He had never acquiesced to a partner‟s demands or desires before. But Elizabeth was not like any other partner. For the
first time, sex was not about taking what he wanted, but about giving what she needed. He could do this for her. He could give
her one less thing to worry about tonight.
He took the foil packet from her hand.
Of course, being Elizabeth, she was not passive. As soon as he opened the packet, her hands were there. Her head bent
gravely to her task, her smooth hair sliding forward. Her fingers stroked and encircled his aching shaft, pushing the sheath
firmly to its base. When she was done, she cupped his stones gently in her hand, scraped her nails lightly over him. Exquisite
sensation shot from his balls to his brain.
He clenched his fists in near agony. “I promised to make your wait worthwhile. I‟ll have no chance at all if you do that.”
She shook back her hair and smiled up at him, her eyes gleaming in the dark. “Maybe I‟m tired of waiting.”
She was tired of waiting, tired of thinking. She wanted to feel something besides responsible and alone.
Maybe Morgan wouldn‟t give her what she needed in the long run. But he was exactly what she wanted tonight.
She was no longer a naïve twenty-one-year-old dreaming of adventure, no longer a hopeful bride dreaming of forever. She
was done with dreams.
Tonight, she would take what she could get: tenderness, trust, companionship, sex.
Her heart hammered. And Morgan could give them to her.
With her fingertips, she explored him, learning his textures. Sleek and then rough, cool and then hot, silky smooth and
unyielding as stone. She rubbed her cheek against his stomach. She loved the way he smelled, musky and male.
Expelling a harsh breath, he caught her wrists and pulled her hands away from his body.
Startled, she looked up. She couldn‟t see well. Only his body, smooth and strong and pale against the night, the gleam of
his eyes, the glint of the medal on his chest.
It was Copenhagen all over again.
She pushed the thought away. No, it wasn‟t. She knew what she was doing this time. She knew him.
“I want you.” His low voice resonated through her.
She quivered like a violin string in the dark. Deliberately, she smiled. “Then take me.”
He swooped. The sky swung and her world tilted as the hammock dipped and climbed like a skiff in a storm. His hands, his
mouth, streaked everywhere, fast and hot and even a little rough. Pummeled by sensation, saturated with pleasure, she could
do nothing but hold on and respond.
She heard herself cry out as the whirlpool dragged her under. Her body arched, her fingers tangled in the webbing. A
quickening pulse beat in her blood.
Take me now.
She felt him at the entrance to her body, heat to her heat, hard to her soft. Her eyes slid closed.
“With me,” he demanded. “Elizabeth.”
His command recalled her from the depths. She opened her drowned eyes and saw him above her, the moonlight on his
shoulders, his face a dark blur, her fantasy lover made flesh, pushing inside her, plunging inside her. Real. Here. Now.
The shock contracted her stomach, flung her to another peak. Her short nails gripped his sides as he worked her, as she met
him, thrust for thrust, stroke for stroke. His feet braced on the deck, his hard hands bruising her hips, he pounded into her,
strong and relentless as the sea. She was drenched, battered, swept away.
Until the long crest rolled through her like a gathering wave and took them both.
12
ZACK HACKED THROUGH THE SEAMS OF THE CARTON, exposing the soup cans inside. Almost through his first
shift. Picking up the price gun, he shot numbers in a row: two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-nine .
Wiley‟s Grocery didn‟t have scanners in the checkout lines.
“No need for them,” George Wiley had explained earlier that evening as they were shifting cartons from the back room. “I
know my store. This isn‟t America, son.”
He meant the mainland.