even the smile was enough to stop her gaze from straying down over his muscled chest, firm abdomen and slim hips. Her throat, constricting at the sight of his nude, muscular perfection, emitted a sound of feral admiration that made him grin.
‘Missed me, huh?’ he asked smugly.
His lips sought her mouth, giving her no chance of verbal response, but hell yes, she’d missed him! Her arms clamped tightly around his neck; they’d been parted mere hours, yet she’d missed him with an intensity she’d thought would kill her.
‘I didn’t expect to see you until the end of the week,’ she said when they broke apart, dazed as much by his unexpected presence as the effects of his kiss.
‘I know, but I was worried about you.’
‘Worried? You don’t think I can last three days without you?’
Chucking her indignantly jutted chin, he grinned. ‘It wasn’t the days that concerned me. I know how much trouble you have sleeping in summer, so I decided I’d better be here to keep you cool.’
Stifling a smile, she raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course it was solely my best interests you had at heart.’
‘Yeah.’ He all but purred the word, and, taking what she now recognized to be an ice cube, he drew it around her hairline to the pulse behind her ear.
‘Feel good?’ he asked, his gaze intense.
‘It feels great, but it’s not going to work,’ she told him. ‘You’re only making me hotter...’ Her words died to a sigh as the frozen cube was trailed down her throat and across her chest.
‘Hot, babe?’ he whispered, manoeuvring the cool wetness into the valley of her breasts, then mopping it up with his tongue. ‘How hot?’
Arousal flamed in her and Taylor gripped the sheets in an effort to stay centred.
‘Tell me how hot I make you,’ he urged. ‘Better yet—’ he paused only until her eyes lifted to his, then straddled her with slow, easy grace ‘—show me.’
As he said the words, the cube made contact with her nipple, sending her bucking from the mattress. Desire seared her bones as furiously as his hardness branded her belly. She made a futile grab for him but in one smooth motion he snared her wrists and stretched her arms above her head.
‘Easy, honey, I’m not through cooling you.’
The taste and temperature of his kiss had Taylor equating hell with the North Pole, and as passion engulfed her, she wondered if a person could drown in fire, or combust from love. Dimly she became aware of his reaching for another ice cube from the tray by the bed, but nothing in her wildest dreams had prepared her for what he did with it.
Placing it between his teeth, he began guiding it from the base of her throat along the length of her, the combination of her overheated skin and his breath creating melting rivulets that trickled along the ridges of her ribcage as slowly as he flowed down her body. With both her blood and flesh growing more heated by the moment, each time Craig replaced one spent ice cube with a cooler, fresher one, Taylor expected to hear it sizzle as it met her skin and evaporated on contact. By the time his trail of torture reached her navel, her breathing was as ragged and erratic as the reactionary tremors that surfaced across her belly, but erupted from a far deeper core.
Millimetre by erotically slow millimetre, he orally steered the ice lower and lower until her nerve endings were ablaze to the point where she thought she would explode into a zillion pieces without ever finding the completion she craved. Her experience with this man’s torrid sensuality meant there was no question as to why the ice didn’t feel cold against the most sensitive part of her femininity. Every pulse in her body was screaming at sound-barrier pitch for release and her hips lifted with wanton demand for its delivery.
She was almost frantic with need for him when his dexterous mouth and hands stilled. Tossing her head, she writhed beneath him. ‘Now!’ she cried. ‘Don’t stop...now!’
‘Look at me, Tay....’ His words were breathless and strained, but the touch of his hand on her forehead signified their importance.
Forcing her lashes open, she stared at up the sweat-drenched male perfection poised above her and her heart almost exploded at the depth of emotion shining from his eyes into hers.
‘I love you, Tay. I love you more than you’ll ever believe. And nothing will ever change that.’
‘Oh...Crai—’
His mouth claimed hers in a humid, hungry kiss that she never had a chance of controlling. Then he eased away and, with a smug, satisfied smile, moved his hips intimately against her. ‘Now?’ he asked.
‘Yes, yes...now. Now...’
Taylor struggled to shrug free of the hand shaking her shoulder. It wasn’t Craig’s hand...it was too small. Too fragile...
‘Mummy! Mummy, wake up! You’re having a bad dream!’
Panting for breath and blinking against the glare of the bedside lamp, Taylor tried to sit up. To speak. To ignore the fact she was quaking with unsatisfied desire. To comprehend what the wide-eyed child hovering by her bed was doing in her and Craig’s tiny apartment in the middle of the night.
‘It’s okay, Mummy,’ the dark-haired child assured her. ‘You must have been dreaming about being on Grandpa’s farm.’ She giggled. ‘You kept yelling “Cow! Cow!”’
Reality struck with a crippling blow, catapulting Taylor from past pleasures to present pain. It hurt her to breathe, nearly killed her to think. Acid tears burned her eyes and throat. Tears for what she’d lost with the only man she’d ever loved and for what she’d gained with her daughter. His daughter.
‘Mummy, if you want, I could get in bed with you so you aren’t scared any more.’
Taylor pulled her daughter into a fierce hug, silent tears scalding paths down her face and her body trembling, as despair clawed her heart.
What had happened to them? What the hell had happened to the all-consuming love they’d shared? And when, dear lord, when would she stop feeling its loss?
It was well after midnight before Craig had the luxury of removing his tie and stretching out in his favourite reclining chair. He sighed wearily, lifting the glass of bourbon to his lips and savouring its soothing warmth.
His dinner meeting had gone on far longer than he’d anticipated or wanted. He allowed himself a smile as he ruefully admitted that part of the reason had been his inability to keep his mind on what was being discussed. If Taylor had consented to seeing him tonight, he’d have cancelled the engagement without a second thought. Considering the way the events of the day had distracted him from the business at hand, he would have been best served to have done so, regardless! His mind had been constantly sidetracked from the topic under discussion by images of a beautiful, green-eyed, honey-haired woman.
Taylor was back. Sexier and more beautiful than ever. And with her she’d brought a small, almost porcelain fragile, child who by rights should never have survived beyond a few days of life. He shivered as an image of his daughter’s face imprinted itself in his mind. His daughter. The reason Taylor had walked out on him.
He took another sip of his drink,
