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She knew then the totality of the lie she had told herself about loving another, about pining for another.
Because she had never felt this intensity of feeling before, as if fireworks were exploding against a night sky, as if her heart had started to beat after a long slumber, as if her blood had turned to fire. There was not a remnant of cold left in her.
Burn, she told herself blissfully, burn.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, too,” he whispered, his voice sexy, low and hoarse. “You taste of rain. Your hair smells of flowers, you do not disappoint, Danielle.”
She tasted him, rubbed her lips over the raspiness of whiskers, back to the softness of his mouth, along the column of his neck. She gave herself permission to let go.
And felt the exquisite pull of complete freedom. She went back to his mouth, greedy for his taste and for the sensation of him. She let her hands roam his bare skin, felt the exquisite texture of it, soft, the hardness of male muscle and bone just beneath that surface softness.
His breathing was coming in hard gasps, almost as if she knew what she was doing.
She both did and didn’t. The part of her that was knowledge knew nothing of this, she was an explorer in unmapped terrain. But the part of her that was instinct, animal and primal, knew everything about this, knew just how to make him crazy.
She loved it when she felt him begin to tremble as her lips followed the path scorched out first across his naked chest with her hand.
“Stop,” he said hoarsely.
She laughed, loving this new wicked side to herself. “No.”
But he pulled away from her, back to his own side of the couch. As she watched him with narrowed eyes, he ran a hand through the spikiness of his hair that looked bronze in the firelight.
“We aren’t doing this,” he said, low in his throat, not looking at her.
She laughed again, feeling the exquisiteness of her power.
“I’m not kidding, Dannie. My sister would kill me.”
“You’re going to mention your sister now?”
“She always comes to mind when I’m trying to do the decent thing,” he said sourly.
“I’m a grown woman,” she said. “I make my own decisions.”
“Yeah, good ones, like following me into the water when it was completely unnecessary.” She moved across the couch toward him. He leaped out of it.
“Dannie, don’t make this hard on me.”
“I plan to make it very hard on you,” she said dangerously, gathering her own blanket around her, sliding off the couch.
“Hey, I hear something.”
She smiled. “Sure you do.”
“It’s a powerboat!”
She froze, tilted her head, could not believe the stinginess of the gods. They were stealing her moment from her! She had chosen to burn.
And now the choice was being taken away from her!
There was no missing his expression of relief as the sound of the motor grew louder out there in the darkness. With one last look at her—gratitude over a near miss, wistful, too, he grabbed his blanket tighter with one fist, and bolted out the door.
As soon as he was gone, the feeling of power left her with a slam. She flopped back on the couch and contemplated what had just transpired.
She, Danielle Springer, had become the tigress.
“Shameless hussy, more like,” she told herself.
She was not being rescued in a blanket! Her state of undress suddenly felt like a neon Shameless Hussy sign! She tossed it down and grabbed her jeans from where he had hung them on a line beside the fire.
They were only marginally drier than before, and now beginning to stiffen as if someone had accidentally dropped a box of starch in with the laundry.
Nonetheless, she lay back down on the bed and tried valiantly to squeeze them back on.
She had just gotten to that awful hip part when he came back in the door.
“Don’t look,” she said huffily. “I’m getting dressed. I plan to maintain my dignity.” As if it wasn’t way too late for that!
He made a noise she didn’t like.
She let go of her jeans and rolled up on her elbow to look at him. “What?”
“That was Michael in the boat. The bottom of the lake is really rocky here and he can’t see because it’s too dark. He said if we’d be okay for the night, he’d come back in the morning.”
“And you told him we’d be okay for the night?” she said incredulously. It was so obvious things were not okay, that her self-discipline had unraveled like a spool of yarn beneath the claws of a determined kitten.
“That’s what I told him.”
“Without asking me?”
“Sorry, I’m used to making executive decisions.”
She picked up a pillow and hurled it at him. He ducked. She hurled every pillow on that bed, and didn’t hit him once. If there had been anything else to pick up and throw, she would have done that, too.
But there was nothing left, not within reach, and she was not going to get up with her jeans half on and half off to go searching. Instead she picked up her discarded blanket, and pulled it over herself, even over her head.
“Go away,” she said, muffled.
It occurred to her, her thirty seconds of passion had done the worst possible thing: turned her into her parents! Loss of control happened that fast.
And had such dire consequences, too. Look at her mom and dad. A perfect example of people prepared to burn in the name of love.
She peeked up from the blanket.
In the murky darkness of the cabin, she saw he had not gone away completely. He had found a stub of a candle and lit it. Now he was going through the rough cabinets, pulling out cans.
“You want something to eat?” he asked, as if she hadn’t just been a complete shrew, made a complete fool of herself.
Of course she wanted something to eat! That’s how she handled pain. That’s why the jeans didn’t fit in the first place. She yanked them back off, wrapped herself tightly in the blanket and crossed the room to him. If he could pretend nothing had happened, so could she.
“This looks good,” she said, picking up a can of tinned spaghetti. If he noticed her enthusiasm was forced, he didn’t say a word.
“Delicious,” he agreed, looking everywhere but at her, as if somehow spaghetti was forbidden food, like the apple in the garden of Eden.
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