Page 54 of Hunter

He knew nothing of mating, yet the image was very vivid in his mind—his body joined to hers so that it would be impossible to tell where one of them stopped and the other began.

He pulled her down, gathered her as close as he could with their clothing in the way. The tight, swollen part of him fit perfectly into the cleft between her legs. She must know it too, he thought, drunk with sensation as they rocked together on the bed. Blood surged through him in a roaring torrent. Need built, like a hot, raging river sweeping away sanity in its path.

He was caught and held in a spinning whirlpool of hunger—held by the soft sounds she made, the woman scent of her, the frantic little movements of her hips against his.

In a few moments he knew he would be unable to deny himself. Unable to think beyond physical need. He would have to give himself over to the blinding, deafening desire for her.

But he couldn’t let that happen. He had come here for another purpose. He must talk to her. Find out about the gun. Protect her.

That thought gave him strength he hadn’t known he possessed. With a strangled sound deep in his throat, he lifted his mouth from hers, moved a few inches away so that his aching body was no longer pressed tight to hers. Still, it was impossible let her go of her completely. His hand stayed clasped on hers as he spoke in a voice so thick that the words were barely articulate.

“We can’t.” he said, then more strongly, as he sat up and moved to the side of the bed, thumped his feet onto the floor to clear his head. “We can’t.”

Her eyes were dazed, her face flushed. The color deepened as she focused on him.

“We have work to do,” he rasped, knowing that if she held out her arms to him, he would go into them. “We must look at the thumb—with the personnel files.”

Kathryn blinked, sucking in a shaky breath as she struggled to remember where they were and why they couldn’t do what both wanted so desperately. Sitting up, she ran an unsteady hand through her hair, pushing it back from her face, buying a few moments to collect herself. He was right, she thought as she forced her mind to start functioning again.

“The drive? You have it?”

He nodded and pulled it out of his pocket. “I brought it out of the administration building. In the hospital, I folded it into my clothes when they had me get undressed.”

“Did you set the fire?” she asked, her fingers digging into his hand.

He kept his gaze steady. “Why would I do that?”

“You said you’d get me information from the computer. Then you realized it was going to be impossible. But you did it for me, anyway, didn’t you?”

A flush crept up his cheeks. “How did you know that?”

“It was a guess. Knowing you. Hunter, you shouldn’t have taken a chance like that!”

He shrugged. “It was like a field exercise.”

She made a low sound of distress, and her fingers tightened on his.

“It was all right.”

“You could have gotten killed.”

“I didn’t.”

Before she could lecture him on taking unnecessary risks, he changed the subject.

“McCourt was here? Tell me about that. And about the gun.”

“He came in the morning after you left and said a gun was missing from the armory. He looked for it, but he didn’t find anything. Then when I got back after the fire, I could tell that someone else had searched the house. The gun and the silencer were both gone.”

“He could have come back.”

“Or it could have been someone else.”

“I heard the sounds of searching on the tape.”

She nodded tightly.

“The gun may have come from the armory. Not the silencer.”

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