She studied him for a moment, thinking that he looked younger in sleep. More the way she’d remembered him on those very rare occasions when she’d allowed herself to think of him.
A lock of brown hair had tumbled onto his forehead. Her fingers itched to brush it back, the way she had so many times in the past.
She curled her hand into a fist to keep herself from making that mistake.
Experimentally, she lifted her head from the pillow. Gabe didn’t stir.
Holding her breath, she rose to one elbow, never taking her gaze from his face. When he still didn’t move, she tried shifting her weight, inching slowly downward toward the foot of the bed. If she could just slip off without waking him, she could—
His hand shot out to catch her forearm. “Forget it,” he growled, his voice gravelly.
She pushed away from him, hoping his reflexes might still be dulled from sleep.
He rolled on top of her, pinning her to the bed with his weight. “You never give up, do you?”
“I was only going to the bathroom,” she muttered.
“Be glad your name isn’t Pinocchio,” he advised, yawning. “As much as you lie, your nose would be ten feet long by now.”
“You may get off of me now,” she said, clinging to her dignity, despite her embarrassing position.
He didn’t move. With his face very close to hers, he took his time studying her. “You look different with brown eyes. But I suppose that was the intention, wasn’t it?”
Taking it as a rhetorical question, Page didn’t answer. “I can’t breathe,” she complained instead, pushing futilely against his broad shoulders.
“I’ve been on top of you in bed before, remember? You never complained then.”
She swallowed a groan. Her body was already reminding her of other times when he’d been on top of her—and vice versa. To make it worse, she could tell that his body was remembering, as well.
“Gabe, please,” she said, her voice strained. “I’d like to get up.”
“It seems that I already have,” he commented, shifting his hips against her.
She flushed. “There’s no need to be crude.”
“Why not? Nothing else has worked so far. Maybe I can embarrass some answers out of you.”
“I don’t embarrass easily,” she said coolly. “Get off of me, Gabe.”
He seemed to take the order as a challenge. “I will—when I’m ready.”
She curled her lip. “You’ve resorted to stalking, assault, kidnapping, threats. What’s it to be now? Rape?”
She’d hoped to shame him into releasing her. Instead, he cupped her face in one hand, and lowered his mouth to within an inch of hers. “Would it be rape, Page?” he asked in a seductive murmur, his breath caressing her lips. “Would it really?”
Automatically, she moistened her lips. She tried to answer, but her voice stuck in her throat
Gabe brushed his lips against hers. Lightly. Testingly.
And then he abandoned the taunting and took her mouth in a hard, deep, hungry kiss.
A need greater than her willpower made Page stop fighting him.
Despite her better judgment, she couldn’t seem to find the strength to struggle against him just then. Her arms slipped around her husband’s neck. Emotions that had been pent up for much too long flooded through her as she abandoned herself to his embrace.
It had been so long since Gabe had held her like this.
GABE COULD ALMOST FEEL his brain empty of thought as he sank more deeply into Page’s welcoming softness. The faint scent of strawberries clouded his mind, and the sweetness of her taste made his entire body pulse with need.