And as before when he did that, she uttered a little yelp of protest. Only this time, he ignored it, left the light on and went back to doing what he’d been doing so pleasurably before.

“Have a heart,” she whispered, clutching his shoulders and laughing weakly as he reached under her tunic to stroke the sides of her waist.

“Come on,” he teased, pulling her torso against his and at the same time bending her backward a little, nibbling the side of her neck, delighting at the way her body moved in his hands, the way her muscles flexed and tightened, supple as a green willow. “You don’t mean to tell me you’re embarrassed…” Her shaky little half laugh confirmed it. Still not believing she was serious, he pulled back and looked at her, smiling himself, expecting to see a teasing light in her eyes. “Carlysle?”

But she wouldn’t let him see her eyes, and he wondered if it was because of what he’d told her, that he could read her feelings in them.

“Well, of course I am,” she murmured, sounding a little testy, licking her lips as if she could taste him still. “I told you, it’s been more than five years…and before that there was only…” She paused, drew a breath and blurted out, “You’re only the second man who’s ever seen this body, not counting obstetricians, and, well…”

That tenderness that surprised him every now and then, and that unnerved him so whenever it appeared, was lurking about again, playing a little goblin-game with his emotions. He fought it, keeping his frown in place as he said solemnly, in the best John Wayne imitation he could muster, “Well, ma’am, from what I’ve been able to see of it, it looks like a damn fine body to me.”

She made a disparaging sound, half snort, half whimper. “It’s forty-five years old, and looks every year of it.”

God help me, he thought, suddenly remembering what she’d said to him about people collecting baggage, and about nothing being as simple now as it was when they were young. Nothing about this woman was simple, that was for sure, and neither was the way he felt about her. Where in the hell was good ol’ lust when he needed it?

You’ve been with other women, she’d said-what’s one more? But he’d never felt like this, not under these circumstances, anyway. He felt protective, strong, but a little bit awed and humble, too, as if he was taking part in something…special. Out-of-the-ordinary. And there was that word again: Important.

Even the first time with Jenny hadn’t felt like this-but he’d been a virgin then, himself, and Jen, well, Jen had always been so sure of herself, so sure of him. In some strange way, he thought, Jane seemed younger now than Jenny had then.

He felt her shudder when he began, slowly, to lift her tunic, but she didn’t stop him, and he pulled it over her head and let it drop to the floor. Her hands fluttered nervously to the center clasp of her bra, but he gently pushed them aside and put his there instead. And then, instead of unhooking it immediately, he leaned down and kissed her a long, slow time, until her breathing grew uneven and she had to reach for him to keep from falling.

And still he didn’t free her breasts from that last bastion of modesty and protection, but began to rub the nipples through the lacy fabric that covered them, until he could feel them grow hard and tender, and chafe against that restriction. Until her breaths became tiny pants and whimpers that he took from her lips like sips of warm brandy.

He knew she would have torn off the rest of her clothes then herself, if he’d let her. But now, perversely, he denied her, holding her captive with his mouth and hands, and when she finally tore her mouth free and clung to him, incoherently gasping, instead of undressing, he began to talk to her. Blowing the words past the sensitive channels of her ear so that every nerve ending shivered to attention, he began to tell her about how he’d spent most of his adult life in Europe, where people have different attitudes toward women and age.

“Someone told me once…” Someone… He didn’t tell her just then about Ava, the mistress of a notorious drug kingpin with whom he’d had a brief but mutually profitable liaison, and who, last he’d heard, was enjoying a comfortable retirement in Morocco while the kingpin was serving a life sentence in a Gibraltar prison. But he knew he would…someday. Someday. And that, in itself, was a revelation.

For now, though, he told her what Ava had said to him once, on a warm summer day in Tuscany. “A woman’s body is a receptacle, caro mio…in which she collects life’s pleasures and experiences. And the more she collects, the more of life she experiences, the more she is able to give and receive pleasure…”

“In other words,” Jane gasped. “I’m not getting older, I’m getting better?”

“You got it.” He heard her breath catch as he finally released the catch on her bra. Slowly, he drew the halves apart, pushed the straps over her shoulders and down, until the thing fell of its own accord. Then he didn’t say a word, just looked at her, watching her face until he saw her lips soften in a smile…sleepy, seductive and wholly female.

“What are you waiting for?” she said huskily, licking her lips. “This receptacle has got some catching up to do.”

He laughed then, and he’d never known laughter to feel so good.

She’d wanted to make him smile, she remembered, the first time she’d ever set eyes on him. But she hadn’t known it would feel like this to look at him, full to bursting with wonder, joy and fear. Stunned, she lifted a hand to touch his lips with just the tips of her fingers, awed by the firm satiny warmth of them, hardly able to believe those same lips still bore the glaze of moisture from her own mouth, and that she could still taste him on her own tongue.

It was with a sense of shock that she realized she’d felt this same confusing mix of happiness and terror twice before, when she’d first gazed upon the faces of her newborn daughters, first tremulously touched the velvety fuzz on their heads with an awestruck finger. Love. No gentle emotion, this. No hearts-and-flowers and giddy birds tying ribbons into lovers’ knots. This was something fierce and frightening, powerful and ungovernable. Not a choice at all, but a force of nature.

“Tom,” she cried, “I-” But she stopped herself in time, and didn’t say it out loud.

Instead, she gulped and said, “Hey, when do I get to see your-” And stopped again.

“-My forty-five-year-old body?” he finished for her with such gallantry her heart, if it hadn’t already, melted completely. Grinning, he held out his arms. “Feel free…”

Feel free. Oh, she wanted to, more than anything. She wanted to feel, to experience, to relish and enjoy, to lose herself in almost forgotten sensations, languish in unimagined pleasure. But it was all so new, and that she hadn’t expected. Her mind was so busy discovering, sorting, comparing, questioning, wondering… She didn’t want to think at all, and instead she was overwhelmed with thoughts.

Have I ever done this before? she wondered as she lifted Tom’s sweater and helped him push it up and over his head, clumsily, so that he emerged tousled and grinning, like a mischievous boy. She couldn’t remember, and it didn’t seem likely she would have. Unwilling to relinquish even that much control, David had always preferred to undress himself. Should she tell Tom that? And would he believe her if she did?

He is beautiful. she thought as she tugged his soft white T-shirt free of his trousers and skimmed it upward, running her hands over the almost geometric symmetry of his abdominal muscles, brushing the tickly thicket of chest hair with her arms and biting her lips to keep from following her impulse to bury her face in it. Beautiful…just as I imagined he’d be. Should she tell him so? Would she sound like a silly, besotted girl if she did?

And all the while, he was cradling the weight of her breasts in his hands, teasing and tormenting the nipples with his fingers until they hardened to the point of hutting-a good hurt, a delicious hurt, a tugging she could feel deep down inside-and all she wanted to do was close her eyes and sink into that glorious sensation and forget everything in the world but his hands…his mouth…his body.

This is worse than being a virgin, she thought, swaying drunkenly into his hands, trying not to moan at his touch. I should be better at this…I have no excuses for being so scared.

“Hey, look at me,” Tom said in his familiar gravelly murmur, his breath pouring like liquid sunlight over her eyelids. She tried, but her eyes wouldn’t focus, and she saw him only in a shimmering blur. From inside it his voice came, softer than she’d ever heard it, soft as the voices of bees on lazy summer afternoons. “You are beautiful, but that’s not the reason I wanted the light on. The part of you I really want to see is your eyes…”

She felt his hands moving, fanning down her rib cage to the sensitive sides of her waist She sucked in air when his fingers feathered across her belly, dipped under the elastic waistband of her leggings and eased them gently over her hips. With his hands firmly cupping her bottom, he paused and murmured, “Your turn…”

She struggled with his belt buckle, her fingers nerveless and stiff as wire. It parted more of its own accord, she thought, or some kind of miracle, perhaps, than from anything she’d done. But when she slipped her hands inside his waistband, his skin felt warm and smooth, like silk. She wanted desperately to kiss him there. Do I dare? she thought. Would it be too bold?

“Look at me,” he said more insistently now. “You look scared. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

It took a moment; her tongue felt wrapped in cotton wool. When she did try, her words kept getting caught in her breathing and bumping into her wildly pounding heartbeat, so they came out in broken gasps. “I keep…thinking I feel…like I’ve never…done this before.” She tried to laugh and failed miserably. “Silly…”

“But you haven’t,” he said. And neither have I. He kept trying to believe otherwise, that it was as she’d said, that she was no different than any of the other women-lovely women, each and every one-he’d been in lust with during the past seven years. He was trying his best to make it all about sex, but it kept getting away from him and turning into…something else. What. exactly, he didn’t know. What he did know was that all the women he’d made love to in his lifetime hadn’t prepared him for making love to this woman. Nothing had prepared him for Jane.

Prepared. The thought hit him like a bucket of cold water.

How, he wondered, silently cursing himself with all the virtuosity of half a lifetime’s international experience, could he have been so stupid? He felt as clumsy and ill-equipped as an adolescent boy.

“What?” The word was a warm, frightened puff against the base of his throat, and he realized that he’d gone stiff and still as a post, with his hands neatly cupping the part of her that had contributed most to his lustful fantasies, not to mention a couple of recent sleepless nights.

“Carlysle,” he groaned, “please tell me you’re on the Pill.”

“I’m not.” She pulled back a little, frowning. “I mean, there wasn’t…” He sighed, and slowly eased his hands away from her bottom. “Wait,” she gasped. “Don’t go ’way.” And before he could stop her, she’d slipped out of his arms and was darting across the bedroom, forgetting to be self-conscious about the fact that she was wearing only a pair of formfitting leggings.

A diaphragm? he thought, bemused. Would such a thing still be functional after five years? But no, she was making, not for the bathroom across the way, but down the hall to one of the bedrooms he’d assumed belonged to her daughters. He heard a door open, then drawers scraping in and out.

A moment later she was back, looking embarrassed but triumphant as she came to him, all too aware now of her nakedness, but determined not to cower. He wondered if he could ever make her understand how sexy she looked to him. She was right, hers was a forty-five-year-old’s body, not a young girl’s, and all the more beautiful because of it…lush and ripe as the fruits of summer, or a velvety, full-blown rose.

“How’s this?” she said breathlessly as she dropped a foil packet onto the nightstand. She flushed and nervously pushed her hair back from her face, and didn’t look at him as she explained, “I got them…a while back. For Lynn. She’s on the Pill now, so I don’t think she’ll mind.”

“You bought condoms…for your daughter?” Hawk didn’t know why he felt so shocked; some sort of residual fatherhood instinct, he supposed.