"Would you forget about my d.a.m.ned car?" He began pacing, his voice getting louder as he told her what an incredibly stupid thing she'd done. He paused by her white velvet love seat, still talking, and ran a hand over his hair, making it stand up in damp spikes.

That love seat used to be her grandmother's. She'd had it recovered once-white did show every little stain-and had hunted and hunted until she found a fabric that was almost identical to the original. She liked to curl up there and read. Not often, but once in a while she gave herself permission to be utterly useless for a day. Novels only, when she was indulging. Fun books. She especially liked the ones about lords and ladies, or a good fantasy with a dragon and...

And Ethan was standing right in front of her. "Have you heard a word I've said?" he demanded.

"Oh. Well, no, I don't think so. Normally I enjoy a good argument, but I'm really not up to it right now, and while you might be able to bull your way in here, I don't think you can make me listen, can you?" She smiled at him brightly.

The strangest thing happened. All that thunder and lightning drained right out of his face. He looked stricken. "Aw, Claudia. Look at you. Just look at you." And he gathered her up in his arms.

He was so large and solid. And damp. His coat was still wet from the rain, and it smelled like cigarette smoke. Her breathing wasn't working right. Things were hitching up inside her. "I'm all right," she told him.

"I know you are." He stroked her hair. "You're fine. I'm so sorry, sugar. Don't smile like that anymore. You don't have to smile like that with me. You're safe. You're okay."

"Y-yes, I am." All by themselves her hands clutched fistfuls of his coat, and she realized the shakes hadn't gone away, after all. They'd just moved, lodging in her spine. One long tremor pa.s.sed up it. "They wanted to hurt me, Ethan! They didn't even hate me-I was just there, and they were bored, and maybe they've had terrible lives and don't know any better. But it was me they had."

"Shh," he said, and ran his big hand along her back, stroking another tremor out the way a squeegee strokes water from a winds.h.i.+eld. "Forget them. They don't matter."

"Everyone matters. Even them. But I-I-" She gulped.

"I shouldn't have yelled at you. I wasn't going to, but whenever I stopped being mad I got scared all over again. You were right about that anger and fear business. I've never been so scared in my life."

"M-me, neither." And she gave up and cried.

Maybe the ability to cry easily was another feminine skill she lacked. Claudia didn't cry often, but when tears did hit, they hit hard. Ethan didn't say a word. He ran his hand up and down her back, using long, soothing strokes. He didn't tell her to quit crying, or try to fix things so she'd stop. He just held her.

The storm pa.s.sed as quickly as it had hit. Soon she hung, limp and quiet, in Ethan's arms. She sniffed once. Again.

"Better?" he said in a low, husky voice.

She nodded her head against his shoulder. Such wonderful shoulders. Wonderful arms, wonderful chest ... wonderful man. She rubbed her cheek against that hard, comforting shoulder.

"Ah ... Claudia?"

"Hmm?" She turned her head without lifting it, and there was his neck. Strong and warm and smelling so good. She nuzzled it.

"You might want to stop doing that."

"Why?" And why was she still gripping his coat? That wonderful chest was beneath the smoke-stinky coat. She slid her hands inside the damp trench coat and sighed with pleasure. The cotton of his s.h.i.+rt was warm from his body.

"I'm having a problem here."

"Are you?" She looped her arms around his neck, which brought their bodies firmly together. His body provided intimate evidence of what he meant. "Hmm ... no. Not a problem."

His hands tightened at her waist. "You're probably impaired right now, just coming off a crying jag and all. Not thinking straight."

"Probably."

"We weren't going to do this."

"I've changed my mind."

"Thank G.o.d." The last word came out as a puff of air against her lips just before his mouth covered hers.

Her eyes closed. She leaned into his kiss and sweetness poured through her, a tactile hum buzzing from lips to throat, groin to thighs to the pockets at the backs of her knees. Her fingertips tingled. The wet rasp of his tongue demanded her attention, but his hands coursed up and down her body, distracting her.

"This coat," he muttered. "It has to go."

"Yours, too. I don't like it." She pulled it off his shoulders. He cooperated, yanking his arms out and letting it fall to the floor.

That was all the cooperation he had in mind, though. He wanted her coat off, and he wanted it off now. And her sweater. And then he unfastened the catch on her bra.

When he pushed it aside he made a funny noise, sort of a delighted grunt. "I've thought about these," he said, cupping her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Sweet, creamy pears. I need to taste them again."

So he did. Claudia approved of his initiative and told him so silently, clutching his head, running her fingers over his ears, his jaw, where she felt his muscles work as he began to suck.

Oh. Oh! Heat melted her knees and made mush of her brain. He knew what to do, though. He scooped her up and placed her on the love seat, with himself on top.

This was much better. He propped himself up on one elbow and rubbed his chest across the tips of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She leaned up, caught his head and kissed him again, then broke away to run her tongue along the whorls of one ear. Intoxicated by intimacy, she rubbed her hands over his back, down to his b.u.t.t.

He quivered. And ran one hand down between her legs.

She jolted. Her eyes flew open wide.

Outside, the rain poured down, muting the light in the room to a rainy-day gray. The velvet was plush and warm beneath her back. Ethan's face hovered close to hers, his eyes dark with pleasure and intent on her. In sudden, dizzy splendor she broke with gravity, falling up into his gaze.

And realized she was about to do something irrevocable.

Claudia might have stopped then, frozen by that sense of change, vast and permanent, hovering over her, but he began to knead her in a rhythm that drove thought from her head. She forgot everything except how to feel. And move.

She curled one leg up around his, wanting to grip him with every part of her. That brought him closer, but not close enough. His clothes hampered her, so she tore at the b.u.t.tons on his s.h.i.+rt.

Claudia had never seen a stampede outside of the movies. She'd certainly never partic.i.p.ated in one. But that was what happened next-a mad stampede to strip, unzip, unb.u.t.ton, both of them frenzied for skin. Yet skin wasn't enough. Or else it was too much, sending them scrambling for union before they'd removed everything properly.

The love seat was cramped, especially for a man Ethan's size. He dealt with that by lifting her left leg and placing it along the back of the love seat. Then he put her right leg on his shoulder, leaving her utterly exposed. And excited. He groaned as he sank into her.

She gasped and dug her fingers into his back. "There is rather a lot of you, Ethan."

"And you are perfect." He licked her bottom lip. His hips s.h.i.+fted. "Hot and slick and perfect."

He thrust slowly once, then again. But she'd been at a high pitch before he came inside her. Lingering was unbearable now. For him, too, it seemed. His control cracked on the third thrust, and he began pounding into her.

Friction and sweat-slick skin. The slap of flesh against flesh. The musky scent of s.e.x, and a delirious pressure that built and built. She cried out, telling him to hold her, to touch her-and he slipped a hand between their bodies. He touched her exactly where she needed.

The world exploded. A few thrusts later, he followed her over the edge.

There wasn't room for him to collapse fully. Her leg slipped from his shoulder. He sagged onto his elbows. Little aftershocks pinged through her body, a visceral version of the afterimages left by a flashbulb. She smiled sleepily, smugly, and drifted her hand over the wrinkled cotton still covering his shoulder. "Mmm."

His chest was heaving like a bellows. "Yeah." He lifted his head and smiled down at her, and he looked so disheveled and happy that the single word was quite satisfactory.