"You have got to be kidding me," Lucy said, and he said, "Right," and kissed her again and made her blood pound, and then he pulled her away from the Jeep, a little deeper into the woods, as her heart raced.

The light was better in the small clearing they came to but she still stumbled over the foot-high ring that surrounded the clearing.

"What's that?"

"Shell ring."

"Huh?"

"A spiritual place. Very old and sacred."

Sacred, she thought, and wondered if she'd go to hell for thinking what she was thinking in a sacred place. But those old earth goddesses had thought that way, too. She'd seen the carvings. "Works for me," she said, and then she saw that the only thing in the circle was a thin mattress with some kind of camouflage cloth tossed over it. "This is it? Where's your tent, your sleeping bag, your Coleman lantern? Where's the S'mores, for Christ's sake?"

"S'mores?"

Lucy shook her head. Obviously he'd never been a Girl Scout. She'd just have to settle for him being a Green Beret.

On the other hand, she was about to get someone to hold in the forest at night. Us Amazonians, she thought, and started to laugh.

"The way back is over…" he began, and she pulled her shirt off over her head and tossed it to him, flashing her WonderWear at him.

He caught it and shut up.

She hopped on one leg to pull off her boot, thinking, This can't be seductive, and then dropped it and pulled off the other, while he stood there watching her with that unfathomable look on his face. Then she unzipped her jeans and shoved them off. "This would be working on you better if there were more light," she said and tossed them to him.

He caught them with his free hand. "It's working." But he reached into a pocket and pulled out a small, green glowing stick, which he hung on a palmetto frond. "Did you bring the rope?"

"Just me," she said and stripped off the red Wonder Woman camisole and tossed it to him, too. "I'm not seeing much enthusiasm," she said as she shoved off the blue-starred bottoms, and he caught those, too, and then she stopped, not ready to take off her underwear and be naked for him, not yet.

He dropped the bundle of her clothes he'd been holding and stepped over it to get to her, catching her arms when she tried to put them around him.

"There," he said, and gently pushed her toward the ground cloth.

"Romantic," she said, and knelt down on it, trying to figure out what the hell it was in the dim light. It was definitely camouflage, but that was pretty much J.'T.'s signature color. He probably had the matching china. When she looked up, he was gone, and she felt a moment of panic again. "J.T.?"

"In a minute," he said from the shadows outside the dim glow of the stick, and from his outline it looked like he was stripping off his shirt. Modest, she thought. Well, okay. At least they were getting someplace.

She went back to exploring the bed situation. Just some kind of pad with the camouflage cloth over it and that was it. You couldn't fall for a millionaire with a Swedish mattress, she told herself as she crawled under the thin cover. You had to want Nature Boy. She heard something rip in the shadows that sounded like Velcro-Velcro?-and then a zipper, and then something snap like spandex, and she thought, I really don't want to know, and tried to settle in on the quarter inch of whatever it was underneath her. "You know-" she said, and then he was beside her, under the cover, and she shut up.

His body was long and hard against her as he pulled her close, his muscles tight from use, and she shivered a little because it was him, for real, not a fantasy, playing her fingers over his chest, smiling in the dark when he sucked in his breath. "You know," she began again, and he kissed her and she forgot what she was about to say as she lost herself in the weight and the heat of him. The simmer in her blood flared as she wrapped herself around him and felt hard muscle press into soft flesh. This is good, she thought, feeling a little dizzy, while he unfastened her bra and slid the straps off her shoulders, as efficient with that as he was with everything else. Good, clean, American outdoor sex. Yep. She pulled away to help him, feeling her breasts fall free, already tight and swollen for him so that when he touched her, she leaned into his hands to ease the pressure there, whispering, "Oh "against his neck because he felt so good.

He said something under his breath and kissed her again, his mouth hot, and while she was reeling from that, he dropped his head to her breast, and she shuddered, feeling the touch of his tongue, the tug of his mouth, all the way to her groin. She moaned as he moved up to bite her gently on the neck and slid his hand between her legs, and she arched to meet him without thinking.

God, you feel good, she thought, and then his hand stroked over her again, his fingers sliding carefully under the elastic of her pants, then smoothly inside her, and she lost her breath as she coalesced around him and made him the center of everything. He knew where to touch her, how to touch her, and she melted boneless against him as he drew in his breath and said, "God, Lucy." He kissed her then, and she fell into him, not giving a damn about anything except what he was doing to her and how impossibly good it felt. I should be helping here, she thought as he moved his hand away a few minutes later, but then he slipped her pants down her thighs, kissing and biting his way down the curve of her stomach-Oh, God, yes-and she opened to him, arching her hips to his mouth, shuddering under his tongue, and rocking with him as all the frustration and longing she'd felt for him rose and built and twisted inside her, multiplied a thousand times because it was him, and then she broke, shuddering under his mouth, breathless and shaking and helpless.

J.T., she thought, drowning in him, and then he moved up beside her and she rolled to press against him, but he said, "Wait," a little out of breath himself, and moved away from her.

"J.T.," she said, trying to pull him back, and he said, "Condom," and then a moment later rolled back to her, and she curved into his heat, warm and sated and wanting him closer, much closer, part of her, inside her.

"Thank you," she said into his ear, and he stopped and said, "For what?" calm and cool and suddenly annoying because he wasn't as destroyed as she was.

"The condom," she said, thinking, So not romantic. "The orgasm." She shifted on the pad he thought was a bed, trying to find a place for her hipbone that wasn't on a rock or tree root. " The great accommodations."

He shook his head in the dark. "You come your brains out in a sacred place and still you complain. You're a hard woman to please."

"Hey," Lucy said. "I'm pleased. I just said-" and he kissed her again, pulling her hips into his this time, and she felt him hard against her and shut up, curled herself around him as his fingers tightened on her, and the heat flared again. Stop trying to make this something it isn't, she told herself. Especially since there's a pretty good chance the rest of the sex is going to be just as good as the first part. She rolled onto her back, pulling him with her, wanting to feel his weight on her, and he put his hands on each side of her, balancing over her, larger than she'd thought.

"Touch me," she said and wrapped her legs around him, and he laced one hand through her hair and brought her mouth up to his, kissing her thoroughly as he bore down on her. She moved against him, feeling him hard between her legs, wanting him inside her, but he waited, touching her everywhere, making her breath come faster, deeper, her body liquid, slippery with need, and just when she was ready to scream, Now, damn it, he moved his hand down and stroked her open, sure and insistent, and she felt him move into her.