The feel of his big hands on her curves made her quake inside. She gave a slight shake of her head. “That would be you.”

She thought she saw the slightest of smiles touch his mouth. It vanished as she found his belt buckle. Unfastening it, she reached for the button on his jeans and undid that, too. Then she unzipped his pants. It was a small sound, but erotic enough to make her pulse pound and her fingers unsteady.

He had gone very still. Against her breasts, she felt his muscles turn to iron. The sudden diamond-hard glitter in his eyes was enough to curl her toes.

“You’re just what I always wanted, Doc.” His voice was thick and hot. He tilted her face up to his, pressed a quick hard kiss to her mouth. “I’m going to make you come for me all night long.”

Then he picked her up and laid her on her bed and came down on top of her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Stretching her arms above her head, Garland pinned her beneath him, kissing her like he would never get enough of the taste of her mouth. Charlie had a brief uneasy instant in which she realized that in this position she was almost entirely helpless against a man of his size and strength. A glimmer of caution, a glimmer of doubt—what if sex was the trigger that brought out the monster in him?—was swamped by a wave of fierce need. She could feel the whole long length of him pressing her into the thick softness of her comforter, feel the pressure of his muscled chest against her breasts and the hair-roughened rasp of his powerful thighs as they settled between hers and the burning weight of his manhood brushing her skin. He was big, and heavy, all rippling sinew and hot sleek skin, and the feel of him against her drove her wild. When his mouth left hers, it trailed down her neck to find her breast. Hungry and wet, it closed over one nipple, kissing her, licking her, and then moved on to the other. Shivery with arousal, Charlie arched her back and closed her eyes and gave herself to the darkness and the heat. When he shifted his grip so that one hand shackled her wrists and the other was free to slide between her legs, she quivered and moaned and moved for him and let him play. When he finally let her wrists go, when he kissed his way down her body to lick into the delicate cleft his fingers had explored, she cried out and came for him.

After that, when he stretched back over her and started to fit his body to hers, she was warm and pliant and still pleasantly floating. Holding himself a little above her with his elbows taking most of his weight, he pushed into her slowly, letting her feel him, and her eyes fluttered open with interest as he entered that first little bit. He felt huge, long and thick and hard, all velvet over scalding steel. Sated though she was, she made a little sound of surprise and pleasure as her body got with the program again and began to clench and burn around him. His mouth was set, his eyes open and so dark they were almost black as he watched her face change, as he watched her register what he was doing to her and how it felt. She knew she must be flushed, knew her eyes must be heavy-lidded and slumberous, knew her lips were parted with anticipation and swollen from his kisses. She could sense the tremendous control he was exercising as he pushed inside her inch by deliberate inch, until she couldn’t stand it anymore, until she closed her eyes and clenched her teeth and started to move, rocking up against him, trying to draw him in deeper, digging her fingernails into his back, gasping at the sheer pleasure of it, wanting more.

“You want me to fuck you, ask me.” The low growl in her ear made her suck in air.

Charlie’s eyes opened to find that he was watching her still. The hot, fierce gleam in his eyes made her go all liquid inside. She was moving beneath him, she couldn’t help it, he was making her wild, she was on fire from wanting him. Never in her life had she been this sexually aroused. What had sprung to life between them was pure chemistry, a kind of sexual magic, an erotic intensity so potent that it sizzled in the air.

“Michael,” she begged.

At the sound of his name on her lips, his eyes blazed. Charlie saw the clenching of his jaw, felt the slight tremor in the arms braced on either side of her, heard the hoarse sound he made.

Then he kissed her, a hot lush kiss, and pushed all the way inside her. Charlie cried out, clung, writhing at the sheer fierce pleasure of it. He pulled back, then pushed in again, hard and deep, and she cried out once more. He kept going, fast now, driving into her, his movements almost savage, kissing her all the while. On fire, Charlie wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and moved with him, matching him stroke for stroke and kiss for kiss with passionate abandon, giving herself over to the hot dark wildfire he had ignited inside her until, “Michael,” she gasped at last, and came in a shattering climax that rocked her world.

He came, too, then, shuddering, driving deep and holding himself inside her shaking body and groaning with the intensity of his release.

For a long moment afterward neither of them moved. He was hot and damp with sweat and heavy as a slab of concrete on top of her. His arms were locked around her, holding her tight. His head had dropped to rest in the tender curve between her neck and shoulder.

I love the way he feels.

Charlie was just having that thought, just resurfacing from the aftermath of the explosions that had detonated inside her, just becoming aware of how boneless she felt and how violently the storm still raged outside and how warm and cozy her bed was with him in it, when he shifted position. Her eyes snapped open as he rolled onto his back and pulled her with him so that she ended up lying on top of his chest. Folding an arm beneath his head, splaying a possessive hand over her ass, he looked at her.

Okay, so meeting his gaze was embarrassing. So was lying naked on top of him in a tangle of bedclothes while he casually fondled her bottom. Come to think of it, so was just about everything they’d done.

“So?” he asked, his eyes crinkling at her.

Charlie knew what he was asking. Her breath caught: The earth moved.

“Very nice,” she answered repressively, and felt her heart speed up as he gave her a broad smile.

“Don’t mess with …,” he began, but Charlie didn’t hear the rest of it because, out of nowhere, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Charlie.” A man was speaking to her urgently. It was Tony’s voice, and he …

Charlie’s eyes widened. “Michael.” As she realized what was happening, she clutched at him urgently, but it was already too late. He and the bed and her house and everything else dissolved around her, and then her eyes opened to find Tony leaning over her. His hand was on her shoulder, shaking her awake. Behind him were Kaminsky and Crane. All three were fully dressed, frowning, and Crane and Kaminsky were talking to each other while Tony concentrated on waking her.

After a horrifying moment in which she thought she might be naked and rosy with sex, Charlie realized it wasn’t so. She was once again wearing the pink pajamas that Michael had so recently taken off her. Lying curled up on the couch where she had fallen asleep. With a single lamp burning, and her laptop lying on the floor beside her.

Even as Tony withdrew his hand and Charlie blinked and sat up, she was aware of the most profound sense of loss.

Michael.

“What is it?” she snapped, shaking her hair back from her face, glaring up at Tony like it was all his fault and then impartially at the other two, knowing that she sounded irritable and not able to help it. With every ounce of her being she longed to be back in the tumbled bed she had just left.

That was a one-time deal, you know. Don’t you even begin to let yourself think it’s ever likely to happen again.