"Warm enough?" he asked. "I don't want you getting sick." His voice was too deep, too thick, telling of the heavy running of his blood. "You didn't get much sleep last night, I couldn't keep my hands off you in the pool, it was a long ride back and then you cooked a meal for twelve."

"Carla did most of the work and-"

"Bull. I was watching, honey."

"-and I loved your hands on me in the pool," Mariah said quickly, talking over Cash's voice. "I love your mouth. I love your body. I love-"

His mouth came down over hers again, ending the husky flow of words that were like tiny tongues of fire licking over him.

"I shouldn't have taken you this morning," Cash said when he managed to tear himself away from Mariah's sweet, responsive mouth. "Damn it, honey, you're not used to having a man yet, and you make me so hard and hungry."

"The pool must have magic healing properties," Mariah whispered, looking up at Cash with wide golden eyes. In the vague golden illumination cast by the nightlight, Cash was little more than a dense man-shadow, a deep voice and powerful hands holding her imprisoned within the soft cocoon of bed covers. "And when I couldn't sleep tonight I took a long soak in the tub. I'm not sore, not even from the ride back. If you don't believe it, touch me. You'll see that I'm telling the truth. I know you want me, Cash. I felt it when you hugged me. Touch me. Then you'll know I want you, too."

"Mariah," he whispered.

Cash kissed her again and again, tiny, fierce kisses that told of his restraint and need. When she made soft sounds of response and encouragement, he deepened the kiss. As their tongues caressed, hunger ripped through him, loosening his hold on the bedclothes for a few moments.

It was all Mariah needed. She kicked aside the soft, enfolding covers even as she reached for Cash. He groaned when he saw her elegant, naked legs and the cotton nightshirt that barely came below her hips. Then she took his hand in hers and began smoothing it down her body.

He could have pulled away and they both knew it. He was far stronger than she was, more experienced, more able to control the hot currents of hunger that coursed through his body. But Mariah's abandoned sensuality disarmed him completely. When her breasts tightened and peaked visibly beneath cloth, he remembered how it felt to hold her in his mouth, shaping and caressing her while cries of pleasure shivered from her lips.

Even before Mariah guided Cash's hand to the sultry well of her desire, he suspected he was lost. When he touched the liquid heat that waited for him, he knew he was. He tried not to trace the soft, alluring folds and failed. He skimmed them again, probing delicately, wishing that his profession hadn't left his fingertips so scarred and callused. She deserved to be caressed by something as silky and unmarked as her own body.

"Baby?" Cash whispered. "Are you sure?"

The answer he received was a broken sound of pleasure and a sensual melting that took his doubts and his breath away. When he started to lift his hand, Mariah's fingers tightened over his wrist, trying to hold him.

"Cash," Mariah said urgently, "don't leave yet. Please stay with me for a little more. I-"

"Hush, honey," Cash said, kissing away Mariah's words. "I'm not going far." He laughed shakily. "I couldn't walk out of here right now if I had to. Don't you know what you do to me?"

"No," she whispered. "I only know what you do to me. I've never felt anything close to it. I didn't even know it was possible to feel so much. It's like I've been living at night all my life and then the sun finally came up."

The words were more arousing than any caress Cash had ever received. His hands shook with the force of the hunger pouring through him.

Mariah watched while Cash stripped away his clothes with careless, powerful motions that were very different from the tender caresses he had given to her just moments before. The nebulous glow of the tiny night-light turned Cash's skin to gold and the hair on his body to a dark, shimmering bronze. Each movement he made was echoed by the black velvet glide of shadows over his muscular body.

Cash watched Mariah as he kicked aside the last of his clothes and stood naked before her. Mariah's eyes were heavy lidded, the color of gold, shining, and they worshiped all of him, even the full, hard evidence of his desire. Still looking at him, she reached for the bottom button on her nightshirt with fingers that trembled.

Cash rested one knee on the mattress, making it give way beneath his weight. One long finger traced from the instep of Mariah's foot, up the calf, behind the knee, then slowly up the inside of her thighs. When her leg flexed in response, he smiled slowly.

"That's it, little one. Show me you want me," Cash whispered. "Make room for me between those beautiful legs."

Mariah's long legs shifted and separated. He followed each movement with dark, consuming eyes and light caresses. Slowly he knelt between her legs, watching her, seeing the same sensual tension in her that had taken his body and drawn it tight on wires of fire.

For a moment Cash didn't move, couldn't move, frozen by the beauty of Mariah's body and the trust implicit in her vulnerable position. Slowly, irresistibly, his hands pushed aside her unbuttoned nightshirt, smoothing it down over her shoulders and arms, stopping at her wrists, for he had become distracted by the rose-tipped, creamy invitation of her breasts.

Mariah made a murmurous sound of pleasure that became a soft cry as his mouth found one nipple and pulled it into a tight, shimmering focus of pleasure. When she arched up in sensual reflex, the nightshirt slid down beneath her back to her hips, stopping there, holding her hands captive. She didn't notice, for Cash's hands were smoothing up her legs, making her tremble in anticipation of the pleasure to come. When he touched her very lightly, she shivered and cried out.

"It occurred to me," Cash said, his voice deep and slow, "that something as soft as you shouldn't have to put up with hands as callused as mine."

Mariah would have told Cash how much she loved his hands, but couldn't. The feel of his tongue probing silkily into her navel took her breath away. Glittering sensations streaked through her body at the unexpected caress.

"You should be touched by something as hot and soft as you are," Cash said. He sampled the taut skin of Mariah's belly with his tongue, smiling to feel the response tightening her. His tongue flicked teasingly as he slid down her body. "Since it's too late for you to go out and find some soft gentleman to be your lover, we'll just have to do the best we can with what we've got, won't we?"

Mariah didn't understand what Cash was talking about. As far as she was concerned he was perfect as a lover. She was trying to tell him just that when she felt the first sultry touch of his tongue. The intimacy of the kiss shocked her. She tried to move, only to find her legs held in her lover's gentle, immovable hands and her wrists captive to the tangled folds of her nightdress.

"Cash – you shouldn't – I-"

"Hush," he murmured. "I've always wondered what a woman tastes like. I just never cared enough to find out. But I do now. I want you, honey. And that's what you are. Honey."

Cash's voice was like his mouth, hungry, hot, consuming. The words Mariah had been trying to speak splintered into a pleasure as elemental as the man who was loving her in hushed, wild silence. For long moments she fought to speak, to think, to breathe, but in the end could only give herself to Cash, twisting slowly, drawn upon a rack of exquisite fire.

By the time Cash finally lifted his head, Mariah was shaking and crying his name, balanced on the jagged breakpoint of release. He sensed that the lightest touch would send her over the edge. Knowing he should release her from her sensual prison, Cash still held back, loving the sound of her voice crying for him, loving the flushed, petal-softness of her need, loving the raggedness of her breathing matching his own.