She knew he was aware of her approach as she followed the graveled path to the barn. His bare shoulders were tense now, the sweat gleaming off them in the summer sun. He was a powerful male animal, and that was what she saw as she stopped at the front of the tractor and watched him silently.

“Lunch ready?” His voice was dark, brooding.

“Not yet. I wanted to see if you wanted to come up and talk to me while I fixed it.”

He tensed further as he bent behind a large wheel and fiddled with something there.

“Why don’t you just yell at me when it’s ready?” he suggested. “I’m pretty busy here.”

Oh yeah, she could see that. He was really busy getting his hands greasy as he picked and probed behind the tire.

“It’s just sandwiches,” she told him then. “Maybe a salad. A few minutes at the most.”

He nodded. “Just yell when it’s done.”

“I don’t think so.”

He tensed further, stilling beneath her gaze before his head turned slowly and his gaze latched onto her with almost predatory awareness.

“Excuse me?” The inordinate politeness of his tone caused her heart rate to increase, the blood to surge stronger and hotter through her veins.

“You heard me, Mac. You can come up to the house with me while I fix lunch or you can do without it. I wanted to spend some time with you. It’s something you make certain we don’t do lately. I’m tired of it.”

Mac shifted, straightening with a graceful, dangerous flex of muscles that had her taking a step back. Suddenly her husband reminded her more of a wild animal preparing to jump. And he noticed her reaction. His lashes narrowed over his eyes as he pulled a discarded rag from the tractor seat and began to wipe his greasy hands.

Not that it helped a lot. And grease should never, at any time, be sexy, but the streaks of oil on his hands and up his arms and the few slashes across his chest were highly arousing.

Sexual tension was like a smothering blanket between them now. As though they had never touched, never been intimate, as though the power of the anticipation for it was suddenly as strong as it had been the day she met him.

“You’re tired of it,” he repeated softly. “Tired of what exactly, Keiley?”

Her lips dried with nervousness. Stroking her tongue over them, Keiley nearly caught her breath as Mac’s gaze flicked to the action.

“You know what I’m talking about, Mac.” Suddenly she could feel the amount of skin her clothing revealed. The fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. That she wasn’t wearing panties.

“Poor Keiley.” He tossed the rag back to the tractor seat and began advancing on her. “Maybe you shouldn’t have run away from me in the bedroom this morning.”

“Don’t turn this into sex, Mac,” she ordered weakly.

Weak, because it was about sex. It was about the hunger that seemed to grow between them daily. About the need for his touch, his kiss, his very presence. And the need for the reality and the fantasy of his hunger.

“But it is about sex, Keiley,” he murmured as he caught her hips, uncaring of the oil she was certain now marked the bare flesh.

He trapped her against the front of the tractor, the bulging erection beneath his jeans pressing against her stomach as her head fell back to stare up at him.

He was so tall, nearly a foot taller. At almost six four, Mac seemed to overwhelm everyone else. Especially her. She was only five-four, short, and fine-boned. She always felt alternately protected and undefended against his height and strength.

“It’s not about sex.” She tried to shake her head as his lips lowered to her neck. “I just wanted to talk.”

“About sex.” His lips grazed her neck, then his teeth scraped over it, causing her lashes to flutter as she fought to hold back a moan.

It had been like this from the first. He could seduce her with nothing but the threat of a kiss, the anticipation and thrill of just knowing his touch was coming.

And he was doing it now. She shuddered in his hold, feeling his hands against her hips, his fingers subtly massaging as his lips and tongue tasted her flesh.

They were outside, nothing but the tractor to shield their bodies as she felt one hand move, felt it began to slide beneath her shirt.

“We should go to the house,” she gasped, he head tilting to the side as her eyes closed.

The nipping kisses to her neck were destructive. She was highly sensitive there. Whenever Mac’s lips moved over the tender flesh it weakened her, stole the strength from her legs, and left her fighting to just stand upright.

“Why?” His questioned shocked her.

“Anyone could see what you’re doing.”

“Just us here.” His broad hand cupped her breast, his thumb stroked over her hard nipple.

“But we’re outside.”

“All alone. Take your shirt off for me, Kei.” He leaned back, staring down at her with stormy eyes, with a hungry gaze.

Keiley stared back at him in surprise. Not that they hadn’t had sex outside before. They had. By the pool. In the hot tub. But never like this. In the wide open, where her nakedness could be seen if by chance one of the workhands decided to show up.

“We have a bed.” Her laughter was nervous.

The forbidden was always a draw for her. It always had been. It excited her, titillated her, made her feel alive when Mac drew it out of her. Undressing here, in broad daylight, was forbidden. Taking the chance of being seen, watched, as her husband caressed her body, was forbidden. And all the more arousing.

“Who needs a bed?” His head lowered, his gaze holding hers as he let his tongue stroke over her suddenly swollen lips. “Come on, Kei, be brave with me.”

There was something different about him. She couldn’t put her finger on it, couldn’t make sense of it as his hands began to draw her t-shirt up her body.

“Come on, let me touch those pretty nipples with my lips while the sun heats your breasts. Wouldn’t you like that, Kei?”

His voice was a velvet rasp. It was goading. Challenging. Primitive. That was the difference. He had never shown this side of himself to her in this way before. As though her invasion earlier into that dark, silent core of him had tempted the monster he had warned her not to awaken.

It exhilarated her.

Keiley pulled back, gripped the hem of her t-shirt, and pulled it slowly over her head before dropping it to the ground.

Mac’s response was surprising. For a moment, blank surprise filled his expression; then it darkened once again, turned savagely carnal. His lips appeared fuller, his eyes darker, his cheekbones more pronounced. He looked dominant. Forceful.

“Beautiful.” Calloused, heated palms cupped her breasts, lifting them to his lips as his head lowered.

Excitement surged through her like a tidal wave, ripping her from the moorings of self-control and thrusting her forcefully into the shadowed lusts she felt whipping around her.

Mac was always tender with her when he made love to her. But this wasn’t lovemaking. It was a possession. She could feel it as his teeth scraped over her nipple. Then his lips covered it, drawing it into his mouth as he began to suck it with a heated, forceful suction.

Her shorts were loosening as her hands speared into his hair to hold him closer. Mac cupped her breast with one hand and disposed of her shorts with the other, leaving her naked beneath the heat of the sun. Leaving her open to the sudden powerful surge of hunger that tore through her.

She had never been so brave. Had never felt the need and the hunger as she felt them tearing through her now. There was too much pleasure, too much passion. It was whipping through her mind, sinking into her pores, and tearing her loose from the moorings of control that she thought she possessed.

Pleasure was her reward, though. A pleasure that Mac was only now showing her. A pleasure that came from freeing the wildness inside her rather than controlling it.

There was no control here.

She jerked, shuddered, as his head lifted from her nipple only to have his lips cover hers as he lifted her against his chest. The hair-roughened contours rasped over her tender nipples, sending a cry into the kiss as his tongue tempted hers to spar with him.

Lightning. Electricity. Surging, destructive pinpoints of explosions detonated along her nerve endings as her flesh became hypersensitive. As the need suddenly began to grow and nothing he did seemed to be enough.

Keiley knew her husband’s hands were rougher than normal as he lifted her against her. Knew that his kiss would leave her lips swollen long after he finished, but she didn’t care. She needed it. Needed the rough nips, the hard clench of his hands at her rear. She needed this part of him and hadn’t even realized it until she felt it. Until he unleashed it on her.

“Are you wet, Kei?” He suddenly tore his lips from hers, moving them over her jaw, her cheek, until he was nipping at her ear. “Are you ready for me?”

Ready? She could feel the juices flowing, dampening her, preparing her for so much more.

“Let’s see how wet you are, darlin’.”

She expected his fingers to skim between her legs. Expected his fingers to probe into the hidden folds. She didn’t expect his lips to begin burning a path down her neck, over her breast, where he paused to lick, to suck, to nip at the hardened peak with a force that had her arching into his arms, her cries filling the summer afternoon as she tightened her thighs to still the ache beginning to burn there.

Sensation was lashing through her. The tug of his lips at her breasts speared to her clit, to her vagina. Spasms were flexing inside her, forcefully reminding her of the pleasure to be had when he took her.

He didn’t stay at her breasts long enough. Even as her fingers clenched in his hair to pull him back, he was moving lower, his tongue skimming over her upper stomach, then her abdomen, as he knelt before her.

“Mac—someone could see us,” she panted.

She stared down at him, shaking as he gripped her thighs.

“Part your legs for me, Kei. Now.” His tone brooked no refusal. The forceful rasp of hunger in his voice had her whimpering even as her thighs parted.

The eroticism of the moment was searing her. She was suddenly seeing a part of Mac that she had only glimpsed in the past three years. The dark, dominant hungers that he kept carefully banked. And she loved it. Loved it so much that she could feel the sudden flow of her juices spilling from her body.

“Sweet and wet,” he growled as his gaze dropped to the curl-shrouded flesh between her thighs. “You know, Kei, if this sweet pussy were waxed, you could feel even the breeze whispering over your clit, caressing your flesh. Wouldn’t that feel good?”

He blew across her clit, the sensation of even that small caress drawing her to her toes as she fought for something to hold onto. A way to strengthen her legs.

One hand grasped hold of the fender of the tractor, the other reaching up and gripping the small handhold that opened the casing to the motor.

“Beautiful,” he whispered. “I think I’m ready for lunch now, Keiley. But we don’t have to go to the house for me to eat it.”

Her cry shattered through the barnyard as his hand lifted her leg and his head lowered to the saturated flesh between her thighs.

He consumed her. Lips, thrusting, licking tongue, his suckling mouth. He devoured her over and over again as she clung helplessly to the machinery behind her and angled her hips to give him better access.

It was good. So good. The heat of the sun bearing down on her, the heat of Mac’s mouth consuming her. She was lost in the sensations. In the pleasure. Lost in the overriding carnal intensity that began to build inside her.

It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t as though Mac had never gone down on her before. But the difference was in how he did it. The situation, the location, the hunger he was unleashing on her. Within minutes she could feel the electricity pouring up her spine, the pleasure building in her womb.