She had tried then to scrub that stain from her body, but it remained. The mark she couldn’t wash away, couldn’t forget. It had clung to her for years, just like her sopping clothes did now.
Dirt was dirt and she’d wallowed in that particular filth long enough. She pulled at her T-shirt, at his, desperate to be free of constrictions, of phobias, of pain.
This was her call. Her choice. A beautiful, haunted man held her in his arms. Wanting her on a purely carnal level, judging by the strong hands that held her so tightly, by the hard, rigid length of his anatomy that prodded her hip through her sopping jeans.
She wanted to be rid of them. Wanted to feel the man naked and willing.
For seven years she’d pulled into a shell, refusing to date, refusing even to go out with the girls. She was sick and tired of hiding, of jumping at shadows. She wanted to confront life again. Wanted to be intimate with a man because it was her choice.
All she had to do was reach for what she wanted most. Right now.
She turned in his embrace and wiggled her legs free, slithering down his long legs like a serpent. “What if I said I’d changed my mind?” she said, straddling the edge of flippant.
“About?”
“Sex. Us. Now.”
He pulled back, water pouring over his head and streaming down his face as his eyes searched, assessed. “That’s the shock of surviving danger talking.”
“You don’t feel it, too?” she asked, voice hoarse. “God, I feel it,” she said, breathless. “But what difference does that make? I want you. Need you now. What more can I say?”
“Nothing. In the end you will expect more than that. An affair, commitment.”
She shook her head. “Not anymore. No ties. No promises.”
His eyes narrowed, and his hopes and desires soared. “You want my financial backing and sex?”
“Yes. We are bound together by a contract, there’s no changing that. But when the job is finished, so are we.”
“Of course,” he replied, his eyes dark and unreadable.
Then his beautiful lips curled in a wolfish smile and he pulled her into his arms, his mouth brushing hers once, twice, before settling in for a lengthy melding of lips and tongue that poured live coals on her desire. The passion burning in his eyes melted her heart, and the heat curling off his body threatened to set hers on fire with raw need.
She moved against him with feline grace, her hands boldly stroking his broad shoulders, the long line of his spine and lean hips, before her fingers splayed over his firm buttocks. He jerked, his erection sliding between her thighs and gracing her core through her clothes. A moan tore from her as the friction of wet bodies moving together stoked the ache pulsing low in her belly.
God, how she wanted this man. Wanted to experience uninhibited sex with him. Wanted this moment to blot out the ugly memory that haunted her deep into the night.
This was her choice. No promises. No regrets. No shame.
The only way to escape the demons in her past was to plunge headlong into the future because she wanted this. She deserved it. She would take it.
CHAPTER FIVE