Page 54 of Nothing More

She could envision it: a black wraith sneaking between control boxes, perching on the parapet, spotting the spill of light through her sliding door. Fox and Tenny and Reese could have done it, why not Toly, too?

“Now,” he continued. “Do you want to know what I learned today?”

She wanted…a lot of things. Some of them violent, some of them violent in a whole different way, some of them tied to the way her peaked nipples chafed against her nightgown.

“You could have called.”

“It’s not safe to say that sort of thing over the phone.”

“Oh, but it’s safe to jump off a roof and frighten me half to death?”

“So you admit it, then. You’re scared.”

“Anyone would be bloody scared of a man peeping in their window!” she hissed. “What if I’d had a gun? I could have shot you.”

“You don’t have one. And you wouldn’t have.”

The sureness in his voice, the near-cockiness of his pressed-flat mouth and glittering dark eyes, set her blood to boiling. The way he seemed to know that she wouldn’t have shot him, wouldn’t have wanted to truly hurt him, made her feelseenin a way that left her wanting to turn and cower. To climb beneath her covers or shut herself away in her closet.

She swallowed with difficulty, gaze dropping to his hands curled around her wrists, clamped tight enough to turn the skin white; her fingertips had begun to tingle.

“Let go of me,” she repeated.

“Not until I’m sure you won’t slap me.”

She lifted her face to search for mockery in his, but there was only that same expressionless smoothness, everything blank save his eyes, which burned like coals.No onehad ever stared at her the way he did now: not a lover, not a man who wanted to be her lover. She’d been on the receiving of all sorts of looks, from lustful, to covetous, to envious, to sedately appreciative (from one too many of the aforementioned genteelly-bred lovers), but nothing like this. Like he knew everything she was thinking, each shameful, ardent fantasy, and like he felt more than sure that he could deliver on them.

She clenched her jaw, and schooled her features, and met him stare for stare. She wouldn’t flinch from him; she didn’t flinch fromanyone, and she wouldn’t start with some young, ill-tempered Russian hitman.

But her body betrayed her. A shiver stole through her. A twitch of her spine that rippled up her arms; a leap of her pulse; a shudder of the breath in her lungs, catch in her throat. And scrutinizing her the way he was, he noticed.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.” Then he spun her.

“What – hmph!” Too quick for her to escape, he had both her wrists twisted tight together in one hand, his other hand clapped over her mouth, muffling her indignation. Caged between both his arms, his front warm and solid down her back, and the edge of the dressing table digging into her stomach, she was well and truly trapped now, without enough room to wriggle loose or get an elbow in his ribs.

Again, panic squeezed her, chased quickly away by a hot flood of need. Her pulse settled warmly in her breasts and between her legs, thighs squeezing helplessly together. She could feel the shape of his lean body, the firmness of muscle beneath his leather jacket, the dig of his belt buckle at her tailbone.

He tucked his head down next to hers. His breath fanned warm across the side of her face, cigarettes and spearmint. His pulse thumped steady against her shoulder blade, while her own beat itself bloody against her ribs.

She made the mistake of turning her head a fraction, and caught sight of their reflections in the wide mirror atop her dresser.

Good God.

Her cream silk robe had slipped off one shoulder, the thin strap of her gray nightgown trying to follow. Her damp hair lay in wild disarray down her arms, and her eyes, above the hand he pressed over her mouth, were huge and feral – pleading, and not for her life. In his black jeans, and jacket, his hood still pulled up, his hair slipping from its confines, the jet of a blackbird’s wing, the contrast between them couldn’t have been starker. Predator and prey. Demon and angel. Master and supplicant. She didn’t think she’d ever looked so helpless.

She’d never been so turned on in her life.

His gaze went to the mirror, and met hers through it, brown to blue, answer to question. Her throat jumped as she swallowed, and he shifted minutely, a slant of his shoulders, a tilt of his hips she could feel as well as see: he was getting hard.

He whispered, “If I take my hand away, will you scream?”

I don’t scream, she thought, and then:maybe you should try to make me. She shook her head.

He peeled his hand away one finger at a time, trailing his index finger down her lower lip, her chin, her throat, before resting his hand on the bare skin of her shoulder. He fingered the silken strap of her nightgown, a teasing touch that sent goosebumps racing across her chest.

Her face was flushed, and it had turned her lips pink and puffy, as if she'd already been kissed. They quivered as she tried to steady her breathing.

“If I let go of your hands, are you going to hit me?” he asked.

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