Kneeling face-to-face, both naked to the waist, they paused…but only for a moment. It wasn’t a time for lingering explorations, for feasting the eyes, for stimulating the senses. Those senses had been stimulated quite enough as it was.

Eve felt sick with desire-dizzy and light-headed. When Jake reached for her and dragged her to him, she whimpered. His body was a furnace; she clung to him desperately, straining to get closer, dug her fingers into the muscles of his back, raked his shoulders with her teeth. He did the same, trying, it seemed, to touch every part of her at once. Forgetting to be gentle, but who cared? And there were no words. The only sounds they made were gasps and pants and whimpers of pleasure.

As if he’d reached the limits of his endurance, he suddenly captured her head between his hands, held it still while he first gazed with smoldering intensity into her eyes, then swooped down like a raider and took her mouth and plundered it without mercy, until she tore away from him sobbing, and cried out in panic and fear-not of him, but for her own sanity.

She couldn’t fight this. Instinctively she knew that her only relief lay in surrender. With eyes closed she tipped her head back and gave herself up to the waves of desire. Rocked on the rhythms of her own body, utterly lost, like one cast adrift on a stormy sea, she trusted him to be her anchor. Weightless, she had no grounding, no point of reference save for the burning heat of his mouth. And it was everywhere-a searing brand on her throat, a pounding pressure where her pulses leapt and jumped beneath the skin…gently laving the soft hollows of her neck, then fiercely raking the taut and quivering cords. It was an overwhelmingly sensual and exquisite torture. She felt it in every part of her, every corner of her being.

“Please…” she whimpered, not knowing how to articulate what it was she wanted. Just… “Please…Jake…”

While his hands held her hips pressed tightly against his body so that she felt its heat and hardness, its rocklike strength and powerful desire, his mouth continued its journey of conquest, as inevitable and devastating an assault on her senses as a wildfire. His lips whispered over her breasts like promises. His teeth raked a rigid nipple, his tongue bathed it with cooling moisture. His mouth encircled it, drew it deep into a melting, tugging warmth, and she thought she would explode, break apart in his hands… shatter into a million tiny pieces.

Her hands found his belt buckle, the waistband of his trousers. And as if it was the signal he’d been waiting for, his found hers, as well. She felt the scrape of fabric on sensitized nerve endings, the cool kiss of air, and then the warm embrace of his hands…and pleasure so intense, she wept. With his head cradled against her breasts, she buried her hands and her face in the thicket of his hair, and the sobs rippled through her like seismic waves.

He whispered something she couldn’t quite hear, and his arms came around her, encircling her in comforting warmth and reassuring strength. She pressed her face into the hollow of his neck and shoulder, reveling in the rasp of his beard on her cheeks, tasting the saltiness of his skin, drinking in the familiar spicy smell of him-oh yes, she remembered that smell. Had she known even then, somewhere deep inside, what it would come to mean to her? Now it seemed as if she had always known, as if she’d been born with his scent programmed into her genes.

Dimly she felt him drag her legs across his lap and shuck away her jeans and panties. She gave him no help. She was far beyond that. And then he laid her down, oh, so gently, and moments later followed her, having sloughed away his clothing like an old skin. She opened her arms to him with a welcoming chuckle and felt his body slide over hers…smooth and warm and silky hard. Ecstasy settled over her like a gossamer blanket woven of star bursts and sunbeams.

Nowhere in her consciousness was there even a glimmer of doubt, or the faintest echo of suggestion that there might be things she should attend to, reasons why she ought not to be doing this-here, at least, and now. Her world, her existence was Jake. His arms were her foundation, his body her fortress, his face her sun, moon and stars. He was the air she breathed; his heartbeat was her heartbeat; his mouth was her nourishment. When she closed her eyes she felt as if she’d ceased to exist as a separate entity entirely; she existed only as part of him.

So when he pulled away from her and, kneeling between her parted legs, began to blaze a new trail of kisses and love bites over her body, she cried out and clutched at him in panic, writhing and whimpering in inarticulate protest.

And with a low growl of understanding-as incapable of words as she-he straightened, and stroking and gentling her with his hands, reached under her thighs and drew them even farther apart…positioned himself and then at last, with excruciating care and quivering self-restraint, drove himself home.

Breath rushed from her lungs in a gasp of shock, relief and pleasure. She arched her back and opened to him in delighted welcome, half lifting her body to meet him. He scooped his arms under her and raised her to him so that she found herself again more upright than reclining, sitting astride his thighs and clinging to him in joyous abandon. The strength in his body both awed and exhilarated her, she felt the trembling of self-control deep within his muscles and from somewhere found the words, and the sanity, to whisper, “It’s okay…it’s okay.”

Then it was he who gasped, and with one hand supporting her head and the other pressing her lower body hard against him, took her mouth and plunged his tongue deep, while at the same time he surged into her with all power and passion unleashed.

She lost all sense of time and space. She knew only wave after wave of unimaginable pleasure alternating with mindless panic…tension that seemed to build and build, higher and higher until she wanted to scream with it. And finally… the deliciously terrifying, heart-stopping plunge from the highest point of the roller coaster, a cry torn from the depths of her soul, the absolute certainty that she could not survive this…

And then the trembling, pulsating quiet. The wondering joy at finding herself alive. The overwhelming sense of awe, humility, and…love? Oh, yes! That’s surely what it was. Love…

She was laughing, shaking with laughter while tears ran down from the corners of her eyes and into her hair. And Jake was kissing her mouth, her wet cheeks, her eyes, framing her face with his hands and rubbing the tears away with his thumbs. She could feel his body shaking. Staring up into his face, she blinked away the tear shimmer…and suddenly her heart was swelling, bursting inside her. She lifted her hands and touched his face, holding it as if it were something rare and wondrous-as indeed it was.

“Well,” she said in a voice soft with laughter and awe, “I guess I know now what it takes to make you laugh…”

Chapter 13

Unable to find the words, Jake gave up and kissed her.

Eve whispered, “I guess we’ll have to do this more often,” as she traced the curve of his mouth with a fingertip.

He heard her words, and his heart leapt beneath his ribs-a primitive cognizance of danger. What had they done?

He lay back with a careful exhalation, bringing her with him, wrapped in his arms. Even now, with the return of full awareness and, he hoped, a measure of sanity, he still couldn’t bear to separate from her. But, oh, what had he done?

He couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to do such a thing. It was against all his training, his professional ethics, not to mention common sense. And yet…and yet. The tousled head tucked under his chin felt so good there. Her body, thinner than he remembered, seemed to fit the planes and hollows of his own as if it were meant to be a part of it-like the yin to his yang, or the missing piece of a puzzle he’d been looking for all his life. Had he ever felt like this before? If he had, he’d surely have remembered it. What did it mean?

That question he had no answer to.

One thing he did know: the thought of sending this woman back to Cisneros made him sick to his stomach.

“Jake?” Eve raised herself on one elbow to look down at him. Her eyes had a misty, worried look, and he remembered belatedly the postcoital vulnerability of women. “You’re already regretting this, aren’t you?”

He reached up to touch her face with what he hoped was reassurance. “Yes…and no.” He looked at her for a long time, thinking how complicated it was, wondering if he’d ever be able to explain so she’d understand. He was filled with regrets, he ached with regrets…about all the years he’d spent without knowing her, what his life might have been like if he’d met her twenty years ago, the fact that he couldn’t wrap her up and take her home with him and keep her safe, make love with her every night and wake to her laughter every morning. How lonely that apartment of his was going to seem, how empty his bed, after this.

He sighed and closed his eyes, and wrapping his arms around her, pulled her down onto his chest. “I’m still having trouble believing I actually let it happen.”

She tensed in protest. “What do you mean, you let it happen? I kissed you first.”

“I met you halfway.” He let several beats go by before he said quietly, “We took no precautions.”

He felt the quick intake of her breath, the shivery tickle of her fingers stirring in the hair on his torso, then the warm flow of an exhalation. “I know. But I thought…since you’re in the FBI you probably have to be tested regularly, and I just had blood tests for the marriage license…” Her voice trailed off.

Jake lifted his head and pulled in his chin so he could look at her. “You thought of all that, did you?”

Her eyes danced up to meet his. “Well, no… It was maybe more like… instinct.”

“Instinct…” He lay back, jerking with silent laughter. A few more seconds ticked by, and then he said, “You know, that’s not the only consideration. I did tell you it was my wife who couldn’t have children.” He paused, surprised by the rasp of emotion in his voice, then added wryly, “I’ve been thoroughly tested, believe me, so I know. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

For a long moment she said nothing. Then she cleared her throat and murmured, “It’s okay, I’m on the Pill.”

She pulled away from him and sat up, keeping her back turned toward him as she searched awkwardly for her clothes. He could see only the curve of a flushed cheek, the sweep of lowered lashes, the childlike nape of her neck, but something about her seemed fragile, suddenly, and off-limits to him, as if she’d put away an essential part of herself behind glass walls.

“I have to get back,” she said huskily, hurrying. “They must be wondering where in the world I am.”

“Eve…” He reached out his hand and unable to resist touching her one more time, brushed his fingers lightly downward over the delicate bumps of her spine, the twin indentations just above the place where her buttocks began. He felt her breathing catch, and a shiver ripple through her body. Felt her hesitate… Then she stabbed her arms through the straps of her bra and pulled it around her and into position. The tiny click of the front catch was like a punctuation mark. A period. A closing.

Jake sat up and reached for his pants. He was suddenly thinking what he wouldn’t give for a shower, some cologne, a wet washcloth-at the very least, some of those little moist towelettes they give you at fried chicken places. As it was, he was going to have to crawl back into that damn van with Birdie Poole and Agent Franco, reeking of sex. And Eve…my God. He was sending her back to a houseful of people and a murderous fiancé, with his scent and the scarlet burn of his beard on her skin!

As if she’d heard his thoughts, she pressed her hands to her cheeks. “My face feels so hot,” she murmured, turning to him. “I have a whisker burn, don’t I?”

He took her by the shoulders, touched her chin and turned her face to the light. “Yeah,” he said gruffly., “you sure do. How are you going to explain it?”

Her eyes clung to his, jewel bright. “I went for a walk. A long one. I was trying to work off the calories. I got flushed…sunburned…poison ivy. I’ll explain it, okay? Don’t worry about me.” Breathless, she picked up her collar and thrust it at him. “Help me with this, will you? Please?”

He took it from her and held it for a moment in his hands while he gazed at her. Then he lifted it slowly and settled the two halves into place, one in front, one in back, once again entombing her neck-that lovely neck, with its vulnerable nape and elegant throat, vibrant pulses and petal-soft skin-in cushioned plastic. He felt as if he were strapping her in irons, or the guillotine.