LITMIR.BIZ

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of his voice was cat smooth and cougar dangerous. “Help me out here. I don’t understand.”

      Then she made her second mistake. She touched him. Just a whisper of finger against the roughness of his beard. The heat of it shivered through her. The want, the need. His. Hers. “It’s the waiting and the worrying. It’s killing me.”

      “It’s my job.”

      “I know.” And she did. She understood how his parents’ murder at the hands of an escaped convict had driven him into the U.S. Marshals Service. She understood his need to hunt criminals and put them back in jail where they couldn’t hurt anyone but themselves. She understood his need to leave her for long periods of time to do his work. He was the best manhunter in the Service, and his duty to the Service always came first.

      And that simple little jealousy made her feel petty. How could she ask him to stay when what he did was so important? Why did he insist on shutting her out of the most important part of his life?

      “But I want to share it.”

      He frowned. “We’ve been through this before.”

      “I know.” And gotten nowhere. She wanted him in her life, of that she was sure. But she needed the balance to shift. She didn’t want to simply be his haven. She wanted to be his partner. This course was the first concrete step to that partnership. “You’re so strong. And I’m…” She shook her head. “I need to find my strength.”

      “You are my strength, Olivia. Don’t leave. Not tonight.”

      He reached for her, eyes bright with that potent mixture of desire and danger that never failed to arouse her, and a small helpless cry escaped her. No, don’t touch me. I’ll give in. She could feel her body responding to his before he’d even finished wrapping his arms around her. He held her tight. She tried to push him back, but when it came to Sebastian, she was weak.

      He was passionate about everything he did. And that passion, she was loathe to admit, was part of her attraction to him. The aura of intensity around him acted as an aphrodisiac for someone unsure of her place in the world. The bad-boy looks on a man who hunted for justice had made her believe that, at his side, she could find herself. And each time he touched her, she believed it again—until he left.

      His chin snuggled against the top of her head. The strong beat of his heart drummed beneath her hands. His heat seemed to fuse her to him. She could start a day late. She could leave tomorrow—after this storm of return. Maybe he’d understand then. Maybe she could tell him that her need to leave was like his need to decompress before he came to her when he returned from a hunt. Something that was temporary, but necessary.

      “I love you, Olivia.”

      “I know.” And the slow melting started. It shimmered from her heart towards her limbs and left her limp. She twined her arms around his neck to hold herself up and accepted the brand of his kiss. The searing heat of it, the desperate need in it, erased the boundaries between them. The savage taste of him filled her. The scent of him, so primal, so Sebastian, dissolved her will. She could feel herself slipping away, and her desire suddenly tasted salty with tears. “Let me go, Sebastian. For a little while.”

      “Stay. I’ll take some time off. We’ll go away somewhere together. No beeper. No phone. No computer. I promise.”

      “Until the next prisoner escapes.”

      He opened his mouth to answer. She covered his lips with a finger. He took the offending digit into his mouth and gently sucked.

      “It’s not you.” As his hands slid up her sides, she tried to catch her breath and put some space between them and found her hands mirroring his, seeking the firm skin beneath his shirt. “It’s me. I need…”

      “What?” His thumb skimmed a nipple, drawing a gasp from her.

      “Sebastian…”

      As he continued his exquisite torture of her flesh with his hands, his mouth found the tender spot behind her ear, clouding her mind. “What do you need?”

      “More. I need more.” She crushed herself against him to gain focus, only to lose it again when his fingers rounded her waist and stroked the sensitive hollow at the base of her spine. “Let me go, Sebastian.”

      The sudden stillness in him was more frightening than the seduction she couldn’t resist. But before he could say anything, the beeper on his desk shrilled.

      “Answer it,” she said, as the invisible web making them one separated strand by strand. “You know you have to.” When they stood apart, an aching cold made her shiver. Why had she done this? Why had she hurt him? Why was she risking the love of the one person who made her feel secure?

      Because the next time that phone rang, she wanted him to talk to her about the coming hunt and not shut her out. She wanted him to know she truly understood his job, him.

      He stalked to the phone and ripped the receiver off the cradle. Punching in numbers, he stared pointedly at her. She memorized the lines of his face—the sharp jaw, the thin nose, the full lower lip, the cleft in his chin, the upside-down V his work had creased between his eyes, the dark shadow of beard that he could never quite seem to get rid of no matter how often he shaved, the clean cut of his straight black hair. She closed her eyes and breathed in his scent. She licked her lips and imprinted his taste.

      “Falconer,” he barked into the phone.

      She opened her eyes, blinked as if taking a last picture, then turned toward the steps. She wanted to stay. She had to go. Her heart suddenly weighed heavily with the contradiction of her needs.

      “Olivia! Wait.”

      But she couldn’t. She was leaving because she’d nearly lost herself in him again. When she was stronger, when she was his equal, when she could stand solidly beside him without forgetting herself…then she’d return.

      “HOLD FOR MR. SUTTON,” the voice on the other end of the line ordered in a clipped voice.

      Sebastian put a hand over the speaker and called, “Olivia!”

      But she wasn’t waiting. She was running up those stone steps as if the devil were on her heels.

      Maybe he was. In the past year, he’d felt himself grow colder, harder. Had his work seeped into his home life? Olivia was so sensitive that his dark moods were bound to frighten her. Decompressing took longer and longer. Would he one day get stuck in the mind of the scum he chased?

      Tethered to the phone and his boss, Sebastian watched helplessly as the ten best years of his life walked out the door. Maybe if he’d been able to give her the child she so desperately wanted. But no, he realized, the slowly widening rift between them went deeper than that. Something had been bothering Olivia for months now, and he’d gone against his habit of facing unpleasant things head-on and chosen to believe the closeting he saw in her eyes was temporary. Winter blues. She had them every year. Should he have suggested adoption? Would that have calmed the sadness in the summer sky of her eyes? A vacation. They needed a vacation. Somewhere sunny.

      He strained the length of the telephone cord. “Olivia!”

      She wasn’t really leaving. She couldn’t. He needed her. Did she know he watched her sleep? That he took comfort in the slow rise of her chest, in her simply being there, alive, beside him? That she was the reason he could keep doing what he had to do and still stay sane?

      Finding her was always his first objective when an assignment was over. Getting back to Olivia. The beat of that need pulsed in him from the second he ratcheted cuffs on a fugitive. And then, when the long ride home was finally over and he saw her, alive and breathing, he could let the tension slip, let his breath out, let his heart feel again. With the first hug came a silent prayer of thankfulness. She was safe. He was home. And for now the world was right.

      But not tonight. Tonight the mountain smoked from the unseasonable sweat of the day. Every year in February, winter seemed to grow weary of blowing blue and mean. For a day or

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