This was true even of things that weren't directly connected with Luke, but a hundred times more true about things that were. She couldn't be in the same room with him without growing excited and impatient. When he was cooking she watched his hands. They were artist's hands, powerful and muscular, yet sensitive, too, and the mere sight of them could thrill her body, which carried the memories of their intimate touch.

At work she wore the sedate, respectable uniform of a chambermaid, but it told a lie. Beneath it she wasn't respectable at all. It made her laugh sometimes to think how shocked people would be if they knew her head was filled with thoughts of Luke, who wanted her as uncontrollably as she wanted him-Luke, in bed with her, naked and aroused. In thought she dwelt on every inch of him: how long and slim his flanks were; how firm his behind; how unexpectedly strong his hands; how big and hard he was inside her; how badly she wanted him there.

Once, at home, the urgency grew more than she could stand, and as soon as he closed the oven door, she fastened her lips on his in the fiercest kiss she'd ever given him-avid, devouring, voracious, gloriously shameless, both giving and demanding. With one hand she cupped his head, while with the other, began undressing him. After the first shock he'd responded avidly, drawing her swiftly out of the kitchen and along the corridor to their room. They barely had time to shut the door before they were pulling off each other's clothes, almost competing to see who could strip whom the fastest. She could never remember who'd won, but they were both naked before they hit the bed.

She pulled him over her with strong, determined movements. She wasn't fooling. She wanted Luke on the most basic, primitive level and no nonsense about it. Romance and candlelight were lovely in their place, but right now she would go crazy if she couldn't feel him inside her, completing her, filling her to satiation point.