She watched as he came around and got in swearing when his knees bumped the steering wheel. Sliding the seat back, he started the car and drove off.

On the bike, Stone craned his neck to watch them go, waving when they passed.

Rafe didn’t wave back. Jaw tight, working the temperamental gear shift as if he’d been driving this vehicle all his life, he sped away.

Emma stared at his hand on the gear stick. It was big, tanned and, she had good reason to know, calloused on his fingertips and palm. Just thinking about how that warm hand felt gliding over her breast, catching a little on her nipple, made her shiver.

“Which way?” he asked.

Feeling suddenly dry-mouthed, she just pointed.

While his long legs worked the clutch and the gas, his face was taut with concentration…and something else, something making his big, hard body tight with tension.

He glanced over at her with so much hunger and heat in his eyes, it took her breath.

Excitement flooded through her, making her nipples even harder, and between her legs she was already wet. He hadn’t even touched her yet, but oh, he was going to, and all because she’d asked him. She’d come on to him and he’d not only accepted, he couldn’t wait to get to it.

The power of that was mind-blowing. “Here,” she said, pointing. “You turn here.”

He did so fast and furiously, as if on a car chase. She couldn’t help it-a little laugh escaped her, though she wasn’t sure if it was from amusement or nerves.

“What?” he asked in a low voice, glancing over at her. “What’s so funny?”

“Your hurry.”

He spared her another glance. “You didn’t think I’m dying here? That I’ve been dying for a very long time?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You can spend the next few hours making it all up to me.”

How was it he made her want to laugh and melt at the same time? “So just to put it all out there…we’re tied in the wanting department. Right?” This was her last doubt, right here. Because she knew how much she wanted him, more than her next breath, actually, and she didn’t see how he could want her that much in return.

Without taking his eyes off the road, he reached over and took her hand. He brought it up to his mouth, took a quick bite out of her palm, then kissed the spot.

She felt the tug all the way to her belly.

“We are tied,” he said softly, then slid her hand down his body to the juncture of his jeans, cupping his hand over hers so that she could feel the unmistakable outline of an erection so impressive it took her breath.

She stared at him, her fingers molding to the shape of him through the denim.

“I’m not going to be able to take much of that,” he said, eyes still on the road.

She did it again.

“Feeling playful?” He squeezed her bare thigh before running the tips of his fingers beneath the hem of her denim shorts.

“T-turn right,” she said on a shaky laugh. “Second house on the left. It’s the last house on the street-”

He parked in her driveway so fast that her head spun.

“Inside,” he said. As if to make sure she was following, he pulled her out across his seat.

At her front door, he waited with barely masked impatience while she fumbled with the lock. Fumbled, because there was something unsettling about having a six-foot-two-inch, gorgeously rumpled, frustrated man standing over her, breathing down her neck, needing her so badly he couldn’t even talk.

She barely got the door unlocked before he took her arm and led her inside, pressing her back against the door as he shut it with their momentum. And then she was pinned there by his harder body.

“Now,” he said.

“Now,” she agreed.

He pulled off her shirt in one economical movement, then lifted his arms for her when she tugged at his. Both hit the floor. He went to work on her bra next, swearing when he couldn’t find the hook. Laughing a little, gasping for breath, too, she showed him the hidden latch. Then it was gone and he bent, taking a breast in his mouth.

“Wait,” she said.

And with his mouth on her breast and his fingers on the fastener of her shorts, he went still.

“I just thought a bed…”

With a groan, he rested his forehead against hers. “Yeah, a bed, face to face, with my body buried so deeply inside yours that I don’t know where I end and you start.”

Just his words made her quiver.

“But if we go now, it’ll be over far too fast.” He dropped to his knees and slid off her shoes and shorts, leaving her in nothing but a pair of sunshine-yellow cotton bikini panties. He ran his finger over the elastic at her hip, slid both hands around the back of her and cupped her cheeks in his hand.

“You have the best ass ever. Turn around, Emma.”

Her stomach fluttered but she did as he asked-turned so that her front was now pressed up against the door. Still on his knees, he traced his fingers along the leg openings of her panties, until they met at the back juncture of her legs, lingering to explore. She pressed her palms flat to the door, and her cheek, too, looking for balance in a tilted world. Her nipples pressed against the wood, as well, and her thigh muscles were so tight they were shaking.

“Rafe-” She broke off when he touched the inside of her thigh, urging her legs open for more discovery on his part, and she had to lock her knees to remain upright.

“Mmm.” One finger slid beneath the material and lightly, so lightly, traced over her every curve. “So wet.”

And then he slid her panties down. She gasped and, then when she felt his mouth low on one cheek, the gasp turned into a moan. He kissed a line down to the back of one thigh and then up the other, while his fingers delved between, leaving her panting, arching, writhing.

“Please,” she heard herself whisper. “Oh, please.”

“Anything.” Surging to his feet, he pressed his chest to her back, slipping his arms around her ribs so that he could cup her breasts, teasing her nipples into two tight, aching peaks with a rasping glide of his fingers and thumbs. “Anything, Emma.”

“Inside me,” she managed to say, pushing her butt into his crotch, knowing she was making the front of his jeans wet but beyond caring.

She heard the pop, pop, pop of his buttons. Felt him rub the length of his erection down her backside. Arching her back, thrusting herself upward to help, pressing her face to the wood, she whispered his name again-a whisper that turned into a cry of pleasure when he eased just his very tip inside her.

Then he pulled back. Thinking he was going to thrust again, she widened her stance and waited with baited breath. He kissed her shoulder, her neck, whispering her name, and when she realized he was asking her a question, she lifted her head.

“I still don’t have a condom.” He kissed the other side of her neck. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think when I ran out of the house after you like I did that I’d-”

“I have one,” she admitted, and turned to face him. “I write city girls for a living, remember? I…thought I should know how to use one.” Embarrassed, she started to look the other way, but he tilted her chin up and kissed her long and deep.

“Let’s go,” he said, and kicked off the rest of his clothes.

She looked down at the clothes on the floor, feeling more than a little naked, but he took her hand and tugged her toward the hall, not giving her a chance to feel anything but him.

It worked. His kiss always would. He just had a way of putting everything he had into it, and getting her to do the same. Before him, she’d have said kissing with her tongue was…well, something she tolerated.

Now? She thrived on those kisses. At least for tonight. Just for tonight.

She took him into her bathroom, opened the drawer and showed him the box missing one condom. A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.

“What did you experiment on?”

“A carrot,” she admitted, blushing when he laughed good and hard.

“A carrot.” Shaking his head, he pulled a condom out of the box, ripped open the packet with his teeth and then handed it to her. “Show me.”

“You’re bigger than a carrot,” she murmured as she rolled the condom down the length of him.

“Yes, thankfully.”

She led him to her bedroom. She hadn’t opened the shutters because the light interfered with the screen of her laptop. She hadn’t picked up her clothes, and her bed wasn’t made.

One of the pitfalls of working twenty-four-seven-she never got to the “home” stuff and it was never more evident than right this minute.

“Sorry,” she muttered. She kicked a pile under her bed, then tossed a towel off her sheets to the floor.

“No, it’s good,” he said, following her down, down, down to the mattress, covering her body with his, thrusting a leg between hers so that she was wide open to him. “Emma.” He took her mouth with his until she was once again clinging to him.

Then, holding her hips in his hands, he lifted up enough to snag her gaze with his.

And that just might have been her biggest mistake yet. Because as he thrust inside her with one delicious flex of his hips, as he let out a low moan that was a twin to hers, as he gathered her close, she knew the undeniable truth.

This was about far more than tonight.

This was about her heart.

About her soul.

But quite possibly, about falling in love.

But since she couldn’t go there, not now, maybe not ever, she closed her eyes and let the wave of passion take them both.

17

RAFE WOKE UP at the crack of dawn to find he had one tiny corner of the bed, no covers and no pillow.

And no woman in his arms.

Emma had the rest of the bed, all of the covers and both pillows. She was facedown, sprawled out and dead to the world.

Since he risked falling off the bed if he so much as moved, he didn’t. He just lay there and looked at her.

Always, he left a woman’s bed before the sun came up. So he stared at Emma, waiting for the claustrophobia to overcome him.

Nothing.

Still, he waited, for it would happen. It always did. It was why he wanted out of his “Hollywood” lifestyle, wanted to meet the kind of woman he could wake up with and feel excited about instead of panicked.

In anticipation of the need to run, he forced himself to slip out of bed. Leaning over her, he kissed her lightly before backing to the door.

He always left, he reminded himself. And he was leaving now because they had no future. He was leaving now because she’d wanted only one night.

He was leaving now for the biggest reason of all.

Because he didn’t want to.

He looked down at her, sleeping so deeply. If she moved, if she so much as twitched, he would stay.

But she didn’t.

THE NINTH PHOTO SHOOT was two days later. Emma had agonized over it for most of that time. She had agonized over everything since the moment she’d woken up alone in her bed the night after Rafe had-

Well. Thinking about what Rafe had done to her that night brought both the memory of incredible pleasure-more than she’d ever known-and a good amount of pain.

Because that was the night she’d realized she was in trouble when it came to her feelings about Rafe Delacantro. Maybe she’d realized it before then, but it hadn’t been until he’d made love to her, in her bed, in her shower, on the kitchen table at three in the morning while they were feeding each other cheese and crackers, that she’d been able to face it. She was in deep.

So much for keeping a clear head about this.

Now, hours before the shoot, Amber sat on Emma’s bed, munching on yogurt, her idea of junk food. Emma’s idea of junk food was a big old bag of chips. Thank God for good metabolism.

“Are you sure?” Amber asked for the fifth time as Emma stared at herself in the mirror. “Because, quite honestly, I don’t get why you have to do this.”

“I know.” Emma didn’t know how to put into words why she wanted to do this shoot instead of having Amber do it. She figured it was a sneaky way of seeing Rafe again, since she knew the way he’d left the other morning without waking her up meant that either she’d completely disappointed him or he was scared of his feelings for her in the same way she was scared of her feelings for him.

But she couldn’t imagine Rafe scared of anything.

Which meant she’d disappointed him.

Hard on the ego, but she’d had two long nights to agonize over it now. She could have been more aggressive, hotter, more earthy somehow-she just knew it. Maybe she could convince him to come back out to her place tonight and they’d try again-

“Because if I didn’t know better,” Amber said carefully, “I’d guess you were really into him. But since I do know better, it has to be something else, right?”