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“Because of this.”
She saw the glitter in his eyes and immediately bolted away from the desk, intent on escape. She was quick, but he was quicker. He seized her wrists and folded her arms behind her back, effectively wrapping her in his embrace at the same time. The pressure of his iron-muscled arms forced her against the hard planes of his body. Having seen him naked, she knew that his clothing disguised his true strength and muscularity, knew that she didn’t have a prayer of escaping until he decided to release her. She declined to struggle, contenting herself with a furious glare.
“Cat eyes,” he murmured. “The first time I saw you, I knew you were no lady. Your eyes give you away. And I was right, thank God. The night we spent together proved that you don’t give a damn about what’s proper or ladylike. You’re wild and hot, and we wrecked my bed. You should have known there’s no way in hell I’d let you go.”
He was aroused. She could feel his hardness thrusting against her, his hips moving ever so slightly in a nestling motion, wordlessly trying to tempt her into opening her thighs to cradle him. It was tempting. Damn tempting. She couldn’t deny wanting him, had never tried to, but he was right: she didn’t trust him.
“It won’t work,” she said hoarsely.
“It already has.” The words were soft, almost crooning, and his warm breath washed over her mouth a second before his lips were there, firm and hot, his head slanting to deepen the kiss and open her mouth to him. She hadn’t meant to do so, but she found herself helpless to prevent it. Right from the beginning, his kisses had made her dizzy with delight. His self-confidence was manifested even in this; there was no hesitancy, no awkwardness. He simply took her mouth as if it were his right, his tongue probing deep, and a deep shudder of pleasure made her quake.
Held against him as she was, she could feel the tension in his body, feel his sex throbbing with arousal. He had never made any effort to disguise his response to her. Though it had been obvious even on their first date, he hadn’t pressured her in any way. Maybe she had started falling in love with him then, because he had been both amused and matter-of-fact about his frequent arousal, his attitude being that it was a natural result of being in her company. She hadn’t felt threatened in any way; in fact, looking back, she realized that Quinlan had gone out of his way to keep from alarming her. He had been remarkably unaggressive, sexually speaking, despite the persistent evidence of his attraction. She had never felt that she might have to face a wrestling match at the end of an evening. Even the night they
had made love, she hadn’t fully realized the seriousness of his kisses until she had somehow found herself naked in bed with him, her body on fire with need. Then she had discovered that he was very serious, indeed.
The memory made her panic, and she tore her mouth away from his. She had no doubt that if she didn’t stop him now, within five minutes he would be making love to her. The hot sensuality of his kisses was deceptive, arousing her more and faster than she’d expected. It had been the same way that one night. He had just been kissing her; then, before she knew it, she had been wild for him. She hadn’t known such intense heat and pleasure had existed, until then.
“What’s wrong?” he murmured, reclaiming her mouth with a series of swift, light kisses that nevertheless burned. “Don’t you like it? Or do you like it too much?”
His perceptiveness alarmed her even more, and despite herself she began to struggle. To her surprise, he released her immediately, though he didn’t step back.
“Tell me what went wrong, babe.” His tone was dark and gentle. “I can’t make it right if I don’t know what it is.”
She put her hands on his chest to force him away and was instantly, achingly aware of his hard, warm flesh covered only by a thin layer of cotton. She could even feel the roughness of his hair, the strong, heavy beat of his heart pulsing beneath her fingers. “Quinlan—”
“Tell me,” he cajoled, kissing her again.
Desperately she slipped sideways, away from him. Her body felt overheated and slightly achy. If she didn’t tell him, he would persist in his seductive cajoling, and she didn’t know how long she could resist him. “All right.” She owed him that much. She didn’t intend to change her mind about dating him, but at least he deserved an explanation. She should have told him before, but at the time all she had wanted was to stay as far away from him as possible. “But…later. Not right now. We need to get everything gathered up and get settled in the lobby.”
He straightened, amusement in his eyes. “Where have I heard that before?”
“It isn’t polite to gloat.”
“Maybe not, but it’s sure as hell satisfying.”
* * *
She was nervous. Quinlan was surprised at the depth of her uneasiness, because that wasn’t a trait he associated with Elizabeth. He wondered at the cause of it, just as he had wondered for the past six months why she had run from him so abruptly after spending the night in his arms. She wasn’t afraid of him; that was one of the things he liked best about her. For him to find women attractive, they had to be intelligent, but unfortunately that intelligence tended to go hand in glove with a perceptiveness that made them shy away from him.
He couldn’t do anything about his aura of dangerousness, because he couldn’t lose the characteristics, the habits or the instincts that made him dangerous. He didn’t even want to. It was as much a part of him as his bones, and went as deep. He had made do with shallow relationships for the sake of physical gratification, but inside he had been waiting and watching. Though the life he had led sometimes made him feel as if only a few people in this world really saw what went on around them, that most people went through life wearing blinders, now that he was mostly out of the action he wanted the normalcy that the average person took for granted. He wanted a wife and family, a secure, settled life; as soon as he had met Elizabeth, he had known that she was the one he wanted.
It wasn’t just her looks, though God knew he broke out in a sweat at the sight of her. She was a little over average height, as slim as a reed, with sleek dark hair usually pulled back in a classic chignon. She had the fast lines of a thoroughbred, and until he had met her, he hadn’t known how sexy that was. But it was her eyes that had gotten him. Cat eyes, he’d told her, and it was true, but though they were green, it was more the expression in them than the color that made them look so feline. Elizabeth’s nature shone in her eyes. She had given him a warning look that had said she wasn’t intimidated by him at all, underlaid by a cool disdain that was certainly catlike.
Excitement and arousal had raced through him. The more he’d learned about her, the more determined he had been to have her. She was sharply intelligent, witty, sarcastic at times and had a robust sense of humor that sometimes caught him off guard, though it always delighted him. And she burned with an inner intensity that drew him as inexorably as a magnet draws steel.
The intensity of his attraction had caught him off guard. He wanted to know everything there was to know about her, even her childhood memories, because that was a time in her life that would be forever closed to him. He wanted to have children with her and was fascinated by the possibility of a daughter in Elizabeth’s image, a small, strong-willed, sharp-tongued, dimpled cherub. Talking about Elizabeth’s own childhood made that possibility seem tantalizingly real.
At first Elizabeth had talked openly, with that faint arrogance of hers that said she had nothing to hide and he could like it or lump it. But then he had begun to sense that she was hiding something. It wasn’t anything he could put his finger on; it was more of a withdrawal from him, as if she had built an inner wall and had no intention of letting him progress past that point.
Both his training and his nature made it impossible for him just to let it pass. Her withdrawal didn’t make sense, because he knew, knew with every animal instinct in him that she felt the same way he did. She wanted him. She loved him. If she were truly hiding something, he wanted to know about it, and he had both the skill and the resources to find out just about anything in a person’s life. His inquiries had turned up the fact that she had been married before, but the marriage had seemed to be fairly typical, and fairly brief, the sort of thing a lot of college graduates drifted into, quickly finding out they didn’t suit. He’d had his own short fling with marriage at that age, so he knew how it happened. But the more he’d thought about it, the more he’d noticed that the period of her marriage was the one period she didn’t talk about, not even mentioning that she’d ever been married at all. He was too good at what he did not to realize the significance of that, and he had begun to probe for answers about those two missing years. At the same time, feeling her slipping away from him, he had made a bold move to cement their relationship and taken her to bed, trusting in the bonds of the flesh to both break down the barriers and hold her to him until she learned to trust him completely.
It hadn’t worked.
She had fled the next morning while he was still in the shower, and this was the first time he’d gotten her alone since then.
Over half a year wasted. Almost seven long damn months, endless nights spent in burning frustration, both physical and mental.
But he had her now, all alone, and before they left this building he intended to know just what the hell happened and have her back where she belonged, with him.
