She barely caught him in time, pushed backward by his solid bulk. The cot’s thin mattress sank under their combined weights. Mac worked her body sideways to avoid being crushed and found herself entangled with him—limb with limb, chest to chest.
She came to rest on top of a warm, hard-contoured, breathing male body. Every inch of him burned through her thin clothing, fever-hot. Hooded gray eyes made a study of her face. His lips curled in something like triumph.
Heat pooled between her legs, in her breasts, filling up the space where her brain ought to be. She planted her hands on the cot and pushed up. “Your shoulder—”
“No pain,” he said. He worked his arm between their bodies, brushing her oversensitive breasts. “I think I’ve found the cure.”
Where’s your snappy comeback now? Mac asked herself. But it wouldn’t come. Her mind had detached itself from her body.
“Mac,” he said, caressing her name. “You know what it’s like to be close to death—feel it brush by you and leave you untouched.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Something always happens then, darlin’. It’s when you know you’re most alive.”
Yes. The admission hummed through her, a first inevitable surrender. She felt more alive now than she had in years.
His mouth was so close, his body so unapologetically masculine. Right down to the unmistakable thrust of his pelvis under hers. She felt… womanly. Soft. Almost beautiful, all the things she’d never been and never could be. Didn’t want to be. Except he made her want it.
He made her want him.
He cupped her cheeks in his hands. “We’re alive, Mac. Now more than ever. Life calls to life. It demands repayment.”
Secret shivers racked her from head to toe. Why fight it? She was independent, mature; she could choose what she wanted. She could prove that not all Sinclairs were alike, that they could save instead of betray, give as well as take.
She could choose to give herself.
His hips lifted, probed, demanded. “Prove what you said by the lake,” he said. “Prove you’re a match for me. Teach me.”
She heard the challenge and knew it must be met without fear. The old MacKenzie Sinclair fell away like a snake’s molted skin.
She braced herself over him, closed her eyes, and gave him his answer.
Chapter Nine
This time is out of joint;
O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to
set it right!
—William Shakespeare
SHE WAS EVERYTHING she’d been by the lake and a hundred times more. Her mouth descended on his with an abandon that startled him before he gave himself up to the exultation of victory.
For he’d been right. She was like a banked fire, a tempest locked in an improbable body. And now that tempest descended on him with unanticipated fury.
A fury in which he could lose himself, a flame to consume the rage and the pain he’d sworn never to feel again, the anguish that was nothing but impotence and weakness.
Mac was burning life to remind him that Perry hadn’t succeeded. That loss and betrayal were not all that existed in the world…
There was no hesitation in Mac’s kiss, though it lacked the finesse of experience. Her tongue darted out to brush his lips and ventured no further. She acted now in half-fearful defiance, to prove herself his equal.
But she was a woman. He could bury himself in her, and forget for a while. There was nothing between them but desire. Nothing to make him weak again.
He had wanted her, not understanding why. He admitted that now. But now it didn’t matter, because the wanting was all there was. In this moment out of time he was free, liberated from every chain of reality. He wanted to pour his seed into the hot core of her body, to feel the swell of life in every nerve and let his blood shout defiance to very death itself.
And she wanted him. He was certain of that. She’d saved his life and come close to losing her own. The need in her was as strong as it was within him.
His mouth held hers with flicks and forays of his tongue as he maneuvered her about, rolled with her on the narrow cot until they lay side by side. Her slender thighs were trapped under his, her breasts puckered against his chest. He felt her try to speak, but he trapped her words with a deeper kiss and worked her beneath his body.