Nothing.

The moan that came out of her mouth twined with his, carried through the open balcony doors, and got lost in the storm as he began moving inside her. She tried to remain still, vaguely remembering Freddy’s complaints that she moved too much, but when she lost herself and rotated her hips, Winter said in a tortured voice, “That’s right—grind on me. Christ, you feel good.”

She fell back and adjusted her legs, trying to find a place to put them. Everything about him was big—even his hips—and she was unsure of herself. He seemed to understand her floundering and lowered himself over her body, resting his weight on forearms that pressed into the mattress on either side of her head. Then he hooked one of her legs around his waist and sunk deeper into her.

“O-o-oh.”

“Too much?”

She wrapped her other leg around him in answer.

“Dig your heels into my ass,” he commanded roughly. She did. It opened her legs wider and changed the angle again.

“Yes!” she cried out with more enthusiasm than intended. “Oh yes!”

He chuckled in response, and she felt so happy, she laughed, too, breathless. Then his mouth found hers and she accepted it, greedily kissing him back as he rocked into her steadily. A lock of dark, damp hair brushed across her face as he dipped his head to her neck, sucking and kissing. His shoulders bunched. She ran her hands through the hair on his chest, then skimmed around his sides, feeling every taut muscle in his broad torso tight and hard and shifting beneath her exploring fingers as he moved.

She made strange, savage noises, but he felt so good, she couldn’t make herself care.

“Aida, my God,” he whispered against her ear. “You feel like heaven. So perfect. Even better than I imagined.”

Her pleasure was honed by his words, abruptly quickening. The slick muscles at her center wanted to clench and bear down on him, but he was too big. She cried out in frustration, feeling the urgency of what was coming, almost frightened by it.

And it was gathering within her with alarming speed.

If he’d brought her to orgasm the night before with his fingers and mouth, that was one thing. This was wholly different. He was inside her. Sharing the same pleasure. Filling her. Surrounding her. She was humbled by the intensity of emotions that bloomed at the horizon and raced her thundering heart.

“Goddamn,” Winter cursed appreciatively as her center constricted around him again, this time with greater success.

“Oh, God, Winter! Please don’t stop.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” he said, pumping his hips with urgency. “Come for me, älskling.”

She grasped his solid shoulders, slick with sweat. Her breath caught as she tightened around him a final time. Deliverance rocketed her to great heights and the world fell away. Euphoric spasms pulsed through her center, bringing wave after wave of astonishing pleasure. She shook. She whimpered. And just when she began to fall back down to earth, Winter pounded into her a handful of times with such intense strength, she opened her eyes to watch him.

Mouth slack and wide, he bucked, squinted his eyes closed, and bellowed out an extended cry that reverberated through her as he shuddered in her arms like a great, divine beast taken down by a single bullet.

She didn’t know if she was the gun that fired the bullet or the hunter who’d pulled the trigger, but when he rolled to his side, taking her with him, and she heard his heartbeat pound in time with hers, slowing and heavy, she felt an unyielding sense of brutal possession and knew she had made a terrible miscalculation.

She was the one who’d been shot.

TWENTY-ONE

WINTER TOOK ONE LAST SWIG OF COFFEE, THEN PUSHED THE rolling cart away from the bed with his bare foot. Two in the afternoon might be a brow-raising time for breakfast service, but the hotel staff didn’t argue when he phoned down the request.

“That was the best meal I’ve had in years,” Aida said from his side, propped up on feather pillows. One bent freckled leg peeked out from beneath the white sheets. “Maybe there’s something about your pro-breakfast stance.”

He rolled onto his left hip to face her. “Stick with me and you’ll eat breakfast every day.”

She gave him a slow smile and closed her eyes, the picture of satisfaction. This is how he wanted to see her, stretching like a cat, cheeks flushed, eyes lazy. Unable to do anything more than lift a spoon. “Are they your customers?” she asked.

“Who?”

“This hotel.”

“No,” he said, eyeing the open condom tin on the bedside table. Only one of three left, dammit. He should’ve bought another tin. He’d never gone through an entire one in an afternoon; then again, he’d never bedded a woman who was so eager to help him empty it. “They aren’t one of my customers. They just lost their supplier.”

She cracked open one eye. “Does this have to do with the raid last night?”

“Raids, and yes.”

“Tell me everything. Where did you go after you left?”

Winter heard his father’s voice somewhere in the back of his mind, reciting a list of rules for bootlegging. Never tell a woman details was one of them. He’d warned him that pillow talk was the downfall of many a great man, and forbid him to tell even Paulina where their warehouses were, who their customers were, when the mother ships from Canada came into port. And he never did, mainly because Paulina never wanted to know.

While he was trying to decide how much to tell her, his eyes fell on the golden locket around her neck. “What’s inside?” he asked, fingering the engraved floral pattern on the front.