The Borrowed Ring

B.J. felt her throat tighten. “Um…Daniel?”

“Yeah. I'm going to move now.” But instead he brushed a strand of hair away from her face and remained where he was, looming over her, bodies touching from chest to ankles. Touching intimately enough that she could tell he was becoming more aroused by the moment.

She put a hand on his chest. Probably to push him away. At least, so she tried to tell herself. Instead her fingers curled into his shirt, slowly kneading the warm skin beneath the thin fabric.

Oh, he was strong. Solid. A man one could lean on. Curl into.

But not one she could completely trust, she reminded herself in an attempt to quell the desire rising inside her.

It didn't work. When Daniel lowered his head, she lifted hers to meet him.

Their previous kisses had begun with an audience in mind. Though the embraces had threatened to spin out of control nearly every time, there had always been the awareness of onlookers, the reality of the roles they were playing to keep them reined in.

There was no audience this time, no reason to perform. And nothing to stop them except willpower—which, B.J. conceded, wasn't going to be enough.

She had been fantasizing about this man, this moment, for almost half her life.

Resting his weight on one elbow, he cupped her face between his hands, tilting her head to provide him unrestricted access to her mouth. He spent a long time exploring her lips, nibbling at them, tasting them, tracing them with the tip of his tongue. And then parting them so that he could delve more deeply.

His tongue swept the inside of her mouth, tangled with hers, then taunted with slow, rhythmic thrusts that made her hips move instinctively in tempo. Murmuring something that might have been an attempt to soothe her, he slid a hand down her stomach. His fingers spread across her abdomen, resting so close to that aching place between her legs that she moaned helplessly into his mouth.

Entreaty turning to demand, she speared her hands into his luxuriously thick hair and kissed him with a renewed fervor. She sensed his control slipping away from him. Heard it in the ragged edges of his increasingly rapid breathing. Felt it in the hammering of his heart against her ribs. Her own was beating so hard and so fast that she knew he could feel it, too.

His fingers moved an inch lower, and she arched in response, one knee rising to cradle him more intimately between her thighs. There was no pretending now that either of them was in control. No way for either of them to deny the need that was driving them.

“B.J.,” he muttered against her throat.

She was so very glad he hadn't called her Brittany. That he wanted the woman she had become. Sliding her hands beneath his shirt, she stroked the warm, supple skin of his back and kissed him again. Only this time it was slow, not fevered. Deliberate, not impetuous.

She didn't think she could make the invitation more clear.

He froze for just a moment against her. Just long enough for her to sense the battle taking place inside him. Hunger warred with common sense—and she was so deeply relieved when need won out. When his head lowered again to her throat, there was no mistaking the new purpose in his actions.

He kissed a path from her jaw to her ear, took a tiny, arousing nip of her earlobe, then dipped his tongue into the hollow behind it. More kisses led downward to the deep V of her blouse, toward the rise of her breasts, which were already heaving with the breaths she struggled to drag into her lungs. Her attention was divided between the journey he was taking with his mouth and the movement of his fingers against her tummy, her thighs and—finally—against the so-sensitive area between them.

She jerked spasmodically in reaction, gasping his name. Once again his mouth returned to hers, attempting to calm her but succeeding only in making her want more.

“Don't stop,” she said when he lifted his head, breaking the kiss.

His gaze bore into hers, his dark eyes glittering in the pale gray light of predawn. “Be sure,” he said roughly. “I won't apologize later.”

“I won't ask you to,” she said and moved deliberately against the hard bulge at her hip. The involuntary grunt of reaction she drew from him filled her with a satisfying sense of feminine power, giving her the courage to move again.

Whatever thin hold he'd had over his control seemed to snap then. The man she had thought incapable of acting without careful deliberation proved that he could be as blindly driven by passion as any other mere mortal.

His hands were all over her, drawing away her clothes and the unsteadiness in them thrilled her. His movements were jerky, primal, unpremeditated—yet so innately skillful they took her straight to the edge of sanity.

They plunged over that edge together, filling the shadows in the quiet pavilion with cries of exhilaration. And maybe just a touch of anxiety—on both their parts-at what might come after the landing.

The sky had lightened to a pearly gray-blue by the time B.J. recovered enough to think coherently. Blinking dazedly, she took mental stock of her situation.

Both only half-clothed, she and Daniel lay still sprawled together on the cushion-padded picnic table. Her head rested on his shoulder and her fingers were curled into a death grip on his partially opened shirt. His heart was still beating loudly beneath her ear, but the rate was gradually slowing to normal. His breathing was almost steady now, as was her own.

Yet she knew that some things would never return to the way they had been before. Her heart, for example.

“We didn't use protection,” Daniel said, and there was just a hint of disbelief in his voice, as though he was stunned that the realization had only just occurred to him.

Hoping that meant he wasn't usually so careless, B.J. reassured him, “It's okay. I'm on the Pill.”