Monday, July 26. 1:23 a.m. Khandallah, a northern suburb in Wellington, New Zealand.

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A woman’s soft whimpers catapulted Daniel up from the dark pit of exhausted sleep.

Something thwacked him solidly across the chest, and something else, covered in a slippery synthetic fabric, jabbed him repeatedly in the shin.

“Ana?” he said, reaching out blindly.

The sleeping bag his questing hands found squirmed and thrashed as if it were filled with highly agitated snakes. He reached for the flashlight stashed against the tent wall and switched it on. The thin beam of light illuminated Ana’s hair spilling in wild curls across the floor of the tent. Her normal warm complexion had drained to a taut waxiness and tears spilled from under her tightly clenched eyelids.

On his hands and knees he set the flashlight down so he could slide his hands down her arms, chafing her wrists and palms. It was like caressing marble. Her head tossed from side to side, dark strands clinging to her tear-streaked cheeks.

“Ana, honey, wake up.”

Daniel told himself the reason he smoothed the hair off her face and wiped the moisture from her cheeks was that he didn’t want to startle her awake in the midst of a nightmare. He leaned over her, murmuring her name, watching as the dream that held her terrified released its death grip. Sooty lashes cast tiny jagged shadows on her cheekbones, flickering like butterfly wings as she blinked repeatedly.

“Hey,” he said.

A solitary tear purled over the arch of her lashes and slid down her face until its trail was stopped by his thumb. That one tear undid all his earlier resolve of not touching her. Her eyes locked guilelessly with his, a melted chocolatey-brown now that tears deposited a watery sheen across their surface.

“Daniel?”

He couldn’t reply; the words necessary to express all that he wanted to say pounded through his veins and glued his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Instead, he skimmed his lips along the path that final tear had tracked. The path ended at the corner of her mouth. Her faint exhale puffed against his jaw. Would an emphatic “no” follow a second later on those full lips?

When no resistance came, he angled his mouth over hers, hovering, not touching, feeling his restraint crumpling one layer at a time. He didn’t know who closed the whisper of space between them; it simply evaporated in the heat of the moment. His lips drank in hers as if she were an oasis in a vast desert. She offered no resistance but that wasn’t enough. His tongue flicked against the curve of her lower lip. The moan that slipped out of her was ten times more arousing than the one he’d overheard earlier because this time he knew it was for him and him alone.

Deepening the kiss, his fingers dipped into her hair and curled loosely into a fist. When his tongue probed softly again, it met with hers in a gentle duel. Now it was his turn to moan.

His arm and shoulder muscles started to spasm as his entire weight rested on them in an effort to keep his body off hers. Sliding his legs out from his kneeling position to lie beside her, he heard her make an inarticulate sound of disapproval when his lips momentarily abandoned hers.

He knocked the flashlight over and it spun in an arc away from him, shadows roiling and jumping, a fact he scarcely registered. Her fingers wove through his hair and yanked his lips back to hers.

“Don’t stop,” she murmured against his mouth.

He gathered her into his arms, rolling half onto his back so she was cradled full length in his embrace. “Not a chance.”

The sleeping bag had tangled around her waist, leaving half her body flattened onto his chest. The sweater she wore barely masked the delicate swell of her breasts pressed against him. His hands traced concentric circles down her back, fingers encountering a strip of smooth, warm skin.

His sweater, which should have covered her to her knees, had bunched upward. He followed the dip of her waist to the ridges of her rib cage and, unable to resist his desire to explore further, tilted her body away from him so his fingertips could glide over the silken rise of her breasts. She arched back, her breath hitching as she pulled away.

Now you’ve overstepped the mark, Calder.

His hand stilled until a second later she moaned again. Her body shifted subtly down so her whole breast slipped firmly into his palm, the nipple swelling even as his fingers closed around her softness. He pulled the sweater over her head then quickly removed his T-shirt, relishing the sensation of skin against skin.

Her fingers raked through his scalp and then clutched at his shoulders, nails digging shallow crescents in the muscle. For all he cared she could score the skin from his back as long as he was allowed to keep touching her.

“Please, Daniel.”

He unzipped the sleeping bag as far as he could reach, and explored the slopes of her shapely ass he’d been itching to get his hands on. She gasped into his mouth, scraping her nails lightly from his shoulders to his shorts. Then she boldly dipped her fingers between the waistband and his stomach, brushing the head of his cock. His hips jerked instinctively forward and the growl that rumbled out of his chest had her fingers fumbling for his zipper.

This woman wasn’t passively permitting him to make love to her. Instead, it was as if he had accidently triggered a switch inside her, transforming her tearful nightmarish state into an inferno of arousal. He wanted to slow things down, to take his time traversing every inch of her beautiful body. But the moment she finally managed to peel open his shorts, all his good intentions evaporated in the flaming heat of his need to bury himself inside her.

---

Ana was in way over her head and drowning.

But what a way to go.

Daniel’s jaw, prickly with stubble, rasped along her shoulder, trailing warm kisses.

The nightmare that left her breathless had been a doozy, and she’d woken to find his face inches from her, his eyes dark with concern. Her unguarded emotions were too raw, too real. When he’d kissed her all the logical arguments why she shouldn’t give in were swept away.

Just this one night, she told herself. Just this one moment, and it’ll flush him right out of my system.

The musky male smell of him overwhelmed her senses; the feel of his arousal through the barrier of the sleeping bag torching her own excitement. Once she permitted herself to touch him, to give in to the need for him to touch her, it was as if a wanton stranger had hijacked her body.

Bold in her caresses, she felt empowered as Daniel groaned with pleasure at her touch. That she could have such an effect on a man like him was a potent aphrodisiac. She liked the sensation of being in control of this large and devastatingly gorgeous male.

Where had this part of her been hiding?

She removed her hand from the front of his shorts so Daniel could strip the sleeping bag from her feet. He spread it flat on the floor while she crouched at the end of the tent.

“Are you sure?” His voice was husky, his eyes deep cobalt in the shadowy light as he turned toward her, removing a small silver foil from his wallet.

Her eyes slid lazily down his chest, over the sculptured muscles of his abdomen to the spread-apart opening of his shorts, seated low on his hips. The exposed folds of his boxer shorts underneath did nothing to hide the solid length of his erection.

“I’m sure,” she said, her pulse bounding. “I’ll turn the flashlight off.”

“Leave it on.”

He crawled toward her, stopping when they kneeled face-to-face. With one finger he traced a feathery line from the dip in her throat, down over her achingly tight nipple, under the curve of her breast, and slid briefly between her skin and his borrowed boxer shorts—the only stitch of clothing she had on.

“I want to see your face when I’m deep inside you,” he said.

All the moisture that had pooled in her mouth suddenly plummeted between her thighs.

“I want you to see what you do to me,” he added and guided her hand to rest against his chest.

Everything in her quaked with need as his warm, smooth skin seemed to pulse with his rapid heartbeat. Tiny hairs prickled against the pads of her fingers as she scoped out the contours of his chest and explored the hard valley of his stomach.

She wrapped a fist around him, sliding it sensuously along his length sandwiched between the soft folds of his boxers. “Not going commando, then?”

He bent down, ducking slightly backward so her fingers slipped from him. His tongue darted out to taste the ridged tip of her breast. Then he drew her nipple into his mouth, his tongue swirling delicate rings around the areola. Glad his hair was long enough to hook her fingers through, she clutched him close to her, surrendering to the pleasure of his lips as they transferred attention to her other breast.

Hands grazing the waistband of her shorts, he snagged the elastic and tugged it leisurely down her hips, where it slid with barely a whisper to her knees. His fingers plunged between her thighs, two of them sliding along her slippery length to lodge deep inside her. His thumb swirled a solitary circle around her center. The sudden movement both shocked her and nearly caused her to climax.

She moaned his name and he kissed her again, the stubble around his lips chafing hers. She couldn’t get enough of his mouth and she unashamedly pulled her body hard against his, reveling in his chest hair that tickled her breasts and the cotton gently abrading her thighs.

“Now,” she begged as his hands cupped her bottom and raised her up so his erection pressed firmly into her groin, making her squirm. She wanted him inside her that instant. She wanted him to take her, every part of her. To feel the empty space inside her filled to capacity by him and only him.

“Not yet, honey. I’m just getting started.” He was torturing her as he raised and lowered her body achingly against him, as if she weighed no more than feather down.

He unwrapped her arms from around his neck and lowered her to the sleeping bag. She propped herself up on her elbows; in the dusky light she watched him peel off his remaining clothes and rip open the condom packet. She forgot to breathe. Fully clothed, Daniel Calder was impressive. Naked and blatantly aroused, he was magnificent.

Surprisingly, she felt no desire to cover her own nakedness. All inhibitions were swallowed by the passion for this man who knelt at her feet, his large work-roughened hands sliding over her calf muscles to part her thighs. If she had any misconceptions of who had control in this situation, it was shattered to a million jagged pieces when she heard herself whimpering as his tongue followed the path his fingers had earlier.

Time spun out, minutes and hours and days seemed to flit by as he tracked moist kisses along the line of her hipbone and lower through her soft curls. When he tasted her so thoroughly with his mouth, lips probing her most sensitive spot, her nails indented little crescents in her palms.

Everything spun in orbit around her: emotions, the repetitive loving sweeps of his tongue, the sensations building deep in her womb as she fought and failed to prolong a climax. And, oh God—the orgasm slammed into her, merciless and violent in its intensity, and she cried out, bucking under the strong hands grasping her hips.

Endless seconds later her eyes blinked open. Her body still quivered with aftershocks, and she gathered enough brain cells together to appreciate the irony in that. She knew from experience that one orgasm was her usually her limit, and a sliver of disappointment slithered through her that she hadn’t been able to hold off long enough to feel him inside her.

Daniel rested on his forearms above her, his erection lodged against the juncture of her thighs. His eyes locked with hers and glittered with an intensity that caused her breath to catch.

“I still want to watch you come again while I’m deep inside you.”

“I don’t think I can,” she protested softly, moving her legs so she could wrap them around his waist and draw him deep into her body.

“Challenge accepted.” He smiled down at her, pulling back and slipping his hand between their sweat-soaked bodies, stroking her dampness while his lips claimed hers in a soul-wrenching kiss.

Sensation upon sensation deconstructed the limitations she had placed on her own sexuality, as he teased and tantalized her body into climbing steeper peaks than it had ever reached before. When she thought she’d shatter from the heat building inside her, he drove into her, fully and completely. Every thrust of his hips propelled her higher and closer.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and clung as the convulsing waves, stronger than any force of nature, quickened through her again. She cried out his name, her heart rate spiking as she heard him grinding out hers. As he came with a hoarse shout, he buried his face into the curve of her neck. Ana stopped fighting the unfightable and let the waves take her over the abyss.