When he rocked his hips, pushing himself deeper, she gave herself up to the magic she’d only ever found with him. She matched his rhythm, moving with him in a dance that seemed as new as it did familiar. She ran her palms up and down his back, scoring his skin with her nails. She inhaled the scent of him and dropped a kiss at the base of his throat before meeting his mouth with hers.

His tongue pushed inside, tangled with hers and as they devoured each other, his body continued to plunge inside. Fiercely, passionately, he claimed her again and again, taking her higher, faster, than she’d ever been before.

The first twist of release spun out inside her and Debbie gasped, lifting her hips into his, tipping her head back on the bed, holding on to him as though he were her only remaining link to the world.

And then it was more.

It was everything.

Her body splintered and her mind shattered. She shouted his name, held him tightly and rode the wave of amazing sensation that carried her into oblivion. And when he called her name and followed her, Debbie was there, waiting to catch him as he fell.

Gabe rolled to one side of her and then pushed off the bed. He needed a little distance from Debbie. A little bit of room so that he could catch his breath and congratulate himself on a job well done.

After all, that’s what this had been about. Seduction. Sex. Payback. It had worked like a charm, he told himself. He had her right where he wanted her. Glancing over his shoulder, he looked briefly at Debbie, stretched out across the duvet, practically purring in contentment.

And he wanted her again.

That hadn’t been the plan, but plans were meant to be changed, right? Just because he’d had her once didn’t mean the game was over. Until she left-until he let her go-she was his.

“That was…” Her voice trailed off as if she couldn’t quite find the right descriptive words.

“Yeah.” He knew how she felt. Damned if he could come up with a word to describe what that experience had been like, either. So he put it out of his head, forced his voice into a casual tone and said, “You want a drink? I want a drink.”

He walked naked from the bedroom into the living area and headed straight for the bar. Soft lamplight spilled across the room, chasing shadows into the corners. The sheer drapes across the open French doors lifted and danced in a whisper of a breeze that carried the scent of the ocean into the room.

At the bar, he opened the under-the-counter refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Chardonnay. Debbie liked white wine, he knew, and it would do for him, as well. He opened the bottle and had the first glass poured before she strolled out of the bedroom wearing only his black bathrobe. He didn’t want to think about her naked body beneath the silk fabric, so he swallowed hard and asked, “Wine?”

“Thanks,” she said, and crossed barefoot to him to accept the glass.

Gabe tossed back his drink as if it were medicinal, then quickly poured another. He stared down into the gold liquid, willing himself to settle. It wasn’t working. Blowing out a breath, he crossed the room and stepped through the fluttering curtains and out onto the terrace. Didn’t matter here if he was naked or not. This was a private balcony and couldn’t be seen from anywhere else on the island.

The cool ocean air caressed his skin and did a good job of banking the embers still warming inside him. How could he want her again so quickly?

“Aren’t you cold?” She stepped up beside him, laid one hand on the stone railing and took a sip of her wine.

“No.” He didn’t want to talk to her. He didn’t want to know what she was thinking and he sure as hell wasn’t up to having one of those post-coital conversations all women seemed to thrive on. Damn it, what he wanted to do was to throw her down on the terrace and lose himself inside her again.

Lowering to admit that he was getting tangled up in his own damn trap.

“Gabe…”

He turned his head to look at her. The soft breeze ruffled her hair. Her eyes were shining and her mouth looked too damned delectable for safety. So he kept his voice tight, his tone grim as he said, “Don’t start.”

“Start what?”

He snorted, took a sip of wine. “You know what. Have sex with a woman and she wants to talk about the future, for God’s sake.”

She blinked at him, frowned and said, “I wasn’t going to talk about the future at all.”

“Fine,” he snapped. “Then let’s talk about the past.”

Stupid, he thought. No reason to bring up what’s long dead and buried. But when her mouth flattened into a grim line, he enjoyed it too much to stop. “You want to talk. So talk.”

“What’re you so pissed about?”

“Hell if I know,” he muttered, taking another long drink of his wine.

“You know, you used to be in a better mood after sex,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I used to do a lot of things differently.” His gaze locked on hers and for several humming seconds, neither of them said a word.

“Unbelievable,” she said quietly. “You can stand there and be all snotty and standoffish after what we just did together?”

“It was just sex.”

“It was more than that,” she countered.

“Not to me.”

“Liar.”

“You don’t know me, Deb. Not anymore.”

“You’re wrong,” she said and set her wineglass down on the stone railing. Lifting her chin, she stared up into his eyes and challenged him with a hot glare. “I do know you, Gabe. You haven’t changed that much in ten years. And for some reason you’re supremely pissed off-not at me. At yourself.”

He choked out a laugh and looked away from those blue eyes because damned if they weren’t seeing too much. Staring out at the moonlight scattering across the ocean’s surface, he said, “Now you’re a psychologist? Well, you’re wasting your time analyzing me, babe. I’m a happy man. My life is just the way I want it. Can you say the same?”

“Mostly.”

“Yeah? What about your bigamist boyfriend?” He shot her a hard look. “That make you happy, did it?”

Her bare foot tapped against the stone floor as she inhaled sharply, deeply. Then blowing the air out of her lungs in a rush, she said, “Made me happy to lock his ass up.”

“Uh-huh.” He turned, leaned one hip against the railing and watched her now, relishing the sparks flashing in her eyes. “And just how’d that happen? You catch him with his other wife?”

“No.” She took a drink of her wine and then she was the one who shifted her gaze out to the ocean and what lay beyond. “I got a call from someone wanting to book a ’round-the-world cruise. She came to the agency to talk it over, but she wasn’t there to book the trip. She had another woman with her. Both of them were Mike’s wives. They showed me pictures. Marriage certificates. And they wanted me to go with them to the police to file charges.”

He watched her and though her voice was clear, steady, he saw the dregs of pain and humiliation in her expression and didn’t enjoy it as much as he might have thought he would. “Must have been rough.”

She shrugged it off, as if it were nothing. “Rougher on them. They had kids with him. The bastard.”

He picked up her wineglass, handed it to her, then took another drink himself. “Here’s to lucky escapes, then.”

“Yeah. Real lucky.” But she drank, then shifted a look at him. “Why so interested?”

“Curious, that’s all. Wondered what kind of man it was you said yes to.”

She swallowed hard, stared into her wine as if looking there for a script to read. “I didn’t want to walk away from you, Gabe.”

“Really?” he asked, irony coloring his tone even as a wry smile curved his mouth. “Because you didn’t seem to have any trouble with it at the time.”

“We had nothing,” she said quietly.

“We had everything,” he argued.

She finished off her wine, then held the empty glass between both hands as if needing something to hold on to. “We were in school, still. No money, no prospects.”

“We had plans,” he reminded her, feeling again the long-ago sting of realizing that she hadn’t believed in him.

“It wasn’t enough.” She pushed one hand through her hair, scraping it back from her face as she looked up at him. “Don’t you get it? I told you then that I had to finish school. I needed to find a stable career. One that I could depend on. I couldn’t take a chance-”

“On me?”

Her eyes filled with tears she blinked to keep at bay, but he wouldn’t be sucked into feeling sympathy for her.

After a long moment or two she sighed heavily and said, “I told you about when I was a kid…”

He nodded, remembering. He’d had a family. Security. And it had been hard for him to identify with what she’d gone through, but it hadn’t mattered. All that had mattered for him then, was her.

“About how my mom lost her job and for a while, we even lived in our car.” She sucked in a breath as if it were her last and said, “We had nothing. No home. No money. Nothing.” Turning her gaze back to the sweep of ocean, she said, “Then, later, when Mom was back on her feet and she got so sick, we couldn’t afford a damn doctor.” A single tear rolled down her cheek and glistened like silver in the moonlight. “I watched her die by inches, knowing that if things were different, if we’d had insurance, or savings, we could have found someone. I don’t know. A specialist, maybe. Someone who could have helped her. Saved her.”

“So you walked away from me because I didn’t have money.”

“It wasn’t about money,” she said hotly. “It was about security. Stability. Easy enough for you to dismiss it when you never had to wonder if you were going to eat that day or not.”

“I loved you.”

“And I loved you.”

“You just didn’t believe in me.” And that still stung. Still gnawed at him at the odd moment.