State Secrets by Linda Lael Miller Page A

from her and off the bed, she was stricken, until she realized that David was onlyremoving his own clothing, that he would come back to her.
    “Are you sure, Holly?” he asked softly as he stretched out beside her again, part of his lean, powerful body covering and making promises to hers.
    “Yes,” she managed to say.
    He kissed her again, deeply and desperately, and their tongues engaged in a savage, fevered battle. His knee prodded her legs gently apart and then he was poised above her, bracing himself with his hands.
    “God in heaven, Holly,” he muttered hoarsely, “how I’ve wanted you…from the first…”
    Holly’s hands were moving up and down the sleek, rippled expanse of his back. She wanted to say something poetic, something memorable, but her arousal was such that she could do no more than gasp his name.
    David groaned and entered the sweet sanctum of her body, carefully and with a tenderness that deepened the love Holly already felt for him. He moved slowly at first, rhythmically, sheathing and unsheathing, reacquainting her with the long-forgotten feel of a man’s possession.
    Holly’s few experiences with her fiancé long ago had done nothing, nothing whatsoever, to prepare her for this. This was a glorious, blinding joy, one that centered all of her heart and all of her soul on the singular joining of this man’s body with her own. She moved in time with him, making a soft, unselfconscious sound in her throat, a crooning, needing sound.
    David’s lips were everywhere, brushing her eyelids, tracing the line of her jaw, tasting her mouth. His tongue circled her lips in a way that was somehow territorial andfiercely arousing, and the pace he had set for her body increased by degrees until they both seemed to be hurling themselves at each other, frantic for a oneness that would consume them both.
    When that moment came, David growled, his eyes closed, and shuddered upon Holly while she cried out and thrust her hips upward to enclose him as completely as she could.
    They both sank into a sleeplike state for a time, their breathing ragged, eyes closed. David’s fingers, tangled in Holly’s hair, moved soothingly against her scalp. Then, suddenly and with devastating determination, he thrust himself free of her, cursing under his breath as he wrenched on his clothes.
    Holly, shameless only moments before, now felt tawdry. She clasped the edge of the quilt covering her bed and pulled it over herself.
    “David, what is it?” she finally dared to ask, watching wide-eyed as he completed the angry rite by jerking his boots back onto his feet.
    He might have stormed out without saying anything at all if Holly hadn’t spoken when she did, but then he froze, his back turned to her, rigid and impassive. “It was a mistake,” he muttered at length.
    “It was your idea!” Holly cried, wounded.
    David lowered his head but did not turn around to face her. “Yes. It was my idea,” he conceded raggedly.
    “You feel guilty, don’t you, David?”
    Now he turned and met her eyes. “I’m sorry, Holly. I wanted you so badly I lost my head.”
    “You lost your head?” Holly was suddenly energized,electrified. But this time it was fury, not passion, that surged through her. Heedless of her nakedness, she flung back the quilt and bounded off the bed. “I beg your pardon?” she screamed.
    David silenced her by laying three fingers gently, ever so gently, over her mouth. His eyes were dark with some pain that Holly couldn’t understand and couldn’t share. But whatever it was, she would gladly have traded her own confused, hurt feelings for it.
    “Believe me when I tell you, Holly, that I’ve never wanted or needed a woman the way I needed you just now. Never. But it was a mistake. We can’t let it happen again.”
    It would have hurt less, Holly was certain, if he’d slapped her. “What do you mean, it was a mistake? It was…it was…”
    David kissed her forehead, wiped away the tears gathering at