"Excuse me?" All her good intentions began a slow slide into oblivion. "Are you talking about my going to the movies with a friend of Zack's?"

"Movies, hell." Nick fueled up on breakfast as he prepared to lecture. "You didn't get home until after one."

Her hands were on her hips now, and her fingers were tight around the handle of the spatula. "How would you know when I got home?"

"I happened to be in the neighborhood," he said loftily. "Saw you get out of a cab at the hotel. One-fifteen." The memory of standing on the street corner, watching her flit into the hotel in the middle of the night, soured his mood again, though it didn't diminish his appetite. "Are you going to try to tell me you caught a double feature?"

He reached for the jam for his toast just as Freddie brought the spatula down smartly on the top of his head. "Hey!"

"Spying on me. You've got a lot of nerve, Nicholas LeBeck."

"I wasn't spying on you. I was looking out for you, since you don't have the sense to look out for yourself." With well-conditioned reflexes, he ducked the second swipe, pushed back from the table. His body moved on automatic, tensed for a fight. "Put that damn thing down."

"I will not. And to think I felt guilty because I'd yelled at you."

"You should have felt guilty. And you sure as hell should have known better than to go off with some guy you know nothing about."

"Uncle Zack introduced us," she began, fury making her voice low and icy. "I'm not going to justify my social life to you."

That's what she thinks, Nick countered silently. No way in hell was he going to allow her to go dancing off with any bar bum who happened along, and he needed to make that clear. "You're going to have to justify it to somebody, and I'm the only one here. Where the hell did you go?"

"You want to know where I went? Fine. We left the bar and raced over to his place, where we spent the next several hours engaged in wild, violent sex—several acts of which are still, I believe, illegal in some states."

His eyes went hard enough to glitter. It wasn't just her words, it wasn't just her attitude. It was worse, because he could imagine—with no trouble at all—a scenario just like the one she'd described. Only it wasn't Ben she was breaking the law with. It was Nick LeBeck.

"That's not funny, Fred."

Much too wound up to note or care about the dangerous edge to his voice, she snarled at him. "It's none of your business where I went or how I spent my evening, any more than it's mine how you spent yours with Scarlett O'Hara."

"Lorelie," he corrected, between his teeth. It didn't do his disposition any good to remember that he hadn't spent the evening with Lorelie, or anyone else. "And it is my business. I'm responsible for—"

"Nothing," Freddie snapped back, jabbing the spatula into his chest. "For nothing, get it? I'm above the age of consent, and if I want to pick up six guys at a bar, you have nothing to say about it.

You're not my father, and it's about time you stopped trying to act like it."

"I'm not your father," Nick agreed. A slow, vicious buzz was sounding in his ears, warning him that his temper was about to careen out of control. "Your father might not be able to tell you what happens to careless women. He sure as hell wouldn't be able to show you what happens when a woman like you takes chances with the wrong man."

"And you can."

"Damn right I can." In a move too quick and unexpected for her to evade, he snatched the spatula out of her hand and threw it aside. Even as it crashed against the wall, her eyes were going wide.

"Stop it."

"What are you going to do to make me?" Nick's movements were smooth, predatory, as he stalked her, backing her into a corner. "You going to call for help? You think anybody's going to pay attention to you?"

He'd never looked at her like that before. No one had, with all that lust and fury simmering. Fear lapped through her until her pulse was scrambling like a rabbit's.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said, trying for dignity and failing miserably as he slapped his palms on either side of the wall, caging her. "I said stop it, Nick."

"What if he doesn't listen to you?" He stepped closer, until his body was pressed hard against hers, until she could feel the wiry strength in it, just on the edge of control. "Maybe he wants a sample—more than a sample. All that pretty skin." His eyes stayed on hers as he ran his hands up her arms, down again. "He's going to take what he wants." Now his hands were at her hips, kneading. "How are you going to stop him? What are you going to do about it?"

She didn't think, didn't question. Riding on fear jumbled with excitement, Freddie threw her arms around his neck. For an instant, the gleam in his eyes changed, darkened, and then her mouth was on his.

All her pent-up needs and fantasies poured into the kiss. She clung to him, wrapped herself around him and reveled in the wild flash of heat.

He was holding her as she'd always wanted to be held by him. Hard, possessively hard. His mouth was frantic as it took from hers. A scrape of teeth that made her head spin, a plunge of tongue that staggered her soul.

Desire. She could taste it on him. The full, ripe and ready-to-explode desire of a man for a woman. They might have been strangers, so new was this burst of passion and need. They might have been lovers for a lifetime, so seamlessly choreographed were the fast, frenetic movements of hands, of mouths and bodies.

He lost his head. Lost himself. Her mouth was a banquet of flavors—the tart, the sweet, the spicy—and he was ravenous. There was so much there—the scent and taste and texture of her, so much more than the expected, so much richer than dreams. All of it opened for him, invited him to feast.

He didn't think of who they were, or who they had been. There was no thought at all, only a desperate leap of emotion that consumed him, even as he avidly consumed her.

More. The need for more slashed through him like a whip. He pressed her hips into the edge of the counter, then lifted her up onto it so that his hands were free to touch and take.

He heard her raspy indrawn breath when his fingers streaked under her sweater and closed over her. Then his own moan—part pain, part pleasure—when he found her, firm and soft, her ni**les hard with desire against his thumbs, her heart pounding out an erotic rhythm against his palms.