"I can barely feel them." A moment later, silk slid down her legs, and there was nothing she could do but endure his inspection. Dense patches of toughened, b.u.mpy skin started at the outer curve of her lower hips and spread down, mid-thigh, each patch about the size of her hand. The freckles both hid the scars and made them more noticeable in places.

"This is what you're worried about?" he said, running the pads of his fingers over her scars. "How long have you had them?"

She let out a long breath. "Since I began working nightclubs. They've gotten thicker over the last year. And I know you can see them, so don't tell me you can't."

"Yes, I can see them," he said softly.

"I've tried to use the lancet on other places, but this is the easiest to hide onstage."

He studied the other hip and brushed his knuckles over a tender spot. "It's red here."

"That was from two nights ago, my last show. I try to switch sides every show."

"Probably wise." His hand ran up the scars, over the upper curve of her hip, up her ribs. Then he cupped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, catching her off guard. "Now, are we done with this ridiculousness?"

"Yes," she said, feeling as if she'd cleared some small hurdle or received a pa.s.sing grade on a test. And when he traced circles around her nipples with his thumbs, she gasped for breath and forgot about the scars altogether.

"Good." The erection tenting his towel brushed against her stomach. "See what you do to me?" he whispered roughly against her hair. "Even the sound of your voice makes me hard. Your smile . . . your laugh. You smell so d.a.m.n good. Christ, Aida-you turn me into a babbling fool."

"Winter." Her forehead fell against the damp hair on his chest. He was always so warm.

"I want you, cheetah. Every inch, scars and all. I want all of you."

His words emboldened her. The corner of towel tucked into his waist looked as though it wouldn't take much effort to come loose. She took hold of that corner and tugged.

TWENTY.

AIDA STARED AT WINTER'S HARD c.o.c.k. SHE COULDN'T HELP IT. It was long and shockingly thick, jutting proudly from a forest of dark curls. And it curved upward at the end like the stalk of a shaded plant desperately seeking sunlight.

His knuckles brushed her belly as he casually took himself in hand. One stroke pulled the foreskin back to expose a fat, glistening tip. "What do you think?" he asked, half mischievous, half serious, as if he already knew the answer but wanted to hear her say it.

What did she think?

She thought he was bigger and more exciting than anything she'd seen before. She thought maybe the crazy p.o.r.nographic drawing on that wicked postcard of his wasn't as exaggerated as she'd believed.

After another stroke, he aimed toward her hip and rubbed himself across the scars there. It could've been crude; it wasn't. He was speaking to her in a primal language she was disarmed to realize she not only understood, but craved.

She wanted to speak that language, too.

When she reached between them, he guided her hand to replace his. He was shockingly hot and smooth, velvet over a core of steel. The fingers circling his girth did not meet her thumb.

She ran her palm down his length and felt him shudder. His hands cupped the back of her head as he kissed her hotly, his tongue filling her mouth above as he filled her hand below. She was inexplicably happy, feeling an urge to pleasure him, to make him feel as good as she'd felt last night. He made low, hungered noises as she stroked him with more confidence, then pulled back on a groan. "You have to stop," he said in a gravelly voice. "I've wanted you too badly for too long."

A thrill raced through her.

He urged her toward the bathroom door, grabbing the round tin off the vanity along the way, then herded her to the bed.

Rain pounded on the balcony a few feet away. Cool wind carried scents of the city into the room-concrete and rust and brick-as they crawled onto the bed together. He dropped the tin on the embroidered matela.s.se coverlet and wrapped her in his arms, kissing her mouth, her neck.

Pleasure rippled over her, flooding her body from the outside in as they rolled together. They were skin to skin: her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressed against the whorls of hair covering his chest, his erection trapped against her belly, her legs tangling with his, intertwined. Just this indulgence alone was an extravagance, and she explored the planes and contours of his body, touching him freely without shame.

Such a joy.

She marveled at how solid he was. Not just his chest and arms, but his back. Muscles she'd never felt before on another man. Her hands found the twin dimples above his b.u.t.tocks that she'd often fantasized about touching since spotting them at Velma's. And when she pressed her fingers into those dimples and traced their shape, his mouth opened wide against her cheek- And he bit her.

Not hard. Not gentle, either.

It was startling. Strange. And it sent desire racing over her skin in waves. When he licked the place he'd bitten, her hips pushed against him, a response she couldn't have controlled if she tried. He pushed back, rubbing his length against the triangle of hair between her legs. "Are you wet for me?" he whispered against her cheek.

"Yes."

He frisked her curls with questing fingers, cupping her as she spread her legs. When he touched her aching center, she cried out and moved against his hand. "All of this for me?" he murmured, kissing her ear as he began stroking her. "You're amazing."

Her eyes fluttered shut as she gave in and relished the intense sensations he stoked up as he rubbed a thumb down and around her c.l.i.toris, making her whimper. It was too much, too intense. "Please-"

"Please, what?" He slid a thick finger inside her. "This?"

"Yes." Her voice sounded far away as he stroked her, putting pressure against the same aching place he had the night before. A second finger stretched her. Then he pushed deeper, twisting those fingers inside her, as if he were testing. Making a way for himself, she thought, and contracted around him, testing back. He groaned.

Extracting his fingers, he rubbed his thumb along her swollen entrance and pushed himself up to kneel on one knee. She lay on her back and blinked up at him, squirming under his touch, her gaze moving over his chiseled, aroused body. He took her hand and guided it between her legs, pressing her own fingers on top of his, slick and warm. So foreign and intimate to feel him there. Until he moved his hands away. She started to retreat as well, but he stopped her. "No, keep them right there."

"Winter-"

He reached for the metal tin. "I want to watch you keeping yourself ready for me."

She hesitated, but savage instincts took over.

"Yes, just like that. Most beautiful thing I've ever seen." He watched her dazedly for a moment, eyes hooded, then pried the lid off the tin and retrieved a small piece of rolled rubber cinched in the middle by a sleeve of paper. She'd never seen one before, and watched in fascination as Winter removed the paper band and fit the rubber sheath over his tip. "Don't stop," he instructed, eyes between her legs. Only when she continued did he unroll the sheath over the length of his c.o.c.k, practically strangling it.

"Looks uncomfortable," she said, more compliment than criticism.

"It's a tight fit. But you'll be even tighter, and I can't wait. Come here." He slung an arm under one of her thighs and tugged her closer, parting her legs wider, until he was kneeling between them. Prodding her fingers away, he took himself in hand and rubbed the head back and forth through her slickness. It felt extraordinary. Better than his fingers. And when he settled himself against her entrance, her heart hammered furiously.

Everything seemed to pause as her awareness sharpened in that hanging moment. She smelled the city rain, felt it mist across her arm as the wind blew. She felt the mattress springs beneath her back. Saw the diffused light from the bedside lamp and heard the alarm clock softly ticking.

And then he pushed inside her, and it all disappeared.

She cried out in surprise, her shoulders coming off the bed as her muscles tensed. It was too much, all at once. He was too big; she was too small. An unyielding fullness that stretched her uncomfortably. And he was barely inside her. Without thinking, she tried to scoot away.

"It's okay," he a.s.sured her in a strained voice, flattening his palm on her stomach while the other hand reached for her hip. "Just relax. I'm not going to move."

She remained propped up on her elbows, b.r.e.a.s.t.s heaving, willing herself to calm. But she didn't have to try. He was right. It was okay. It was so okay, after a few moments she found herself tilting her hips upward to urge him deeper inside. He groaned and pushed with her, then retreated, pulling all the way out. Her body instantly changed its mind and decided she was now empty and aching, which was far worse than before. "Winter," she pleaded sharply, unable to communicate anything more. By some miracle, he understood, and was pushing back into her again, this time fully, all in one long stroke.

Nothing had ever felt so good.

Nothing.

The moan that came out of her mouth twined with his, carried through the open balcony doors, and got lost in the storm as he began moving inside her. She tried to remain still, vaguely remembering Freddy's complaints that she moved too much, but when she lost herself and rotated her hips, Winter said in a tortured voice, "That's right-grind on me. Christ, you feel good."

She fell back and adjusted her legs, trying to find a place to put them. Everything about him was big-even his hips-and she was unsure of herself. He seemed to understand her floundering and lowered himself over her body, resting his weight on forearms that pressed into the mattress on either side of her head. Then he hooked one of her legs around his waist and sunk deeper into her.

"O-o-oh."

"Too much?"

She wrapped her other leg around him in answer.

"Dig your heels into my a.s.s," he commanded roughly. She did. It opened her legs wider and changed the angle again.

"Yes!" she cried out with more enthusiasm than intended. "Oh yes!"

He chuckled in response, and she felt so happy, she laughed, too, breathless. Then his mouth found hers and she accepted it, greedily kissing him back as he rocked into her steadily. A lock of dark, damp hair brushed across her face as he dipped his head to her neck, sucking and kissing. His shoulders bunched. She ran her hands through the hair on his chest, then skimmed around his sides, feeling every taut muscle in his broad torso tight and hard and shifting beneath her exploring fingers as he moved.

She made strange, savage noises, but he felt so good, she couldn't make herself care.

"Aida, my G.o.d," he whispered against her ear. "You feel like heaven. So perfect. Even better than I imagined."

Her pleasure was honed by his words, abruptly quickening. The slick muscles at her center wanted to clench and bear down on him, but he was too big. She cried out in frustration, feeling the urgency of what was coming, almost frightened by it.

And it was gathering within her with alarming speed.

If he'd brought her to o.r.g.a.s.m the night before with his fingers and mouth, that was one thing. This was wholly different. He was inside her. Sharing the same pleasure. Filling her. Surrounding her. She was humbled by the intensity of emotions that bloomed at the horizon and raced her thundering heart.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n," Winter cursed appreciatively as her center constricted around him again, this time with greater success.

"Oh, G.o.d, Winter! Please don't stop."

"I won't, I won't," he said, pumping his hips with urgency. "Come for me, alskling."

She grasped his solid shoulders, slick with sweat. Her breath caught as she tightened around him a final time. Deliverance rocketed her to great heights and the world fell away. Euphoric spasms pulsed through her center, bringing wave after wave of astonishing pleasure. She shook. She whimpered. And just when she began to fall back down to earth, Winter pounded into her a handful of times with such intense strength, she opened her eyes to watch him.

Mouth slack and wide, he bucked, squinted his eyes closed, and bellowed out an extended cry that reverberated through her as he shuddered in her arms like a great, divine beast taken down by a single bullet.

She didn't know if she was the gun that fired the bullet or the hunter who'd pulled the trigger, but when he rolled to his side, taking her with him, and she heard his heartbeat pound in time with hers, slowing and heavy, she felt an unyielding sense of brutal possession and knew she had made a terrible miscalculation.

She was the one who'd been shot.

TWENTY-ONE.

WINTER TOOK ONE LAST SWIG OF COFFEE, THEN PUSHED THE rolling cart away from the bed with his bare foot. Two in the afternoon might be a brow-raising time for breakfast service, but the hotel staff didn't argue when he phoned down the request.

"That was the best meal I've had in years," Aida said from his side, propped up on feather pillows. One bent freckled leg peeked out from beneath the white sheets. "Maybe there's something about your pro-breakfast stance."

He rolled onto his left hip to face her. "Stick with me and you'll eat breakfast every day."

She gave him a slow smile and closed her eyes, the picture of satisfaction. This is how he wanted to see her, stretching like a cat, cheeks flushed, eyes lazy. Unable to do anything more than lift a spoon. "Are they your customers?" she asked.

"Who?"

"This hotel."

"No," he said, eyeing the open condom tin on the bedside table. Only one of three left, dammit. He should've bought another tin. He'd never gone through an entire one in an afternoon; then again, he'd never bedded a woman who was so eager to help him empty it. "They aren't one of my customers. They just lost their supplier."

She cracked open one eye. "Does this have to do with the raid last night?"

"Raids, and yes."

"Tell me everything. Where did you go after you left?"

Winter heard his father's voice somewhere in the back of his mind, reciting a list of rules for bootlegging. Never tell a woman details was one of them. He'd warned him that pillow talk was the downfall of many a great man, and forbid him to tell even Paulina where their warehouses were, who their customers were, when the mother ships from Canada came into port. And he never did, mainly because Paulina never wanted to know.

While he was trying to decide how much to tell her, his eyes fell on the golden locket around her neck. "What's inside?" he asked, fingering the engraved floral pattern on the front.

"Just a photograph." She sounded defensive, which set off warning bells inside his head. He clicked the small mechanism on the side before she could stop him. A tiny oval photograph was set inside. A young man.

"Who is this?"

"No one." She tried to shut it, but he wouldn't let her. "Stop. It's just Sam."

"One of your lovers?"

"No," she said. "Sam Palmer. My brother."

Winter was confused. "You told me you lived with a foster family."

"I did. The Lanes. Sam and I were rescued from the earthquake together. He was a year older than me."

He studied the photograph with greater interest. Perhaps there was some resemblance, hard to tell. Then he remembered what she told him when they were walking in Chinatown. Everyone I've loved is dead. "You said Sam was a year older than you. Is he . . ."

"Sam and I lived with the Lanes together in Baltimore until he turned eighteen. He joined the army in 1916 after President Wilson called for volunteers."

"Did he end up in the war?"