down at her hands so primly knotted in front of her, she licked her dry lips and focused on her goal. Everything else she’d tried to dissolve the barrier between them had failed. “You’re a contained man, Sebastian, and I need to spill over. For a little while. Until I figure out where you end and where I start.”
“I don’t understand.” The pain slashing his features twisted inside her. He took another step forward. Though she wanted to flee, she held her ground.
“I’ve known you since I was seventeen. We were married when I was eighteen. You have five years on me. You knew what you wanted out of life. This.” She arched her arm to encompass not only the room, but all of the house. “You. It’s all I’ve known for the past ten years.”
“I thought you loved the house.” Another step. She stiffened.
“I do.” She’d helped design it herself. The way the light played with the shadows, the way it fit snugly into the rocky New Hampshire landscape as if it belonged, the way each room was a restful den, made it a home, not merely a house. “It’s not the house.”
“The village then.” His gun hand flexed. He wouldn’t let her go. “You feel isolated.”
“No, it’s not Wintergreen.” How could she resent a place where everyone knew her and treated her like a friend? If she wanted a taste of the city, Keene, Nashua, Manchester weren’t that far. Even Boston was only a few hours away. She straightened against the stone wall and hugged herself tighter.
He stopped, let his head drop to his chest, then blazed her with a look of such sadness she nearly closed the distance between them to comfort him. “I’m sorry I can’t give you the baby you want.”
That was a tiny bit closer to the truth. Without that common goal, the wall between them seemed to get thicker. But a baby wouldn’t fix the hollowness growing inside her. Until Sebastian trusted her with all of himself, a baby would only complicate the situation. “It’s not the baby.”
He took another step. They stood close enough for breath to mix with breath. He knew her weakness and was going to use it against her. “Then what is it, Olivia?” The reverberation 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
