Griff kept her laughing; for some obscure reason, she seemed to keep him laughing, too. They were just strangers for an evening; no reason for defenses to be raised, no reason not to share a few blunt truths…but then Griff was the kind of man who evidently always played with his cards on the table. Being comfortable with his candor was a little difficult for Susan, who had always been more reserved. Proper. Griff already realized that.

Well, she was. Maybe not proper, but normally shy, modest, stiff with strangers. Where had all that old-fashioned stuff come from, she didn’t know; her father had certainly been happily outgoing. It had always been a bit of a nuisance, carrying around those outdated character traits. With someone close to her, it was different, yet it had never been easy for her to scale those defensive walls…

Griff had no problem scaling those walls. She had no idea how or why it happened… She was doing something simple: hanging up the dish towel. His hand brushed the small of her back. And then lingered.

She turned to him with a smile all ready to be captured. He captured it. That first taste of a shared kiss seemed to surprise them both, because suddenly there was no more laughter. His arms cradled her close as if he’d discovered something precious. A blend of rough, tender kisses aroused a sweet, low love song in Susan that she’d never heard before. He had so damned much love in him, all pent up. She could feel it. Touch it. It was not the desire to take, but the desire to share, the need to share, the need to touch another human being…

Susan knew better than to sleep with a man she barely knew. It had never happened; it never would happen.

But then she didn’t sleep with him; they didn’t sleep at all. They made love, over and over, defining that word in all its myriad facets. Tenderness, sharing, selflessness, warmth, passion…touching souls. For the first time in her life, Susan understood why she had built up so many defensive walls over the years. Anything casual would have taken away from what she offered this man now. What she wanted to offer him, what he asked for, what he claimed, was the freedom to share the depth of emotion she had kept inside herself. She was like a well just waiting to be tapped, straining to be free…