When in hell had he lost control, and had the student begun teaching the teacher? Matt reared up to capture her very busy hands again as they headed for his waist, wrestling them back on either side of her head as he let loose a growl that made her go suddenly and completely still. Matt sucked in a calming breath as he stared down at her flushed face and wide-eyed, somewhat dazed expression.

“Am I doing something wrong?” she asked in utter sincerity.

Matt could only close his eyes and drop his chin to his chest, fighting the urge to laugh, knowing damn well she’d take it the wrong way. “Nay,” he said, gaining back just enough control to look at her again. He moved her hands closer to her head, letting his thumbs trace the sides of her face. “But we have reached the point where I need to know if ye understand what’s about to happen, lass. Do ye realize exactly what you’re doing, Winter? That you’re not dreaming, that I really am here, and that I’m about to make ye mine?”

“I—I love you, Matt Gregor,” she said ever so softly. “I want to belong to you.”

He smiled tightly. “I know ye love me, lass, or ye wouldn’t be giving me yer most precious possession. But I’m asking if ye understand all that goes with it? Once you’re mine, Winter, it will be completely and forever. Ye’ll give me not only yer love, but yer trust and loyalty, with my being nothing less than yer husband. If ye can’t give me all that, then say so now. It might very well kill me, but I will walk away and leave ye intact.”

Her dazed expression turned somewhat confused, her flushed face growing pale. “What century are you living in?” she asked in a squeak. “I’m not expecting you to marry me just because we’ve made love.”

“Aye, I realize that,” he said with a solemn nod. “I’m the one expecting nothing less than marriage. But if ye give me your virginity, ye give me all that goes with it.” He leaned down and softly kissed her, then pulled away to look at her again. “Do ye love me that much, Winter? Enough to give me everything?”

Matt was surprised, if not alarmed, when she answered so quickly. “Yes,” she said, her body relaxing in feminine softness as her face glowed with the warmth of her smile. “I love you enough, Matheson Gregor, to give you all I have.”

“You’ll be my wife?” he clarified gutturally. “I’ll have yer trust and loyalty?”

“Yes,” she rasped, her smile disappearing as her legs tightened around him with obvious impatience.

Deep down in his chest, again near the region of his cold, dead heart, Matt felt the tiniest stirring. With a quiet curse aimed at the foibles of fate, he let go of her hands and swept Winter against him, kissing her deeply as he surrendered control.

She met his passion with blossoming desire, her body moving restlessly beneath him as he positioned himself to claim her. With his forearms under her shoulders, Matt gathered her beautiful hair in his fists, holding her mouth still for his tongue’s invasion as he slowly eased his hips forward.

She wouldn’t let him be gentle, wouldn’t let him go slow, untangling her legs to brace herself and lifting her hips to meet his. With his mouth locked firmly on hers, Matt swallowed her sudden cry as he slowly pressed past her maidenhead and seated himself fully inside her. He stilled, intending to allow her to adjust, but Winter mocked his noble intentions by digging her fingers into his shoulders and throwing her head back with a moan of pleasure as she arched upward, taking him even deeper.

“Yes,” she cried when he slowly retreated, surged forward, then did it again. She tightened around him as tiny droplets of dew broke on her forehead and her body dampened with passion.

Matt could do nothing more than marvel at Winter’s response as she swept him closer toward her beautiful flame of promising bliss. The air around them charged with the energy of a thousand torches, the golden walls of his den pulsing to the rhythm of his pounding heart. She finally moved beyond the timeless void and into the abyss, and Matt shouted his wonder as the explosion of her passion wracked his body in surging waves, pulling him with her into the powerful storm of swirling colors.

That quickly, that irrevocably, it was over but for the lingering sensation of her body clenching around him. Matt lowered his weight to lie beside her, pulling her with him so that he remained inside and wouldn’t miss even one of her waning spasms. He brushed her hair off her flushed face and kissed her closed eyes and the side of her smiling mouth as she sucked in calming, billowing breaths.

“Mmmm,” she hummed, lifting her lazy blue eyes to him. “That was…wonderful,” she said on a winded whisper. She patted his sweaty shoulder, leaving her hand there and closing her eyes again.

“Everything I imagined it would be.”

Matt propped his head up on one hand, keeping his other hand stroking her hair. “So ye’ve imagined making love, have ye? In general, or with me?”

She cracked one eye at him, her satisfied smile widening as she patted his shoulder again. “If I’

d imagined it with men in general, my curiosity would have gotten the better of me long before now.”

He kissed her sweet mouth for giving the right answer, then untangled his hand from her hair and trailed it down her body, closing it over her lovely backside and carefully withdrawing from her before tucking her up beside him. “So are ye going to tell me why you’ve run away from home?”

“No,” she said, pulling on his shoulder to give him a kiss, then continuing to tug until he was sprawled on top of her again. “Later. Right now I want to feel you inside me again.”

Matt immediately hardened to stone and reared up in surprise. “You can’t,” he growled. “It’s too soon.”

“For you or for me?” she asked with a laugh, the musical sound echoing off the walls of the cave.

He felt heat creeping up the back of his neck. “For you,” he growled more than whispered, grabbing her wandering hands and holding them beside her head. “You’re too tender.”

Her brows lifted above wide blue eyes. “What century are you really living in? You’re more old-fashioned than a Victorian spinster. I am a healthy, athletic, twenty-first-century woman,” she said with another laugh as she slid her legs up the length of his, curling them around his thighs so that her heels pulled him toward her. She stuck out her lower lip. “But if you’re too tender, then I guess we’ll just have to cuddle until you…ah, recover a bit,” she offered, all the while trying to wiggle herself into a more promising position, obviously well aware that he was not only not tender but quite recovered.

Matt slid back inside her with maddening slowness, watching her face flush with returning passion as his own desire soared into the stratosphere at mach two.

Winter MacKeage then proceeded to not only back up her boast of athletic health, she proved herself to be surprisingly free of inhibitions and provokingly curious for a woman so new to the sport.

They made love several more times that night, sometimes with wild abandon and sometimes with lazy tenderness, sometimes dozing between sessions and sometimes just lying in each other’s arms as they listened to the angry wind howling outside their cozy golden den.

And through it all, deep in the back of Matt’s mind, was the realization that morning would arrive with either Winter’s vow of loyalty passing the test, or the harsh reality of an even more deadly storm damning them both.

Chapter Seventeen

W inter woke up with a smile, thinking she might have dreamt her night of passion but for the wonderful aches in every muscle she had and the very real taste of Matt Gregor still on her lips. She could tell she was alone without even opening her eyes, the cave’s stillness so absolute after being filled with an energy so volatile that her insides still quivered with remembered sensations.