“I want to have an affair.”

“I’m sorry, I really did want to talk to you.” His free hand went to her face and cupped her cheek. Something tightened pleasantly in her belly. “Just talk?” she breathed.He nodded, but used their clasped hands to pull her closer to him. She raised her head and met his eyes, a storm of blue and green. She smirked. “That’s a shame.”

“Gretchen,” Clint said, his voice full of the same luscious agony Gretchen felt building inside of her. “I’m going to kiss you.” He was giving her one last chance to back out, to push him away. That was not going to happen.Her mouth twisted with amusement. “Not if I kiss you first.”

“He was so much more than she had expected. More than a delicious body and a smile that came out of nowhere to light up the darkness of this hopeless place.”

“What Hans had intended to end at a simple kiss quickly escalated into something neither one of them seemed able to stop.”

“Yes. Kissing. Overrated.””I could change your mind,” Zach said, surprising the hell out of them both. Why would he take something as simple as this banter as a challenge? “I don’t know that I want to, but I feel right sure I could.””How arrogant. How typically male.””I suppose.” He shrugged and reached for the wine bottle. “More?”She nodded, frowning now. “How do you know you could change my mind? It’s been a long time since you… well—””Over two years.” The pain was there, an ache in his chest he imagined he would feel every time he thought of Hannah.And he thought of her every day. Dreamed of her about as often. But lately, maybe only in the past week, he’d begun to realize that his life had not ended with his wife’s.He either had to die or start living again.”

“We are only victims if we allow ourselves to be.”

“It was the impatience of the way he tore my panties from my body, that really turned me on: I was all he could think of, as his lust got the better of him. I glanced back, and saw the underwear torn and discarded, a little strip of thin black material on the floor, and thought, Yes, this is the kind of impatient sex I’m looking for. The way they looked so small, and cruelly forgotten, was a beautiful symbol of how much we both needed to satisfy our lusts.”

“I love being aroused.I relish that delicious feeling of freedom, the delirium of being naked, and my flesh being born again. It’s like I’m being made new.”

“The longer I lived, the longer it would be until I saw him alive again, until I could taste his new lips and run my fingers through his new hair. We could be young and beautiful again . . .”

“My knees were weak but he held me with one hand, guiding me with the motion of his hips. I was completely his to do with what he wanted and he knew it.”

“To feel aroused is to feel alive. Having great sex is like taking in huge lungfuls of fresh air, essential to your body, essential to your health, and essential to your life.”

“If I were being honest with myself, he lit a blaze, not just a blush, but that’s too much reality for me to admit.”

“We were a galaxy exploding into a million pieces, creating a whole new world, as we crashed against each other on the soft surface of his mattress, a cloud in the darkness, our bodies finally falling together like rain.”