Eye of the Tiger by Diana Palmer Page B

night.
    “Don’t!” she cried, biting her lip hard as his free hand began to move the bra away from soft flesh. “Please don’t do this to me, Keegan!”
    “Why are you so afraid of it?” he asked gently, searching her wild eyes. “You’re a woman now, not a child. Four years older, wiser, experienced yourself. This is just an interlude. Share a little pleasure with me, Ellie. Let me bring back the memories.”
    “They were terrible memories,” she reminded him on a caught breath. “You hurt me!”
    “I know, baby,” he said softly, and his eyes for an instant were haunted. He bent and brushed his mouth gently over her forehead. “Once, but never again, never. Lie still, baby, and let me touch you.”
    She wanted to stop him. To cry out, to protest. He’d hurt her pride so desperately, and he was only playing with her. But he was calling her “baby,” just as he had on that night, and she remembered the feel of his hair-roughened chest against her taut breasts, the smooth, hard muscles of his bare legs against her own, the unexpected steely strength of his body as he held her down and overwhelmed her in the moonlit darkness….
    How could she want this, after the way he’d hurt her? But she did; she wanted it, her body was gently arching, and his hand was tracing her rib cage, taunting her, teasing her. “Shhhh,” he whispered again. The arm supporting her lifted her a little closer to his chest, turning her so that her hot face could fall against his neck.
    She shuddered helplessly and raised her hands, tangling them gently in the slightly curly hair at the napeof his strong neck. She couldn’t breathe properly, and she couldn’t hide it. She moaned again, a breath of sound that barely reached his ear.
    His cheek brushed against hers. His mouth touched her ear, her cheek, her nose. “Ellie,” he whispered, and his lips found hers, probing them delicately apart, biting at them.
    It was just like that night. Explosive. Blazing. Frightening, a brushfire that hardly needed its own spark to ignite.
    “Keegan,” she moaned against his lips, shaking all over. Her eyes opened, anguished, and found a matching torment in the blue depths.
    “Nothing’s changed,” he whispered, his deep voice a little husky with emotion. “Touching you excites me so. This, with you, is as satisfying as lovemaking. You make such sweet noises when I do this….”
    “This” was an achingly slow tracing around her breast until his fingers brushed the taut hardness and made it throb with pleasure. Her body jerked and she moaned against his mouth. He reveled in the trembling hunger he could feel in her. Lost, burning up with remembered passion, he opened his mouth and gently thrust his tongue into her mouth. It was surprising, the way she tensed, as if she weren’t used to this kind of kissing. Surprising, and wildly arousing.
    His hands teased her body until he felt her fingers at his wrist, pleading, guiding. Surges of pleasure shot through him like fire as his hand found her, so gently, and she froze in the tender embrace, her breath catching as he took the delicate weight and found the hardnesswith his thumb. She jerked at that brushing contact, shuddering with obvious pleasure.
    “Do you like it like that?” he whispered. “Does it please you when I touch them this way? Or is it better like this?”
    His thumb and forefinger contracted, and she arched back, groaning, abandoned. And he went crazy.
    She felt her body being forced down against the hard ground, felt the weight of his body as he kissed her fiercely, and was powerless to stop him. She was caught in the power of what they were sharing, in the sweet, warm beauty of it. Her mouth felt bruised when he finally lifted his head, and her eyes opened lazily to look up at the passion-hard face of the man above her. “I’m going to look at you,” he whispered, catching the hem of her blouse while she lay helpless under his body. “I’m going to get drunk on you,