But she’d been thinking irrationally. She’d made some mistakes, but she’d done everything she knew how to make her marriage work. There was no reason to believe Evan hadn’t done the same with his relationship. “No, that isn’t what I’m saying at all. If it were, it would go for me, too, not being able to hold on to him.”

He relaxed a bit, taking his hand from her arm, but the darkness still shadowed his expression. She didn’t like it there. She wanted to wipe it away. From him, from her. God, why did this have to happen to them? Adding another layer of complication over the catastrophe of their friendship?

She might as well add yet another.

“No.”

A vertical line formed between his dark brows. “No what?”

“He really couldn’t get me that hot. For most of our relationship, I overlooked it.”

One corner of his mouth tugged upward, showing a flash of white teeth in the darkness. “Why?”

She shrugged, dropping her gaze from his. She put a hand in front of one of the water jets, letting the pressure tickle her palm. “Why did I overlook it? Because I loved him.”

“Then what was missing?”

It was a good question. “I really don’t know. But there was an emptiness there. Even if he got me off some other way, something was just…lacking. I never felt it as strongly as I did after we had sex.”

She wasn’t looking at him—she couldn’t—so she tried to tune in to him in other ways, gauging the sound of his breathing, the tension in his limbs that were somehow brushing against hers now. He seemed to be holding himself perfectly still. She dared the briefest glance upward to find his gaze riveted on her. It made her suck in a breath. It trapped her.

“Am I completely crazy?” she asked.

“Not at all.”

“I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

“I’m glad you are. I get to be the one to assure you that you’re not the problem.”

She laughed, though the insinuation had her heart brimming with hope she probably had no right to feel. “How can you be so sure?”

“Look at you. Beautiful, sweet. I remember how whenever I touched you your muscles would pull tight, your breath would catch. It still does. I see how you’re looking at me. There’s no reason a woman as sensitive and loving as you should feel empty after a man makes love to her. If there’s a problem, it’s not with you, and I get the feeling he tried to tell you it was.”

Kelsey was trying to control her breathing and her pulse. Both threatened to spiral out of control at his words. Jesus Christ, he knew, he always had. And he was moving closer to her. Her eyes closed, purely an involuntary action. Her senses were overloading and one of them had to go. “Not in so many words…but, yes.”

“Kelsey,” he whispered, his voice tinged with sweetness and reassurance……but not pity. She couldn’t stand that, and he knew it. His fingers whispered across her shoulder. True to his words, her entire body pulled taut. “Come here.”

She exhaled shakily and went into his arms. His chest was sleek and wet beneath her cheek, but even so, she could smell the spice of his cologne, the scent that was distinctly his. His chin settled on top of her hair. She didn’t embrace him back, just curled up there in the protective circle of his comfort and tried to rest. Her mind still roiled with the agony of this nearness she couldn’t do a damn thing with.

There wouldn’t be any emptiness with him. She knew it. Todd might have convinced her she was the problem, but that was before she felt this. Even her feelings for Evan ten years ago had been immature compared to the soul-burning lust that had filled her in the past few days.

Her br**sts were flattened against his chest and her ni**les peaked against him, the only barrier between their flesh the thin silk of her bra. One of his hands was resting low on her back, his fingers stroking her with feathery caresses. She could swear that hand was inching downward. So slowly as to hope she wouldn’t notice…or simply wouldn’t say anything.

A moment later, she was certain of it. Yes. Oh, God. Yes. Her pu**y clenched so hard she sank her teeth into her lip and cuddled closer into Evan’s embrace. It was all she could do to bite down on the moan gathering in her throat. Her mouth ran dry. His breath was dragging through his chest, the rise and fall beneath her cheek becoming more pronounced.

Lifting her head, she looked up into his eyes, pouring all the invitation into her gaze that she knew how. Please, please.

He froze, too, staring down at her. His perfectly shaped lips parted as his gaze dropped to her mouth, and when his fingers kneaded her flesh almost imperceptibly, she sighed.

It seemed all the encouragement he needed. There in the darkness, with the only sounds the distant whisper of waves and the water lapping gently against their bodies, his lips sought hers, capturing them in the warm, soft trap of his own.

She closed her eyes, a whimper escaping her as her arms stole around his neck. He paused as if savoring that first touch, and she absorbed the shudder that went through him. He slanted his mouth over hers as the water temp rose twenty more degrees and seemed to drain all strength from her limbs.

It seemed an eternity before his hand finally cupped the curve of her ass and she was incinerated utterly, the ache that had been pooling between her legs ever since the bar flaring into a four-alarm emergency. She wanted that hand in other places. She was one ounce of self-control away from shifting to try to coax it where she needed it most.

His fingertips drew back a few inches and slid just beneath the leg of her panties. She pressed closer and opened her mouth against his, inviting the invasion of his tongue. When it slipped past her lips into her mouth, her spinning senses overloaded again and she pulled back.

“I don’t know if… I mean is this…” her lips were trembling so hard she could barely move them, “…okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” he whispered, sounding dark, fierce.

Because we’ll never be the same. I’ll never be the same. Helplessly, she raised her gaze to his. She felt torn in two, dying to have him and afraid she would die if she did. She’d been a married woman for almost five years and he made her feel like a blushing virgin. “We’re friends.”

“So we are.” He dipped down, skimming her lips with his. “Tell me you’ve never thought about this before. Say you don’t want me, don’t want this, and I’ll stop.”

She went boneless, knowing she couldn’t lie to him. She didn’t want to, not about this. The words burst out on their own. “I do. I want you. But—”

Evan barely let that note of pleading leave her before he claimed her mouth fully, putting to rest all further protests.

Oh, God. She’d hugged him countless times, planted plenty of kisses on his cheek, all chaste. There was nothing chaste now about the slow burn of his lips across hers, nothing platonic about the erotic fervor that had her breath rasping through her lungs and her thighs shaking with the need throbbing at their apex. She wanted to cry out in frustration when he moved his hand from her bottom, only to sigh when he brushed her right breast with the back of his knuckles. Her nipple tightened further, pushing against the silk barring it from his long-awaited touch. His other hand moved up into her hair, cupping her nape as his kiss turned ravenous.