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“Wait,” he said in a low growl. He grasped the hem of her T-shirt. “Raise your arms.”

A second later, her naked breasts were against his bare chest.

He pushed her hair aside and kissed her neck. Nipped her throat. Soothed the tiny wound with a lick of his tongue.

She heard herself sobbing. Pleading. She wanted more. This wasn’t enough. It wasn’t…

His hands cupped her breasts.

His thumbs flickered across her nipples.

Her legs buckled and he swept her into his arms, carried her into their tiny shelter and lay her down on the bed of soft palm fronds.

He stood above her, silhouetted by the light of the fire. He was beautiful, a magnificent male animal, and she had never wanted a man, never wanted anything as she wanted him.

He toed off his boots. Undid his belt. Unzipped his camos. Shoved them down. His penis, swollen and proud, tented his jockeys.

“Tanner,” she whispered.

It was the first time she’d used his name.

She said it softly, but it swept through him, gave meaning to his need, his urgency, his desire…

And just as suddenly dragged him back to cold reality.

Had he lost his fucking mind?

She was his responsibility.

Jesus, why mince words?

This wasn’t a date. Not of any kind. They hadn’t met in a bar or at a party or even online. They’d met, if you could call it that, because she’d been a captive and he was the soldier whose mission was to rescue her. And, as a solider, especially as a STUD operative, he was sworn to a code that put honor before everything else.

There wasn’t a damned thing honorable in seducing the woman he’d been sent to protect, a vulnerable woman, and if Alessandra Bellini was not a vulnerable woman he didn’t understand the meaning of the word.

“Tanner?”

He looked down at her, and his heart twisted. A nice image, spoiled by the fact that his dick was still doing its own thing, and that thing had nothing to do with his heart.

How in hell had he lost focus? How had he gone from taking care of

her to taking advantage of her?

She was so beautiful. Those dark blue eyes. Hair like a spill of sunlight over her creamy shoulders. She raised her arms to him and her breasts, small and perfect, lifted as if they were an offering.

He wanted to reach for her, roll her under him, take possession of her body and maybe even her soul, lose himself and everything that had haunted him all these past months…

Shit!

Tanner tore his gaze from Alessandra, scrambled for his camos and pulled them on.

“The fire,” he said roughly. “ I have to—I have to—”

She was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. The truth was, he’d just found it, but there was no way to tell her that.

Instead, he swung around, stepped into the night and hoped to God he could forget the last glimpse he had of her, the expression on her face that went from desire to bewilderment, the way she quickly folded her arms over her breasts in an age-old gesture of female shame.

It would have been better if she’d flung something at his head and called him a son of a bitch, because he deserved at least that—and more.