Carol Finch (11 page)

Shiloh heard an inner voice whispering,
Live for the moment because you never know which moment is going to be your last. Take whatever Hawk will give you without any expectations.

Spurred by desire and an overwhelming need for protection and comfort, Shiloh tipped back her head and arched upward to brush her lips over his. She felt his splayed hand coast over her abdomen then settle on the swell of her breast. Pleasure rippled through her. Passion flared to life like a match set to dry kindling.

Enthralled by the sensations flooding through her, she leaned into him, aching for more. She was amazed that what she felt for him far exceeded the naive infatuation she had developed for Antoine. But comparing the two men was laughable because they were at opposite ends of a spectrum.

Antoine was all for show—like an expensive tailored suit designed to dazzle and impress guests at an elaborate ball.

Logan Hawk was a rugged, invincible warrior. He was the man she wanted on her side, by her side when trouble broke out. He was also the man she wanted to introduce her to passion because in all likelihood she would never allow herself to be this vulnerable to a man again.

With that thought drifting in her mind, Shiloh looped her arms over his sturdy shoulders. She kissed him for all she was worth, silently assuring him that she wanted this embrace to be the beginning of a fantasy,
not the end of her harrowing nightmare. She heard him groan deep in his throat, felt his arms contract around her.

Even when she told herself that any woman could satisfy the need she had aroused in him, she still experienced a gratifying sense of feminine power. Nothing had prepared her for any of these unique sensations and ravenous needs that overwhelmed her.

When Antoine had taken her in his arms and kissed her, it had been pleasurable. But it was nothing like being consumed by Hawk’s embrace. Whatever she thought she felt for Antoine was nowhere near the tidal wave of intense pleasure that cascaded over her when Hawk crushed his sensuous mouth against hers and stole the breath from her lungs.

She was astonished that he seemed as frantic and desperate as she felt. Her heart was hammering like a tom-tom and her breath came in panting spurts. Her body sizzled and burned when his hand cupped her breasts and his thumb brushed against her turgid nipple. When he bent to suckle her through the fabric of her blouse, a wobbly moan tumbled from her lips. Shiloh swore she was melting beneath his hot mouth and there was nothing she could do to prevent it.

Nothing she
wanted
to do to prevent it.

“Hawk?” Her voice was filled with wonderment and aching need. “I want you….”

Hawk squeezed his eyes shut and battled valiantly for control, but it was slow in coming. He eased away from her and asked himself what the sweet loving hell he thought he was doing. This was not one of the occasional women who came and went from his life when he wanted to scratch an itch. This was Shiloh, someone he had come to know and like—because of her
feisty nature and independent streak that sometimes drove him crazy but always intrigued him. She was someone who had come to matter to him, someone who deserved more than a quick tumble on the ground.

“The wanting is just lust talking,” he told her in a raspy voice that he barely recognized as his own.

“Then I’m all in favor of listening,” she replied recklessly. “You need to know that I am very determined to have my way with you, Hawk.”

When she rubbed provocatively against him he wanted to throw back his head and howl at the moon. Sweet mercy! This green-eyed siren was driving him to complete distraction. She tasted like heaven and felt like an angel—all soft and smooth flesh…and not quite attainable to a man like him.

The words
forbidden, taboo
and
off-limits
flittered through his mind without taking root. But that was because his heart wasn’t listening to the good sense sent down by his brain. The truth was that he wanted Shiloh as he had never wanted anything else in life. Hell, he hadn’t known it was possible to want someone as much as he desired her. Even when he knew she was on the rebound, he still wanted her. Even when he knew that he wasn’t the right kind of man for her, he still craved her. He had nothing to offer her that she didn’t have already, but none of that seemed to matter when she was warm and willing in his arms.

They were alone in the dark of night, far away from the condemning eyes of society. He had spent too many waking hours trying to resist her lure, trying to remain professional and impersonal. It hadn’t worked worth a damn, though. Every time Shiloh faced disaster or suffered pain, it affected him to the extreme.

He had grown accustomed to caring for her, protect
ing her. He was constantly drawn by the alluring sight of her, by the sound of her voice, by her vivacious personality. She made him feel more alive than he’d ever felt, made him want to yield to the tempting and dangerous emotions she called from him.

He wanted her.
The undeniable truth was that he had wanted her since the very first time he laid eyes on her.

Now here she was, confiding that she wanted him, too, whether it was best for them or not—and he knew it wasn’t.

But consequences be damned….

Hawk lost the inner battle he’d been fighting when she kissed him as if she was starving to death for another taste of him. Her fingertips drifted across his bare chest and his defeated groan must have encouraged her because she raked her nails down his belly.

Need, intense and forceful, struck like a physical blow. Her touch made him hard and aching in the time it took to draw breath. He tried—and barely managed—to exhibit some restraint when her lips drifted down his shoulder to skip lightly from one male nipple to the other. When her adventurous hand skimmed over the waistband of his breeches he couldn’t breathe because need throbbed heavily, tormentingly inside him.

There was no hope for it, he realized defeatedly. Shiloh set off so many wild sensations and triggered so many emotions that he didn’t know which feeling to fight first. He couldn’t remain immune to her touch when she set him on fire and fanned the flames with each tantalizing kiss and caress.

He was pretty sure that she was going to be the exception to every rule he had made about remaining detached and uninvolved, whether it was in business or
pleasure. Because
not
feeling,
not
responding to her was impossible.

He groaned in unholy torment as her warm lips skimmed over his chest, making him melt into a puddle of helpless desire. “Damn, woman, what are you doing to me?”

“Whatever I wish,” she murmured impishly. “Do you mind so much, Hawk?”

“Mmm…” was all he could get out when her mouth returned to his and he drowned in the intoxicating taste of her.

He absorbed her alluring fragrance and felt ravenous hunger engulf him. He wanted her out of her clothes—now. He wanted to kiss and caress every satiny curve and contour of her body until he knew her by touch and taste. He wanted to feel her respond to his touch and lose himself in the fire of desire that billowed around him.

To that end, he unfastened her blouse and bared her satiny flesh to his appreciative gaze. He pressed his lips to the swanlike column of her throat, felt her pulse racing in accelerated rhythm. When he cupped her breasts in his hands and teased her nipples with thumbs and fingertips, a soft moan tumbled from her lips. He smiled in satisfaction when she trembled beneath his tender touch and he realized he had given her pleasure.

She whispered his name as his lips skimmed the taut peaks of her breasts then he flicked at them with his tongue. He felt her nails spike into his back as he suckled her gently, aroused her and drew her from one plateau of dizzying pleasure to the next.

Hawk had never dedicated so much time to pleasing a woman, never felt the need or the desire to explore a woman’s body so thoroughly. But anything less
than complete devotion to Shiloh’s pleasure was unacceptable to him. He should have fretted over why that seemed so important, but he was too enthralled with seducing her—one kiss and caress at a time—to puzzle it out. Too caught up in the power he seemed to hold over her and mystified by her uninhibited responses to him.

“Sweet mercy!” Shiloh panted as he eased her back to the pallet then hovered over her. “I can barely breathe.”

He kissed her and she realized she didn’t have to breathe. All she needed was the taste of him to survive. He had lifted her into another realm where erotic sensations prevailed. The feel of his hands and lips drifting unhurriedly over her body was driving her crazy. She couldn’t control the fervent desire that burst alive inside her like fireworks. She couldn’t satisfy the maddening needs that he incited in her. He made her feel wild and desperate, impatient and reckless.

Her breath hitched and her heart skipped a beat when his hands and lips whispered over her rib cage. A coil of heat knotted inside her when he loosened the band of her breeches and slowly but deliberately eased them off her hips. Shiloh told herself that she probably should be embarrassed when he tossed aside the last of her clothing and she lay naked and exposed to him. But the look of masculine appreciation gleaming in his midnight eyes made her feel desirable, special.

Although Antoine had left her feeling unwanted and insecure, Hawk made her feel alive and empowered…and yet enslaved by the unrestrained passion he incited in her. Her thoughts scattered like buckshot when his hands drifted back and forth over her inner thighs. Her breath broke when his warm lips flitted over her abdomen then drifted lower.

Shiloh forgot to breathe—didn’t care if she ever did again—when he stroked her intimately with his thumb. Wild hunger raged through her quivering body. Fiery sensations shot into her very core with each slow, deep penetration of his fingertip. Never in her life had she experienced such a phenomenal craving, such a desperate need for a man. But she wanted Hawk like an addict craved a mindless obsession.

And she wanted him
now,
before white-hot desire caused her to burst into flames.

“Come here,” she demanded frantically.

“Not yet,” he whispered as he lowered his head. “I want to taste you completely….”

Shiloh was unprepared for the hot, spiraling sensation of pleasure that riveted her body when he kissed her intimately. Uncontrollable spasms rocked and buffeted her. She shamelessly arched toward his erotic kiss, felt his fingertip tracing her secret flesh then gliding inside her to set a seductive rhythm that drove her insane with wanting all over again.

Hawk shuddered with barely restrained need when he felt the hot rain of Shiloh’s desire on his lips and fingertips. Answering heat throbbed heavily through his sensitized body, burning him inside and out. He had never known a woman could be so responsive, had never dared such intimacy before.

Yet, for some reason he couldn’t seem to be satisfied with anything less than watching and feeling Shiloh come apart in his arms. He wanted to know what pleasured her, wanted to know her in every way imaginable. Wanted her to know him just as well. And when he came to her, he wanted to share the same intense pleasure, share the same frantic breath, the same uncontrollable need.

For sure and certain he didn’t want Shiloh to mistake him for that low-down, conniving scoundrel that she had fallen in love with. He wanted
his
face to be the one she saw above her,
his
touch to be the one that set her aflame.

“Please…” she cried out in frantic desperation.

“Look at me,” he commanded as he eased between her legs.

Her long lashes swept up, her green eyes glowing with the ardent passion he had ignited inside her.

“Who do you see, Shiloh?”

“A tormenting devil who is taking his hellish time about satisfying all these wicked cravings he set off.” A smile pursed her lips as her hands glided up his chest to settle on his shoulders. “Are you going to make me beg all night?”

“No, I just wanted to make sure you aren’t pretending I’m someone else.”

Shiloh cupped his ruggedly handsome face in her hands and brought his head steadily toward hers. She was so wildly desperate for him, so entranced by the sensations leapfrogging through her body that it didn’t dawn on her that Hawk needed the reassurance that he wasn’t her consolation prize.

She couldn’t think. Period. She simply desired.

“I need you,” she panted. “
Now,
Hawk. Make the empty ache go away.”

When he lifted her hips to his and thrust forward, she tensed. The unexpected pressure of his masculine invasion took her by surprise, dimming the pleasure that shimmered inside her. Alarmed, confused, she stared up at him.

And he stared back. “Shiloh?” he choked out hoarsely.

There were a dozen questions in his voice, in his eyes, as he went absolutely still above her. The realization that he was her first lover sent his thoughts spinning like a cyclone. “I presumed—”

“
I
thought all good Rangers dealt strictly with facts,” she murmured wryly. “Presumptions always get you in trouble.”

She shifted beneath him, restless, curious and so naturally seductive that he felt another jolt of desire ricochet through him. She moved again, as if silently assuring him that she still wanted him, wanted the passion he offered. He felt the fragile barrier of innocence give way as he moved instinctively toward her, trying to be as tender as possible.

He had never been a woman’s first time—hadn’t expected to be Shiloh’s, either. An unexplained sense of possessiveness overcame him as he buried himself deeply within her then gently withdrew. He felt her lush body caressing him inwardly. The unparalleled pleasure she gave him played hell with his noble attempt at self-control.

Burning alive in the passion she stirred in him, he wrapped her legs around his hips and plunged into her again. To the hilt. He made himself wait until she adjusted to the feel of their bodies locked intimately together as one pulsing essence.

And then the most incredible smile spread across her lips. It was like watching a radiant rainbow arc across the heavens. It blinded him, dazzled him and stole his breath.