That’s all she saw. In the broken moment before his mouth came down on hers, she saw something steely glowing in his eyes, a neediness that grabbed deep within her, even as her mind shut down. Then she only felt. His mouth slanting against hers. The scrape of whiskers against her cheek. His hands, so big and hard, cradling her face. There was a desperation in his touch, a tenderness that— A tenderness that made her heart strum low and deep. It took effort, but she forced herself to pull back, forced herself to open her eyes and look at him. See him. The dirty and torn camouflage pants, the smoke-stained olive T-shirt and field jacket, the solid chest and powerful arms, the hard jaw and the cleft in his chin, the closely cropped dark hair, the impossibly full mouth—the same mouth that had kissed her in her dreams every night for five weeks. “You,” she whispered, then his mouth was on hers again, and nothing else mattered. She pushed up and lifted her hands, let them touch his face as his touched hers.
