What was going on? She’d hardly seen him all evening, though she’d been aware of him. How could she not be, she wondered frantically. The man was inescapable. Just knowing he was in the room had kept her on edge all night-wondering what he was doing, what he was thinking-had had her own mind racing, questioning.

Now, he was only an arm’s reach away, and the only thing she read on his face was a strength of purpose she couldn’t identify.

“Hunter-” She spoke first as soon as he stopped in front of her. “Is everything all right? Are you-”

“Quiet.” It was a command no less authoritarian for its whispered delivery.

“What?”

Then Hunter shook his head as if not surprised at all she hadn’t been able to be quiet. His lips curved into a wicked smile that sent a jolt of something amazing staggering through her. And before she could recover, he grabbed her, swept her into a low dip, cradled her in his arms and kissed her, so long, so hard, so deep, that Margie forgot to breathe.

His mouth on hers was at first wild, aggressive, almost as if he didn’t want to be doing what he was doing. But she responded to that hint of darkness instantly, as if the shadows in this man had reached out and found every dark corner of her own soul. There was fire here, a ferociousness she hadn’t expected but thrilled to, in the deepest corners of her heart. In seconds, his kiss changed, shifted, became less brutal, more hot and hungry, more passionate. Margie sighed into his mouth and felt his body mold itself to hers as if he were trying to hold her so tightly she’d never be able to escape him.

She didn’t know what had prompted this, and she didn’t care. Since the first time he’d kissed her, days ago, she’d been dreaming about another one. And this kiss more than lived up to her fantasies. Her blood felt like champagne, bubbling into a froth that swam giddily through her veins. His tongue swept into her mouth, stealing her breath, filling her with a heat that felt overwhelming, mind boggling.

She gave herself up to it, and when her mind started whispering, she resented every taunting thought. What was he doing? Why was he kissing her? Was it all a show for the townspeople? And if it was, why now? Why tonight? He hadn’t seemed to care if anyone believed they were married or not. So what had changed?

And why do you care? that voice murmured at last. Did she really have to question this? Couldn’t she just, for once, enjoy the moment? Feel his arms around her and pretend, however briefly, that they were a real couple? Couldn’t she just convince her brain to take the night off and let her body lead the way?

Oh, yeah.

Lost in sensation, she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him everything he was giving her. And while she surrendered to the heat, she was only dimly aware of the thunderous applause rising up from the people surrounding them.

Margie couldn’t sleep.

How could anyone be expected to sleep when the bodies were simmering at a high boil and sexual expectation was humming along at a gallop? Hmm. Mixed metaphors. Probably a bad sign.

Apparently her “husband” wasn’t feeling any lingering effects from that kiss. His deep, even breathing sighed into the silence, telling her that at least one of them was going to get some rest that night.

Jerk.

With the pillow wall at her back, Margie tried to ignore the fact that Hunter had been ignoring her for hours-ever since that spontaneous kiss had ended. As if he somehow was blaming her for him kissing her. And wasn’t that just like a man? Right back to Adam in the Garden. It was all that woman’s fault.

She punched her own pillow and shifted position, trying to find a spot where the sheets didn’t seem to be scraping sensitive skin raw. Where she could hear the sound of Hunter’s breathing and not imagine that breath dusting her face as he loomed over her.

Moonlight sifted into the bedroom through the French doors and lay in a silvery blanket across the bed. In the dim light, she stared up at the ceiling and told herself she’d never fall asleep if she didn’t close her eyes. But then every time she closed her eyes, she felt Hunter’s mouth on hers again, so no sleep that way, either.

She folded her arms over her chest, pinning the sheet and quilt to her body and tried silently repeating multiplication tables. Maybe she could bore herself to sleep.

That’s when Margie noticed Hunter’s breathing pattern had changed. She listened harder, noticed the quickened tempo of his breaths, as if he were running in his sleep, and she went up on one elbow to peer over the pillow wall.

He yanked a field dressing out of his pack and wrapped it around his side in an effort to stop the bleeding. Damn lucky shot, he told himself, fury at the situation spiking inside him.

Should have been a simple recon mission. But he’d been cut off from his team almost from the moment they entered the target area. They’d had to break for cover; then he’d been trapped, forced to hide while the others stealthily made a break for it.

The SEALs never left a man behind, and he knew his team would be waiting for him. They’d never evac the country without him, but it would be up to him to make it to the rendezvous point. Which would have been a hell of a lot easier if he hadn’t been bleeding.

With pain his only companion, Hunter inched his way across a desert barren of any life but the enemy. He hid during the day, traveled at night. He rationed his water and was finally forced to dig the bullet out of his side with his own fingers. Days crawled past and tension, along with a fever, mounted. There were so many dangers, so many easy ways for him to die and be lost in this damn desert forever.

But he wouldn’t go that way, he told himself. He’d find a way out. Get back to where things were green. Quiet. Where he didn’t have to constantly expect the muffled explosion of a gunshot coming out of nowhere.

He wanted…In his sleep, Hunter heard a whisper of something soft, something comforting, and he turned toward it, instinctively reaching. Warmth surrounded him. A gentle touch smoothed his hair back from his face and whispered words of comfort swam through his mind, his heart. He reached for the source of that calm, for the ease it promised, for the balm he so desperately needed.

Gentle hands stroked his skin, and Hunter groaned at the sensation. He was back, he was out of the desert. It hadn’t killed him, after all. And here he was, with a warm, willing woman sliding her hands over his back, tenderly across his face, and he wanted that touch more than he wanted his next breath.

Coming up completely out of the dreamscape he’d wandered through, Hunter heard that whisper again, and this time, he recognized the speaker.

“It’s okay, Hunter,” Margie soothed, while her hands stroked him tenderly. “You’re okay. You’re safe. Come back.”

He took a slow, deep breath and drew her scent of jasmine deep into his lungs. His eyes cleared and he looked up into her grass-green eyes and felt something stir and shift inside him. The same something he’d fought all night after kissing her at the dance.

Well, he thought, staring up at her, feeling her hands on his bare skin, he was through fighting. He wanted her. Had wanted her for days.

And now he was going to have her.

Seven

Reaching up, he cupped the back of her neck in his palm and pulled her head down to his. The first taste of her inflamed him, jolting through his body like a zap from an electrical wire.

She stilled briefly, then groaned into his mouth and returned his kiss with an eagerness that staggered him. Hunter used one hand to shove the pillows separating them aside, then yanked her close, molding her cotton-nightgown-clad body tightly against him. Every curve, every luscious inch of her was molded to him; he felt her heat searing his skin, and he wanted more. He wanted all.

“Take this off,” he murmured, moving his mouth a scant inch from hers.

“Yes, take it off. I want to feel you,” she whispered, her small, soft hands moving, constantly moving over his chest, his back, through his hair, scoring his scalp with her short, neat nails.

Every touch was fire. A blessing. A benediction. A compulsion. He wanted her skin beneath his hands. He wanted to trace every delectable curve with his fingertips, his mouth, his lips. He wanted everything she had to give, and then he wanted it again.

He raised himself up on one elbow, undid the buttons on that blasted gown-the very one that had been tempting him nightly-and then slowly, lingeringly, pulled the nightgown up and over her head. Her incredible hair fluffed out around her head as she lay back on the pillows, and he could think only about burying his face in the mass of curls, inhaling her scent, taking the tenderness she offered so openly.

Hunter had never felt anything like this. Such a wild, frenetic mixture of passion and gentleness. A driving need to bury himself inside her heat blended with the frenzied urge to watch her as she came. To push her higher and higher, to see desire flash and burn in her eyes, to hear her cry his name and feel her splinter in his grasp.

“You’ve been making me crazy for days,” he muttered, dipping his head to take first one rosy nipple into his mouth and then the other.

“I have?” she whispered, then, “Ohh…”

“That nightgown of yours. Covering up what I knew was under there.” He shook his head against her body, trailing his tongue around the edges of her nipple before nibbling gently at its peaked tip. “Ugliest, most seductive thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I didn’t know,” she admitted, then arched up, pushing her breast into his mouth, silently asking, demanding more.

He gave it to her, sucking until she whimpered, while his hand swept down her lush body, sliding across jasmine-scented, soft, smooth skin, to the juncture of her thighs. He found her wet and hot for him and groaned himself as he cupped her, rubbing his hand over her center, loving how she lifted her hips into his touch.

“Hunter…”

Her breathy sigh filled the room and shuddered inside him. Hunter wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. He’d never known such need, such all-consuming desire. And he wanted more.

Reaching quickly to the bedside table, he pulled the drawer open, rummaged one-handed inside it and came out with a condom. Quickly, he tore it open, tossed the foil wrapper and sheathed his aching body. Then he looked down at her, losing himself in her eyes. Moonlight played on her skin, making her flesh seem to shimmer in the pale wash of silver.

“Never get rid of that nightgown,” he ordered, already imagining watching her wear it, knowing what was beneath it, being able to pull it off her, like unwrapping a much wanted present.

“Right. Never.”

He grinned and slid closer, moving his mouth down now, across her rib cage, down to her abdomen to flick his tongue at her belly button. And still his hand worked her core. Fingers stroking, thumb pressing against the heart of her while she quivered and trembled for him like a finely played musical instrument.

He was the master, but she was the treasure. He touched her; she responded.

Her hands smoothed over his shoulders, her fingernails drawing light lines of sensation across his skin until he felt as if each one of her fingertips was a lit match head, singeing him down to the bone.

She carefully maneuvered around the bandage low on his hip and whispered, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” he assured her, pausing for one kiss, then another. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

The concern in her eyes touched him even more deeply than the flash of desire he read there as well.

“Let me show you,” he murmured, and before she could speak, he had shifted position so that he kneeled before her, lifted her hips from the bed and covered her wet, slippery heat with his mouth.

He looked at her then, her green eyes wide with passion and dazzled with pleasure as she rocked into him, instinctively reaching for the release he didn’t plan on giving her just yet. He took her to the edge again and again, working her flesh, driving her higher and higher. Her whimpered pleas became groans, and those became demands and still he wouldn’t let her find satisfaction. He kept her on a razor’s edge, even though he tortured himself as well.

His body hard, aching and unable to wait another minute, Hunter laid her down, covered her body with his and pushed himself deep into her heat. She was tight and hot and-gasping in shock.