“He looked up at the rain and closed his eyes, his hands still wrapped around her back. Mattie knew with an acute awareness that she would always remember this moment: both of them nude in the falling twilight of a mountain summer, sated and yet still hungry, Zeke’s strong face tipped to received the gift of rain, his broad hands warm on her.”

“He kissed her before he knew he would do it. Cupped her small head against his hand and bent to touch her lips with his own, lightly tasting that sensuous mouth. He closed his eyes to feel it better—the moist plumpness of unseasoned lips, flavored with coffee and sugar and something that belonged only to her. And like an exhausted man sinking with gratitude into the down of a pillow, he sank into the softness, losing himself as he explored the edges and corners, the sensitive inner edge. He suckled gently and heard her sigh as she inclined her head to take him more fully.”

“She wanted him. Not in the sweet way of poetry, though there was that music in the symmetry of his body, in the careful meshing of bone and sinew and flesh that made him.Her want was raw. Physical. She felt it in the palms of her hands and the flesh of her lips and the heaviness of her breasts.In her life, she’d been hungry, and thirsty. She’d needed sleep. She had never, in her life, needed to touch a man.”

“Mattie watched him cross the clearing with long-limbed ease, his movements loose and calm. His hair shone in the sunlight. Her heart caught. Strider.Yes, she loved him. It wasn’t logical or sensible or anything of those other things. He was not the kind of man she’d daydreamed about all of her life, safe and stolid and dependable, but he was the one. The One.”

“His mouth was wet and hot and intensely demanding, so sharp and piercing with need that it broke through Mattie’s defenses the way nothing else could have. A burst of excruciating hunger made her almost frantic with wanting him. She shifted in his arms and met his kiss wide open, giving as furiously as she took.“Oh, Mattie,” he said against her mouth. “I’ve never wanted a woman in my life like I want you. You’re driving me crazy.”

“His mouth. It touched hers lightly, just touched at first. And it seemed every nerve in her body suddenly rushed toward her mouth to join the explosion of sensation his lips brought. He moved his head and his mouth slid one way, then the other, and his fingers tightened around her neck, pulling her closer.”

“He kissed her violently, wanting to somehow inhale her into himself, unable to stop the fury of his reaction, the trembling rocking hunger for her—so vast and all-encompassing, he couldn’t stand it.Mattie, flowing all around him, met his savagery. He clasped her hips hard against him, found himself biting her neck, laving her breasts with his tongue. He felt such unblunted, furious desire he thought he might die of it.”