“Great,” he snapped, clambering down out of the cab and slamming the door.

Mari swung her door open and tumbled out, forgetting she was barefoot, annoyed at the interruption of their fight. She staggered and stumbled around the nose of the truck, struggling to keep herself upright on the steep hillside. Mud and dead leaves oozed up between her toes. Zip leapt out of the back of the truck and dashed off into the woods after adventure, a big grin on his face.

“Great job of driving, Rafferty,” Mari jeered.

He lifted a finger in warning. “Don’t start with me, Mary Lee. I’m mad as hell the way it is.”

“You’re mad? I’ve been shot at, kidnapped, had the pee scared out of me, and spent the last hour wondering if anyone would show up to save me before Rambo decided to skin me with one of his many knives and fashion lampshades out of my hide. If anyone has a right to be angry here, it’s me.”

J.D. leaned over her, towering above her more than usual with the added advantage of standing uphill. “You don’t have any rights,” he bellowed. “You don’t belong here. I told you to stay away!”

“And I told you to quit bossing me around!” Mari shouted. She planted both hands against his chest and shoved him as hard as she could.

He shoved back automatically, knocking her off balance. Mari let out a little shriek and caught him around the knees as she slipped. Off guard and off balance, J.D. dropped like a felled sequoia, and they went down the hillside in a tangle of arms and legs and bodies, grunting, swearing, tumbling over each other.

They came to rest in a spot where the ground flattened out just before a huge moss-covered boulder. Mari was on the bottom. J.D. rose up over her, the heels of his hands digging into the soft ground on either side of her head.

She stared up at him, her deep clear blue eyes unfocused until she blinked hard to clear away the fog. There were twigs and leaves stuck in her hair and a bruise darkening on her cheek. Her lips were parted, her breath puffing in and out. The need that had gripped J.D. in its talons for days now tightened its hold ruthlessly.

Instantly the air around them seemed suddenly hotter, thicker, redolent with the ripe, fertile scents of the forest. Their gazes locked and held. J.D. moved slightly, experimentally, against her. Her breath caught. Her eyes widened. She made no move to protest.

“You make me so damn mad, Mary Lee,” he whispered. Mad with need of her. Every other emotion he had felt toward her-the anger, the frustration, the kinder feelings he wouldn’t name-channeled themselves into the desire, making it burn hotter, brighter. It didn’t matter that she was wrong for him. Nothing mattered except the need. “You make me want you,” he growled.

Mari started to deny the charge but stopped herself. She could feel his erection against her and didn’t bother to tell herself she didn’t want him. She did. She wanted him with every fiber of her being. The need burst through her, radiating out from the hard fist of desire in the core of her, astonishing her. She wasn’t the sort to live by her hormones. She didn’t tumble into bed with just any man. And this man made her as angry as he made her hot. He was stubborn, arrogant, high-handed, hard-headed. She remembered thinking that the attraction that flared between the two of them was good for nothing but wild, hot, mind-numbing sex.

At the moment she could not for the life of her see what was so bad about that.

“I don’t want you here,” he murmured, lowering himself onto her. He leaned on one elbow and with his other hand stroked the tangled strands of hair back from her face. His breath came harder at the feel of her breasts against his chest. “I don’t want you here, but I want you so bad I can’t stand it. I want you now. Right now. You gonna try to stop me this time, Mary Lee?”

It wasn’t a challenge, it was her last chance. The moment shimmered between them, quivered with tension. J.D. stared down into her eyes, waiting. She was too aware of his arousal, too aware of her own. The sensitive flesh between her legs was pounding with need, aching for the feel of him, and he was more than ready to comply. Would she try to stop him? Did she want to?

Slowly she shook her head.

He lowered his mouth to hers, sealing their fate. The instant their lips touched, the second his tongue slid against hers, all sanity was lost, vaporized by the heat that flared between them. He kissed her roughly, wildly, possessively. She locked her hands around the back of his head and kissed him back with equal abandon.

They tore at their clothes. The snaps of his work shirt pulled apart and her small, cool hands were on his chest, combing through the thicket of dark hair. Her fingers ran down over the taut muscles of his belly and back. He pulled her sweatshirt and T-shirt off in one tangle, barely breaking the kiss, and blindly flung the knotted mess aside into a huckleberry bush. Then her breasts were naked against him, and whatever scrap of reason he might have had left was incinerated.

Mari gasped at the touch of his body against hers. He was fever hot. Her every nerve ending was vibrating, quivering at the slightest contact. She was aware of each chest hair that brushed across her nipples. They kissed and groped, rolling around on their little plateau of ground, oblivious of the mud, the leaves, the twigs; blind to everything but passion.

They came up on their knees and J.D. bent her back over his arm and fastened his mouth on her breast, flicking his tongue against her nipple, then sucking hard, wringing wild cries from her. Mari’s fingers tangled with his at the waist of her jeans, fumbling with the button, wrestling the zipper down.

Pants and panties were shoved out of the way. Her legs parted and his big hand found her most tender flesh. Hot. Wet. Aching for his touch. He parted the delicate folds with his callused fingertips and she arched against him, inviting him, begging him.

Mari twisted and bucked against him, mindless with need, desperate for the feel of him inside her. She worked a hand between their bodies and held him, pulling on him, rubbing him through the soft fabric of his old jeans, wringing a deep moan up from the depths of his chest.

Dragging his mouth down to her breasts again, he kissed her and nipped her as he tore his belt loose and struggled to free himself. Mari pushed him back, sinking to her knees in the soft ground, kissing his chest. Eager to please and torture him as he had her, she found the brown button of his flat male nipple and captured it lightly between her teeth, rubbing the tip of her tongue back and forth across it. She shoved his hands aside and fought with the fly of his jeans, wrenching the zipper down. His white cotton briefs were tugged down quickly, and he was in her hands, as hard and smooth as a steel rod, hot and heavy and throbbing with life.

J.D.’s control broke at the feel of her fingers closing around him. He shoved her back down and mounted her, driving fully into her in one powerful thrust. She called his name and came immediately, powerfully. J.D. gritted his teeth and hung on as her woman’s body tightened rhythmically, exquisitely around him. Her fingertips dug into his back. Her wild cries called him to join her in ecstasy. Beyond holding back, he began to move, pumping in and out of her, reaching deep with every stroke.

“Wrap your legs around me, Mary Lee,” he commanded, then groaned as she did so, pulling him deeper still.

Mari locked her thighs around his hips, her arms around his heaving ribs, then she tucked her head against his shoulder and hung on for the ride. She was past identifying individual sensations. There were no words for the place he was taking her. Paradise had been found in that first moment of joining, but he was taking her beyond paradise into uncharted territory at a pace that stole her breath. The heat was engulfing them. She was on fire with bliss. Every thrust touched a place inside her no other man had ever managed to find.