Tempestuous Eden by Heather Graham Page A

but notice.
    Blair flushed slightly, but didn’t flinch or move. What must he think of her? she wondered a little desperately, coming so blatantly to his tent in the middle of the night. Could he possibly understand how special he had been to her? How he had already opened undreamed of doors?
    She was starting to tremble; she shouldn’t have come. She was never going to be able to carry off the role of aggressor. Good Lord, what if he didn’t want her? He was always holding back … always able to leave her.
    He did want her, she could see that.
    “Blair,” he said softly, the slightest tone of perplexity in his voice. “What are you doing here?”
    She closed her eyes to gather her strength as she moved into the tent and allowed the flap to fall shut behind her. She couldn’t quite stare into his golden eyes with bravado, so she kept hers lowered even as she opened them. Her first attempt at speech didn’t make it. Her second was faint but audible and steady.
    “I’d like to be with you tonight.”
    He froze again, for more than a second. This just wasn’t fair. He could painstakingly control himself, but not both of them. The machinery was faulty as all hell, and what had been aching with warmth suddenly throbbed with a raging heat.
    He should cover himself, he thought almost absently. For what? He’d look more like a tent than the damned tent did.
    Employ any means, the old man had said.
    But somehow he didn’t think this was exactly what Huntington had in mind.
    “Craig?” Her voice was soft, it was tremulous, it was throatily sexy, it sounded just a shade unsure, just a shade frightened. Such a strong character, suddenly so vulnerable, seeking reassurance from him.
    The hell with the old man.
    “Come here, Blair,” he said, moving slightly to allow her room on the cot.
    Blair was suddenly paralyzed. It had been so easy to imagine going through with it all in the security of his arms with his warmth rampaging through her. But he wasn’t holding her now, and then there had been no thought, just natural, elemental action and reaction. Now she was thinking, he was thinking. It was all there in those yellow eyes, a tenderness that belied their rugged intensity, an understanding that even now offered her an out if she chose to take it.
    She didn’t want an out, she wanted to be here. Her legs began to woodenly take her to him, but her eyes remained downcast. Her knees buckled beneath her just as she reached the cot, and luckily she sank to it with some grace.
    “Blair,” he asked quietly. “Are you sure?”
    She nodded, her throat having gone parchment dry. Her hands were on her lap, folded, wanting to touch, unable to touch.
    What was it? Craig wondered, his thoughts no longer for anything but the exquisite, beautiful woman beside him, so close, not touching, but filling his senses with wonder. She wanted him, but she held back; she had boldly come to him, but now she quivered like a pine beneath the onslaught of a winter wind.
    He had known desire before, and many women of different lands in different ports, but never anything as shattering as this. A desire that almost drove him mad, still tempered by the overwhelming need to be tender, to protect.
    She was so beautiful. So breathtakingly beautiful. Her skin so fine, her eyes shimmering seas of green crystal barely visible beneath the concealing fans of flame.
    Craig slowly lifted his fingers to graze lightly the velvet softness of her cheek. “Talk to me, Blair,” he said soothingly.
    Her lashes finally fluttered open, and he was met with the full force of shining green. “Will you make love to me, Craig?” The first word was faintly underlined. She actually doubted that he would.
    “Good God, Blair, of course I will,” he swore, his voice solemn and yet touched with a wondering amusement that was still unerringly gentle. He sensed the pain in her, the loss, the fear. He was instantly sure she had loved no man but Teile before, and that the