He forced his hands away from her breasts and settled them on the curve of her waist instead; but it was harder by far to stop the driving movements of his tongue when she was clinging to him and answering and digging her nails into his back. When he finally pulled his mouth an inch from hers, Zack wasn't certain if it was she or he who moaned with the loss before she leaned her forehead weakly against his chest. Eyes closed, his heart pumping fast, he dragged air into his lungs and slid his arms around her back to steady her against him. But it was no use—he had to have her, all of her, now. Drawing a ragged breath, he put his hand under her chin and tipped her face up. Her eyes were closed, long lashes lying on her creamy cheeks, as she instinctively lifted her lips to his.

Zack's control snapped. His mouth seized hers with fierce desperation, forcing her lips to part as his hands pulled the silk tie of her robe open, then shoved it apart, pushing the material down her arms and sending it to the floor in front of the fireplace so that he could feast on the sight and touch of her skin.

Wrapped in his arms, Julie felt him lowering her to the floor, but she didn't surface from her state of mindless pleasure until he took his mouth and hands from her. She opened her eyes and saw him hurriedly unbutton his shirt and yank it out of his pants, tossing it aside, but not until he looked up at her did she feel the first stirrings of panic. In the firelight, his eyes had a fierce glitter as they moved restlessly over her body; passion had turned his face hard and intense, and when she lifted her arm self-consciously to cover her breasts, his voice was harsh: "Don't!"

She shivered convulsively at that stranger's voice, that stranger's face, and when he pulled her hand away and covered her with his upper body, she realized instinctively that the preliminaries were abruptly over and he was going to be driving into her in a matter of moments unless she slowed him down. "Zack," she whispered, trying to make him listen without just blurting out the situation. "Wait!" The word didn't register with Zack, but the panic in it struck a mildly discordant note, and so did the fact that she was shoving on his shoulders and squirming against his thigh in a way that was wildly provocative.

"Zack!"

Zack knew he was going too fast, cheating on the foreplay, and he thought she was objecting to that.

"There's something I need to tell you."

With an effort that nearly sapped his strength, he made himself move onto his side, but when he bent his head to her breast to oblige her, she caught his face in her hands to stop him and forced it up.

"Please!" Julie said, looking into his smoldering eyes. She spread her fingers over his rigid jaw, softening it, and when he turned his face into her palm and kissed it, her heart swelled with relief and tenderness. "We have to talk first."

"You talk," he said gruffly, pulling her tighter to him, kissing the side of her mouth and her neck, sliding his hand over her breast, "I'll listen," he lied, his fingers stroking down, past her flat belly, sliding into the triangle of curls. She jerked beneath him, grabbing his hand, and the topic she chose to discuss was, in his opinion, the most inanely inopportune one ever brought up by any woman in history at a time like this: "How old were you the first time you made love?"

He closed his eyes and swallowed an understandably impatient retort. "Twelve."

"Don't you want to know how old I was?"

"No," he said tightly, moving up to kiss her breast since for some reason, known only to her, she didn't want to be touched more intimately. His entire body was straining with need and he was trying his damndest to touch her in the places that he remembered very clearly gave women the quickest and greatest pleasure.

"I was twenty-six," she provided in a panicky voice when his mouth closed tightly on her nipple.

His blood was roaring in his ears; he heard the words but not the import. She tasted so good; she felt even better. Her breasts weren't large or heavy, but they were pretty and exquisitely feminine, just like she was, and if she'd only be as receptive to him as she'd been when they were standing up, he'd give her a climax now, before he came inside her, and then afterward he'd make love to her properly. He had five years of pent-up desire to expend; he'd be able to make love to her all damned night without stopping if she'd just let him do this and stop clamping her legs together, and stop talking about how old she was the … first time … she had … sex…

* * *

Julie knew the moment it registered on him, because he lifted his mouth a fraction of an inch from her skin, and his body went so still she had the feeling he'd stopped breathing. "This is the first time for me," she said shakily.

He dropped his forehead on her breast, shut his eyes, and swore. "Christ!"

The explosive whisper made it eloquently clear to Julie that he was not pleased by her revelation—a conviction that was reinforced when he finally raised his head and stared hard at her face, his eyes minutely inspecting each feature as if he were hoping to find some proof she was lying. He was either angry or disgusted, Julie realized with a sinking heart. She hadn't wanted him to stop, only to slow down and not handle her like … like a body that was used to being handled.

Zack was not disgusted, he was dumbstruck. He was disoriented. Within his personal frame of reference, he had never heard of a twenty-six-year-old virgin, let alone a beautiful, witty, intelligent, desirable one.

But as he gazed at her lovely, apprehensive face, suddenly everything about her that had puzzled him last night and tonight began to make some sense. He remembered her heartbroken outburst after the news program last night:

"My father is a minister!" she'd wept. "He's a respected man. I've spent the last fifteen years of my life trying to be perfect." He remembered her answer when he asked her if she was engaged: "We're talking about it." Evidently they'd been doing a lot of talking and no lovemaking. And last night, Zack himself had likened her to a choirgirl.

Now that he understood the past, he was more confused than ever by the present. Apparently, she had withheld her virginity from her own boyfriend, who obviously loved her and wanted to offer her respectability and a future. Tonight, however, she was willing to surrender it to an escaped convict who was incapable of loving anyone and who had nothing whatsoever to offer her. Zack's conscience chose that moment to reassert itself for the first time in years by reminding him that Julie's almost-fiancé hadn't coerced her into surrendering her virginity; if Zack had any scruples, any decency whatsoever, he'd keep his hands off of her. He'd already kidnapped her, verbally abused her, and subjected her to public embarrassment and censure. Compounding all of that by robbing her of her virginity was inexcusable.