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  Julie knew the moment it registered on him, because he lifted his mouth a fraction of an inch from her skin, and his body went so still she had the feeling he’d stopped breathing. “This is the first time for me,” she said shakily.

  He dropped his forehead on her breast, shut his eyes, and swore. “Christ!”

  The explosive whisper made it eloquently clear to Julie that he was not pleased by her revelation—a conviction that was reinforced when he finally raised his head and stared hard at her face, his eyes minutely inspecting each feature as if he were hoping to find some proof she was lying. He was either angry or disgusted, Julie realized with a sinking heart. She hadn’t wanted him to stop, only to slow down and not handle her like . . . like a body that was used to being handled.

  Zack was not disgusted, he was dumbstruck. He was disoriented. Within his personal frame of reference, he had never heard of a twenty-six-year-old virgin, let alone a beautiful, witty, intelligent, desirable one.

  But as he gazed at her lovely, apprehensive face, suddenly everything about her that had puzzled him last night and tonight began to make some sense. He remembered her heartbroken outburst after the news program last night: “My father is a minister!” she’d wept. “He’s a respected man. I’ve spent the last fifteen years of my life trying to be perfect.” He remembered her answer when he asked her if she was engaged: “We’re talking about it.” Evidently they’d been doing a lot of talking and no lovemaking. And last night, Zack himself had likened her to a choirgirl.

  Now that he understood the past, he was more confused than ever by the present. Apparently, she had withheld her virginity from her own boyfriend, who obviously loved her and wanted to offer her respectability and a future. Tonight, however, she was willing to surrender it to an escaped convict who was incapable of loving anyone and who had nothing whatsoever to offer her. Zack’s conscience chose that moment to reassert itself for the first time in years by reminding him that Julie’s almost-fiancé hadn’t coerced her into surrendering her virginity; if Zack had any scruples, any decency whatsoever, he’d keep his hands off of her. He’d already kidnapped her, verbally abused her, and subjected her to public embarrassment and censure. Compounding all of that by robbing her of her virginity was inexcusable.

  But the feeble protest of his conscience wasn’t enough to deter him. He wanted her. He had to have her. He was going to have her. Fate had deprived him of his dignity, his freedom, and his future, but it had for some reason given her to him during these brief days of what was likely to be the end of his life. Neither his conscience nor anything else was going to deprive him of having her. Unaware of the passage of time, he stared at her until her shaky voice snapped him from his thoughts, and her words were poignant testimony to her lack of experience with men. “I didn’t expect you to be angry,” she said, completely misinterpreting the reason for his silence.

  With a harsh sigh, he said, “I’m angry with myself, not you.”

  Julie searched his face. “Why?”

  “Because,” he said gruffly, “it isn’t going to stop me. Because it isn’t going to matter a damn to me that you’ve never done this before, not even with someone who loved you or who could stay with you if he got you pregnant. Nothing matters to me right now . . .” he whispered, lowering his mouth to hers, “but this . . .”

  But her inexperience did matter. It mattered enough to Zack to make him break off the kiss and try to get his lust under control, so that he could start over with her. “Come here/’ he whispered, gathering her into his arms and rolling onto his side so that she was facing him, her head pillowed against his shoulder. Breathing deeply, he waited for his pulse to return to normal, slowly running his hand down her trim back in a soothing caress, while he resolved to make this good for her, even if he died of unassuaged lust in the process. Somehow, he was going to have to arouse her thoroughly without arousing himself more than he already was.

  Julie lay in his arms, bewildered by the sudden change in his mood and terrified that, despite his words to the contrary, she’d apparently turned him off on the idea of making love altogether. Unable to stand it any longer, she kept her eyes on his throat and said shakily, “I didn’t mean to make such a—a big deal out of this being my first time. I was only trying to slow you down a little—not stop you.”

  Zack knew how hard it must have been for her to say a thing like that, and he felt another unfamiliar surge of tenderness toward her as he tipped her chin up and said with quiet gravity, “Don’t spoil this for either of us by belittling its importance. The truth is, I’ve never had the responsibility—or the privilege—of being a woman’s first lover, so it’s a first time for me, too.” Lifting his hand, he brushed her tousled hair off her cheek, slowly combing his fingers through it, watching it spill over her left shoulder as he mused aloud, “You must have been driving the boys in Keaton crazy all these years, wondering what you’d be like.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pulled his gaze from her hair and smiled wryly into her eyes. “I mean that I’ve been fantasizing about running my fingers through this gorgeous mane of yours since yesterday, and I’d only been looking at it for two days.”

  Julie felt a warmth begin to seep through her entire body at his stirring words, and Zack instantly sensed the change in her expression and the way her body relaxed against his. Belatedly remembering that words could arouse a woman almost as well and as quickly as the most skillful sexual stimulation, Zack realized that was also the best way to accomplish his goal without driving himself to the dangerous extremes of lust that came with touching and kissing her. Softly and truthfully, he confessed, “Do you know what I was thinking last night during dinner?”

  She shook her head.

  “I was wondering how your mouth would taste on mine, and if your skin could possibly feel as soft as it looks.”

  Julie felt herself sinking into a deep, delicious sensual spell as he spread his fingers over her cheek and said, “Your skin is even softer than it looks.” His thumb moved over her lips and his eyes watched the movement. “And your mouth . . . God, you taste like heaven.” His hand slid inexorably down her throat, over her shoulder, then slowly covered her breast, and she dropped her gaze to the mat of dark, curly hair on his chest.

  “Don’t look away,” he whispered, and she forced her gaze back to his. “You have beautiful breasts.”

  That, Julie felt, was so far from true that it made her doubt the other things he’d just said. He saw the skeptical look on her face, and his mouth quirked in a somber smile. “If that wasn’t the truth,” he said, his thumb moving back and forth over her nipple, “then you tell me why I’m dying to touch them and look at them and have my mouth on them right now.” Her nipple tightened into a taut little bud against his thumb, and Zack felt lust begin to rage through him again. “You know it’s true, Julie. You can see on my face how badly I want you.”

  She did see it—it was there in his smoldering, heavy-lidded gaze.

  Dying to kiss her, Zack drew a long, steadying breath and bent his head, fighting to hold himself in check as he touched his tongue to her lips. “You are so sweet,” he whispered. “You are so damned sweet.”

  Julie’s restraint broke before his did. With a silent moan, she slid her hand around his nape and kissed him with all the passion building inside of her, pressing herself against his rigid length, glorying in the shudder that racked his body as his mouth opened over hers in a rough, tender kiss. With an instinct she didn’t know she possessed, she sensed his desperate struggle to prevent the kiss from becoming too erotic, and the tenderness she felt was almost past bearing. Brushing her parted lips over his, she coaxed him to deepen the kiss, and when that failed, she started kissing him the way he’d done earlier. She touched her tongue to his lips and felt the gasp of his indrawn breath; encouraged by that, she let her tongue make a brief, sensuous foray in his mouth, probing lightly . . .

  And she accomplished her goal.

  Zack’s res