Charlie looked down at herself, too.

Her nightgown was a lustrous pale blue, silky and insubstantial, with lavish trimmings of cream-colored lace. Wide lace straps hugged her shoulders, traced the deep V neckline, and edged the hem that ordinarily ended just at the very tops of her thighs, although Garland’s hands underneath rucked the delicate garment up almost to her naval. The matching bikini panties, dainty in silk and lace, showed beneath, leaving the lower part of her toned midriff and her long, tanned legs bare. The material clung to her breasts, revealing their fullness and shape. Her aroused nipples were embarrassingly visible against the thin cloth. Only the thing was, realizing that Garland was seeing them that way, was seeing her that way, didn’t embarrass her at all, Charlie discovered.

Just like being next to naked with him and having his hands up under her nightgown holding her by her hips didn’t embarrass her at all.

Truth was, she liked it.

“I got to tell you, you keep surprising me.” Garland’s voice was slightly thick. When she looked up to meet his eyes, she saw that they were hot. Her heart revved until it was beating a mile a minute. Her blood heated to boiling as it rushed through her veins. “Back there on the Ridge, I sure didn’t have you pegged as the type to go for sexy nighties.”

“I like pretty things.” She sounded maybe a tad defensive, because lingerie was the one area in which she could indulge her feminine side and she did. Her delicates were an antidote to the nearly androgynous professional look her work life demanded.

His eyes slid over her a second time, and by the time they met hers again there was a carnal gleam in them that made her want to start pulling her nightgown over her head and shimmying out of her panties. His lids had a sudden heaviness to them. A smile curved his mouth slightly.

“Yeah, me too.”

By the way he said it she knew he meant pretty things like her, and her bones turned to water and her blood to steam.

Swaying close, she smiled into his eyes.

It was the smell penetrating the dreamy haze that had prompted her smile, and had her hands sliding sensuously over his chest, that did it. The smell was what stopped her cold. The air that wafted around them was fresher and cooler than it should be, Charlie realized at last. Instead of popcorn and beer, it smelled briny and fishy, like the sea. The surface beneath her feet was firm but gritty. Sand. A beach. Deserted, as far as she could tell. A sharp glance to her right found the ocean. Black waves tipped with silver rolled toward shore, surging to within inches of her toes. Overhead, the moon was as big as a saucer and silver, too, surrounded by giant tinsel stars that seemed close enough to touch.

Her mouth dropped open at the impossibility of it. She cast Garland a startled look. “Where are we?”

Then she remembered: this was a dream.

The negative shake of his head indicated that he had no clue.

“Romantic, though.” The smallest touch of humor was in his voice, but there was an underlying rasp to it that told her all she needed to know. Looking up into his hard, handsome face, she saw the hot flare of passion in his eyes. And she saw he was teasing her a little, too.

“Why do you say it like that?” Her breathing was uneven. Her body pulsed with sexual need. It was ridiculous to feel shy of him suddenly, but she did. To cover up, she went with her suspicious side.

“It’s your dream, Doc,” he drawled, and pulled her close. “I figure that means it works out however you want it to.”

Then he bent his head and kissed her mouth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It was the kind of kiss that Charlie never in a million years would have expected from him: gentle and tender, a tasting. A testing.

Her heart lurched. Her pulse drummed in her ears. Fireworks went off somewhere deep inside. For a moment she simply stood there, not breathing, letting him kiss her, letting him learn the shape of her mouth and sample, just sample, the warm wetness between her lips. Her hands closed on the front of his T-shirt and her wide-open eyes searched his face.

The kiss should have been a nothing, should have been a throwaway on the keeper scale of kisses, and yet it set her body ablaze.

When he stopped kissing her and drew back and opened his eyes to look into her face, Charlie finally remembered to breathe. She was melting inside, liquefying, and it was the most unsettling thing she had ever felt. No way should she be reacting like this to a barely-there kiss. She had kissed her fair share of men—really kissed some of them, too—and not one of them had made her feel like this.

Not one of them had made her feel as hungry for sex as an animal in heat.

“Doc,” Garland said. He looked down at her with what she recognized as a predator’s unblinking gaze. His jaw was tense, his mouth unsmiling. Tall, hot, and dangerous as hell: Charlie knew it. Knew it.

In an instant, a thousand reasons why she didn’t want to do this chased one another through her mind. And vanished, blown away by a blast of desire stronger than reason could ever be. Want didn’t enter into it anymore. What she felt was pure need.

“Garland.” Hands still fisted in his T-shirt, Charlie went up on tiptoes and kissed him back, a hot, tantalizing sampling of her own that made her dizzy.

“Michael,” he corrected against her lips as she drew a little away.

Another thousand reasons why she needed to turn back now assaulted her brain. Calling him by his first name made it personal, signified a connection that she’d have to be crazy to form. This was the last guy on earth, or in heaven, or hell, with whom she needed to forge any kind of emotional bond. Any kind of physical bond. She knew that if she didn’t call a halt now, right now, she was stepping into a quagmire from which she might never be able to extricate herself. But if the heart wants what it wants, the body equally needs what it needs. What was happening between them was pure chemistry, pure animal attraction, and it was as impossible to resist as a magnet’s pull to the north. Their lips were millimeters apart now, but still she shivered, even as, deep inside, her body burned.

Maybe she still would have summoned the fortitude to turn away while she had the chance if she’d thought that what was happening between them was anything other than a dream.

His eyes held hers, waiting. The price for what she wanted was his name.

“Michael,” she said obediently, in a throaty voice that she scarcely recognized as her own. His lips curved into the slightest of smiles. His eyes blazed down into hers.

“Charlie.” He drew her name out like he was savoring the feel of it on his tongue. Other than that, his only response was to tighten his grip on her hips. His hold was almost hard enough to hurt, his strong fingers digging into her flesh, but she barely noticed and didn’t care. Her heart hammered. Her body was on fire. He might be able to take his time, but she couldn’t wait. Impatient, she let go of his shirt, slid her arms up around his neck, fitted her lips to his, and slipped her tongue inside his mouth. Molding herself to the whole long length of him, she kissed him with an urgency that was a silent testimony to the conflagration he’d lit inside her. He stayed still as stone against her, letting her coax him, letting her tantalize him into coming out to play.

Until he did.

One minute she was touching her tongue to his, and plying his lips with hers, and pressing herself ardently against him, and for all the response she got she might as well have been trying to seduce an especially hunky statue. Then he let go of her hips to slide his arms around her. They stayed underneath her nightgown, encircling her waist and back, hard as iron and warm as a furnace against her bare skin as he pulled her even more tightly against him. He seemed to pause for a second. She got the impression that he was making sure he had himself under rigid control.