LITMIR.BIZ

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back on the bed, but kept her gaze locked with his. He pushed himself home with one long, deep stroke, and Keira gasped as she rocked her hips, taking even more of him within.

      Outside, the storm raged, and inside, a different kind of storm swept the two of them into a world of mindless passion. Where all that mattered was the next touch, the next kiss, the next stroke of heat to heat. Their bodies moved in an ancient dance with a rhythm that seemed as old as time and as new as her next breath.

      His body moved with hers, invaded hers, claimed hers, and Keira gave him all she had to give. Her hands smoothed over his back and around to stroke down his chest, her thumbnails flicking at his flat, brown nipples until he was gritting his teeth to hold back a shout.

      She liked knowing that he was as lost to sensation as she was. That his body was screaming for release as loudly as her own. That she could shatter Nathan's rigid sense of control.

      Arching into him again and again, she urged him deeper, faster, harder. Her fingers clawed at his back while the pressure within tightened ferociously, demanding release.

      “Now, Nathan,” she groaned, moving with him at a fever pitch that couldn't be sustained without the two of them bursting into flames, “please now.”

      He pushed himself up on his hands, stared down at her face and whispered, “You first, Keira. You first and I'll follow.”

      He slid one hand down the length of her body, across her flat abdomen, down to where their bodies were joined. His fingers dipped into the joining and stroked her damp heat as he continued to move inside her.

      “Nathan!” Keira shrieked his name, clutched at his shoulders and bucked beneath him as an overwhelming wave of pleasure swept through her on what felt like an endless tide of mind-shattering explosions rattling just beneath her skin.

      “Now,” he groaned and plunged deep inside her, his body shaking as he fell into the same tidal wave that had captured Keira and let it carry them both away.

      An hour … or, for all Keira knew, a week later, she forced her eyelids open and stared up at the ceiling. Fire-cast shadows leaped and danced across the beams in hypnotic pulses.

      “You okay?” Nathan murmured from close to her ear.

      “Not sure yet,” she admitted, turning her head on the pillow to smile at him. Reaching out, she smoothed his hair back from his forehead with her fingertips. “Hey, I can move my hand, so … good sign!”

      Pushing himself up on one elbow, he stared down at her for a long minute or two, his eyes unreadable. A curl of unease opened inside Keira as she studied him, searching for a shadow of the passionate man he'd been so short a time ago. But the Nathan watching her now was more like the closed-off man she'd met his first day at the lodge.

      “What?” she finally asked, unable to stand the silence any longer.

      “I was just thinking.”

      “About?” she coaxed.

      He looked as if he were about to say something, then thought better of it. Shaking his head, he said only, “Nothing. Never mind.”

      He rolled off the bed and walked naked across the room to a door that he opened to reveal a gigantic closet. It was practically empty from what Keira could see, since he'd brought only enough clothes for a month. But he stepped inside and when he came back out, he was wearing a thick black robe and carrying a dark green one that he tossed onto the foot of the bed. “I brought my own robe, but this green one was hanging in the closet when I got here.”

      “Thanks,” she said, reaching for it and shoving both arms into the sleeves before slipping off the bed and tying the belt of the robe at her waist.

      His features were tight, closed off as if he were carefully preventing whatever he was thinking from showing on his face. Which only served to really irritate Keira. A few minutes ago, they'd shared something truly amazing. They'd been as close as two people could get. Yet now … he was looking at her as if she were a stranger.

      A really unwelcome stranger.

      “Nathan, what's going on?”

      “Not a thing,” he said and started for the bedroom door and the stairs beyond. “But I promised you food, didn't I? I'll check out the kitchen. See what I can find.”

      Very nice, Keira thought. He'd shut her out so politely, so neatly, she had to wonder if maybe his hideous grandmother, who'd shipped him off to boarding school with hardly a wave goodbye, had taught him how to do that? How to push people away without even breaking a sweat.

      Well, she wasn't going anywhere. Not until the storm stopped. And to be honest, even if the storm stopped right this minute, she wouldn't have been going anywhere. Not until she found out what the hell had happened to send Nathan from orgasmic to crabby in no time at all.

      She followed him down the stairs, keeping one hand on the banister to make sure she didn't fall down the damn stairs and break her neck before she got some answers. She made a sharp right at the bottom of the stairs just in time to see his black robe disappear into the distant kitchen.

      Well, if he thought she was that easy to get rid of, he really didn't know her well at all. Walking quickly, her bare feet hardly making a sound on the area rugs tossed across the gleaming wood floors, Keira got to the swinging door to the kitchen, slapped her palm against it and sent it crashing open.

      He was at the fridge and raised his head to look at her when she stepped into the room. Then he dismissed her coolly, reached into the freezer and pulled out a long, flat aluminum tray.

      “The housekeeper fills the freezer for me once a week. I think this is …” He read the label. “Fettuccine Alfredo with grilled garlic chicken. It's from the Clearwater, the restaurant you seem so fond of.”

      “Their fettuccine is great,” Keira said, walking toward the granite counter and one of the stools pulled up beneath it. She sat down and tucked her bare feet up to get them off the cold floor.

      “Glad you approve,” he said, and turned to quickly take off the lid, turn on the oven and pop the tray inside. “Shouldn't take too long,” he said, and walked to the wine cooler along the wall. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

      “Sure,” Keira said, trying to figure out a way to get past the wall he'd erected around himself so quickly and so completely. “Nathan, is everything all right?”

      “Why wouldn't it be?”

      “You're just acting a little … weird.”

      One black eyebrow rose as he set a bottle of white wine on the countertop. He opened a drawer, took out a corkscrew and then tore off the foil top from the bottle. Keira shivered a little and he said, “Cold?”

      “A bit.”

      There was another fireplace in the kitchen, but this one was cold and dark. Beyond the windows leading to the covered deck, the world was a whirl of white. Light faded from the sky, the heavy clouds dropped even lower, and the flurries of snow were thick enough that it looked as though someone had hung a sheet from the edge of the patio cover.

      “There's extra firewood on the deck. I'll get some.”

      “Okay, fine,” Keira said as Nathan walked to the back door, “but first, tell me what you were going to say upstairs. When you were looking at me so funny. When you said, ‘oh, it's nothing, never mind.’ “

      “Keira,” he said with a sigh, “just let it go.”

      “Oh no,” she assured him, shaking her head at the sheer folly of the man. “That's never gonna happen. So it'll be quicker and easier on both of us if you'll just spit it out.”

      “It's nothing.”

      “Then say it,” she insisted.

      One hand on the doorknob, he stared at her for a long moment, as if trying to decide whether to speak or not. At last, though, he nodded and said, “Fine. I was

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