Denial flashed in her eyes. "Don't say that."

"It's true. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever met."

She tried to move away, and he could see the anger and tears mixed in her eyes.

"But," he added, forcing her to stay still, "it has never been your beauty that drew me."

She looked at him through narrowed eyes.

"If anything, your beauty kept me away." His fingers drifted along the shell of her ear. "I didn't need

a spoiled, beautiful woman who believed the world should revolve around her. I didn't want that."

He ran his knuckles along her jaw. "But I realize now that you aren't interested in your beauty-which

I hardly understood at first."

She bit her lip.

"Once I realized you didn't care about that, really didn't care, I thought you just wanted to have fun, no responsibilities." He ran his forefinger over the seam of her mouth. "But I was wrong about that, too."

"You were?" Their words trembled.

"Yep. All you want is someone who sees you for who you really are-all the good, all the bad-and

still loves you."

A chill shot through her.

"I finally realized that you exaggerate everything. In your own way making everything about you larger

than life-so no one can miss your traits."

"Faults."

"Not faults. All the bits and pieces that make up a wonderfully giving and complicated Julia Boudreaux."

"I don't care what people think of me."

"Sure you do," he said with a wealth of patience. "You care more than anyone realizes. Including your

friends. I realized that in the days after we got off that tram."

"My friends know me really well."

"Agreed. But you never let them see that you aren't always strong. Plenty of the time you're strong, sure.

Hell, you spend most of your time taking care of other people, never letting people take care of you."

"I don't like needy."

"No, your father didn't want you to be needy."

She pressed her eyes closed.

"Everyone needs someone at some time. And that's okay."

"No-"

"Yes." He leaned down and kissed her again, lifting her up and carrying her to her bed.

Chapter Twenty.

Ben laid Julia on the bed, then came over her, sup-dT)porting his weight on one elbow. She knew he was going to kiss her. She wanted to feel his lips on hers. She wanted to feel the way he always managed to take her breath away, as if he alone had the ability to steal what she didn't want to give.

She couldn't help it when her lips parted, couldn't help it when her chin came up to meet him. The touch was electric, jolting down to the hot center of her. And she was hot. Hot and wet and wanting him. Need curled inside her, making her dizzy with longing.

With an expert's skill, he brushed his lips back and forth across her mouth. She felt his tongue graze her flesh, his teeth nipping as he drifted lower. Then she moaned and ran her palms down his shoulders to his arms.

He ran his finger along her hairline to her jaw, then over to her mouth. The minute the tip of his finger touched her lips, she took it in her mouth. He moaned as he captured her wrists and pulled them over her head. She had the thought that if he'd had some lengths of ribbon, he would have tied her up. Instead he bound her with one strong hand, then he bound her with sensation when he spread open the edges of her dress, as if he were unwrapping a precious gift.

She could see the appreciation on his face when he looked at her. She could feel the tremor that raced along his skin. He wanted her. He wanted to savor her and make her yearn for his touch.

With his free hand, he unclasped the snap between her breasts, loosening the mounds from the sheer, lacy bra. The minute he looked at her, she felt her nipples pull tight with anticipation.

A groan of pure masculine lust sounded deep in his chest before he gave in and kissed first one breast, then the other.

He pressed his lips to the soft underswell of flesh, then rose higher, and her eyes fluttered closed. When he took one nipple in his mouth, she arched up to him, her hands still caught, her body straining toward him.

He meant to be in control, and he was. But she knew that at some level it was costing him. She could feel the hard bulge of him straining against his jeans, pressing into her thigh. When she moved against him, his groan became feral and he pressed their bodies together. He planted his face in her hair and breathed her in, as if he could breathe in the strength to resist her. Then he pulled back and tugged her from the bed.

"What are you doing?"

He didn't answer with words. She inhaled sharply when inch by inch, piece by piece, he removed her clothing. When she finally stood before him, naked except for her heels, his breath shuddered through him.

"God, you're amazing."

He took his fill and murmured his approval when her nipples tingled without him ever touching her. He could tell she wanted him.

He dipped his head and brushed her neck with his lips before his tongue slid up to her ear. He took the lobe gently between his teeth. His breath grew short when she groaned and her hands came up and clasped his forearms.

As always, her beauty stirred him. Though it was not an ordinary beauty-rather a beauty of the wild prairies or the majestic heights of the Rocky Mountains, beauty that a man could not capture or hold, only delight in, taking it in and savoring it. Her beauty was not just that of face and body, but of mind and soul as well.

And he realized that that was where they had been headed since the day he met her. For this moment it was beyond pleasure. It was about love.

He loved Julia. He loved everything about her, from her competent sexiness, to her deeply hidden vulnerabilities. And he wanted her to love him, too.

But how to prove to her that they were meant to be together, that it wasn't just about the tease and sensation and playful one-upmanship?

He didn't know.

All he knew was that this wasn't just about sex. He wanted to make love to her.

As if reading his thoughts, she reached out and began to tug at his T-shirt. When he ripped it over his head, she pressed her palms to his chest. His breathing was rapid as he let her touch her fill. He wanted her, in his arms and by his side. He wanted her with an ache so intense that he thought he would burst, right there, right then, as he merely looked at her.

He bent his head to capture her lips in a barely perceptible caress. Only to taste. But his body began to burn, slowly, intensely. His mind reeled. He kissed her again, this time harder. She sought the pressure. Desire surged through him uncontrollably, turning his kiss into a demand until he had ripped the rest of his clothes free.

Then he kissed her again.

He pulled her close, crushing her to him. Lowering his head to hers, he captured her lips in a punishing embrace. With one hand at her back, he traced a path down her spine, pressing their bodies together.

She returned his embrace uninhibitedly, the touch of her tongue showing just how much she wanted him. He couldn't believe that it had taken so long before he had given in and kissed her on the mouth. Now he couldn't get enough.

He nipped at the corner of her lips. His tongue sought entrance to her mouth. At the touch of tongue on tongue, Ben forgot everything, his only thought being Julia, her feel, her warmth. Julia, his mind repeated over and over, matching the thrusting of his tongue, slowly, languidly.

He groaned as he trailed his lips down her neck. She shuddered when he ran his tongue along the pulse. Very slowly he returned to her mouth, kissing her in a sensual dance of lips and tongue, tantalizing, tempting.

He felt her answering moan deep inside him when she encircled his shoulders, clinging with a fierceness that amazed him. Their mouths slanted together desperately, then she opened to him.

"Julia," he whispered, his voice thick with passion, gravelly and rough.

And she said one word. "Ben."

His body shuddered as his control snapped. He laid her back again. And this time he did find something to bind her with. Her entire body trembled when he found two silk scarves and loosely tied her hands to the curlicues of her wrought-iron headboard. She could have broken free, but didn't. Didn't want to. It wasn't until he opened her legs and bound her feet to the footboard that she felt a little nervous.

"Ben?" she asked.

"The minute you want me to stop, just say so," he promised.

"Are you trying to prove that I'm not a good girl?"

That made him go still, and he looked at her in surprise. "I want you to feel. I want you to feel what it's

like for someone to give entirely to you, without taking for themselves. But if you think this is about me proving you wrong-"

"Touch me." It was the only way she knew how to really get his attention.

He looked at her forever, as if debating the wisdom of continuing down this path.

"Please," she added.

And he gave in.

He slid his arm under her back, arching her as his palm pushed first one breast high, then the other. He groaned into her neck, his mouth tantalizing her throat, then sliding low to close over first one nipple, sucking, teasing, then the other, pulling it deep into his mouth making her breath come out in tiny pants.

She gasped as his hand drifted low, over her ribs, then still lower. She held her breath. The tips of his

fingers grazed a line down the center of her torso.

She felt primal and ravenous. He did this to her. Part of her understood that he was experienced at making women want him, and another part didn't care. She wanted to be with this man, whatever the reasons were.

Without thinking, she tried to touch him, only to tug against the silken bonds.

"Oh," she whispered, and he caught the sound in his mouth when he leaned over and kissed her again. .

Her body reached out to him as he kissed her all over. First on her brow, then on her nose. Chin,

collarbone. Lower and lower, his lips following his hands, until his fingers expertly found the curls between her spread legs.

A slow, deep moan escaped her when he parted her with the calloused pad of his thumb.