Page 17

"Then stop justifying it."

Her expression changes. Barely. A slight parting of her lips. A breath that doesn't make it all the way into her lungs.

"This isn't why I came."

"I know."

"Do you?"

I don't move toward her. Not yet.

"If you wanted answers, you'd still be asking questions."

Silence settles between us. Her gaze drops to my hands, lingers there, then travels slowly back to my face. Nothing professional in it now.

There it is. The thing that's been in the room since she walked through the door.

I close some of the distance between us.

She doesn't retreat.

"I need to say one thing before this goes where it's going," I tell her. "I was tested when I entered the state facility. There hasn't been anyone since."

Her gaze stays steady. She had her answer ready before she left her room.

"I was tested last month. Clean. I haven't been with anyone since, and I'm on birth control." She delivers it om a flat, clinical tone as if turning it into an operational detail might make the rest of this the same. "That covers the logistics."

"That covers the logistics," I repeat.

The word sounds different in my mouth. Heavier. She hears it too, because color climbs her throat and her gaze drops to my hands again before coming back to mine.

She crosses to the dresser. Even now, she's measuring every step. The agent is still in the room. She's just decided what the agent is willing to risk tonight.

"You can have this room," she says. "Don't mistake it for anything outside that door."

The room is quiet enough that I can hear the highway and the hum of the air-conditioning unit bolted to the wall beneath the window. Neither of us speaks for the time it takes the ice machine down the walkway to cycle and go still.

I reach for her wrist. My fingers close around it. The contact is the first bare skin between us, the first touch that isn't an exchange of documents or a photograph left on a tailgate.

Her pulse is fast under my thumb. The rest of her is still.

I pull her toward me. She comes without hesitation until her chest is against mine and her face is tilted up. The height difference puts her mouth below my jaw and her eyes level with my throat.

"Look at me," I say.

Her chin lifts. Our eyes connect, and the contact hits harder than anything physical. Dark eyes with a focus that strips a man down to his components, locked on me with an intensity that says she's weighing what she wants against what she's willing to risk.

She stays for a beat. Then her gaze cuts to the side. She can face down a convicted felon at his own truck on a remote ranch, but she can't stay steady when the distance between us collapses to inches.

I tilt her chin back with two fingers. Her gaze returns with defiance in it. She isn't yielding. She's holding ground while I close the distance, and the contest is the hottest thing I've felt in years. She's here because she chose to be, and she's looking at me because I told her to.

I kiss her. Hard, immediate, no preamble, because we've been circling this since the ranch and the circling is done. She kisses back with equal force, her hand fisting my shirt at the hip, dragging me toward her when most people in her position would be establishing boundaries. Her mouth opens under mine, and the first taste of her carries a trace of beer and something warmer underneath.

My hands go to her hips. I lift her, and the ease of it shows in her expression, surprise she can't quite hide. Her legs wrap around my waist, and I carry her to the bed and set her down on the edge.

She reaches for the hem of her shirt. I catch her wrists.

"I'll handle that."