Her heart stopped beating as she saw the size of the swell of him underneath the thin white boxer briefs. He was huge!

His smile was tender, warm, and if she didn't know better, she'd swear she saw relief in his gaze.

This time when he took possession of her mouth, his kiss was demanding. Bold.

His kiss literally made her dizzy. He pulled back long enough to jerk his olive green T-shirt over his head. He took a moment to wipe the paint off her mouth and then his, but ended up only smearing it more across his face.

Marianne laughed as she took the shirt from him and carefully removed the paint from his skin. "I suspected there might be a human somewhere underneath all of this." She'd meant the words to be light and funny.

He didn't take them that way.

Instead, he made an odd noise in the back of his throat. "Not really.

Once I don the garb and assume the mission, the human in me was trained to be shoved deep into the background."

With his chin in her hand, she paused while wiping a particularly stubborn bit of camouflage from his temple. The sincerity of those deep blue eyes scorched her. "You were trained?"

"What they didn't kick out of me from birth, the military finished."

His words tugged at her heart, and she felt strangely close to him, as if he had just shared something with her that he didn't normally share with others.

As gently as she could, she wiped his tawny skin clean.

He watched her with a hint of suspicion behind his eyes as if it were more habitual than anything she'd done or might do to him, and at the same time she felt his trust. It was a heady contradiction.

And as she toweled the last of the color from his face, she let her gaze roam his hard body.

Her breath caught at the sight of his wide chest and broad shoulders that tapered down into a narrow waist and lean hips. He was built like a professional athlete.

Every single muscle in his chest was discernible.

But what caught her attention most was the sight of several scars over his ribs and the two in his chest which looked vaguely like healing bullet wounds. Or at least what she thought healing bullet wounds might look like.

Having never seen a real bullet wound, she didn't have a basis for comparison. Still, those scars looked authentic, not like makeup or window dressing.

Before she could ask him about them, he picked her up, cradled her against his chest, and took her deeper into the cave. He laid her down on a pallet that was made up of several military blankets and an air mattress.

He turned on a small battery-operated lamp.

"What is all this?"

"Boy Scout motto. Always be prepared."

She trembled as he slowly unbuttoned her shirt. Her heart hammered in anticipation as she felt trapped between her common sense, which told her to run, and her lust, which told her to rip the pants off him and have her wicked way with all that lean, masculine strength.

"Are you always prepared for a tryst in a cave?"

"No, ma'am. But I was hoping you'd take me up on my offer."

"Because you were bored?"

He paused his hand at the last button and gave her a hot, intense stare.

"No, because I happen to think you're sexier than hell."

She had a hard time believing that, but there was no doubt he was sexier than hell. He had a body that had been torn from her dreams.

He undid the last button.

Marianne gulped for air.

Kyle slid his large, callused hand through the opening of her shirt to cup her breast through her white lace bra. She moaned at the feel of his palm against her swollen nipple. Even with the fabric of her bra between them, his hand was scorching.

It had been way too long since she'd last made love to a man.

For that matter, it had been a long time since she'd really wanted to make love to a man. Now all that repressed sexuality thrummed through her, wanting him desperately.

But with that desire came the fear that he might think her lacking from her inexperience. She wasn't the kind of woman who played the field, and in spite of what she'd done with Kyle, she'd never fallen into bed with strangers.

What was he expecting from this?

He pulled back from his kiss to smile down at her. His eyes were blazing and hot.

"Say the word, Marianne, and I'm out of here."

She answered him with a demanding kiss of her own.

Kyle closed his eyes as he inhaled the scent of her hair combined with the sweet scent of some kind of womanly perfume. But it was the earthy smell of woman that made his heart race even faster. Made his mouth water for more.

He'd never been with a woman like her before, and for the first time in his life he was nervous.

As a teenager, he'd run with the worst sort of New York gang. At fifteen he'd lost his virginity in the backroom of a run-down slum in the Bronx to a woman in her mid-twenties who was on the make and looking to nail any handy dick she could find.

He'd fought his way out of the streets to enlist in the Navy. At age eighteen he had done his best to turn his life around and not become another statistic of urban poverty and bad parenting. Even so, he'd never dared dream a woman like this would want to be with him.

Someone soft and gentle. A teacher. Not a woman on the make. Not an operative out to blow his cover or a criminal wanting a fast lay before she blew his brains out.

Marianne was just a nice, average lady from a small town in the Midwest.

She was safe. That word alone was so alien to him that it made him ache even to think of it.

He'd never known safety. Never known unconditional acceptance.

He could vaguely remember his mother once telling him that sometimes the best dreams were simple ones. He'd never understood that.

Not until this moment.

He didn't crave the excitement that was his life. He craved the slice of normality Marianne offered. The simple taste of wholesome woman.

The simple taste of Marianne Webernec.

Marianne was breathless as Kyle moved down her body to unlace her shoes and pull them from her feet. She couldn't believe she was doing this with a complete stranger.

It was so out of character for her.

And yet she couldn't stop herself.

"Tell me something about you, Kyle." She needed to know something so that she wouldn't feel so self-conscious.

He pulled her other shoe off and massaged her sensitive arch with his thumb. Oh, but it felt sinfully wonderful as it made her stomach tight. She felt a rush of moisture between her legs.

"What do you want to know?" he asked, his deep voice intoxicating.

Everything. There was nothing about him she didn't want to know.

"What do you do for a living?"

He tossed her socks by her shoes and gave her an impish stare as he nibbled the arch of her foot.

She moaned in ecstasy.

He blew a stream of warm air over her skin before he spoke again.

"Honestly?"

She nodded, unable to breathe from the pleasure that rippled through her.

"I'm a federal agent."

For a second she couldn't move as his words sank in. Then she laughed at the absurdity. "Can you break out of character for one minute and be serious?"

"I am serious," he said earnestly.

But she didn't believe it. It was too perfect to be real, and what were the chances of a federal agent being here with her right now when that was her fantasy?

He was just one of the men playing on the island. She didn't want that.

She wanted to know about him. The truth. "Who do you work for?" she asked skeptically. "The CIA?"

"The Certified Idiots Association?" he asked, as if offended by her question. "Hardly. We eat those wannabes for breakfast. I'm with BAD, the Bureau of American Defense."

She scoffed. "There's no such agency."

"Yes, there is."

Part of her wanted to believe him, but the rational part of her knew better. She'd never even heard of such a thing. "And what part of D.C. are you located in? The White House?"

"We're not. Our offices are in Nashville."

She laughed even harder at that. "Oh, please. What kind of agency would have their headquarters there?"

His look was devilish. "The smart one. If D.C. gets wiped out or bombed, we're still able to function. No one's ever going to take out Nashville. It's barely on the terrorist map. Besides, we don't do anything by the book. Hell, our director is so whacked, he put us on the ground floor of the bat tower just for shits and giggles."

She arched her brow at that. "Ahh, the bat tower. Let me guess? Your director is Commissioner Gordon."

She groaned as he sucked her toe into his mouth and used his tongue to gently massage it. He nipped her large toe, then pulled back. "Trust me, BAD would make mincemeat out of Commissioner Gordon, Sergeant O'Hara, and Batman combined."

"BAD, huh?"

"Mad, bad, and dangerous to know."

"Have much luck with that line?"

He laughed gently as he crawled up her body like a languid panther and pressed his lips to her belly. His breath tickled her stomach as he parted her shirt more. "Sp far it's working."

Yes, it was. Much better than it should be. Who would have ever thought that she could be seduced by some cheesy little line?

No, she realized. She wasn't seduced by a cheesy line, but rather by his stunningly blue eyes. His tender lips.

Oh, who was she fooling? It was that sinful body that she wanted.

All of it.

She'd never made love to a man who looked like this.

One who was so handsome he should be on the cover of a book or in a movie.

One who set her blood on fire just by being with her.

She stared down at him while his hot mouth skimmed the flesh of her stomach. He lay between her spread legs with his chest pressing against the center of her body.

Oh, how she ached for him. Marianne ran her hands through his dark hair, letting the swirls of his tongue sweep her far away from what they were doing.

She arched her back as he sat up slightly and pulled her shirt off. Then he reached behind her and unfastened her bra.

"Mmm," he breathed as he bared her. "What have we here?"

"Breasts," she said simply as she fought the urge to cover herself. "Two of them."

He laughed at that. "Good, 'cause I was afraid you might have three."

"Nope, no Anne Boleyn here. Just two, like any other normal woman."

Kyle smiled at her teasing and her intelligence. He couldn't recall ever being so at ease with a lover. It didn't feel as if they were strangers to him.

There was an odd sense of belonging with her. It didn't make any sense.

"Tell me something, Marianne," he whispered in her ear. "Tell me what schoolteachers dream about when they're all alone at night. Tell me what fantasies keep you awake while you lie in bed, wanting to feel someone inside you."