He was still wearing his wet flannel shirt and thick jeans, and the contrast of the rough fabric against her bare skin as she writhed against him only inflamed her more. But then he was putting his hands on her waist and holding her back from his body. She didn’t know why, couldn’t get her brain to process a single reason he might not want to keep touching her, until she felt the heat of his gaze all across the surface of her skin and suddenly understood.

No one had ever looked at her like this, as though she was a gift he’d never expected to find waiting for him...and he couldn’t think of one thing he’d done to deserve it.

Needing to touch him, she tried to move back into his arms, but he held her where she was.

“I’m not done looking yet,” he growled.

Even in lovemaking he was bossy, and that realization should have made her pull away, should have reminded her that they were no good together. Instead, it made her want him with a fierceness that stunned her.

For Lori, life had always been a journey of jumping from one high peak to another, with the occasional dip into a shallow valley. At least, until everything had come to a head after Victor had chipped away at her piece by piece over the past year and a half. She’d gotten lost in a hole so dark and deep she hadn’t been able to see a way out.

And yet, despite her experience with such extremes, she’d never felt such a powerful craving for anyone, or anything, in her life. Doubts, concerns, worries—none of them had a chance against this craving, against the hunger that was eating her up from moment to moment.

Oh yes, she loved the way Grayson looked at her, but she needed to have his hands, his mouth, on her, too. And thank God, a few moments later, he was moving his hands up from her waist to cup her br**sts with such reverence that the gentle heat of his touch stole what was left of her breath away.

“I can’t believe you’re here. That you’re real. That you’re really this beautiful.”

His murmured words had her heart beating even faster against his thumbs. Lori knew she was pretty, and wasn’t at all ashamed to have used her looks to her advantage for most of her life—not when it was natural that a dancer should emphasize her best features, along with her most fluid lines, for the audience. But with Grayson touching her, she wasn’t capable of doing anything at all but looking down at his deeply tanned skin against hers.

He was right—the way the two of them fit together was so beautiful, one large, the other smaller, both full of a desire that was stronger even than the thunder and lightning raging outside the log cabin.

He ran his hands down past her ribs, over her flat belly, his fingers playing over her hipbones, until he was cupping her hips in his hands and dragging her back against him to take her mouth again. She sank into his kiss, into the hands cupping her so firmly, so warmly, so sweetly as they massaged her gently from her bottom to the muscles of her back and shoulders, sore from both the ride on the horse and the hard work she’d put in fixing the fence.

One of his hands moved back to brush against her cheek before plunging into her hair, already drying from the heat of the fire behind them. With his other hand, he stroked down the hourglass of her curves, from the swell of her breast to the indentation of her waist, back out to the flare of her hips.

“Grayson.”

She’d sworn never to beg him for anything, that she’d earn with hard work every day on his farm and every night in the bedroom he’d given her. And yet, begging him to touch her, to take her all the way over the edge he’d already brought her to, was as natural as breathing. As natural as the path of his hand from her hips to her stomach.

She was trembling now with need for him, but when he slowly slid his hand down lower, and then lower still between her thighs, she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t find steady ground.

“So hot.” He groaned the words into her neck, where he’d buried his face. “And so goddamned wet. God, I can’t believe how ready you are for me.”

He slipped one finger, then two, into her, and she couldn’t think, could barely remember to breathe.

All she could do was feel.

The heat of him. The shockingly sweet slide of his fingers in and out of her. The press of his thumb over her clitoris.

The storm came to a head outside with thunder and lightning practically crashing down on the cabin just as the storm inside of her broke. She rocked into his hand and he crushed his mouth to hers again to drink from her cries of pleasure.

* * *

He couldn’t stop kissing her, couldn’t stop reveling in the slick softness between her legs. God, he wanted to taste her, wanted to drop to his knees and kiss every inch of her beautiful body. And then, after he made her come again against his tongue, he wanted to pull her down to the floor with him, her gorgeous legs wrapped around his hips as he took her fast and furiously.

The storm that was raging outside had raged just as powerfully inside him—until the moment he realized he didn’t have protection on him, damn it.

Why would he? He didn’t need condoms to head out into the field to work with his horses and cows, to fix fence, to rotate his crops.

But even as practicalities stopped him cold, he knew they weren’t the real reason why he wasn’t going to pull Lori down to the crude wood floor and take her. And it wasn’t because he didn’t want her, either. Lord, he couldn’t ever remember wanting to make love to a woman more, had never needed to know this badly what it would feel like to sink into her.

All these years in California he’d made sure to keep to himself, to feed a community without ever connecting with anyone beyond the food he grew for them. He couldn’t allow himself to fall in love again, refused to let anyone touch his heart, his soul, when he knew he needed to keep them both locked up and punished for the way his wife had died.

But even as Grayson reminded himself of all the reasons he couldn’t permit himself to feel anything for Lori, he couldn’t stop thinking about the moment she had finally stilled in his arms after her climax.

He’d felt every inch of her softness in his arms...and every bit of her vulnerability.

She acted so tough, put on that sassy act at every turn. But he’d seen the flashes of pain in her when she didn’t think he was looking, simply because he couldn’t look away. It was why he’d let her stay when he thought she’d be next to useless as a farmhand.

Because he’d recognized in her the need to heal that had been in himself three years ago when he’d found the farm.