Added to that, which was more than enough to his mind, she only had three months—less than two and a half now, he remembered—before she had to go back to the sea.

He was very much afraid if he asked, if he took, if he had her, he’d never in all his life—wherever and whenever he went—get over her.

He should never have touched her in the first place, given them both ideas. The simple solution? Don’t touch her again. God knew they had enough to do, to risk without adding in sex and heartbreak.

He rose, took the beer with him to his room. Opened the door, and nearly dropped the bottle.

She sat on the side of his bed, got to her feet as he stood there.

“I waited for you.”

“Okay.” Carefully, he set the beer aside. “Do you need something?”

“Yes. So do you, I think. And so I waited for you.”

Watching his face, she lifted her hands, nudged the two thin straps from her shoulders, and with a kind of shrug had the dress pooling at her feet.

The single thought that shot through his head was: I’m a dead man. In a fumbling rush, he shut the door.

“Annika, don’t . . .”

Words slipped away as she stepped out of the discarded dress and stood, lithe and lean and lovely in shoes that were nothing but a few bright red straps and high, thin heels.

“You desire me.” She took a step toward him. “I desire you. Will you take what I offer you? Will you offer me what I ask?”

He knew there were reasons, but he couldn’t find and hold a single one. “I’m supposed to—”

“Lie with me,” she said, and took another step. And her eyes, just her eyes, bewitching green, destroyed him. “Mate with me.” And another step. “Be with me.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed that long, beautiful body against his, and took his mouth.

Long, warm, slow, deep, she twisted him into knots, then set the knots on fire. Her fingers dived into his hair, gripped him there while his defenses crumbled to dust. Before he could find the will, the reason, to shore them up again, she slid her leg up his and breached the wall.

He surrendered to her, surrendered to his own spiraling lust. Screw the rules, he thought. Screw the risks. He pulled her closer, gripped her hair, all that wonderful hair.

They’d break them and they’d take them together.

When he backed her toward the bed, she lowered her hands to tug up his shirt.

“I want to see you, touch you. All of you. I need to take your clothes off.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll do that. Just let me . . .” As they fell on the bed, his hands ran over her. Soft, smooth, sublime. “Annika. Just let me.”

It was everything she’d imagined, everything she’d hoped for. This freedom he’d never given her before, the full passions in the way his hands took and touched, and the wild hunger of his mouth as it . . . fed on hers with teeth, tongue, lips.

No one had ever kissed her just like this. With such appetite.

Eager to give him more, she pressed up against him where she felt the hardness, and he moaned against her breast as if in pain, but the kind of pain that spoke of need.

So she arched her hips against him again, felt a jolt in her own center, and a kind of lovely, lovely clutching.

The muscles in his back, his arms—all so different when lying on a bed—the softness under her, the hard over her, caused such feelings inside her.

Though she’d never undressed a man, it couldn’t be so different from undressing herself—and she so much wanted to have his body, without the clothes, against hers. She reached for his belt, trying to stem her excitement so her fingers could work on the buckle.

“Maybe just hold on there,” he murmured, “or it’ll be over awfully quick.”

Her hands went still. “Can it only be once?”

The sound he made, a mixture of laugh and groan, puzzled her.

“No. Not just once.”

“Then it can be quick this time.” Her need was now, now, now, so she pulled the belt free. “I want to know. It’s the first I’ve mated with legs.”

Breathless, next to desperate, he forced himself to stop. “The first?” Of course it was the first, for Christ’s sake. “Does that mean, you’re . . . Would it be like your first time? Ever?”

“Oh, you mean do I still have the shield?” She dragged him back again. “No. This part is the same. But the legs, the bed, your legs. It’s different. It’s new. I want you between my legs. I want you inside me, between my legs. I want to know, Sawyer. With you.” Filled with those wants, with those jolts, she took his mouth again. “Only you.”

She started to tug his jeans down.

“I’ve still got boots on. Wait.” He rolled, sat up. As he dragged violently at his boots, she reared up, circled him from behind, drove him closer, closer to madness with her mouth at his neck, her hands running over his chest.

Freed, finally, of boots, jeans, everything, he turned toward her. She stayed on her knees, her hair spilling like ink down her back, over one shoulder. Her gaze traveled down his chest, down. And she smiled.

“You’re beautiful, and strong.” Reaching out, she trailed her fingers over his shaft, made his blood thrum. A thousand strings plucked at once.

“This is pleasure?”

“I don’t think they’ve come up with a word for what I’m feeling.”

Still smiling, she lay back, her hair spread over the white sheets in long, rich rivers. A perfect gift, offered without guile or artifice.