LITMIR.BIZ

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either, do you?” she said, sitting next to him on the couch. “You just live with all of your fear and anger and grief all bottled up inside. No wonder you have nightmares!”

       Miller turned away from her, desperate to find his shirt, desperate to be out of there, away from the fear he’d seen in her eyes. God, he could have hurt her so badly.

       But then she touched him. His hand, his shoulder, her fingers soft against the side of his face, and he realized there was no fear in her eyes anymore. There was only sweet concern.

       Her face was clean of any makeup and her hair was mussed from sleep. She was wearing an oversize T-shirt that barely covered the tops of her thighs, exposing the full length of her statuesque legs. Her smooth, soft skin seemed to radiate heat.

       He reached for her almost blindly, wanting only…what? Miller didn’t know what he wanted. All he knew was that she was there, offering comfort that he couldn’t keep himself from taking.

       She seemed to melt into his arms, her face lifted toward his, and then he was kissing her.

       Her lips were warm and soft and so incredibly sweet. He kissed her harder, drinking of her thirstily, unable to get enough.

       Her body was so soft, her breasts brushing against his chest, and he pulled her closer. She fit against him so perfectly, the room seemed to spin around him. He wanted to touch her everywhere. He wanted to pull off her shirt and feel her smooth skin against his.

       He pulled her back with him onto the couch and their legs intertwined. Not for the first time that night, Miller wished he’d worn shorts instead of jeans.

       He shifted his weight and nestled between the softness of her thighs, nearly delirious with need as he kissed her harder, deeper.

      This was one hell of a bad mistake.

       She pushed herself tightly against him, and he pushed the thought away, refusing to think at all, losing himself in her kisses, in the softness of her breast cupped in his hand.

       She was opening herself to him, so generously giving him everything he asked for, and more.

       And he was going to use her to satisfy his sexual desires, then walk away from her without looking back the moment she introduced him to Serena Westford—her friend, his chief suspect.

       He couldn’t do this. How could he do this and look himself in the eye in the mirror while he shaved each morning?

       But look where he was. Poised on the edge of total ecstasy. Inches away from paradise.

       He pulled back, and she smiled up at him, hooking her legs around him, her hands slipping down to his buttocks and pressing him securely against her.

       “John, don’t stop,” she whispered. “In case you haven’t noticed, I am coming on to you now.”

       “I don’t have any protection,” he lied.

       “I do,” she told him. “In my bedroom.” She reached between them, her fingers unfastening the top button of his jeans. “I can get it....”

       Miller felt himself weaken. She wanted him. She couldn’t be any more obvious about it.

       He let her pull his head down toward hers for another kiss, let her stroke the solid length of his arousal through the denim of his jeans, all the while cursing his inability to keep this from going too far.

       He was a lowlife. He was a snake. And after all was said and done, she would hate him forever.

       Somehow, Miller found the strength to pull back from her, out of her arms, outside the reach of her hands. “I can’t do this,” he said, nearly choking on the words. He sat on the edge of the couch, turned away from her, running his shaking hands through his hair. “Mariah, I can’t take advantage of you this way.”

       She touched his back gently, lightly. “You’re not taking advantage of me,” she said quietly. “I promise.”

       He turned to look at her. Big mistake. She looked incredible with her T-shirt pushed up and twisted around her waist. She was wearing high-cut white cotton panties that were far sexier than any satin or lace he’d ever seen. She wanted to make love to him. He could reach for her and have that T-shirt and those panties off of her in less than a second. He could be inside of her in the time it took to go into her bedroom and find her supply of condoms.

       He had to look away before he could speak.

       “It’s not that I don’t want to, because I do,” he told her. “It’s just…”

       Miller could feel her moving, straightening her T-shirt, sitting up on the other end of the couch. “It’s all right. You don’t have to explain.”

       “I don’t want to rush things,” he said, wishing he could tell her the truth. But what was the truth? That he couldn’t make love to her because he was intending to woo and marry a woman she considered one of her closest friends?

       He had to stop thinking like John Miller and start thinking like Jonathan Mills. He had to become Jonathan Mills, and his reality—and the truth—would change, too. But he’d never had so much trouble taking on a different persona before.

       “I’m not ready to do more than just be friends with you, Mariah. I just got out of the hospital, my latest test results aren’t even in and…” He broke off, staring out the window at the dawn breaking on the horizon, Jonathan Mills all but forgotten. “It’s morning.”

       As Mariah watched, John stood up, transfixed by the smear of color in the eastern sky.

       “I slept until morning,” he said, turning to look at her. He smiled—a slight lifting of one side of his mouth, but a smile just the same. “Whoa. How’d that happen?”

       She smiled back at him. “I guess you’re going to have to admit that my silly relaxation exercise worked.”

       He shook his head in wonder, just gazing at her. She could still see heat in his eyes and she knew he could see the same in hers.

       He looked impossibly good with his shirt off and the top button of his jeans still unfastened. He was maybe just a little bit too skinny, but it was clear that before his illness he’d been in exceptionally good shape.

       She could guess why he didn’t want to become involved with her. He was just out of the hospital, he’d said. He didn’t even know if he was going to live or die. And if he thought he was going to die…

       Another man might have more of a live-for-today attitude. But John refused to take advantage of her. He was trying to keep her from being hurt, to keep her from becoming too involved in what could quite possibly be a dead-end relationship in a very literal sense.

       But it was too late. She already was involved.

       It was crazy—she should be pushing to keep her distance, not wanting to get closer to him. She didn’t need to fall for some guy who was going to go and die. She should find his shirt for him, and help him out the door.

       But he found his shirt on his own, on the floor next to the couch. He slipped it on. “I better go.”

       He didn’t want to leave. She could see it in his eyes. And when he leaned over to kiss her goodbye—not just once, but twice, then three times, each kiss longer than the last—she thought he just might change his mind.

       But he didn’t. He finally pulled away, backing toward the door.

       “I’d love it if you came over for dinner again tonight,” she told him, knowing that she was risking everything—everything—with her invitation.

       Something shifted in his eyes. “I’m not sure I can.”

       Mariah was picking up all kinds of mixed signals from him. First those lingering goodbye kisses, and now this evasiveness. It didn’t make sense. Or maybe it made perfect sense. Mariah wasn’t sure which—she’d never been this intimate with someone dealing with a catastrophic illness before.

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