welcoming him home. He pushed his body into hers with one hard stroke. She groaned, loving the long, deep slide of his flesh claiming hers. He filled her and she lifted her legs higher, hooking them around his waist, opening herself so that she could take him even deeper.
And still it wasn’t enough. Wasn’t nearly enough. She groaned, twisting and writhing beneath him as he moved in and out of her depths in plunging strokes that fanned the flames engulfing her.
It had been too long, she thought wildly. She didn’t want soft and romantic. She wanted hard and fast and frantic. She wanted to know that he felt the same crushing need she did. She wanted to feel the strength of his passion.
“Harder, Justice,” she whispered. “Take me harder.”
He looked down at her and his eyes flashed. “I’m holding back, Maggie. It’s been too long. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She cupped his face in her palms, fought to steady her breath and finally shook her head and smiled. “The only thing that hurts is when you hold back. Justice, I need you. All of you.”
His jaw clenched tight, he swept one arm around her back, holding her to him even as he pushed off the couch. With their bodies locked together, her legs wrapped around his waist, he eased her onto the oriental carpet covering the hardwood floors. With her flat on her back, he levered himself over her, hands at either side of her head. Grinning down at her, he muttered, “Told you when you bought ’em those damn couches were too soft.”
She grinned right back at him. “For sitting, they’re perfect. For this…yeah. Too soft.”
She lifted her hips then, taking him deeper inside. When he withdrew a moment later, she nearly groaned, but then he was back, driving himself into her, pistoning his hips against hers and she felt all of him. Took all of him. His need joined hers.
He lifted her legs, hooking them over his shoulders, tipping her hips higher so that he could delve even deeper, and Maggie groaned in appreciation. She slapped her hands onto the carpet and hung on as he moved faster and faster, driving them both to a shuddering climax that hovered just out of reach.
“Yes, Justice,” she said, her voice nothing more than a strained hush of sound. “Just like that.”
Again and again, his body claimed hers, pushing into her soft, hot folds, taking everything she offered and giving all that she could have wanted. She looked up into his eyes, saw the flash of something delicious wink in their depths and knew in that one blindingly clear instant that she would never be whole without him.
Without him.
That one random thought hovered at the edges of her mind and filled her eyes with tears even as her body began to sing and hum with the building tensions that rippled through her senses.
He touched her at their joining. Rubbing his thumb over that one spot that held so many incredible sensations. And as he touched her, Maggie hurtled eagerly toward the enormous climax waiting for her. As her body exploded with the force of completion, she screamed his name, and still she heard the quiet voice in the back of her mind whispering, Is this our last time together?
Then Justice gave himself over to his own release, her name an agonized groan sliding from his throat. When he collapsed atop her, Maggie held him close as the last of the tremors rippled through their joined bodies and eased them into oblivion.
And if her heart broke just a little, she wouldn’t let him know it.
* * *
The rest of the weekend passed in a blurry haze of passion. But for a few necessary trips to the kitchen, Justice and Maggie never left the master bedroom.
After that first time in the living room, Justice made a call to his ranch manager, Phil, and told him to handle the ranch problems himself for the next few days. It hadn’t exactly been a promise of forever, but Maggie had been happy for it.
All the same, she was crazy and she knew it. Setting herself up for another fall. As long as Justice King was the man she loved, she wasn’t going to find any peace. Because they couldn’t be together without causing each other pain and being apart was killing her.
How was that fair?
She sighed a little, her gaze still fixed on him. The only light in the room came from the river stone hearth, where a dying fire sputtered and flickered. Outside, a winter storm battered at the log mansion, tiny fists of rain tapping at the glass. And within Maggie, a different sort of storm raged.
What was she supposed to do? She’d tried living without him and had spent the most miserable nine months of her life. She’d tried to lose herself in her work, but it was an empty way to live. The sad truth was she wanted Justice. And without him, she’d never be really happy.
He was the most amazing lover she’d ever known. Every touch burned, every breath caressed, every whispered word was a promise of seduction that kept her hovering on the brink of a new climax no matter how many times he pushed her over the edge. Her skin hummed long after he stopped touching her. She closed her eyes and felt him inside her. Felt their hearts pounding in rhythm and couldn’t help wondering, as she always had, how two people could be so close and so far apart at the same time.
Now she watched him get out of bed and walk naked across the bedroom. His body was long and lean and tanned from all the years of working in the sun. His dark brown hair hung past his shoulders. She’d always found that hair of his to be sexy as hell and what made it even sexier was that he was oblivious to just how good he looked. How dangerous. Her heartbeat quickened as her gaze moved over his back, and down over his butt. He moved with a stealthy grace that was completely innate. Everything about him was, she had to admit, fabulous. He was enough to make any woman toss her panties in the air and shout hallelujah. And she was no different.
He went into a crouch in front of the hearth. The fire was dying and he set a fresh log on the fading flames. Instantly the fire blazed into life, licking at the new wood, hissing and snapping.
Maggie watched Justice. His legs were muscled and toned from hours spent in a saddle. His back and shoulders were broad and sculpted from the hard work he never spared himself. As a King, he could have hired men to do the hard work around the ranch. But she knew it had always been a matter of pride to him that he be out there with those who worked for him.
Justice King was a man out of time, she thought, sweeping one arm across the empty space in the bed where he’d been lying only moments ago. He would have been completely at home in medieval times. He would have been a Highlander, she mused, her imagination dressing him in a war-torn plaid and placing a claymore in his fist.
As if he knew she was watching him, Justice turned his face to her, and the flickering light of the fire threw dancing shadows across his features. He looked hard and strong and suddenly so unapproachable that Maggie’s heart gave a lurch.
She was setting herself up for pain and she knew it. He was her husband, but the bonds holding them together were frayed and tattered. In bed they were combustible and so damn good it made her heart hurt. It was when they were out of bed that things got complicated. They wanted different things. They each held so tightly to their own bottom line that compromise was unthinkable.
But it was Sunday night. The end of the weekend. She’d have to return to her world soon, and knowing that this time with him was nearly over was already bringing agonizing pain.
The storm blowing in off the coast howled
