LITMIR.BIZ

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      She shivered at the intensity of his gaze and the heat of his touch. Both felt eerily familiar. “Why? You won’t answer my questions.”

      “I want to help you, Alaina,” he said, his deep voice full of seductive promise. “I want you to figure out what you need to know.”

      “I need to know who this killer is,” she said. “I need to catch him.” She’d wanted that for so long, even before he’d killed again. Now she had to find him, to stop him….

      “That’s not all you need to know.” He leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching hers. “You need to know about us.”

      She pushed her hands against his chest and shoved him back. Ignoring the tingling in her palms from the heat of his body and the hardness of his muscles, she shook her head. “There is no us. And there will never be.”

      But had there been? In another life? Was he the lover she dreamed of, even wide-awake? Was he the man who had loved her so passionately in her past life that no other man in this life had ever measured up?

      “You feel it, Alaina,” he insisted, his voice a rough whisper. “I know you feel it, too.”

      Staring into his eyes, she could almost glimpse the images in their depths, the images that had been taunting her, of two naked bodies intimately connected, physically and emotionally. Alaina dragged in a ragged breath of air and shook her head again, trying to clear it. “All I feel for you is suspicion. You know more than you’re telling me about those old murders and this one.”

      His grin flashed again. “You feel more than that. You feel what I feel….”

      It didn’t matter what she felt. “I don’t trust you,” she stated unequivocally, reminding herself. “All I want is the truth.”

      “Since you don’t trust me, you won’t believe that anything I tell you is the truth,” he pointed out. “So I guess we have nothing to talk about.”

      Images, like slides in a projector, flicked through her mind—a sculpted chest pressed against her breasts, heavily muscled arms holding her close, perspiration glistening on slick skin….

      She opened, then closed, her mouth, knowing it was useless to ask Trent Baines any more questions. Like he’d said, she wouldn’t trust the veracity of his answers.

      But since she didn’t trust anyone with her secrets, she couldn’t expect him to share his willingly. She’d have to find out what she wanted to know another way.

      “Come with me,” he urged her, his green eyes glittering with desire and erotic promises. “Come with me and we won’t have to talk at all.”

      Temptation pulled at her to see if he could deliver on those promises. To see if he could make her feel what she only imagined….

       “I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered, as if afraid someone might overhear her and catch them. “It’s so wrong….”

       “That’s what makes it so exciting,” he pointed out as he reached for her.

       She pressed her palms against his chest, as if about to push him away again. Her eyes wide with confusion, she stared up at him. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

       “I told you,” he reminded her, “that you wouldn’t be able to stay away from me … any more than I can stay away from you. You belong with me.”

       She shook her head, trying to deny him, trying to deny her feelings.

       He cupped her chin in his hand and tipped her face up. “Look at me. I’m the man you’re meant to be with. You can feel it, too.” He lowered his lips and just brushed them across hers. “When I kiss you …” He trailed his fingers across her cheek, along the length of her neck to the curve of her breast. “When I touch you …”

       Her fingers clenched the fabric of his shirt, dragging him closer. “I want you.”

       Want. It wasn’t love. And what he wanted—needed—was her love.

      The soft click of a door opening drew Trent’s attention from his computer screen. He lifted his head as Dietrich stepped inside his room of the hotel suite they shared.

      “I’m sorry, sir,” the big man said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your writing.”

      “No, that’s fine.” He didn’t want to be writing, anyway; he wanted to be with Alaina. But she had refused his proposition and denied her feelings for him.

      Hell, maybe he was wrong about her. Maybe he couldn’t feel what she felt because she felt nothing for him. Maybe this connection between them, this sense of destiny, was only in his mind.

      Trent rubbed a hand across his forehead where tension pounded with the onslaught of the emotions of others. “Did you get this floor cleared?”

      Dietrich nodded. “The concierge helped convince them to move to the new rooms you’re paying for.”

      “And everyone moved?” Because he could still feel the anxiety of someone about to do something … Apply for a new job? Ask someone to marry him?

      And the couple that fought …

      Trent felt their anger and resentment, the hurt and pain that felt eerily familiar even though he’d never been in a relationship that had lasted beyond a week or two of physical pleasure.

      At least, he hadn’t in this life.

      Had he lived before? Or was it that through their emotions he lived everyone else’s life right now?

      Dietrich nodded. “Everyone on this floor has moved. But there are people on the floor below and in the buildings surrounding this hotel. We should go home, where it’s quiet and peaceful,” he urged. “The city is too much for you.”

      Trent closed his eyes as a red haze of emotion rushed over him. Then oblivion, black and comforting, tempted him to slip into unconsciousness. He’d done it before. Blacked out when he was too overwhelmed to deal with the pain of others.

      At the crime scene and the morgue, he’d nearly lost consciousness. The terror and pain had been so intense.

      But he was stronger now than the kid he’d once been … the kid who’d escaped into his own little world so he wouldn’t have to deal with others. He opened his eyes to the screen of his laptop. The words he’d just written all blurred together unintelligibly.

      And he realized it hadn’t been his own little world.

      Other people had lived in it with him … Before he had killed them?

      Dietrich cleared his throat, drawing Trent’s attention back to where he hovered, like a mother hen, in the doorway of the suite. He spoke hesitantly, dropping each word softly into the silence. “I don’t understand why we’re here.”

      Trent leaned back in his chair at the desk. Too weary to speak, he just arched a brow.

      “You have that book to finish.”

      He’d already missed his deadline.

      “Your editor called again today.” Dietrich relayed the message, as much secretary as bodyguard. “Twice.”

      Evan was pissed, not just about the deadline but because Trent had told him this book would be the last in the lucrative Thief of Hearts series. It was time to end it. But he’d been struggling before Alaina Paulsen had shattered his peace and quiet and confirmed that his fiction was actually fact.

      Fact that Trent didn’t know if he was strong enough yet to face….

      “I’ll get the book done,” he promised Dietrich and himself.

      “But it’s easier for you to write back at the estate,” his assistant insisted. “You have

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