She moaned again. Her lips tightening as she began sucking the iron-hard flesh, excitement and hunger rising inside her until she didn’t know herself any longer.

That hunger was loose now. She had no way to control it, no way to hold back the needs suddenly filling her, flooding her entire body.

She wanted this. She wanted him, until she felt as though she were dying for it.

“Ah, yes,” he groaned, pleasure filling his voice, his hands sliding into her hair as his hips began to move. “So fucking hot. I knew your mouth would be sweet and hot. Those pretty lips feel like silk.”

His fingers tightened in her hair as his cock began to shuttle back and forth between her lips, deep into her mouth, nearly to her throat, as she struggled to accept the heavy length.

“Relax, Sierra,” he grated, his voice harsh with lust. “Breathe easy, sweetheart. Take me deeper. Let me have you.”

She’d read about it. She’d even watched it. She could do this. This one time, with this man that she loved above all others. Breathing in through her nose, she struggled to take the wide crest to her throat, sucking on it, her tongue rubbing against the underside as he groaned in approval.

“Hell, yes.” She could hear the pleasure in his voice as the strokes in her mouth lightened, became shallower. “Look at me, Sierra.”

She struggled to stare up at him, her eyes tearing as his erection passed slowly through her lips this time. Pleasure pulsed through her veins, flooded her body. She was the woman she had always wanted to be. She was his woman. For this moment, this hunger, she was his woman.

“So fucking pretty,” he groaned. “I’ve dreamed of this, baby. Dreamed of fucking you. Watching your mouth take me. Feeling that wicked little tongue rubbing my cock.”

And she was rubbing against it, licking it. He tasted of midnight and man, and the effect on her senses was devastating.

As his gaze locked with hers, he reached down, gripped her hand as it clenched against his hard thigh, and moved her fingers to the taut sac between his thighs.

“Touch me there,” he demanded, his voice rough with hunger. “Let me feel your soft fingers, Sierra. Give me what I need.”

Her fingers trembled as she cupped the weight of his testicles before caressing them tentatively. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Finally, after so many years. But she knew it couldn’t last. She knew when morning came, whatever lapse he was having in self-control would be quickly repaired. John was nothing if not controlled. He had a plan for his life, and she had always sensed it. A plan that had never included her. Come morning, he would remember that plan. But Sierra would always have tonight.

She couldn’t help herself. She was desperate for him. So desperate that she wanted to create as many memories as possible.

Stroking the tight flesh she cupped, Sierra sucked at his erection, pulled back, and let her lips trail down the hard shaft as her tongue flickered against it. She moved lower, staring up at him, watching his violet-blue eyes darken further as her tongue began to lash lightly at his balls.

A harsh, tortured groan tore from his lips as he gripped her hair, lifted her head, and pushed his cock between her lips once more. Fucking her mouth harder, his strokes short and tight, he looked like a conqueror above her.

“I’m going to come,” he groaned. “Ah, hell, baby, give me your sweet mouth. Take my dick, Sierra. Suck it baby. Sweet and deep . . .” He fucked deeper, shuddered.

The feel of his cock throbbing, flexing, warned her. At first, the warning wasn’t clear, until his fingers tightened in her hair, then the heat and stormy taste of his semen erupting in the back of her mouth sent her senses clawing for each sensation.

The jetting spurts were hot against her tongue. His voice was harsh, low, as he growled her name when she swallowed the lush taste of him.

She wanted to relish it, to relive each second in time as it happened, but John was moving. Pulling back from her, he lifted her, pushed her against the couch, and went to his knees between her thighs.

Before she could react or even think to stop him, her dress was at her hips and his hands had torn her panties from her body. He didn’t hesitate once her flesh was revealed. His lips went straight to the sensitive, violently responsive flesh between her thighs.

Then he kissed her there. An intimate, hot kiss against the folds of her pussy, his tongue lashing at her clit, the wet velvet feel of him firing every nerve ending in her body. Lush, vibrant pinpoints of incredible sensation raked along her flesh, arching her body and drawing a strangled cry from her throat.

She’d never thought she could have this.

She’d never believed John would ever touch her like this.

It was nothing like she had ever imagined it would be. She’d fantasized, she’d dreamed of this with John, but she had never in her wildest imagination known how good it would be. That it would rain sensation over every part of her body. She felt flush from her toes to the top of her head. She felt as though a fire was being stoked in her very womb.

Pleasure seared every nerve ending he touched. Riotous frissons of heat tore through her body. His lips and tongue caressed, licked, kissed. His tongue rubbed around her clit, stroking and caressing with silken hunger as it destroyed her balance and left her spiraling out of control.

She had to hold on to him. Sinking her fingers into his hair as he pushed her thighs farther apart, Sierra wanted to scream out his name. There was no breath to cry out, let alone to scream. There was barely enough oxygen to sustain her as pleasure rushed through her system like a fiery windstorm.

His tongue was wicked, destructive. His fingers pulled the folds of flesh apart as his tongue licked and stroked, blazing a path of ecstasy through her system as she strained to get closer.

His tongue flickered over her opening, a rumbling growl vibrating against her flesh as she cried out in pleasure.

“No. Don’t stop.” She gripped his hair as his head lifted, only to release him as he forced himself back.

“Is this what you want, Sierra?” His hand gripped his cock, tucking it against the swollen, wet folds of flesh as he stared back at her.

“Please.” She was shaking, the need was so great now.

“Please what, sugar? Please fuck you like the beautiful little troublemaker you are?” His words slurred just slightly, whether from the drink or the lust she wasn’t certain.

“Why, baby?” he whispered as he pressed closer. “Why are you even here?” There was a tortured, hollowed sound to his voice.

Sierra shook her head. “I love you, John. I’ve always loved you.”

His hips bucked, driving him inside her, the sharp burst of heat, pleasure, pain, washing through her at his entrance drawing a cry from her lips as he settled against her.

His head fell to her shoulder.

At first, Sierra wasn’t certain why. He hadn’t penetrated her fully, just enough to draw that sharp cry, to tear aside the veil of virginity she had possessed. Now, he was silent.

Because he had passed out.

Sierra blinked up at the ceiling, fighting to just breathe through the incredible emotional burst of pain that flooded her.

He had passed out. As though this moment in time meant so little, that he didn’t even struggle to stay sober enough to keep awake.

Tears spilled from her eyes as she stared up at the ceiling, a sob tearing from her chest.

“Shhh, baby,” he mumbled against her neck. “S’kay.”

He settled closer, his hips shifting, dragging his cock from her a second before the lightest snore fell from his lips.

Silent sobs shook her body as she managed to wiggle from beneath him, then she struggled to get him on the couch. Pulling his handkerchief from his jacket, she quickly cleaned the smear of blood from him, then cleaned herself before dropping the square of linen on the floor next to the couch, wondering if he would even connect the smears of blood to this night.

She had dreamed of this night. Dreamed of him finally wanting her, and perhaps it served her right that it had ended as it had.

Kneeling next to the couch, she brushed his hair back from his forehead, the light brown strands thick, not overly long, but framing his face devilishly.

He was her personal heartbreak. For as long as she could remember, the love she had felt for him had driven her to impossible lengths to gain his attention. It had driven her here, to a night she knew would haunt her forever.

“I’d rather have you hate me than have you marry that bitch,” she whispered painfully as she wiped at her tears.

And he probably would hate her when he awoke. When reality surfaced and he realized the lengths she had gone to in ensuring his engagement was broken.

She wondered, though, if he would remember her arrival here, or the brief time he had touched her as a woman, rather than the troublemaker he had always called her.

Forcing herself to her feet, she left the penthouse, locked the door on the way out, and told herself, this was over.

No more.

Loving John Walker was a dead-end street, and Sierra needed more than brick walls to bang her head against.

It was time to go on without those girlhood dreams.

It was time to go on without her heart.

ONE

ONE YEAR LATER

John C. Walker Jr., son of the formidable John Calvin Walker, had finally come home. He could feel the knowledge sinking inside him, filling all but one part of his soul and reaffirming a decision that had been made on a rainy Boston night a year before.

Standing on the upper deck of the Nauti Dreams as it coasted slowly down Lake Cumberland, he drew in a deep, relaxing breath and felt something slowly relax inside him further. Some inner tension, a deep-seated longing that had finally come to rest.

His father had left Kentucky years before, long before John had been born, and wiped the dust of the Kentucky mountains off his feet. Unfortunately, as his father liked to claim, some of it had managed to adhere to his children.

One of his daughters, as well as his only son, had retreated back to Kentucky.

The mountains rose around him like comforting arms, nestling him within a strong, nurturing embrace. A whisper of a breeze rustled through the trees and over his sweat-dampened shoulders, while the strong heated rays of the sun further bronzed his once pale flesh.

He felt stronger here, more in charge. He felt as though, for the first time in thirty-two years, he was finally himself.

The sun had bleached his thick, light brown hair almost blond, darkened his flesh, and put small lines at the corners of his eyes. The hard, physical labor of helping his sister and her husband build their home, and rebuild the bar that had been burned down by an arsonist the year before, had honed his muscles and sculpted his body.

He’d been in good shape before, but now, he felt at his peak. He felt invigorated and alive.

The houseboat he’d bought from the Mackay Marina was perfect. A floating home that suited the need to push away conformity and embrace that vein of gypsy wildness his father had always scowled over. It gave him peace. Or at least a large measure of the peace he had been searching for.

For the first time in his life, John Walker was close to finding satisfaction. If there was one little niggling worry that continued to prod at him, then he fought to ignore it. Nothing was perfect. No life was completely serene, but he was as close as he had ever been to it.

If dreams haunted him of one woman, a night he wasn’t so certain of, and a pleasure so perfect it couldn’t be real, then he tried to push it behind him.

Other than that night, that woman, he’d finally found a place he belonged.

Now, he understood why his sister had fought her family’s insistence that she return to Boston when the people of this county had turned on her for a brief time. Why the gypsy in her had rebelled and returned to where the mountains nurtured that spark of rebel fire inside her.

He understood things now that he had never grasped before, and the regrets that had once filled his life began to fade away.

All but one.

Shaking his head, he refused to allow himself to touch that thought again. He was beneath the sun, the water lapping at the boat as it coasted gently along the channel. Above, an eagle soared and called out to its mate while a coyote watched him suspiciously from the far bank.