He glanced down at her, and his lips pressed tightly together. “I learned a few years ago that some things are more important than business.”
Her heart nearly stopped beating. “Did you?”
“You taught me that lesson, Kaylie.” The look in his eyes grew distant and guarded. Tension controlled his rugged features. “Seeing you with Johnston on the night of the premiere brought everything into sharp focus. Nothing mattered but your safety. But, of course, it was too late.” She watched as his naked pain dissolved to a cynical expression. He swept his hair back with the flat of his hand. “But you’ve never understood that I only protected you because I loved you and I was afraid of losing you. And I drove you away—did the one thing I was afraid someone else would do.”
The air between them hung heavy with silence. Only the lapping of the water, the twitter of birds in the surrounding pines and the painful cadence of her own heartbeat broke the stillness. Kaylie knew the devastating grief of losing people she loved. Hadn’t she lost her parents when she was young? And Zane had been there to pick up the pieces.
He leaned closer, so close that she saw flecks of blue in his gray eyes. “Losing you was the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced.”
Kaylie’s eyes burned. When Zane’s hand slid upward and strong fingers wrapped around the back of her neck, she didn’t resist, but tilted her face upward.
His lips brushed intimately over hers, and she parted her mouth expectantly.
The wind swept through the trees, soughing through the scented pine boughs. Shadows shifted in the sunlight as Zane’s arms wrapped tightly around her.
Kaylie closed her eyes and tried to think of all the reasons she should push him away. But the pressure of his mouth on hers, the intimate caress of his tongue, the feel of strong fingers splayed possessively along her back were too seductive to ignore. With the sun warm against her back, she succumbed, winding her arms around his neck.
Desire surged through her, and she moved closer to him, felt his anxious thighs against hers. The sweet pressure of his arms wrapped around her and held her so close that her breasts were crushed and she could barely breathe.
Her feet left the ground. He carried her to a thicket of pines and laid her on a bed of needles near the water. Then he stretched out beside her and his lips found hers in a kiss that was hot and wild and filled with emotion.
His hands moved downward, sculpting each of her ribs, his thumbs brushing the swell of her breasts.
Kaylie moaned softly as her nipples hardened and a moist heat in the depths of her womanhood swirled. Lost in battling emotions, she clung to him, laid her head back and felt the warm moist trail of his tongue as he kissed her throat and tugged on her shirt, exposing more of her skin. Her breasts ached for his touch, her body quivered in a need that was overpowering.
He rolled atop her, and the weight of his body was welcome, the feel of his skin against hers divine.
She ignored all the voices in her head that still whispered she was making an irrevocable mistake, and she wound her hands in his hair, then let her fingers trail down the strident muscles of his back and shoulders.
“Make love to me, Kaylie,” he whispered against her ear, and she could barely think. Blood was pounding at her temples, desire creating an ache so intense, she only wanted release.
He stroked the front of her T-shirt, resting the flat of his hand over her pounding heart.
“You want me.”
She stared up at him. His handsome face was strained, perspiration dotted his brow. Above him, branches shifted against the blue, blue sky.
“You want me,” he said again.
“Y-yes.” She couldn’t deny what was so patently obvious. She ached for him, yearned for him, burned deep inside with a longing so intense, she could think of nothing but the feel of his sweat-soaked body claiming hers in lovemaking as savage as it was sweet.
“And I want you,” he whispered hoarsely.
He wasn’t lying. She could feel his hardness through his jeans, rubbing against her hips, causing a friction that seared to her very core. She moved with him and sighed when he pulled her T-shirt from the waistband of her jeans and reached upward, the tips of his fingers grazing her lace-encased nipples.
“Oh, Zane,” she whispered, her mouth finding his as she arched closer, wanting more.
He kissed her again, then his tongue slid down the milk-white skin of her throat, past her breasts, to the sensitive flesh of her abdomen.
; “Zane,” she whispered, and he buried his face in her.
A strangled sound escaped his lips, his breath fanned against her skin, and when he dragged his head upward and met her gaze, his eyes were glazed and stormy, as if he were fighting an inner battle that tore at his soul.
She reached upward to clasp her arms around his neck and drag his lips to hers, but he grabbed her hands. “Don’t,” he said, clenching his eyes shut and sucking in a swift breath.
“Zane?”