She braced herself for the shame that was about to roll in. The guilt. The remorse. Separately, they were uncomfortable, but together they formed her own personal holy trinity of emotions, inevitably painful but mercifully familiar. Penance was no walk in the park, but at least she understood it. Whatever this was she felt for Rush, though? She didn’t understand the first baffling thing about that.
Because, damn, she should be crying right now. Wailing. At the very least kneeing him in the nuts and making her grand escape into the teeth of a blizzard. She should
not
be battling back the completely inappropriate urge to laugh.
Laugh
.
Not that anything was funny. God, it wasn’t. It was just that there was the strangest, tiniest trickle of joy sneaking around inside her.
Joy
. Sparkling, clear and so absolutely, breathtakingly unexpected. She’d spent so many years taking such scrupulous care to ensure that nobody—but
nobody
—really knew her. It was only in her worst nightmares that somebody like Rush came along and peered behind the curtain. She’d built an entire life around the grim task of making sure this day never came.
But here it was. Here
she
was. Flat on her back and completely exposed, and what was she feeling?
Joy. The joy, after all these years, of having somebody call her by her
name
. Of having somebody not only see the crumpled, crippled Maria she’d buried so well, but
want
her. Want her more than the shiny, slick shell she’d hidden herself inside. God. Even her family had been content to let Maria slip away, unmourned, while the infinitely easier Goose took her place. But not Rush. Hell, no. Rush had tugged and pulled and harassed and cajoled until she’d had no choice but to give him exactly what he’d asked for.
Maria. In all her lustful, selfish, curly-haired glory.
And he actually liked what he saw, if the astonishingly sweet smile spreading across his thunderstruck face was any indication. Liked it? Hell, he
wanted
it. Wanted her.
And suddenly Maria had had enough running. She’d had enough hiding. This man—this beautiful, fiercely private man—had declared himself to her. In some bizarre cosmic misunderstanding—and it
had
to be a misunderstanding because she’d done nothing to earn such a miraculous event—he’d offered himself to her, and for once she wasn’t going to stop to wonder if she deserved what she wanted.
Because of course she didn’t deserve him. She knew that wholeheartedly. Didn’t deserve him at all. But she’d take him. God help her, she’d take him. Even if only for tonight.
The reckless hunger that was part of her nature, that she’d so successfully hemmed in for so long, burst free in a blazing explosion of need and want and gleeful appetite, and she arched up under him. Into him. A glorious satisfaction surged through her as she scraped her splayed fingers into the severe stubble covering his warm scalp and took his astonished mouth with hers.
She squirmed under him until he rolled over onto the rumpled pile of their sleeping bags, and she leaped on him like a starving woman jumped a buffet table, indiscriminate and ravenous. She took his mouth first, the harsh beauty of it opening like sin under hers. She welcomed the dark invasion of his tongue, and answered it with her own. She took his want, his need with a primitive noise deep in her throat, and turned her own loose on him.
Her hands streaked over his lean chest, under his shirt, across his skin. She delighted in the tough, wiry jerk of muscle under her palms, in the constant reminder of his superior strength. Strength he kept as sternly leashed as his darker nature, as the hands he kept under polite, rigid control on her hips.
Hands she wanted in less polite territory. Now.
Desire flowed through her, hot and heavy, settling deep into her belly and pulsing lower. She slid herself against him until the glowing center of her want rocked into the hard evidence of his. The blatant demand of his desire against her melting softness twisted the roaring need inside her higher, hotter, and she arched into him, whispered her need into his mouth.
“Rush,” she said. “Touch me. Please. I need—”
She didn’t get any further, which was just fine with her, as she found herself suddenly on her back again, Rush’s length settled firmly between her thighs, the weight of him a dizzying thrill. His eyes burned in his serious face, a face gone dark with a hunger everything in her rose up to greet.
“Maria,” he said, the words halting, reluctant. “You’re sure?”
Something inside her cracked, and tenderness poured hot and sticky through the fault lines. Asking permission was
so
not in Rush’s nature. He was totally a do-whatneeds-to-be-done-with-a-minimum-of-conversation kind of guy. And yet even in the face of extreme provocation, he’d tamed himself far enough to make absolutely certain she was getting what she wanted.
Was it any wonder her stupid heart had run all out of defenses against this guy?
But still. There was out of control and then there was outright self-destructive. She reached deep for the last tiny shreds of her composure and gave him her trademark sideways smile. “I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me since the day we met,” she said. “Are you seriously going to chat me up
now
?”
His hand froze on the ladder of her ribs—oh God, please don’t stop
there
—and he glared down at her.
“Don’t do that,” he said, his face harsh and closed. “Don’t you dare
do
that.”
“Do what?” she asked, mystified.
“Disappear like that.” He sat back on his heels, left her there, splayed on the floor like a half-finished meal. “I told you, Maria. I don’t want your plastic smiles and I don’t want your snappy comebacks. That was the deal, remember?”
Remorse and shame ran through her like a chilling wind, even as the hunger inside her howled. “What do you want, then?” she asked baldly.
He planted one hand just above her shoulder and slowly leaned in until his body was six shimmering inches above hers, his mouth a wicked brush against her ear. He threaded a finger through an errant curl and said, “You.”
His mouth closed on the lobe of her ear with a suddenness that sent a towering wave of desire crashing over her head. “Just”—he moved the hot magic of his mouth to the side of her neck—“like”—then lower, to the vulnerable hollow of her collarbone—“this.” His hand came up and took swift, breath-stealing possession of her breast.
She arched into him with a mindless moan. She’d give him anything he asked, be anything he liked, so long as he never stopped whatever crazy game he was playing with her, teasing her aching nipple with a touch that was
this close
to being exactly what she needed.
She shifted under him, restless, seeking, a discontented little noise mewling out of her. He chuckled, dark and wicked.
“Better,” he said, and lowered his lips to that desperate nipple. Satisfaction shot through her like fire at the wet pull of his mouth through the thin fabric of her long johns, and when he tugged at the hem of her shirt she lifted her arms obediently. She had no recollection, later, of whether or not she helped very much. She knew only that suddenly her clothes were gone, his clothes were gone, the condom was dealt with—thank
God
for Rush’s military preparedness—and then there was the sizzling satisfaction of his skin—oh God, all that beautiful
skin
—on hers. Hot and wild and real and
him
. All of him, pressed into her like glory.
She bowed up under him, not to throw him off—Jesus, no—but so she could sink her teeth into the muscle of his shoulder, exactly where it curved up toward his throat. He made some kind of noise, a growl of pleasure and surprise, and she jerked his mouth down to hers. Feasted on him, reveled in his feasting on her.
Because they
were
feasting—biting, snatching, gobbling each other up in huge, greedy mouthfuls. They’d both have marks in the morning, and a dark, primitive satisfaction edged into the hunger. She’d wear the proof of his want when the sun came up again. He’d wear hers. She smiled then, a fierce baring of teeth, as she wrapped her legs around him, fell into the madness.
Fell? Hell, she leaped into it, surrendered herself to the swirling vortex of heat and want unleashed. It pulsed through her, this naked, ancient imperative, and she squirmed under his glorious weight, slippery and needful and hungry.
And then he was there, just
there
, the hard length of him against the most secret center of her. Demanding, not asking. Warning. Preparing. Taking.
“Maria,” he said, and she opened her eyes to the wild blaze of his. Possession gleamed starkly on his face.
“Now,” she said. “God, please.
Now
.”
Her words seemed to snap that last bit of control and he lunged forward. She cried out at the shock of it, the incredible, vast, world-altering blitz it dealt to her, body and soul. He was inside her now—in
her
, Maria—driving into her, driving out the loneliness, the terrible stark aloneness she’d lived with so very long.
He froze at her cry. “Did I—” he asked, his voice strangled and strange. “Oh God, did I hurt you?”
“
No
.” She wrapped herself around him, stabbed her fingers into what little hair he’d left on his head and jerked his mouth down to hers. Kissed him with all the raging desire and fierce possessiveness boiling inside her. “You didn’t hurt me. You never could. It was just”—she bit his ear and reveled in the answering jerk of his body inside her—“so”—she drew her tongue down his throat, glorying in the taste of his sweat and his need—“
good
.”
He shuddered and pushed forward. Slowly. She clamped her teeth into the meat of his shoulder and moaned. He pulled back and her fingernails raked little crescents into his back. He surged forward again and she twisted under him, brought him deeper, closer.
He shoved his hand into her hair and tugged until her head fell back, leaving him her throat. He fell on it, the stubble on his jaw burning her skin like a brand.
“Mine,” he said against the pulse beating wildly in the hollow between her collarbones. “You’re mine.”
“Yes.” She twisted mindlessly beneath him, her desire a wild whip inside her, a driving tyrant. “Yes.”
His hand went to her bottom then, urgent, rough, and flatly commanding. Everything in her said
God, yes
.
He jerked her up to meet him and took what was his.
IT DIDN’T take long for Maria’s Holy Trinity of Penance to catch up with her.
As long as Rush was inside her, she was good. Even afterward, with him sprawled over her like an accident victim, with her legs still wrapped tight around him, with both of them wheezing like steam engines, she’d been okay. But then he’d brushed aside a handful of ringlets to drop a tender kiss on the side of her throat. Then he’d flopped over on his back and brought her with him, his eyes closed, his hands slow and sweet on her back. Then she’d cracked open one lazy eye and had gotten her first good look at what she’d done to him.
Oh God. Were those bite marks on his shoulder? She eased back, her heart hammering inside her chest. A hickey bloomed just under his left nipple. She slid off him, knelt to the side and nudged him with shaking fingers until he obliged her and rolled over. He probably thought she wanted to spoon or something. She didn’t. Not when she saw two matching sets of long red welts scoring his beautiful back, shoulders to waist, courtesy of her nails.
Nausea trembled in her stomach, and she had to close her eyes against a punishing wave of shame. When was she going to learn? Whatever this was inside her, this beast that hungered and wanted and demanded? It
hurt
people.
She
hurt people. She knew that, yet she’d indulged herself anyway. Nobody had died this time—yay, her—but still. That was cold comfort while she was looking at what she’d done to Rush’s back.
Her stomach cramped even as tears, stupid and useless, stung her eyes. And of course, Rush chose that particular moment to realize she wasn’t, in fact, spooning him. He rolled onto his back again and looked up at her with a crooked smile that pierced her heart.
“So. That was Maria, huh?”
She scrambled to her feet. “Don’t call me that.”
She found her hat and snatched it up. She yanked it back onto the treacherous mass of her hair. Kind of shutting the barn door once the horses were out, but what the fuck else was she supposed to do?
“What? Maria?” He stayed on the floor, one arm tossed over his eyes, completely at ease. “Screw that. It’s your name. I’m going to use it.”
She swallowed, hard. Averted her eyes from the glory of that long, lean body. From the ugly marks her desire had left on it.
“It’s not who I am,” she said finally. Desperately.
He tossed her a skeptical glance from under his elbow. “Screw that,” he said again. “We don’t get to pick who we are,
Maria
. Trust me on that one.”
She opened her mouth to argue then thought better of it. There was a gravity in his words, a fatalism that made her think he wasn’t necessarily talking about—or even to—her. At least not only to her.
“This was
not
the way you were supposed to take the news about Einar,” she told him. She snatched up the first T-shirt she found on the floor—his—and jerked it over her head. It smelled like him, and desire pulsed once—hard—inside her.
“No?”
“No.” She forced herself to turn away from him, to pace the length of the cabin. “You were supposed to be furious with me. You were supposed to hate me.” She shot him a bad-tempered scowl as he sat up and eyed her speculatively. “You were supposed to keep your damn distance for the rest of this damn storm.”
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t look particularly sorry. “I’m clearly doing it wrong.”
She glared at him, then snorted. “You’re not sorry.”