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late. Already her fingers were shaking slightly as she clutched the lapel of his jacket. The temptation to search out the buttons of his shirt, undo them, and seek the crisp, curling hairs of the smoothly muscled chest was rapidly becoming irresistible. For some reason Reva opened her drugged eyes and her gaze fell on the brilliant material of his tie. Grimly she focused on it.
    "I've longed for the feel of your hands on me again, little Reva," Josh whispered with a sigh of eager anticipation. He moved and Reva thought he was going to get to his feet and carry her into the bedroom. She had to act now or it would be too late. Her rapidly disintegrating common sense warned her that if she let him go any farther she would be unable to stop him.
    "Please, Josh," she managed thickly, making the crimson tie her whole point of reference. Something about its incongruity made it easier to concentrate on what she must say. "Let me go. You gave me your word not to
    ... to force me tonight, and if you go on that's how I'll regard it. The one thing I was sure of four months ago was that I could trust you. Don't destroy that now. . . ."
    "Reva," he protested in a voice that tore along her nerve endings like sandpaper. "You'll want me as much as I want you. I swear it! Don't deny me the softness and the warmth I've been dreaming about all these months. I'm going to marry you as soon as possible, little one, I've told you that. You needn't be afraid I'll leave you alone again."
    She heard the desperation and the blatant need in his words and her willpower almost collapsed. Who would have thought it would have been so difficult to fight the sheer intensity of his open and honest desire? Or that her own reaction to it would be so weakening? But that's all it was, Reva reminded herself forcibly, struggling to lift her head off his shoulder and meet his eyes. Desire. There could be nothing deeper or more important between herself and this man who lived and acted as if he'd grown up in the same alley as Xavier!
    "Josh, listen to me," she pleaded, gazing up at him with anxious determination. She was supremely conscious of his physical superiority and the heat in his eyes as they swept over her disarrayed figure. She was completely at his mercy, lying across his lap like this, and she knew it. Her only weapons were words. "I'm truly sorry if you thought I was waiting patiently here in Portland to marry you. That's just not the way things are. I have a life of my own here and you're not a part of it. I shall always remember you and what you did for me, but I have no intention of furthering our relationship. We have absolutely nothing in common, Josh. Nothing at all!"
    His hand stroked her hair as he continued to hold her close and the lion eyes looked searchingly down at her desperate expression. "Reva, honey, we have all we need
    together. Don't worry about the little things. They're not important. Only you and I are important." There was a curiously soothing quality in his words, as if he were calming her, quieting her the way he had the night she'd awakened from the nightmare.
    Reva shook her head. "No, Josh. Don't blow up out of all proportion that one night we had months ago. It was simply the result of the tension and fear I was going through at the time."
    "Reva, it's not just that last night which made me so certain," Josh murmured gently. "There have been other nights and other women. I'm old enough not to read more into a situation than is there. You have to believe me, sweetheart. I'm a man, not a boy. I knew I wanted you the first day when I found you cornered in that kitchen, ready to use a knife against that bastard calling himself a revolutionary. You were so fierce and so gallant even though you didn't stand a chance against the gun he was wielding. For a split second after I'd taken care of him you held onto the knife and I could see in your eyes that you weren't sure but what I was just another one like the guerrilla had been. Then