The hoarse emotion in his voice washed over her. She covered his hand with hers, her throat too tight to push words past. What would have happened if there hadn't been an attack on the embassy that day?

She would have still been pregnant and Lucas would have insisted they marry. She wouldn't have been able to hold out against his insistence then.

Would they have lasted? They'd been on their way to breaking up that day as she pressed for more from him, some proof of intense love as her panic grew over possibly being pregnant. Now their arguments seemed small in comparison to the grief they hadn't known was waiting for them that day in a rebel's gun outside the gate.

Sara arched closer, flattening her br**sts against the hard wall of his chest. She didn't want to think about the past. She didn't want to think about the future, either.

They had this moment where the world stopped. What were the odds of the planets lining up for a time like this again? She wasn't willing to risk it.

Sara peeled his shirt up and over his head. Tanned skin called to her fingers. She could envision him running along the beach with his shirt off as he used to do when they'd been dating. And while she was staring at his chest and sketching her fingers over the hard stretch of muscles her shirt went fluttering to the ground and she couldn't even remember him taking it off.

Some things definitely stayed the same.

She smiled. So did he, and suddenly the rest of their clothes were disappearing, tossed aside until she was n**ed and so was he and wasn't that conveniently wonderful? He pulled her flush against him, skin to skin, her br**sts tightening to a near-painful tingling against him.

Carefully, he lowered her to recline on the quilt, keeping his weight on his elbows, off her, trailing kisses down her neck, her shoulders with such sweet and tender attention. She ached for a firmer touch. He eased away without breaking contact.

What?

Threading her fingers in his hair, she urged him against her. She might as well have been pressing against a brick wall. She'd felt the unrestrained passion of Lucas. Why was he holding back now?

Hmm... Hadn't he always said to tell him what she wanted? "Touch me."

"Oh, I will."

"No. I mean touch me. Really touch me." She pressed his hand firmer against her.

"I don't want to hurt you. You're so damn fragile, and you've been sick." He palmed the scar high on her stomach where she'd been shot, damaging her pancreas. There were other bullet scars, as well, and if she let him explore them all the mood would spoil.

She moved his hand back to her breast over her hammering heartbeat. "What we're doing here is about feeling alive, and I am very much alive, as are you. Please don't cheat either of us of the full pleasure we can have together."

His jaw flexed, his hands shaking.

Damn it, he was stubborn.

She was more stubborn.

Sara nipped kisses along his collarbone, down his chest, circling his nipple with her tongue on her way down, down. She wrapped her fingers and her mouth around him, his low groan thrilling her as much as she seemed to be thrilling him.

His hands went to her shoulders massaging for a moment before he gripped under her arms, hauled her up and flipped her on her back. He stroked with his hands and tongue over her body until she wasn't thinking anymore.

She languished in the magic of an intensely intimate Lucas Quade kiss, flowing tingly champagne bubbles through her veins, fizzing and popping in microbursts of pleasure. She shivered, every inch of her skin oversensitive to the least touch, even the brush of air from the ceiling fan clicking overhead.

Lucas eased from her, reaching to snag the small packet from the corner of the blanket and sheathing himself. He rolled to his back, his hands gripping her h*ps as he guided her over him. More of his protecting her by keeping her off the hard floor? She would let his protectiveness go this time since it came with the payoff of being on top.

Thank goodness he didn't ask again if she really wanted this. Smart man.

Kneeling, she straddled him and stared into his eyes, watching him watch her, tendons tight in his neck in a tension she understood since it echoed the need inside her. He inched her down slowly, the heat of him stretching her after so many years of abstinence. Her brain short-circuited at the onslaught of emotion from having Lucas alive and inside her again. The pure rightness of it all. Tears stung her eyes.

Tears?

She blinked fast, praying she wouldn't start crying and ruin this moment by sending Lucas into over protective macho mode where he pulled away to comfort her. She wasn't sure there could ever be enough comfort to erase the grief and anger over what had been stolen from them.

Move, damn it. Or at least say something to let him know she was okay. "Lucas—"

He traced her lips. "I know. Me, too." His hand trailed from her mouth to her jaw, teasing along her skin, calluses rasping over her chest before he tugged her hair lightly. "Your hair's longer now. I like it."

Lucas and his simple statements, far more potent than some overplayed rambling. With a new insightfulness that came from age or a wisdom born of suffering, she understood what he'd meant. Longer hair translated into passage of time which urged them to live for the moment, not the past.

Her tears dried as quickly as the ache in her heart. She grided down to rest over him, her h*ps rocking once, twice. His answering. Their bodies remembered and reclaimed.

She bit her bottom lip to hold back the moans building as they moved together. Staying quiet to keep their lovemaking private stretched tension tauter within her.

Her body tingled to life again. If anything the pull between them was stronger, deeper, more mature.

The need for release swelled inside her like the most perfect bubble, floating her higher and higher, fuller until it stretched so tight there was nothing left for it but to...shatter into an umbrella of sparkling refracted lights behind her eyes. Except her eyes were open as she watched Lucas fly apart in her arms.

Tears welled again, and this time she let them flow.

Reclining against the pillows with Sara draped over him, Lucas tangled his fingers in her hair, telling himself he stayed in bed so she could sleep longer.

He should have been more careful with her, but they'd both been so damn out of control. Five years was a helluva long time to go without, although he'd never consciously decided to be abstinent. The encounters just never happened because Sara always intruded in his head. Now he wondered if on some freaking whoo-hoo level he'd known Sara was still alive.

And didn't that sort of intuition go against everything he'd ever believed? Being with her always messed with his head in a way nothing else ever had. She stirred him even now when he should be too drained even to twitch.

Rein it in and let her sleep, damn it. She needed to recharge for all the changes in store for her. He couldn't process how fragile she looked now. A result of the injuries or stress, he didn't know for sure. Although her outpouring of tears certainly leaned the scales heavily to the latter.

Either way he was determined to pamper her. She'd wanted more romance before, after all. About time he figured it out.

Although she hadn't wanted much to do with tender pampering a half hour ago as the scratches on his back proved. Remembering the feel of her moving over him, under him, then over him again... He gritted his teeth to regain control before she woke.

Reasonable thought was tough to find with the heat of her all around him. Sara, so familiar and perfect, no wonder he hadn't been with anyone since her. All of it hammered through him—the gut kick of seeing her for the first time. Finally realizing he couldn't stay away. Something that hadn't changed. His hands shook from the fear of losing her a second time.

They'd been so in synch together tonight, he could almost hope... But he knew better. He'd been overly confident after their first time, certain she would marry him...because he'd been her first...

"You should have told me you were a virgin." Lucas combed his fingers through Sara's shoulder-length hair, the sheet doing little to disguise what was now imprinted in his memory.

But while she'd been uninhibited during sex at her flat, he couldn't miss her shyness afterward.

She traced his collarbone. "'Were' is absolutely right. I am now thoroughly and happily no longer a virgin."

"You should have told me."

Snorting on a giggle, she thumped his chest. "So you could decide we shouldn't be together?"

He wasn't laughing. "You've waited for twenty-four years. Why now?" Another question hammered harder in his head. "Why me? I know I'm not—"

"That is bull."

"Excuse me?" His hand stopped midcomb through her hair.

"You heard what I said." She shook her hair free, shoved him to his back and straddled his h*ps while somehow still holding on to that sheet in a sexy dichotomy of shy temptress. "Don't even think about listing some silly excuses of why we should not be together. Such as how you're ten years older than I am. How you're from another country, and we're opposite personalities—"

"Now that you mention it..."

She kissed him, quick and so damn sweet. "I decided for myself and I chose you. I like to think you would have wanted me, regardless, but I wasn't willing to risk it."

Lucas stilled her h*ps with his hands. Damn, she was a quick study. All the same his brain was still reeling from that moment he'd realized he was her first, and before he could pull back she'd surged up. "If I'd known, I could have been more careful."

He was thirty-four years old, for God's sake. He should have read the signs, been prepared for the possibility at least, and given her more of a night to remember rather than their out-of-control tangle of arms and legs in their mad dash the second they'd entered her front door.

At least he'd made it to her bed rather than taking her against the wall.

"You were perfect. It was perfect."

As if she had anything to compare him to?

Nope, he wasn't feeling any better, and the thought of her finding someone else for comparison made him feel a lot worse. "Marry me."

Huh? Where had those words come from? He almost looked over his shoulder. Except he knew he'd said it. Asked her.

Couldn't wait to hear her answer.

She laughed, tumbling onto her back, holding her sides. And ah hell, seeing her bare br**sts made it tough for him to think. Then yeah, he remembered he'd just proposed, by God, and she was laughing her ass off at him.

That really bit—harder than she had, actually.

He rubbed the small nip bruise on his shoulder. "What's so funny about me proposing?"

She rolled onto her side facing him, the sheet slithering farther and, saints be praised, she didn't seem in the least concerned with modesty right now. "You are so adorable."

What the—? "Adorable?"

"Absolutely—" she kissed the tiny bruise on his shoulder "—adorable." She blew along his neck. "You think because you have 'deflowered' me, you should offer a wedding ring." She licked up his ear. "While I thank you for the adorable offer, again I say to you...you are so full of bull."

He may have been full of bull, and he may have been losing his grip on rational thought since the blood supply to his brain was being seriously compromised by a certain hot woman in his bed....

But he hadn't forgotten his question and how, for five chest-tight seconds, he'd wanted her to say yes...

Chapter 12

Blinking awake, Sara kicked her feet free of the tangled sheets around her legs. Chilly air blasted over her bare skin.

Bare?

Memories of being with Lucas tumbled through her mind. How they'd made love on the floor, then against the wall after she'd woken as he moved her.

She reached across the mattress—the empty mattress—and stifled disappointment. There were a thousand reasons why he could have needed to leave instead of being there to kiss her awake with sleepy slow, good-morning sex.