“Is that a rhetorical question?” Ice Man’s deep voice came from the sideboard.

Finally, she was forced to meet his gaze. Her heart skipped a beat at the smoldering warmth she found there. “I am inviting…your answer,” she said carefully, pushing the words past stiffened lips.

“Gunnar Thorsson is the team’s elected rep,” her boss added. “He’s got final approval on the spot. He has a dead-on instinct for what people want.”

Gunnar? Her eyes opened wide.

His gaze didn’t waver. “A woman likes the danger and strength the warrior embodies, but she really wants more than a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’-or a primal grunt. She wants the warrior to unstop a clogged sink, or teach a child to play ball…and to tell her roughly, but eloquently, how beautiful she is to him.” The last seemed like a caress.

Christ, it couldn’t be him. Her Gunn. But he was giving her back her words…and more.

Had what happened in the cave been real, or at the very least, mutual? And who would she kill later-Willa or The Lunch Break staff for hooking them up? If it really was him, he’d remember every stupid thing she’d said.

Her throat tightened around a lump at the back of her throat. It couldn’t be true. She was just projecting her desires onto him.

Her eyes filled. She shook her head as she stared at him, hearing the murmured questions from the management team as she tried and failed to pull herself together.

Ice Man’s arms dropped to his sides and he stepped forward.

Alarm filled her. Christ, don’t let him get too close or I’ll fall apart!

But he opened his arms and enfolded her next to his rock-solid chest. His hands caressed her, soothing up and down her back.

She inhaled, dragging in his now familiar scent-not the wood smoke part, but the manly musky part. She clutched the front of his jersey and tried to make sense of her reactions and figure out a way to run from the room before she made an even bigger fool of herself.

His hand cupped the back of her head, tugging on her hair to tilt back her face. His gaze held hers for a long, intense moment, and she wished like hell she understood what it meant.

Then his lips slammed down on hers in a searing, mind-blowing kiss.

His lips ate hers, molding, sucking, drawing her back into a familiar firestorm of searing emotions and lust. Finally, his tongue thrust inside her mouth to stroke hers, and she was helpless to resist. She tangled her tongue with his and moaned.

Christ, the man could kiss!

“Oh, I see you already know Gunnar,” Wilson said from somewhere behind Ice Man, an edge of dismay in his voice. “He has an excellent track record, actually, for gauging what consumers want. Kili?”

She lifted her hand, one finger extended, telling him to wait just a second. Her heart pounded as she recognized the sound rumbling from the chest pressed to hers.

Ice Man drew back and settled his forehead against hers, his breath hitching every bit as raggedly as hers. “Sweetheart, it’s gonna be all right,” he rasped.

“But, I don’t understand,” she said. He kissed like Gunn, growled like Gunn…Her heart accepted him as Gunn.

Ice Man snorted and kissed the tip of her nose. Then he bent to whisper in her ear, “Ugh!”


***

DELILAH DEVLIN has lived in Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Ireland, but calls Texas home for now. Always a risk taker, she lived in the Saudi Peninsula during the Gulf War, thwarted an attempted abduction, and survived her children’s juvenile delinquency. Creating alter egos for herself in the pages of her books enables her to live new adventures-and chronicle a few of her own (you get to guess which!).