surrender. How could she have known that all of her life she had waited
to be wanted this way? Desperately, exclusively, heedlessly. Nor had
she known that she had waited to feel this same wild recklessness.
He wasn't gentle now, and she reveled in the furor. He wasn't
controlled, and she pushed him further to the edge. When his fingers
dug into her hips, she knew he wasn't thinking of her as frail and
fragile and in need of defending. When her name tore from between his
lips, the need was there, for her. And only for her.
She rolled over him, arching her back with both triumph and release as
she took him into her. The first stunning climax ripped through her,
but didn't weaken. It was his hands that slid from her, that groped
blindly for hers. With their fingers linked, she set the pace, fast and
frantic.
Even after she felt him explode inside her, she rode him, driving him,
demanding more. She brought her mouth back to his, insatiable, until
his lips grew hungry and his breathing shallow. Her tongue slid
along his throat where his pulse began to throb. He murmured something,
dazed and incoherent. But she could only moan as she felt him harden
inside of her again.
Half mad, he reared up, gripping her arms in tense fingers, covering her
mouth with hot, crushing kisses. Then she was beneath him and his body
was like a fumace, pumping and plunging into hers.
Long and limber, her limbs linked around him. Her eyes were open and on
his. He could see them begin to glaze. Watch her lips begin to
tremble. Pleasure rippled through him as he felt her body shudder over
a new peak. Then he saw her lips curve, slowly, beautifully.
It was the last thing he saw before passion dragged him under.
IT iNFuRiATED EMMA that she kept looking over her shoulder. Almost a
week had passed since she'd settled back into the house on the
beach-since Michael and Conroy had unofficially settled in with her. A
rehearsal, she sometimes thought, for the future she was beginning to
believe in. Living with Michael, sharing her bed and her time with him,
didn't make her feel trapped. It made her feel, at long last, normal .
. . and happy.
Yet no matter how content she was, Emma couldn't shake the sensation of
being watched. Most of the time she ignored it, or tried to, telling
herself it was just another reporter looking for a new angle. Another
photographer with a long lens looking for an exclusive picture.
They couldn't touch her, or what she was building with Michael.
But she kept the doors locked and Conroy close whenever she was alone.
No matter how often she told herself there was no one there but her own
ghosts, she kept watching, waiting. Even walking down Rodeo Drive in
bright sunshine she felt the tension in the back of her neck.
She was more embarrassed than afraid, and wished she had called a limo
rather than driving herself
She'd thought she would enjoy looking for just the right outfit, trying
on both the outrageous and the classic, being pampered and cooed over by
the clerks. But it was only a relief to have it over, to tuck the dress
box into her car and drive off.
It was pitiful, she told herself, this persecution complex. Emma