He pulled the loose pants she wore down her hips, and there was nothing beneath them but woman, hot and wet. Hotter and wetter when his hand found her. Her harsh, throaty moan seared across his lips.

When the orgasm ripped through her, she could only think, God, thank God. But the greed whipped back, spun through like a cyclone that had her biting, scratching, tearing. She would give no quarter here, and ask none, but only clamped strong legs around him. Held on to that exquisite shock when he plunged into her.

And drove her like a mad thing, thrust upon urgent thrust, until they were both burned out.

W hat had she done? She’d just had crazed, kick-your-ass sex without a single thought of self-preservation, of consequences, of…anything. No thought, none at all, just brutal, primal need.

He was still inside her, and if felt as though their bodies had melted together in the heat. How would she separate herself again? How could she come out of this whole?

She wasn’t supposed to feel like this. She wasn’t supposed to want something—someone—so much she forgot herself. Let herself be taken even as she took, and in blind, feral passion.

She hadn’t stopped it. She hadn’t been able to stop it. And now she would pay.

He murmured something; she couldn’t make it out. Then he nuzzled—a kind of nose in the neck like a puppy—before he rolled aside.

The simple sweetness of the gesture after the ferocity all but broke her into pieces.

“Crushing you.” He grabbed a couple of ragged breaths. “Well, that was fairly amazing, and not at all the way I’d had it all planned out. Are you all right then?”

Careful, she warned herself. Careful and cool. “No problem.”

She sat up, reached for her pants.

“Hang on a minute.” He patted her arm. “My head’s still spinning here. And I barely took the time to look at you seeing as we were both in a rush.”

“Got the job done.” She hitched on her pants. “That’s what counts.”

He pushed himself up, reached her shirt before she did. “Look here at me, would you?”

“I’m not big on postgame analysis, and I’ve got things to do.”

“I don’t remember a game. A battle, perhaps. I thought we’d both come out on the winning side of it.”

“Yeah, so like I said, no problem.” She would start to tremble in a minute, any minute. “I need my shirt.”

He studied her face. “Where did you go? You have so many little hiding places.”

“I don’t hide.” She ripped the shirt out of his hand.

“Aye, you do. Someone gets too close, you go sliding off into one of your shadows.”

“Okay, why do you want to piss me off?” She dragged on her shirt. “We had sex—really good sex. It’s been coming on for a while, and now it’s done. We can put the focus back where it belongs.”

“I don’t think things are so very different here than in Geall that what we just had between us would be just sex.”

“Look, cowboy, if you want romance—”

He got to his feet, slowly. It was the look in his eyes that warned her his temper was back. That was fine, in fact, that was good. They’d swipe at each other, and he’d go.

“There wasn’t anything romantic about it. I thought there would be the first time we came together, but things took a different turn, and no complaints. Now you’re trying to shove me away, knock me back, the way you did before with your fist. Let me say that the fist was more honest than this.”

“You got what you were after.”

“You know better. You know it wasn’t only this.”

“What’s the point in anything else? What’s the goddamn point? It’s got nowhere to go.”

“Have you been looking into Glenna’s crystal? You see tomorrow now, and the day after?”

“I know things like this are doomed before they start. Cian’s not the only one who is what he is, Larkin.”

“Ah, now we come to it.”

“Just—” She lifted her hands, shoved at the air, turned away. “Let it go. If the occasional grope in the dark isn’t enough for you, look somewhere else.”

So, he’d hurt her along the way, he realized. He was hardly the first, and couldn’t quite decide if he was sorry for his part of it as yet. “I don’t know what’s enough for me when it comes to you.” He scooped up his pants, yanked them on. “But I know I care for you. I know you matter.”

“Oh please.” She grabbed the water from her desk, gulped some down. “You don’t even like me.”

“Where does that fly from? Why would you say something so foolish and so false?”

“You seem to have forgotten what started this whole thing, what you came in here for in the first place.”

“I haven’t, but I don’t see what that has to do with how I feel about you.”

“Well, for God’s sake, Larkin, how could you feel anything for someone when you’re standing on the other side of a basic line?”

He considered his words now. He was, he knew, being compared to the Jeremy she’d spoken of before. Someone who’d been unable—or unwilling—to love and accept who she was.”

“Blair, you’re a hardheaded woman, and I’ve my own streak of stubbornness. My own stands and thoughts and—what did you call it?—sensibilities. And so what?”

“So. You, me.” She pointed to him, tapped her own chest, then swiped a finger between them. “Line.”

“Oh, bollocks. You think I can’t disagree with you, and passionately, come to that, and care for you? Respect you, admire you, even knowing inside my heart you’re wrong about the thing we’re arguing over? The same, I wager as inside yours you believe I’m wrong. I’m not,” he said with the barest hint of a smile, “but that’s another matter. If everyone has to believe the same, if there’s never any passionate differences, how do people come together in your world?”

“They don’t,” she said after a moment. “Not with me.”

“Then you’re just stupid, aren’t you? And narrow in your thinking,” he added when she gaped at him. “Hard in the head as well, as I believe I’ve already mentioned.”

She took another careful sip of water. “I’m not stupid.”