Shaken, I managed to say, “I’m sorry for whatever I’ve said or done to give you that impression.”

“Then I’m wrong?” he asked gently.

“It’s… no… but it’s a matter of timing.”

Joe didn’t react, didn’t appear to believe that, and Jesus, why should he? Why would anyone? He was like something from a dream as he stood there in a wash of moonlight, sexy in his rumpled tux, his eyes midnight dark.

“Can we talk about it for a minute?” he asked.

Reluctantly, I nodded and opened the door.

It was a one-room cabin, designery rustic with a handwoven rug and leather furniture and modern light fixtures that looked like crystal antlers. I flipped on a switch that illuminated a sconce in the corner and set down my bag. Turning to face Joe, I saw him standing with his shoulder braced against the doorjamb. His lips parted as if he were about to say something, but he appeared to think better of it.

“What?” I asked in a hushed voice.

“I know there are rules for this. I know I’m supposed to play it cool.” A rueful smile touched his lips. “But to hell with it. The fact is, I liked you the first moment I saw you. You are a beautiful, interesting woman, and I want to see you again.” His tone softened. “You can say yes to that, can’t you?” Seeing my uncertainty, he murmured, “Pick the time and place. I promise you won’t regret it.”

Pushing away from the door, Joe approached me without haste. My heart began to work in sharp jolts, and I went hot and cold with nerves. It had been too long since I had been alone with a man in a bedroom.

Studying me intently, Joe touched the side of my face, his hand curving beneath my jaw. I knew he could feel the way I was trembling.

“Should I leave?” he asked, and began to draw back.

“No.” Before I could stop myself, I caught his wrist. A few minutes earlier, I’d been calculating how to push him away, and now the only thing I could think about was how to make him stay. My fingers curved around the thickness of bone and sinew, the strong rhythm of his pulse.

I wanted him. Every part of me wanted him. We were alone, and the rest of the world was far away, and I knew somehow that if I slept with him, it would be extraordinary.

To a woman who’d lived twenty-seven years of ordinary, one night with a man like this didn’t seem too much to ask.

I pulled his hand to my waist, and I stood on my toes, deliberately molding my body against his, and he was warm and sturdy, his arms anchoring me firmly. He began to kiss me slow and deep, as if the world were about to end, as if it were the last minute of the last hour of the last day. The things he did with his mouth, his tongue… it was like a conversation, like sex, the way he found what I wanted and gave it to me. There was more pleasure in that kiss than in any act of physical intimacy I had ever known.

After drawing his mouth away, Joe cupped my head to his shoulder. We stayed like that for a hard-breathing minute. I was dismantled, everything inside me thrown into chaos. All I knew was that I had to be close to him, I had to feel his skin. I grasped the lapels of his tux jacket, pushing them back. He stripped off the garment and dropped it to the floor. Without hesitation, he gripped my head back and his mouth found mine again, ardent and intent, as if he were feeding on something delicious. Somewhere in the midst of all those kisses, he reached down to my bottom, cinching me closer against a ridge of hard, impatient flesh. The need sharpened until it seemed I would die of not having him. Nothing had ever felt like this. Nothing ever would again.

You had to run with a feeling like that, all the way to sunrise.

“Take me to bed,” I whispered.

I heard a quick, rough-sawn breath, and I sensed the conflict of desire and indecision.

“It’s okay,” I said anxiously. “I know what I’m doing, I want you to stay —”

“You don’t have to —” he began.

“Yes. I have to.” I kissed him again, excitement pulsing through me. “You have to,” I whispered against his lips.

Joe responded voraciously, caught up in the heat just as I was, his hold on me changing as he sought to make the fit between us even closer, tighter. After a while he began to undress me, and himself, clothes littering the floor in a trail to the bed. The light was switched off, the darkness relieved only by the starlight sifting through the mesh of the window blinds.

I pulled back the covers and lay on the mattress, shaking from head to toe. He lowered over me, the feel of hair-roughened limbs stimulating my skin into excruciating sensitivity. I felt the hot whisk of his breath against my throat.

“Tell me if you want to stop,” I heard him say hoarsely. “No matter what, I’ll stop if you decide —”

“I know.”

“I want you to understand —”

“I understand.” I pulled him down to me.

Nothing was real in that quiet room. Things were being done to me, and by me, in an ecstasy of sexual greed that I knew I would be shamed by later. His mouth was at my breast, his tongue articulating delicate circles until the tip budded, and he began to lap and tug until the pleasure went singing to the quick of my body. I gripped his shoulders, the tough muscle of his back, massaging blindly.

Skilled and sure, his fingers teased along the insides of my thighs, coaxing them to part. The pad of his thumb brushed a place so tender that I cried out, my hips lifting. His finger slid inside me, caressing deep into a frantic wet pulse. My body tightened to hold the sensation, drawing the pleasure inward.