
She felt the wind in her hair and Ethan's mouth on hers. The strength of his
arms absorbed the shock of his footsteps as he carried her back to the truck.
He opened the door and put her in the passenger seat, sliding her to the middle
of the cab so that he could fit facing her, his eyes intent on her flushed face.
Arabella could hardly breathe for the enormity of what had just happened.
She'd never expected Ethan to make such a heavy pass at her with Miriam in resi-
dence. But it was because of Miriam, she was sure of it. He just didn't want to
admit that his heart was still in bondage to the woman he couldn't satisfy. Her
eyes fell to his opened shirt, to the expanse of his muscular chest, and lingered
there.
"Nothing to say?" he asked quietly.
She shook her head slowly.
"I won't let you pretend that it didn't happen." He tilted her face up to his. "We
made love."
Her cheeks went scarlet. "Not. . . not quite."
"You wouldn't have stopped me." He traced her lower lip with a long, teasing
forefinger. "Four years, and the intensity hasn't lessened. We touch each other
and catch fire."
"It's just physical, Ethan," she protested weakly.
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