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dark hand.
    He did glance at her then, to glare. “I’m not addicted to nicotine. I can quit anytime I feel like it.”
    “What’s wrong with right now?”
    His dark eyes narrowed.
    “What’s wrong? Are you afraid you can’t do without it?” she coaxed.
    He pressed the power window switch, then threw the cigarette out when there was an opening. The window went back up again.
    Meg grinned at him. “You’ll be shaking in seconds,” she predicted. “Combing the floor for old cigarette butts with a speck of tobacco left in them. Begging stubs from strangers.”
    “Unwise, Meg.”
    “What is? Taunting you?”
    “I might decide to find another way to occupy my hands,” he said suggestively.
    She threw her arms out to the sides and closed her eyes. “Go ahead!” she invited theatrically. “Ravish me!”
    The car slammed to a halt and Meg’s eyes opened as wide as cups. She stared at him, horrified.
    He lifted an eyebrow as her arms clutched her breasts and a blush flamed on her face.
    “Why, Meg, is anything wrong?” he asked pleasantly. “I just stopped to let the ambulance by.”
    “What amb—”
    Sirens and flashing red lights swept past them and vanished quickly into the distance. Meg felt like sinking through the floorboard with embarrassment.
    Steven’s eyes narrowed just a little. He looped one long arm over the back of her seat and studied her in the darkened car.
    “All bluff, aren’t you?” he chided. “Didn’t I warn you that playing games with me would get you into trouble?”
    “Yes,” she said. “But you’ve done nicely without me for four years.”
    He didn’t answer. His hand lowered to her throat and he toyed with a wisp of her hair that had come loose from her bun, teasing her skin until her pulse began to race and her body grew hot in the tense silence.
    “Steven, don’t,” she whispered huskily, staying his hand.
    “Let me excite you, Meg,” he replied quietly. He moved closer, easing her hand aside. His mouth poised over hers and he began all over again, teasing, touching, just at her throat while his coffee-scented breath came into her mouth and made her body ache. “It was like this the first night I took you out. Do you remember?” His voice was a deep, soft caress, and his hand made her shiver with its tender tracing. “I parked the car in your own driveway after we’d had dinner. I touched you, just like this, while we talked. You were more impulsive then, much less inhibited. Do you remember what you did, Meg?”
    She was finding it difficult to talk and breathe at the same time. “I was very…young,” she said, defending herself.
    “You were hungry.” His lips parted and brushed her mouth open, softly nibbling at it until he heard the sound she made deep in her throat. “You unbuttoned my shirt and slid your hand inside it, right down to my waist.”
    She shivered, remembering what that had triggered. His mouth had hit hers like a tidal wave, with a groan that echoed in the silence of the car. He’d lifted her, turned her, and his hand had gone down inside the low bodice of her black dress to cupher naked breast. She’d come to her senses all too soon, fighting the intimacy. He’d stopped at once, and he’d smiled down at her as she lay panting in his arms, on fire with the first total desire she’d ever felt in her life. He’d known. Then, and now…
    “You were so innocent,” he said quietly, remembering. “You had no idea why I reacted so violently to such a little caress. It was like the first time I let you feel me against you when I was fully aroused. You were shocked and frightened.”
    “My parents never told me anything, and my girlfriends were just as stupid as I was, they made sure of it,” she said hesitantly. “All the reading in the world doesn’t prepare you for what happens, for what you feel when a man touches you intimately.”
    His hand smoothed over the shoulder of her black dress, back to the zipper. Slowly, gently, he