For a moment she believed he had left, but as she shifted away from the wall she sensed him there beside the bed. He was very close.Wretched curiosity! But she would fight it and not look.“Katherine,” he whispered, his breath rolling in a warm wave across her cheek. A traitor tear spilled out, the humiliation was too much to contain. Gently, a finger dabbed the wetness from her skin. He said it again, softly, as though it pleased him just to say it, “Katherine.”“Viktor!” the accented voice bellowed from below. And then the shadow was gone. Darkness overwhelmed her then and carried her away to a land of crows and mocking strangers.

Bing tightened his fingers around hers...."I know what I want."She raised an eyebrow. "What is that?""Only you." And as he said the words, he felt a tremendous weight lifting from his chest. "It's always been only you...""All right." She narrowed her eyes. "But if you break my heart, I'm going to have Peaches have words with you.""That's threatening a police officer. Technically.""What are you going to do?" She flashed him a teasing smile. "Arrest me?"He bent his head to hers, all the way to her ear. "Stick with me and there might just be some handcuffs in your future," he whispered.She laughed out loud. "I'll take that as an incentive to speedily recover.

His phone rang just as he set his evidence kit on the ground. He glanced at the display and took the call. "Hey, Mom.""I ran into Cindy Jenners at the store today.""No.""She's such a nice young woman.""Not interested.""Your sisters abandoned me.""They didn't abandon you. They got married.""They moved to other states. I don't have a single grandchild. within driving distance. How can they be so curel?" She gave a guilt-laden pause. "Mrs. Ottmann said she saw you talking to some blonde with Massachusetts license plates by the feed store yesterday."Chase closed his eyes and brushed his thumb and forefinger over his eyelids. "I was giving her a speeding ticket...

We shouldn’t do this,” he said again as he looked up into her eyes. “But, God, I want to. I just …” He closed his eyes, exhaled hard. “Pheeb. I’m a bad bet. There’s no future here. I know this feels big, this thing between us, right now it feels huge—and shh, don’t make a dick joke, I’m serious. But it’s not going to feel as big or special tomorrow, or, shit, even later tonight. I mean, yeah, I can make you feel good. I know it. And God knows you can make me … Jesus, you’re so beautiful, I just —”She stopped him there, again, with a kiss, and just like that, it was as if something snapped.

I’m not the one who kissed you in the bathroom. In case you’re thinking I forgot about that, or somehow missed it, or …”“Kind of hard to miss,” Ian agreed. “Your lips, mine. A distinct smacking sound. Yup, that was me kissing you. Still, it was short—quickly over and done. A kiss good-bye. The subtext was I hope we don’t die, but if we do, it was nice meeting you. Not at all like that under-the-dock kiss.” He paused. “The one where you jumped me. The first time. So far.” He narrowed his eyes at her, much the way she’d done to him. “Naturally I’m suspicious. Did you intentionally leave my clothes behind?

From the safety of his BMW with tinted windows, he watched Hannah Young pull out of her parking space, seemingly in a hurry to leave work. He'd hoped to catch her alone, but the garage was too busy right now. He wasn't out of place at all, but he couldn't have made a move against her without someone noticing. And following her from the hospital wasn't an option. Traffic in Miami was too thick this time of day.Something told him she'd notice if he tailed her. Hannah was far too smart for her own good. She'd seen something she shouldn't have, and unfortunately he needed to eliminate her.It wasn't something he relished doing, but it came down to his life or hers.

Travis Sanchez rubbed a hand over his head as he stepped into an elevator at the Red Stone Security building. His Mohawk was gone and he wore his hair in a buzz cut these days. It was probably his military background, but he always came back to this cut out of habit. The walk to Harrison's office was too short. He wasn't sure why his boss had called him in after his last security detail, but a small burst of panic had detonated in his gut. He loved this job, but there had been some issues with the CEO he'd recently been guarding not following Travis' orders. The asshole had almost gotten himself killed and now Travis wondered if his head was on the chopping block because of it.

Her lips curved up then, as if she liked his answer. “Are you working tomorrow?”Dax nodded. “Yeah. Training stuff.” He was running weapons-training exercises with three of his guys and a small team of DEA agents. They liked to do joint operations, especially in Miami, where there was a smorgasbord of government agencies. But he couldn’t tell her that.“When do you get off?”The way she said “get off” brought up all sorts of images. Hannah must have read his expression, because she shook her head. “Pervert,” she muttered.He grinned, liking the camaraderie between them, as if part of that wall she’d erected had been knocked down.

They had pulled me from the hemorrhaging, dying body of my mother and turned me over to the care of the man who was not my father. He had taken me home to their tiny apartment above the old hardware store and done what little he knew to take care of me.It took less than six weeks for him to realize his mistake. Maybe even less than six hours, but he never abandoned me. He clung to me as though I was the last remnant of some great and powerful love.And that gave me hope that maybe my mother was really something else and not just some girl who got knocked up by a guy whose name she didn’t even know. She was something special, someone worthy of a man’s loyalty and devotion.--Rocky Evans

As Ian looked at her, he felt something in his chest slip and shift. The pressure came with a blood-tingling rush of triumph and satisfaction, pride and a deeply burning sense of possessiveness. His inner caveman warrior had been awakened and wanted to rush around the room, peeing into the corners, marking it—and her—as his own, while shouting Mine! and randomly smashing things for emphasis.But he knew that was he was feeling was the equivalent of emotional and hormonal indigestion. He hadn’t done this in a long time. And he particularly hadn’t done it with a woman he liked as much as this one. In fact, he’d never had sex with anyone that he genuinely liked as much as he liked Phoebe.

She hit the button again, holding her breath this time until she heard it.Soft, sibilant, as insubstantial as the breaths that came before: Shannon. The voice whispered Shannon. The blood rushed out of her head. Her heart knocked hard in her chest. Her knees buckled and she grabbed the counter to keep from falling. She was starting to hyperventilate, had to calm it down before she was taken by a full-blown panic attack. Paper bag. Think. Think! Drawer below the silverware, next to the sink. Over the nose and mouth. Breathe slowly, slowly.Holding the bag against her face, Shane slid to the floor with her back against the cabinets, legs splayed, lungs heaving. It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be Jordan. Jordan was dead.

From her vantage point, looking up at [Ian] through the water-spotted and slightly blurry lenses of her glasses, he was quite literally larger than life. Right at that moment, with his hands up on his head, his muscular chest bare, and his boxer shorts clinging to him in a most revealing way, water matting the hair on his chest and his legs and his eyelashes, he was ridiculously attractive. Even with his more conventionally handsome brother standing next to him.Of course the fact that Aaron was looking down at her with unconcealed dislike in his pretty hazel eyes might’ve had something to with it, as if she weren’t a person but instead a pile of excrement left on his pool deck by a wart-covered troll with an intestinal ailment.

But one look at Wildcard's face, and he knew there was trouble. Problem? he signaled.Wildcard responded with an obscene gesture that more than conveyed his opinion that not only was this a problem, but it was a big problem...."Okay". That was not anywhere near the complete reaming Muldoon imagined "We'll take a different route down.""We could", Wildcard agreed. "But they've got a prisoner.."Oh man, that hurt. Dream op to nightmare...Muldoon gritted his teeth and considered his options."Holy fuck", Wildcard said. "When I tell you that a stupid ass French photog is going to turn this perfect op into a total clusterfuck, what you say sir, is 'Oh, holy fuck'. If this isn't the time to use your full adult vocabulary, Lieutenant, I honestly don't know what is".

She didn’t know Matt had followed her until he grabbed her shoulder, halting her headlong rush to nowhere. He turned her into his arms, pulled her against his chest, crushed her mouth in a searing kiss.“Shane,” he said when he raised his head from hers. “I love you. I love you.”Her heart opened and the wall inside her trembled as she clung to him. “Burn me up, Matt,” she said, her voice a ragged whisper. “Burn it away. Please, please, burn it all away.”She heard him growl deep in his throat and he lifted her into his arms in one swift movement. As he carried her back across the parking lot and through the door of her room, she rained kisses on his neck and the hard line of his jaw. His skin was warm and damp and tasted of salt and desire.

He stepped closer with an intense, thoughtful look on his face. "We shouldn't do this."Her heart gave a hard thud."You probably can't kiss." Another step closer. "What does the doctor say?""We never kissed," she deadpanned. "Dr. Pratt and I are not interested in each other that way."The sound of his deep laughter broke the tension between them. He moved a little closer still."Dr. Pratt says intimacy is all right, unless the other person is sick." She couldn't believe she just said that. Why not put a neon sign on her forehead? DESPERATE FOR SEX."This isn't going to work." He leaned his forehead against hers, the skin-to-skin contact jolting. "This isn't the right time for either of us." His hands slid up her arms. "I shouldn't kiss you," he said.And then he did.Holy heaven.