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Declan shuddered under that soft, exciting touch. He clasped her wrists. Stilled her hands. Bent his head and lay his forehead against hers.

“Annie.” His voice was low. Raw. “Annie, if you keep touching me… I won’t be able to stop.”

“Please,” she said, “Declan, please please please please…”

A growl rose in his throat.

He carried her through the cave, to the fire.

Went down with her on the leafy bed.

She rolled into his arms, her mouth still fused to his, one of her legs thrown over his, her hands pulling at his sweater again until he tore it off and tossed it aside.

“You’re beautiful,” she whispered.

He gave a broken laugh. “You’re the one who’s beautiful, sweetheart. You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“I want to be beautiful for you. I want to be everything for you.”

“You are,” he said, framing her face with his hands. “You always were. You always will be.”

He kissed her. She moaned and pulled back and for a heartbeat, he thought he was going to die, that she was going to stop him from loving her.

“Declan,” she whispered. “Undress me.”

He could hear the thunder of his blood.

“Are you sure, sweetheart?”

She clasped his hands. Brought them to her. “Undress me,” she said, and whatever faint hope of restraint he might have had left was gone.

He undressed her slowly.

His hands trembled.

Her sweater first. It was the one he’d given her, military issue, voluminous and rough.

What was beneath it almost stopped his heart.

Annie was beneath it. Pure Annie. No bra. No T-shirt. Just Annie, her skin the color of pale gold, her breasts high and small and perfect, God, perfect, the nipples a sweet, delicate pink.

He bent to her. Kissed the slope of her breasts. Trailed the tip of his tongue over that warm, tender flesh.

She moaned. Trembled. Whispered his name. And when he cupped her breasts, gently kissed the tightly furled buds, she cried out and writhed beneath him.

Gently, he rolled one nipple between his fingers.

She arched towards him, sobbing.

He closed his lips around her other nipple. Sucked on it.

Her hands fisted in his hair as her cry rose into the night. “Declan,” she sobbed, “Declan, Declan, Declan…”

He kissed her mouth, her throat, felt the race of her pulse beneath his kisses and then his lips closed around the tip of one breast again and her sobs, her breathless little cries, her body moving against his…

He could feel what was happening to him.

The tightening of his balls. The sense that he was going to explode.