The cold, rainy weather of April turned to May, swamping the deserted little corner of Arkansas with a blast of heat. The flowers burst forth into sensuous blossoms, lilacs and irises and roses and peonies, and Megan left the windows open in the various rooms she was put in, left the windows open to welcome in the warm air, the scent of spring. Left them open to Ethan.

She knew he came sometimes while she slept. She would dream that a hand brushed across her face, drifting down her throat gently, a caress as light as the wind. She knew he watched her, watched her on the video monitors, came and stood by her while she slept. She always knew the nights he came to her. When she awoke, her skin would feel flushed, sensitive, tingling with life. But ten days passed without her even seeing his shadow in the moonlight.

Ten days of moving from room to room with only Salvatore's dour presence for company, with the occasional relief of Ruth's determined friendliness. Ten days of solitude, of an odd sort of serenity as she waited. Waited for the inevitable. Waited for him to come to her.

She had no doubt that he would. She could feel him all around her, feel his wanting, feel his need. At times, she wondered whether it was only her own, confused need that she was projecting onto him. Those were the dark times, the anxious times that sent her prowling the gardens, looking for solace, looking for Joseph and his remote wisdom.

But he was missing, too. Occasionally, she'd glimpse him in the distance, but by the time she reached the spot where she'd seen him, he'd be gone without a trace, only the scent of freshly-tended flowers reminding her that he'd been there.

Ten days. There were times when she awoke in the middle of the night, alone and frightened in the darkness. Those were the nights when Ethan hadn't come, hadn't watched her, hadn't touched her, she knew that without question. Those nights were the hardest.

Reality intruded into her dreamlike existence on those nights. She'd think of Reese, alone, under indictment, facing disgrace, facing jail, with his own child turned against him, missing from the face of the earth. Except that he knew exactly where she was, had sent her there, sacrificed her in a last-ditch effort to save his own hide.

She'd think of her apartment, of going to the movies, going out to dinner, reading the latest historical romance, eating yogurt and ice cream and drinking Diet Coke. Here she seemed to exist on hummingbird's tongues, food arcane and elegant enough to be an art form in itself. Every now and then, she'd struggle into the tightest pair of jeans she'd brought with her, certain that she had to be fading away like a good Gothic heroine. They were still as tight as ever across her hips.

She took to wearing the long, flowing garments Ruth had brought her, wispy things that drifted around her body in a flow of what she knew had to be silk. She wouldn't have worn them, except they were so comfortable, she told herself as she floated from room to room, wondering where Ethan was, wondering when he'd reappear. And nothing she did brought her any peace.

Sometimes, she thought she could hear him, his words, soft, drawing her deeper and deeper into the spider's web of enchantment he'd spun around her, and her dreams would turn sharply, deeply erotic. She was being bewitched, she knew it full well. Hypnotized, caught up in a spell that, sooner or later, she'd have to break. But for now, she felt strangely powerless, content to drift on a tide of lazy sensuality, her every whim catered to. Except her need for him.

Ethan fought his need for her. For ten endless days, he wrestled with it, determined to keep his distance. Determined to push his longing for her, his aching need, to the level of a minor annoyance.

It was a losing battle. Maybe if he'd been able to keep away from her. Turn off the video monitors, turn off his desire for her. Maybe if he'd been able to keep to his underground lair, away from her.

But the temptation was impossible to resist. He would see her in the grainy, black-and-white monitor, watch her as she slept and know that he had to get closer. To breathe the same air. To smell the flowery scent that seemed to surround her. To touch her gilded hair. Salvatore was wrong—her hair wasn't the color of sunlight. Sunlight was harsh, glaring.

No, her shoulder-length blond waves were the exact shade of moonlight on a white rose blossom. A dreamy midnight color, silken to his gently questing fingers.

He had to send her away. He kept telling himself that he had to. The situation in town was escalating to intolerable levels, and he was giving it far too little attention as long as he was distracted by his unwilling guest. If he sent her away without touching her, he could concentrate on his lengthy plans for revenge.

But if lie sent her away without touching her, it might just kill him. His body vibrated with longing for her; his soul ached for her. And he was half afraid he was going mad.

Just one more night, he promised himself. One last time. He turned off the monitor, secure in the knowledge that Sal was somewhere in the town of Oak Grove. Not that he didn't know exactly where Ethan disappeared to at night. But for this last night, Ethan didn't want a witness.

She slept lightly, fitfully, but he had the ability to move in complete silence. He stood over her as she lay on the bed, the white muslin curtains billowing around her, and he reached out his hand to touch the gentle swell of her breast.

But that would wake her and precipitate everything he'd been resisting. He pulled his hand back as if scorched, and a spasm of rage swept over him. It had been years since he'd railed against the unfairness of life. He'd accepted it with a certain grudging cynicism.

But tonight he wasn't in the mood to accept anything. He wanted to take and take and take. And he knew if he stood there for one minute more, he'd do exactly that.

He moved out into the garden, stopping by the shallow pool, staring blindly at the reflection of the moon. The longing was so intense, it shook his body, and in full, aching silence, he tilted back his head and called to her, not with his voice, but with his heart. Called for her to come to him, to break the impasse that was tearing him apart.

To come to him when he wouldn't let himself go to her. To come to him. To love him. Now.

Megan awoke abruptly, pulled from her sleep by an inexorable force. She lay there against the feather pillows, her eyes open in the darkness, trying to remember where she was. Slowly it came to her, inevitably.

They'd moved her to a new room the day before, a huge, airy room painted in white, with yards of white muslin curtains at every window, including the French doors that led into the garden. The bed was mammoth, bigger than a king-size one, and set on a low dais. The sheets were white, too, the softest Egyptian cotton, and the few pieces of furniture, the table, the one comfortable chair, were all white. The only trace of color in the room had been the flowers, a small vase of something she didn't recognize. They were a deep bloodred, with perfectly formed blossoms and a hypnotic scent that filled the room, filled her senses.

The small walled garden matched the room. Every flower in the garden was white—white roses, white peonies, white irises, white lilacs. She had no doubt at all that when the later flowers bloomed, they, too, would be white.

There was a shallow pool in the center of the garden, the pathways with their white crushed stone leading to it, and the clear blue of the water echoed the blue of the sky. The place was perfect, serenely beautiful and yet oddly, subtly unsettling.

She sat up in bed, in the darkness, the pervasive scent of the flowers filling the air. She pushed back the covers, reaching for the light, and then pulled her hand back. The moon was full that night, she could see the bright reflection of the garden through the billowing curtains. A breeze had come up, filling the room with life, and for a moment, she didn't move.

She should lie down and pull the covers around her, she told herself. She should close her eyes, close her heart, keep safe from the phantoms of the night.

But he was calling to her. She could hear him, in her heart. She could feel him, nearby at last, waiting for her, calling for her. And she could no more ignore that call than she could stop her heart from beating.

She slid from the bed, pushing aside the filmy curtains. The room was a shifting mass of shadows, but she knew without question he wasn't there. He'd been there, watching her again. And then he'd left, for what reason she couldn't fathom. He'd left without touching her, without waking her, but deep within his tortured soul, he was calling to her.

And she was answering that call with a kind of dazed certainty. Time had lost all meaning. All that mattered was Ethan, calling to her to come to him. At last.

She moved through the room blindly, her long white robe trailing after her, out past the billowing white curtains, through the open door into the garden.

The landscape was bathed in moonlight, the white flowers glowing faintly. In the shallow pool she could see the reflection of the moon, round and full and pearly white like the flowers of the garden. And she could see the reflection of Ethan, dressed in black, his body tall and lithe, his face turned away from her so that all she could see was the fall of black hair.

"Come to me," he said, and she didn't know whether the words were spoken aloud or directly to her heart. It didn't matter. She moved toward him through the garden, her bare feet silent on the sharp white gravel, knowing she no longer had any choice in the matter. Her heart had taken away that choice. She was his completely, and he'd barely touched her.

She stopped in front of him, afraid to reach out her hand. He would have to make the first move. His face was in shadows, only the beautiful side remotely visible through the fall of hair, the shifting of the moon shadows through the garden. She tried to look up at him, but she was afraid, and instead, she closed her eyes, shivering lightly in the warm night air.

He touched her then, his hand sliding along her neck, beneath her heavy blond hair, tilting her head back to face him without pulling her closer. "Open your eyes, angel," he said in a voice silken and beguiling. "Look at me."

She had no choice but to do whatever that voice told her. She opened her eyes, looking up at him fearlessly. In the moonlit garden, the dark side of his face seemed to disappear, leaving only the unearthly beauty of his profile. It didn't matter. It was more than his face that drew her to him.

His hand slid down her neck to the base of her throat, to the ornate clasp that held the dress together. His long deft fingers released it even as his eyes held hers, and the gown parted, falling loosely about her.

His other hand came up to push the gown from her shoulders, and it landed in a flow of silk at her bare feet, leaving her naked by the clear blue pool, gilded in moonlight.

He didn't lower his eyes to look at her body. Instead, he was intent on her face, her eyes, her expression. "You stayed," he said, and tension ripped the sweetness from his voice. "You could have gone with Palmer. If you'd asked again, Salvatore would have let you go."

"I didn't want to go."

"I live in darkness," he said, still not touching her, his voice low and urgent. "In the shadows, in the warmth and safety of the night. If you come to me, you'll live in shadows, too."

She lifted her head to look around, and her hair rippled down her bare back. "The moonlight is bright enough for me," she said quietly.

He reached out then, his hands cupping her face, his thumbs caressing her cheeks. "I must be mad," he whispered. "You'll destroy me."

"I'll love you," she said, but the words were silent.

"You'll destroy me," he said again, closing his eyes in sudden despair. And then he kissed her.

She had one coherent thought after his mouth met hers. That this was the way it was supposed to be. This was what people chased after all their lives. This was why a wedding ended with a kiss. This was something that sealed, that changed her life, that took her soul to a place strange and new and terrifying. This time she wouldn't run.

She pressed herself against him, needing the feel of his body against her, needing something to hold on to. He was lean and hard and muscular, and his soft black clothes pressed against her skin, arousing her with the very incongruity of cloth against nakedness. Her vulnerability should have added to her fright, but instead, it made her only more determined. Her mouth opened beneath his, accepting whatever he wanted to give her.

His arms slid around her back, arching her against him, and his mouth trailed down the side of her neck, to touch the wildly beating pulse at the base of her throat. And then, with sudden strength, he picked her up in his arms, holding her tight against him, adding to her sense of frailty, she, who'd never felt frail or vulnerable in her life.

She leaned her face against his shoulder, giving up the last ounce of fight. She was his to do whatever he wanted with, and if she felt passive, it was an oddly, intensely erotic passivity. He moved through the billowing curtains into the darkened room with only the white-shrouded furniture marking the way, and then he set her down on the bed, standing over her, watching her as he'd watched her so many nights before.

She looked up at him, silent, questioning, wanting him more than she'd ever wanted anything in her life. He was only a shadow in the darkness, a silhouette dressed in black, a phantom lover come to her bedside, and she knew a sudden longing for sunlight. She wanted to see him, to touch him, to know him.

But instinct told her to take him on his terms. So she lay back against the pillows, eyes half closed in the shadowy darkness, and waited.

She could hear the rustle of clothing, and she knew he was stripping off his clothes. She wanted to rise up on her knees, to reach out for him in the darkness, but she couldn't move, mesmerized but his unspoken command in the inky blackness. She was trembling, not with cold, not with fear, but with her need for him. She wanted him so badly, she thought she might die of it.

And then he was on the bed with her, his hands on her shoulders, pulling her to him, and his skin was hard and hot and damp against her. "Ethan," she whispered, a small cry of passion, of need, of surrender as his hands moved down her body, dancing across her sensitive skin, arousing her without touching anything but her waist, the outer sides of her thighs, her knees.

He lay back against the mound of pillows, pulling her with him, his mouth against hers, kissing her with a devastating thoroughness that was bringing her perilously close to madness. She couldn't come with just his mouth on hers, his hands on her waist, and yet she was astonishingly close to it. His hands moved upward, sliding against her midriff, and she felt the slight, arousing roughness of his skin as it danced along her softness, moving closer and closer to her aching breasts. If he didn't touch her, she'd die. She knew it even as he tore his mouth away from hers, breathing heavily as he trailed kisses down the side of her neck.

Slipping away from her, he pushed her back on the bed, flat against the mattress. She reached for him, wanting to pull him against her, but he caught her wrists, holding them down beside her body. The touch of his mouth against her breast brought a reaction so intense, it was almost painful. She tried to arch off the bed, but he was holding her still with his hands on her wrists as he slowly circled one breast with his tongue, then tugged it gently into his mouth, suckling on it, nipping lightly with his teeth before turning his attention to her other breast.

She moaned, her breath coming in strangled gasps, and she struggled against his imprisoning grip. She wanted to touch him, to pull him over her, into her. Her body was twisting, desperate with longing. She needed him, needed him now. And yet she couldn't tell him. All she could do was writhe on the bed, trying to reach for him.

His hands released her wrists and for a moment, she was almost too dazed to react as he reached up and cupped her breasts, his thumbs caressing the dampened flesh. And then he moved his mouth downward, across her flat belly to the apex of her thighs, and she couldn't make a sound of protest. He kissed her in the downy thatch of golden curls, and then lower still, his mouth finding her with devastating effect. This time she struggled for a moment, her hands finding his head and trying to pull him away as his large, strong hands cradled her hips, holding her still. And then she wasn't tugging at him, she was threading her hands through his thick, long hair, holding him against her, arching against the devastating invasion of his mouth and tongue.

The darkness closed around her, the thick velvet night where no light penetrated, as the sensations swirled around her. It made no sense. Normally, she didn't even like what he was doing to her, had always found it vastly overrated. And yet now she was being turned into a quivering, mindless mass of female flesh in response to his mouth, his hands, his sheer intensity. She didn't want it; she wanted to give to him, not take, and yet he was giving her no choice.

He knew how to judge her reactions perfectly, the shift, the restlessness, the ripple of reaction, the strangled breathing. He knew when she was just on the edge of explosion, and he knew how to expand that edge, to draw her over it, willingly, tumbling to her doom with no more than a strangled cry. He knew how to prolong it so that she was clawing at his shoulders, sobbing frantically, certain her body could take no more until he showed her, with inexorable determination, that it could.

And yet it wasn't enough. She convulsed against his mouth, her body going rigid in reaction, and still she pulled at him, tugged at him, wanting more and more of him, wanting him, not his mouth, not his hands working their fiendish magic, she wanted all of him.

She was scarcely aware that he'd released her. Not until he covered her trembling, shivering body with his, wrapping her in his arms against his own tense, damp body did she realize that despite the contractions still rippling through her, he was no longer touching her.

She put her arms around his neck, burying her tear-damp face against his shoulder. Had she thought there was any chance at all she'd be able to hold some tiny part of her inviolate? It was a false hope. He'd taken her completely, and yet he hadn't even attempted his own satisfaction yet.

His hands reached to cup her face. The moon had gone behind a cloud and the tiny glow of light had vanished from the room, leaving them plunged into inky darkness. His long fingers brushed the tears from her face, and then his mouth followed, kissing salty dampness from her cheeks, her eyelids, her mouth. She didn't need to hear the words; he didn't need to speak them. You 're mine. Forever. She knew it in her heart, in her soul. There was no longer any chance of running.

She turned her mouth to meet his, and his long thick hair fell around them, closing them within a curtain of it. Once more darkness surrounded them, cocooning them in a world of sensation and midnight glory. He shifted her beneath him, parting her legs so that he rested against her, the heat and hardness and need of him, and she trembled, uncertain that she could take much more.

His slow, inexorable possession of her body was something she couldn't deny. It seemed endless, overwhelming, consuming, as her body shifted to accommodate him, and she knew from her initial twinge of discomfort that he was far more than what she was used to. Far more of everything. When be finally rested inside her, he pulled her legs up around his hips, settling in even deeper, and she couldn't contain a little gasp of dismay.

She could feel the iron hard muscles against her, feel the fierce control that tightened his body. ' 'Did I hurt you?" he asked softly, urgently, and she knew if she said one word, he would pull away, leave her. And she would die.

But she wouldn't lie. Never would she lie to him. Instead, she kissed his mouth, silencing the question, and tightened her legs around him, pulling him in deeper still.

Now it was his turn to shudder, to tremble and shiver in reaction. The control that he'd kept so tightly began to slip, as he slowly pulled away from her, only to fill her again. She winced in the darkness, keeping still, determined not to flinch from the fierce possession of his body.

She wasn't quite sure when it changed. When the last trace of discomfort vanished and she was reaching for him, clutching at him, sobbing and weeping as he strained against her. He was so strong, so powerful, that her entire body felt invaded, overwhelmed by his possession, a possession she didn't want to end. She arched up against him, knowing that nothing could possibly reach the heights she had earlier, but reaching anyway when the moon came out from behind the clouds, filling the room with silvery light.

He had his face turned away from her so that all she could see was his unmarked profile, the sheath of long hair between them. His muscles were bunched, slippery with sweat beneath her hands, and she was loath to give up holding him, touching him, but she had to. Reaching up, she caught his face, turning him to look down at her, full face, his bisected beauty mesmerizing her. She kissed his mouth, his nose, she kissed the marked side of his face. Pushing his hair out of the way, she kissed the side of his neck where the mark continued down between their joined bodies.

For a moment, he stilled the hypnotic, powerful rhythm of his body and she was afraid she'd gone too far. She met his gaze fearlessly and she said the words she'd only thought, the words that would be her death knell. "I love you."

He closed his eyes, an expression of pain and something else she couldn't read washing over him. And then, flinging his head back, he began to move again, slow, deliberate thrusts that she met with every last ounce of her strength. Until the tempo increased, until he was thrusting into her with a fierceness that should have frightened her. She held on desperately, somehow wanting to absorb him into her very skin. She knew he was on the absolute edge of his climax; she could feel it in the shivering tension of his body and she wondered why he held off, why he waited.

And then she knew, as suddenly, without warning, her own body convulsed again, around him, with a power that seemed to stop the earth in its orbit. She could feel him, rigid against her, she could hear her name, a curse of despair and triumph, as he joined her, spilling into her, giving the last that he'd kept from her in a timeless, endless dance of desire and satisfaction that she was certain would destroy her. And she would have gone willingly.

When reality returned, it was minutes, hours later. He was lying on top of her, his marked face hidden in the white pillow beside her, and his body was cool and shivery and very tense. She knew he was going to move away, and she couldn't let him go. Threading her arms around him, she clung tightly, unaware of her tear-streaked face, the desperation in her embrace.

His tense muscles relaxed against her, and his hand came up to gently caress her face. In a moment, he was asleep, pinning her beneath his much larger body, and she found, to her amazement, that she was smiling through her tears.

He was human after all, and just as prone as any other damned man to fall asleep after making love. It was a tiny measure of relief to know that even he wasn't always astonishing.

She lay beneath him, accommodating herself to his weight, knowing she couldn't possibly be smothered, even though it felt like it. As the tumult in her heart and body subsided, the tumult in her mind increased. It made no sense. Her experience hadn't been extensive, but enough to know what she liked and didn't like, of what her own body was or was not capable. And he'd proven her wrong on every point, taken her on a trip of such mysterious, mesmerizing proportions that she doubted she'd ever be the same again.

Now he slept in her arms, weighing her down, his silken hair around them both. And not for the first time she wondered whether she'd stepped into a fairy tale or a nightmare. Or a bewildering combination of both.

There was no answer to that. Not in the middle of a moon-shadowed night with a man in her arms who not only meant more to her than anything else. He was the only thing that mattered to her. The only thing at all.

She didn't know how it happened. What strange flaw in her character made her become totally obsessed by a man who'd essentially kidnapped her, terrorized her, seduced and enchanted her. It didn't do any good to wonder. For the first time in her twenty-seven years, she was in love, irrationally, completely. Eternally. She was just going to have to figure out a way to live with it.

Live with him.

If he'd let her.