Masquerade by Janet Dailey

hadn't been fool enough to believe it . . . then.
    "And you fell for me right off, I suppose." She raked her fingers through his hair, flexing them almost like a cat as her parted lips grazed along his jawline.
    "Are you kidding? I swore I wouldn't get within ten feet of you." It was a vow that common sense told him he should have kept.
    "What happened?"
    "About six months ago I got within ten feet of you, and all hell broke loose." He meant that literally. Trouble had erupted almost from the moment they'd gotten together—and grown steadily in the interim. But it was moments like this, when he held her warm and cushioning body close to him and tasted the fiery flavor of her kiss, that he could almost convince himself he didn't give a damn.
    "Now that is the first thing you've said that I believe," she murmured, seeking and finding his lips.
    For her this was like the first time, because she couldn't remember the other. That he had been her lover she did not doubt. Her body knew him, and her heart knew him, even if her mind couldn't recall him. This was the man she loved.
    Yet the sensations of being loved by him were all brand-new. She couldn't get enough of the feel of his hands on her back—kneading and caressing in their foray down her spine to her hips—or the taste of his tongue in her mouth, thrusting and mating with her own. His chestnut-dark hair was thick and full beneath her fingers, smooth but a little on the coarse side, slightly rough, like the rest of him.
    Wanting more, she strained to get closer to him, her back arching, her hips pressing, her body aching to be absorbed by him. Frustrated, she bit at his lip, inadvertently drawing blood. She heard him stifle a faint sound of pain and rained the spot with light kisses of apology as she brought her hands down, encountering the muscular wall of his chest, rising and falling with the heaviness of his breathing. She tried to run her hands over his chest to the wide points of his shoulders, but his jacket got in the way and his shirt barred contact with the flesh beneath it.
    Impatiently she tugged at the loosened knot of his tie. But Cole's hand took her place, yanking it the rest of the way loose and stripping the tie away. When she pushed at his coat, he shrugged out of it. While their lips continued to consume each other with desperate greedy kisses, she set to work on his shirt buttons. But the third one defied her efforts, a thread of the buttonhole catching it and refusing to let it go. Gripping both edges of his shirt front, she pulled them apart, and the rest of the buttons snapped off one after the other. Her hands moved freely onto his bared chest, all hard, bronzed flesh over sinewy muscle, smooth and hot to the touch, like satin over sunbaked steel. But it wasn't enough to feel it; she wanted to taste it, too. She pulled away from his kiss and brought her lips down to the pulsing vein in his neck. She felt the faint tremor that shuddered through him.
    "Someday, Remy—" His low voice vibrated against her hair, husky with disturbance, as his fingers curled around the collar of her jacket. "Someday you're going to pay for all the shirts you've ruined."
    Openmouthed, she ran the tip of her tongue over the ridge of his shoulder, licking the hot saltiness of his skin, then lifted her head, tilting her face to him. "Make me pay, Cole," she whispered the dare, her eyes gleaming as she gazed into the darkening smoke of his. "Make me pay now."
    Accepting her bold challenge, he pulled the front of her jacket apart and dragged it off her shoulders, momentarily forcing her arms to her sides before she could slip free of the sleeves. With the same impatience she had shown toward him, he ripped her blouse open, sending buttons flying into the air. Not content with that, he pushed the blouse off her, dragging the thin straps of her lace teddy with it and exposing the golden cream of her shoulders. Her blouse had barely touched the floor when his fingers