His heart was pounding hard, as if he’d been running flat out for miles, and some part of him thought that he had been, one way or another, for the past ten years.
Not this time, he thought, with a solemnity that might have worried him in the light. But it was dark in his great cavern of a room, and the night wasn’t nearly over, and he could pretend, for a moment or two, that he was the man he’d wanted to be while he was inside her.
Zoe was curled up against him as if they’d slept a thousand nights together exactly like this, and Hunter loved it. He loved the sweet scent of her hair and the fall of it through his fingers, the soft weight of her body against him in the dark. Her head pillowed on his arm and the way the delectable curve of her bottom fit so snugly against him in the middle of that vast bed, making it seem cozy.
She was smart and prickly, gorgeous and sexy, and she fit as if she’d been made to his precise specifications. She wasn’t another groupie whose name he’d never learn. This hadn’t been one more empty form of exercise. He’d wanted her. He still did. He felt it inside him, that ravenous burst of flame and something like wonder, and had the strangest feeling it wouldn’t fade with the dawn like everything else.
He’d felt a pale imitation of this kind of rightness a long time ago, when he was young and callow, life was still golden and he hadn’t the slightest idea what it was like to lose something irreplaceable. In the dark, he could admit to himself that this was different. This was better, if more complicated.
Because he still didn’t know her plan. Why she’d hunted him down in that strip club and used Sarah to make him do what she wanted him to do. He still didn’t know what she wanted from him.
Tonight, he didn’t care.
She smelled of lavender and she’d tasted like sweet cream and hot, aroused woman, and he couldn’t seem to react the way he ought to do. He couldn’t seem to do anything but pull her closer, press a soft kiss to her temple and hold on to her as though he might not let go.
He moved behind her in the dark, tasting her all over again in the deep shadows, his hands exploring her, worshipping her as if it was the first time while he held her to him in that same position. He could trace the thrust of her breasts beneath her raised arm, kiss that sensitive spot behind her ear. He could smooth his way along her side, her thigh, her femininity warm and inviting beneath his hands. He could feel it when she transitioned from sleep to full alertness, and could feel, too, the delicious little shiver that moved in her then. When she thrust back against him with a small moan, pressing her bottom against him, making him that much harder.
When she whispered his name, he came inside her, making them both sigh. He rolled with her, holding her hand in his as he pressed her into the mattress. Like a dream. Hot like silk. Sweet.
And then he rode them both to that shattering end, slow and quiet and something like reverent. Like hope, he thought, losing himself in her.
Like a promise he intended to keep.
* * *
The morning light woke her, beaming in through all that glass with the frantic insistence of winter, and Zoe jolted up into sitting position. For a long moment, she had no idea where she was or why it was so bright.
And when it came back to her—when the long night before began to spool through her brain, one scalding-hot image after another, making her belly clench hard and deep all over again, tossing her right back into that fire—she was immediately furious with herself.
It was better than the darker things that lurked beneath that kick of temper—cleaner.
Waking up in his bed was not what was supposed to have happened. It was certainly not part of the plan she’d concocted on the fly last night, when she’d found herself kissing him and had understood she’d have to deal with this thing between them. With him.
Zoe should have left under cover of darkness, as she’d intended to do. After that first time. That she hadn’t—the reasons she hadn’t—made that dark well inside her yawn open even wider, even deeper. Even more treacherous than before.
She was such a fool.
Zoe had lost count of the number of times they’d come together in the darkness, and she didn’t want to think about how often she’d been the one who’d reached for him. How she’d crawled over that athletic warrior’s body of his entirely of her own volition, no masks and no games.
No hint of compulsion, only want. Need. Desire.
How she’d tasted every part of that mouthwatering torso of his, learning every inch of him, committing it to memory. How she’d taken his hard length in her mouth, licking it from stem to tip and back again, then teased the dark places below until he’d groaned out his surrender, his hands fisted in his sheets.