LITMIR.BIZ

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here alone,” she told him, and realized with those words that she was the one who lied to him, who had lied to him from the moment they’d crossed paths. “It was just one of those stupid things.”

      He searched her face as if he might find the truth there.

      Well, it was one of those stupid things. She knew better than to show disrespect to Hollender Lerche. That was on her, that she’d done so. But she also knew that sometimes Lerche’s mood meant there was no avoiding his temper. That was on him.

      Ian let it pass, in a way she thought meant he wasn’t actually going to forget it. He rose to his feet, so fluidly she couldn’t believe he’d been deeply ensconced in the couch an instant earlier, and prowled to the window—looking out into the darkness and seeing who knew what.

      “You are feeling better,” she said. “And I guess I have the answer to my question.”

      He turned his head just enough to offer a puzzled frown. “Which question is that?”

      “The one where I wondered if you ever sat still,” she said drily.

      He laughed, short as it was. “No,” he said. “Not often. When I sleep. And...” He gave her a thoughtful look, and quite obviously didn’t finish the sentence.

      “Oh, come on,” she said, unclasping her hands from around her legs and letting her feet slide to the floor. “Now you’ve got to tell me. Even if it’s embarrassing. Especially if.”

      He padded back to the couch; somewhere along the way he’d lost his shoes, and the barefoot movement only added to the prowl in his walk.

       He killed a man. I should be frightened.

      But she wasn’t.

      She was alive.

      Her fingers tingled as he reached down to offer his hand. She took it; her body pulsed as he drew her to her feet. Warmth suffused her, instilling just a hint of weakness in her knees—a delightfully liquid sensation.

      “And now,” he said, pulling her closer—not with so much strength she couldn’t hold her own, but with enough ease to demonstrate the strength still lurking. He touched her face; he skimmed his fingers along her jaw so lightly that she felt only their presence and not the pain of the bruises beneath. “Now,” he said, and kissed one eyelid, and then the next. “Now,” he added, and brought his mouth down on hers, kissing her with a gentle assertion—and kissing her, and kissing her, until she threaded her fingers through his hair and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him back, so caught up in the firm sensation of his lips, the tease of tongue and teeth, the impression of being...not taken, but worshiped.

      He bent over her and she trusted. He dipped her as if they were in a dance, and she gave herself up to his strength. He settled her perfectly over the cushions of the couch, and she never stopped reaching for him.

      She had no idea how much time passed before he groaned and drew back—and said, with no little wonder, “Now. I can’t explain it... I never—”

      She silenced him with boldness, slipping her hand inside his shirt to caress skin and feel it flutter beneath her fingertips, a sensitive flinch that came with a grin. She suggested, “Just feel...and follow it?”

      He searched her eyes. For once she didn’t feel like the vulnerable one—not with the uncertainty she saw there, or his eyes gone so dark with what she’d done to him. Or for him. Definitely not with the hard tremble of his arms and body—a tremble that in no way came from weakness. “Is that what you want?”

      Yes. Because what she felt right now was safe and enclosed and accepted. As if, in that moment, she was everything she needed to be.

      How could she do anything other than follow that feeling?

      “Yes,” she said, surprised by the husky sound of her own voice. “Yes, please. Let’s.”

      “Let’s,” he agreed, and laughed just a little—in relief, she thought. Not that she had much time to think about it. He lowered himself over her only enough so she could wrap her legs around him, ruing the impediment of clothing—and then surprised her when he slipped his hands more firmly beneath her and pivoted to sit, putting her squarely in his lap. Squarely against him and his quite obviously already straining erection.

      Pleasure speared through her, startling her into a cry—one she’d not heard herself make before. And then when he moved against her, another, this one echoed by the faint snarl of Ian’s expression—just as surprised as she was, his fingers clamping down on her hips.

      Such a pure, hot lightning, striking so deeply within... Her fingers dug into his shoulders, gathering the material of his shirt—but only briefly, because the more she felt, the more she wanted to touch him. Fumbling at buttons, pushing the shirt back to expose the planes of his chest—a lean man’s muscled body, layered in strength without bulk, crisp pale hair scattered to tease her fingers and fade across his abs to reappear in a narrow line above his belt.

      As it had before, his skin twitched, more sensitive than she’d imagined. When she spread her fingers across his belly and went seeking beneath the belt, he made a disbelieving sort of sound, half laugh and half gasp, and rolled them over again. The soft couch cushions enveloped her just as he found her mouth. He kissed her with fiercely thorough attention, his fingers at her blouse buttons and then tangling with hers. He moved his mouth to her neck, nipping, as she reached for his belt, and he reached for her slacks button. She tugged his pants over his hips; he deftly yanked hers out from beneath her, his mouth still on her neck, on her collarbones, dipping lower to ignore her bra and find one nipple right through the soft material.

      She bucked up against him and reveled in it—reveled in watching herself and her response to him. No man had evoked such response in her...no man had ever tried.

      Ian laughed again, this time with a growl in the background. He lifted his head to capture her gaze, and she stilled under the impact of it—bright intensity, heated desire...

      “Please,” she told him, understanding the question behind that look. “Yes. Most definitely yes.”

      He drew a sharp breath—relief or fettered passion, she wasn’t sure. But then she didn’t want to wait any longer. She kicked her pants aside, shoving her panties off with them, and then went after his boxers. In a moment they were both free, both already warm and wet with the wanting, and she didn’t think twice. She wrapped her legs around his hips and reveled in his unrestrained grunt of pleasure as flesh met flesh.

      And then Ian surprised her all over again, flattening himself on her, muttering—grasping for his pants while the couch all but swallowed them both. He made a sound of triumph and emerged with a condom. She shared his breathless victory with a grin, and between the two of them they got the thing unwrapped and in place, and then he was in place again, and with a single nudge of adjustment, they slipped together.

      Ana stopping thinking. She stopped being able to think. She barely realized it when Ian swung her upright again, thrusting upward as her knees sank into the couch cushions. Pure hot lightning... Ana reached for more of it, finding a rhythm with him, barely aware of her own cries. She shot straight through that pleasure to sensations she’d never even imagined, and found herself with a sudden new awareness.

      His response to her. His gasps and his expression, cords of muscle straining in his neck and his face flushed, his eyes widening with the same sort of startled recognition that suffused her own body. An utter vulnerability that he seemed to fight against and lose to with every thrust, with every breath.

      “Ian,” she breathed, and it was a kind of plea, an understanding that she was in an unfamiliar place and didn’t know where to go from there. His hand slid from her waist to cover her pubic hair, thumb sliding downward to touch her just so.

      Lightning struck. She cried out in abandon and lost herself to it, a flood of sensation that tugged at her toes and filled her from

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