Running From Love by Maggie Marr Page A

fight the need. He thrust up and into her. The smooth silken heat of her body took him and melded her to him. Trevor pulled back and drove forward. Again she clung to him tight and close, and he stroked forward and back.
    Her eyes were open. A window to the feelings she didn’t speak. Their gazes locked onto each other as he took her. Their bodies fused together. No end, no beginning, just one. A mass of pleasure and desire.
    The sound of the ocean roared through the windows, sealing them together. Heat throbbed through Trevor, his balls tightening and drawing upward with each thrust. The base of his spine tightened. He pushed deeper, her body yielding to him. The heat in his balls searing within him. He pressed. He was losing his rhythm now, his control.
    “Baby, Poppy, baby—”
    “Oh my God, Trevor, you feel so good, please,” she whispered. “Please.”
    The heat coursed through his balls and spurted inside her. He thrust forward, his body tensing a final time. Her sex tightened and tightened again, holding his cock deep inside her as the come shot out. Her arms clamped around his back. His gaze locked with Poppy’s and the roar in his mind ceased. Poppy. There was only Poppy. In this moment, in this world, in this universe it was only them, together as one.
     
    *
     
    Poppy slipped from Trevor’s arms and reached for a white T-shirt. Before putting it on, she pressed the cotton to her nose. A long deep breath. She inhaled the scent of Trevor, the man she loved. Lush and rich with hints of sunshine and salt air. She pulled his shirt over her head and walked toward the wall of windows. Just beyond the open sliding doors was a deck. She walked out and the cool night hair slid over her skin. The ocean rolled in and out, and the surf gently caressed the sand in the darkness of the night. Bright bits of starlight scattered across the blackened sky. The last time she’d slipped from Trevor’s bed they’d been in Tahiti and she’d thought that she was leaving him, perhaps never to see him again. She’d been running from her emotions for so long. Why? The first time she’d run, what had she been trying to escape? She’d been the only one left at home with her father, who didn’t seem to want her there. She’d landed at her brother Brian’s place, but had felt like a fifth wheel amongst his mates. Then she’d finished university and shown up at Mimi’s, but Mimi had already settled with Daniel. She’d run from Los Angeles, thinking that Mesquale would be the perfect fit. A life without commitment. No way of getting caught in emotional entanglements. 
    A deep breath. Now what? Now she was madly in love and quite likely wanted to settle with Trevor. Yet she’d run from him too, dodging his love to flee to Los Angeles.
    Her chest tightened. The desire to run again surged through her body. Trevor loved her and she loved him, so what was her problem? She pulled her hand through her hair. Really? Was she so messed up that she’d run away from a man who loved her? A good man who wanted her and made her entire body quiver with pleasure?
    She gripped the deck rail with her hands and leaned back. Her eyes met the moon. The cold orb that hung high above her in the sky, keeping company with the stars. Trevor deserved a woman who would commit to him. A woman who wouldn’t run away from him simply because of the tightness in her chest. Could she be that woman? Could she embrace all that he had to offer with her entire heart? Fear over who she was, based on what her parents had been, filled Poppy. Would she continue to run away from love? Would she fold like a house of cards at the first sign of trouble or inconvenience?
    “It’s cold, why are you out here?”
    Poppy’s skin shivered with the caress of Trevor’s rough voice. He wrapped his arms around her and she dropped her head back against his chest. His arms, thick with muscle, pulled her close and warmed her body. She could stand here in these arms for a