A year, two weeks and three days.

But who was counting?

Why was he letting her hold him down?

She didn’t know, but she needed the rifle, and began to reach back for it-

“Don’t.” He tried flashing a grin. “Come on. We don’t need backup. You and I can rock and roll all on our own.”

“I’m not hitting on you, and you know it. I’ve never hit on you.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

“So that time I caught you staring at me changing shirts, you were, what-checking for moles?”

Okay, he had her there. “I was not hitting on you,” she repeated stiffly. “Good God, only an idiot would think that!”

“An ass and an idiot.” He sounded amused. “I had no idea how highly you thought of me.”

“You shot Gaines,” she reminded him, watching him very carefully. She knew better than most how fast the man could move.

“So we’re going to talk shop now?” he asked, as if he hadn’t just held her down against her will. Maybe he’d decided she was no threat. That she wouldn’t scream to get help when she needed it.

Too bad he was dead wrong.

“Because up until now you haven’t been all that interested. Unless…unless it’s the opposite. You’ve just been playing hard to get.” Hawk grinned again, but it was forced.

And, yes, she actually knew the difference between his real smile and a forced one. But she’d obsess over that later. For right now, Abby wasn’t going to let him distract her, not when he was as slick as rain, and she could feel him beneath her, gathering strength, his every muscle poised for action. She very carefully shifted her weight and…

He almost let her get the rifle, too. But then he locked his gaze on hers, his filled with a whole host of things she wished she couldn’t see-regret, resignation and also sadness, which she didn’t understand. The next thing she knew, he’d unarmed her and once again she found herself held down by six feet two inches of solid muscle.

“Where did you get the rifle?”

“I found it after the first explosion.”

“Or you got it from Gaines, out of the barn. Damn it.” He shifted, pressing down harder.

Her windpipe closed, her heart stopped and she thought maybe the world had slowed to a halt on its axis. Abby opened her mouth to scream, but again his hand came down over it.

“No, don’t. I can’t let you shoot me, or call for help,” he said with real remorse in his voice as he threw the strap of the rifle over his shoulder. His eyes were black, fathomless pools, unwavering in their intensity as they fixed on her. “I’m sorry you’re scared. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Ha, she tried to say. I’m not scared. But she was so far beyond scared she couldn’t even speak the lie.

Hawk sighed and leaned in a little closer. She could feel his chest pressing into her breasts, the powerful thigh he’d shoved between hers. He still had one hand on her mouth, the other gripping her wrists high above her head. He wasn’t hurting her, though he outweighed her by a good seventy pounds. “Any more weapons I need to know about?” he asked, shifting slightly and releasing the hand on her wrists in order to frisk her. As he did, her nose brushed against his neck. His hand slid down her body intimately, choking a gasp out of her. His scent was a surprisingly good one given the night he’d had.

“No screaming,” he reminded her. “Promise me.”

She nodded her head. She’d have promised him the moon if he’d only get the hell off her so that she could draw air into her aching lungs. Besides, she was banking on someone, anyone, discovering them any second now.

He nodded in return. “Good. Because I’m having a major guilt attack here, and I really just need you to cooperate.” That said, he lifted his fingers from her mouth.

Immediately, she opened her mouth to yell, but he stopped her but good.

This time with his mouth.

She was so stunned, it actually took Abby a moment to struggle. He was kissing her.

Really.

Kissing.

Her.

And, holy smokes, she had to work frantically to actually keep herself distanced…which turned out to be all but impossible with his lips slanting over hers, his tongue licking the inside of her mouth, consuming her, heating her up from the inside.

God. Six months of wondering how it’d feel to have his hands on her hadn’t come close to the reality, but this wasn’t the time to melt. No. No melting. This went against every thing she’d expected, against everything she’d experienced the last time a man held her down, and she didn’t know how to react.

But Hawk did. Oblivious to her inner torment, he kept on kissing her. And if she’d thought accidentally brushing her nose against his neck had been heart attack inducing, it was nothing compared to mouth on mouth. His lips were surprisingly soft and yet somehow firm, and while she processed that realization, another came right on its heels.

She’d frozen like a scared little bunny, when she’d promised herself no more scared little bunny. It was why she’d talked Gaines into letting her come back to work after the leave of absence, it was why she’d chosen communications, where she could be in the action and yet not in danger.

Ha!

His tongue traced her lower lip, then slipped inside her mouth to tango with hers, reminding her she was in danger now, mortal danger of forgetting where they were.

Oh, no. Nope. Not happening. Again she came up hard with her knee.

But she’d lost the element of surprise, and he anticipated the move, shifting so that she caught him in the upper thigh instead as he kept kissing her.

She’d shoot him. Soon as she got her rifle back, that is. He still had one of his powerful legs between hers, pressed up high enough that she couldn’t swallow without him feeling it, but she squirmed anyway. He merely pressed down harder, and unbelievably, it awakened parts of her that had been dormant for a long time.

Then he lifted his head, his breathing none too steady as he stared at her. “Two things. Gaines wants me dead, and I think he wants you the same. I need you to believe me.”

“No-”

“Goddamnit-” Hawk bit back the curse, then shook his head. “Fine. You won’t trust me, then I have no choice.”

Reaching back, he grabbed something from his pocket. Handcuffs.

Abby met his gaze and at what she saw there, felt like she was straddling a steep crevice, about to plunge to a helluva fall. “Hawk.”

“Sorry.”

“Whoa. Wait a damn minute-”

He slapped the steel on one of her wrists and then on one of his, linking them together.

6

WATKINS STOOD ON THE EDGE of the clearing, feeling the heat of the fire toast his face. The wind lashed at him, the smoke stinging his eyes. He’d directed Gaines’s men out of there now that the explosions had gone off, and the fire was out of control.

Their job was done. Permanently. Most would vanish completely now with the booty Gaines had given each of them, although it was inevitable that some, the greedy ones, would continue with their illegal forays.

Not his problem.

His cell vibrated. He looked down at the readout and grimaced. He debated not answering, but that could be bad for his health. “Yeah?”

“How the hell did Logan get onto a heli-transport?” Gaines demanded. “He’s supposed to be dead. You were supposed to have him killed.”

Watkins closed his eyes. He’d been paid extremely well over the years, and, as a result, he hadn’t had a problem with how tonight was to go down.

But he hadn’t agreed to off Logan.

Nor Abby.

Besides, there wasn’t enough money to look into Abby’s eyes and watch her die. There just wasn’t. “Not my fault. Sam screwed up and didn’t make sure he was dead before he tossed him off the roof. And then Abby ordered me to-”

“Christ. You let a woman run your show? You’re worthless.”

The back of Watkins’s neck tingled. His heart lodged in his throat. He turned in a slow circle, making it halfway around before he came face-to-face with two hooded men.

Gaines’s men. “I thought I told you guys to get out of here.”

“Goodbye, Watkins,” Gaines said in his ear, just as one of the men lifted his gun and pointed it at Watkins’s chest.

J.T. LOGAN WAS DREAMING ABOUT floating on a raft, surrounded by a sea of gorgeous, stacked Playboy centerfolds there to serve his every whim. Even dead asleep he knew the utter ridiculousness of the fantasy, and exactly how politically incorrect it was, but, hey, it wasn’t his fault, he was dreaming.

But it didn’t last long enough. As he came awake in slow degrees, pain spread like knives stabbing throughout his entire body.

Holy shit. With a moan, he opened his eyes and found himself staring up at one of his Playboy centerfolds. Huh? Still dreaming? Hard to tell. She wasn’t picture-perfect like the others nor magazine-cover ready, but there was something vibrant, something extremely real about her.

She wore blue, which contrasted with her siren-red hair, pulled into two haphazard braids on either side of her head. She was watching over him from behind black-rimmed glasses through which a pair of forest-green eyes, outlined by long, spiky lashes, blinked at him. These rather amazing eyes were narrowed, and her forehead was creased into a frown, with one eyebrow bisected by a scar that drew his gaze.

He couldn’t look away. Oddly, he wanted to know what had happened to cause that scar more than he wanted to know why his head felt as if it’d been blown half off his shoulders.

She wore no makeup except for gloss on lips that were still frowning and also moving.

Asking him a question, he realized. Unfortunately, he couldn’t seem to hear a thing.

Yeah, he had to still be dreaming. But what was this harassed-looking, slightly rumpled Playboy bunny doing in his dreams?