into his spine, squashing his chest against her breasts.
They were nose to nose, Daniel anchoring her to the bed. He slipped one hand down her inner thigh, searching for her womanly heat, finding out how wet she was for him. Gently, he rubbed his index finger along her soft flesh.
Taylor gasped at his touch and her eyes rounded. “Oooh, Danny Boy,” she purred huskily.
He groaned in answer as he found his target and slipped a finger into her.
She shivered and her arousal caused a corresponding shudder inside him.
He inched in another finger. When he found her clit with the tip of his thumb, she moaned at the back of her throat, and pushed against his hand.
“Ah, yeah, that’s my Taylor,” he whispered. Her responsiveness drove him wild.
“I’m not doing this alone,” she managed to say as she nipped at his neck. “I want you to—” she quivered “—come along with me.”
“You know I can’t resist you,” he said, the air suddenly hot as blazes.
“Come,” she whispered.
He couldn’t hold out any longer. He pushed into her. The minute her hot, moist folds engulfed him he found total bliss.
Her fingers were in his hair and she was rocking against him, chanting his name like a mantra. “Daniel, Daniel, Daniel.”
She stopped breathing then. She always held her breath before she had an orgasm.
No, no, it was too fast. He wanted this to last. Daniel slowed down, pulled back. “Not yet, sweetheart.”
“Don’t be mean.” She pursed her bottom lip in a pout.
Grinning, he kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks, her chin as she wriggled impatiently beneath him. “You want it?”
“I want it now!”
“You got it.” He dropped his feet to the ground, pulled her buttocks to the edge of the mattress. His throbbing cock hovered just outside her moist sex. She spread her thighs apart and he nudged against her entrance.
He looked down at her. At her naked body in the moonlight. Her lips were wet and shiny, her hair tousled, her breasts round and luscious. Damn, but she was the sexiest woman he’d ever known.
Taylor writhed against him. “Get inside me now, lieutenant and that’s a direct order.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He sank into her. Taylor grabbed his ass and pulled him in deeper. They groaned in unison. The heat, the night, the moonlight, the flickering candles. The smell of their combined sex. The headiness of the day. Neither one of them lasted long. A few powerful thrusts and they were both over the edge.
Daniel exploded inside her at the same moment Taylor cried out a deep, throaty pleasure.
Minutes later they lay on the bed in a tangle of arms and legs, sticky with sweat. He was completely sated, totally happy.
A drifty, dozy moment passed, and then Taylor murmured, “Daniel.”
“Uh-huh?” He breathed lazily.
“We need to talk.” She sounded serious.
Daniel rose up on one elbow. The expression on her face was sad, wistful, troubled. It touched him because he’d never seen his high-spirited, fun-loving Taylor look melancholy. His gut clenched. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t begin to tell you how great the last four months have been,” she said.
“Same here,” he replied, his voice gruff with the emotions pushing at the seams of his heart.
“It’s been the best four months of my life.”
“Yeah, for me, too.”
“And now it’s coming to an end.”
It was almost impossible, but he tried to stay calm. “It doesn’t have to end, Taylor. I don’t want it to end and I don’t think you do, either.”
She laughed, but it was a dry, humorless sound that sliced him wide open. “Don’t be silly. It has to end.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Be realistic. You’re going away. I’m staying here. Besides, you’ll be in medical school. Studying, working eighty hours a week.”
“We can make it work.”
“Long-distance relationships aren’t practical.”
Since when was Taylor practical? “We’re different,” Daniel assured her. “You and I. We’re not like everyone else.”
A strange expression that he couldn’t quite read came over her face. Part longing, part regret, part determination, part something else.
Relief?
Could she actually be relieved he was going away? The thought stung like a slap.
“Face it, Daniel. We’re fire and ice. It makes for great sex…” She shook her head. “But it’s lousy for relationships.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re too different. You know that and I know it. Most of all, your family knows it. This has been fun. Great fun, in fact, but…”
She was breaking up with him.
It hit him then, a sledgehammer between the eyes. He had an engagement ring in his pocket to slip on her finger and she was breaking up with him.
“We need to get out of this now before either one of us gets hurt,” she said.
Too late, too late.
Thunderstruck, he sat up and just stared at her. What then was this sudden stabbing in the center of his chest? Was that the kind of hurt she was talking about?
“Taylor…” He started to say more, to plead his case, but he stopped himself. Dammit, he wasn’t going to beg. If she didn’t want him, she didn’t want him. He was an airman. A doctor in training. He came from a long line of strong, capable men. He wasn’t going to let a broken heart fell him. Hell, no.
“This is our last hurrah,” she said gently and reached out to lay a hand over his, but her eyes were too shiny, her smile forced. “After tonight, it’s over, Daniel. It’s for the best and we both know it.”
No, no, he didn’t know that at all. Yes, they came from different worlds. Yes, his parents disapproved. Probably so did her father.
He hardened his jaw, tightened his hands into fists. “That’s really the way you want it?”
Taylor nodded. She was checking her emotions, pulling back, detaching herself. He could see it in the murkiness descending over her intense brown
