For an instant his hard body pulled away from her, as his hands fumbled with the zipper of his jeans. The sudden break in unrelenting sensation brought Joey back to herself, her hands were shaking as she moved to help him. Their eyes locked for the first time since they had begun, and there seemed to be nothing rational or human at all in Luke’s, they echoed what she herself had become.
When Luke was free of the restraints of his clothing, Joey’s hands were there to take his hard length, stroking it with the same fierce desperation she had felt in his caresses. He stiffened, half-crouched above her, and for the first time he was as lost as she. He was fire and untamed masculine power in her hands, and she wanted that fire and power inside her to meet the burning of her own desire.
His breath came in audible rasps now, vibrating in time to the stroking of her hand. Without any agreement but one forged of instinct and need, she dropped her hand, and he positioned himself against her. The heavy shaft pressed her inner thigh, slid without hindrance along the slick softness of her skin, poised at yielding wetness. Joey lifted her hips to take him in, felt the delicious pressure as he prepared to enter.
And then it stopped. Joey opened eyes squeezed shut in unbearable anticipation and tried to focus on Luke where he lay, absolutely still, agonizingly motionless as his pale, wild eyes locked on hers again. Her body was taut with need for him, for his body on hers, for him inside of her—and he did nothing. She wanted to scream, to howl in frustration. There was no reasoning with her body now, or with his. With a moan she reached down for his hardness, wanting what only he could give, knowing he wanted it, too.
He finally moved then, a jerk as if he’d been struck. The wordless cry he uttered was hoarse and harsh with denial, almost a snarl, his teeth bared in a grimace of rage and pain. Joey flinched and stared up at him, frozen in midmovement. His pupils had abruptly gone to pinpricks of shock. She stared in incomprehension as he flung back his head and made a sound of strangled, unmistakable agony.
And then, in defiance of human limitations and her own intense need, he was suddenly gone from above her. In the space of an instant she was left bereft, alone and abruptly, unbearably cold. Dazed, she turned her head weakly against the worn cushions, searching. He was there, in the darkest corner of the room, hunched and naked, only his eyes burning from the shadows in reflected firelight. Staring at her, staring, as he had before, but now with the bleak coldness of a stranger. Cold.
Joey shivered and plucked at the edges of her shirt, pulling it over her chest. Naked, suddenly vulnerable and frightened, she buttoned the shirt with fingers shaking now from reaction and returning sanity. Her jeans lay somewhere out of sight on the floor, to get them she’d have to sit up. Her eyes flickered again to the motionless shadow among the shadows. He was still staring, but his gaze seemed unfocused now. Closed off from her. She rolled upright and found her discarded jeans, moving as little as necessary to pull them back on. Again and again she glanced up to gaze blankly at the man she had desired beyond all reason, uneasy and frightened beyond comprehension. There was no desire left now—none but the last wisps of sensation fading from her sensitized body. She shuddered. It was so cold, colder than she would have thought possible. It felt as if she would never be warm again.
He shuddered. He shivered with emotion and need so far beyond control that there was no hope of relief. In the pitiful concealment of the shadows, Luke fought a compulsion so powerful that it took every ounce of strength he possessed not to become something that would destroy him. And her.
The small, weak part of his being that still possessed the ability to think berated him in an endless litany of contempt. He had known the risk and had chosen to ignore it. He had known from the moment he had kissed her and felt her passion flare to meet his own. His pride had told him he would have her and be damned to the consequences. His mind had been determined to control his body, but his body had betrayed him.