4

      HE’D NEVER FELT MORE WELCOMED into a woman’s bed. More wanted. When she’d held out her hand to him, looking small and delicate in the middle of the large bed, his heart had opened, started to ache. And feelings he hadn’t felt in a long time had begun their long, arduous climb to the surface.

      He’d sensed what she was offering him was more than a mere physical sensation or release. It felt as if he were being handed a lifeline. And he took it. He’d never wanted anything more. He took it and followed her down onto the bed in the middle of the day. Life might be going on all around them, but for this day, this hour, this moment, they were alone in the quiet coolness of this motel room, with just each other and the strong emotion that seemed to flow between them so effortlessly.

      When he kissed her, it didn’t seem like the first time, they fit together so well. She seemed familiar to him in the best possible way, and he deepened the kiss, feeling his body quicken, hoping that it would not betray him or shame him.

      He wanted her with the intensity of a teenage boy, that strong hunger and desire, but he wanted to give her the skill and knowledge of a man who knew how to love a woman thoroughly. Yet all of his desire, his emotions, seemed to be demanding he get as close as possible as quickly as possible.

      He broke the kiss and, though he wasn’t usually a man who talked in bed, whispered, “Your name.” He wanted to know her name.

      “Jennifer.” The one word came out on a sigh, so deeply satisfied, and it thrilled him to hear that tone in her voice when all he’d done was kiss her.

      “Jen,” he said with a deep sense of satisfaction, and something flickered in those deep blue-gray eyes.

      “What is it?” he whispered, looking down at her. His body was pressed into hers, even though he was taking most of his weight on his forearms.

      She smiled up at him with a hint of tentativeness. “I like the way you say my name.”

      “Is Jennifer better? Jenny?”

      “Jen’s fine. You?”

      It took him a moment to get that she was asking him his name. “Cody. Cody Roberts.”

      There was the slightest flicker of awareness in her expression, and he prayed she wouldn’t suddenly recognize who he was and what he did. He’d had enough of those kinds of encounters—women who slept with him to get close to success or to get a part in one of his films. Or just to say they’d slept with a star. Even a fallen star.

      “It feels like…I know the name.”

      His whole body tensed.

      “It must be because,” she whispered, “I feel so close to you.”

      He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to make love to her, to make it good for her, to lose himself inside her. In his experience, you were either attracted to a woman or you weren’t, and he was incredibly attracted to this woman.

      “Jen,” he whispered. Then he kissed her.

      SHE’D NEVER FELT THIS WAY with any other man.

      It wasn’t as if she had a vast amount of sexual experience. She’d had only a couple of boyfriends in college and then Ethan. Ethan, who her father had practically handpicked for her and for whom she had felt absolutely nothing.

      Ethan, who was waiting back in Chicago for her, even though she’d broken their engagement and given him back the flawless diamond ring before she’d started on her trip to California and freedom.

      Her father had thought she was insane. By implication, so had Ethan. But Jen had known there was something else or someone else out there for her. She’d known that the life she would have had with Ethan would have gone precisely, step-by-step, according to her father’s master plan for an ordered life.

      It would have been an emotional jail cell. A gilded cage. And she would have beaten her wings frantically against the bars, and no one would have heard. But the end result would have been the same.

      Now she had a chance to fly free. To live.

      She was glad as she looked up at Cody that no one would ever know about this encounter. She wanted it for herself alone, didn’t want anyone judging her or giving her any unwelcome and unasked-for opinions.

      No one would ever know about the robbery other than the police and perhaps the local news. Certainly no one she knew. She would have this time alone, out of time, all for herself. She would give to Cody and, in giving to him, find out so much about herself.

      She’d left Chicago because she’d been afraid she’d stopped feeling anything, and since she’d met this man she’d done nothing but feel.

      She touched his lip. “Does it hurt?”

      “No.”

      She smiled. “Then kiss me,” she whispered. “Kiss me again.”

      He smiled down at her, and her heart sped up at the look in those dark blue eyes. “You’re really something,” he whispered, then kissed the side of her neck. “I didn’t come here thinking this was going to happen.”

      “I know.” She hesitated. “I didn’t open the door thinking something like this would happen.”

      That smile. Devastating. He kissed her temple and whispered, “Sure? Are you okay, Jenny?”

      “Never better.”

      He laughed, a low, satisfied sound that thrilled her, then she ran her fingers through his hair and gently tugged his head down to hers, his mouth to hers. And then one kiss blended into the next and the next, and her body began to soften, to become pliant and willing and so filled with yearning.

      She was more than ready when he touched her breasts, when he moved down and kissed them, took them into his mouth and pulled on them strongly. Almost blind with need, her eyes shut, she arched up against him, all feeling centered where his hands and mouth were touching her.

      And she couldn’t stop touching the strong, hard muscles beneath his smooth, hot skin. Her hands were restless, taking him in, learning him, wanting to commit him to tactile memory.

      Before, she’d felt a subtle impatience from her partners, as if they felt she wasn’t quite keeping up with them, as if they were indulging her by going slowly. Now she felt as if she were racing ahead of Cody, on fire, impatient for what he was going to do next, wanting more and more and more….

      When his hand slipped between her thighs and cupped her, she was almost ashamed at how ready she was. He looked at her as he touched her and saw the bright flush on her face.

      “Don’t,” he whispered, sliding back up and kissing her softly. “Don’t go there, Jen.”

      Her face was so hot, it prickled. She wasn’t at all surprised he read her mood. That short moment when