“Shoot,” he said, a sound raspy as a snarl.

Her chin came up a notch, the only sign she gave of nervousness or that she might not be quite as confident as she seemed. “I know you don’t like personal questions, but I thought, since we’re about to make love, it would be really nice if I knew your name.”

It was a moment or two before he could speak at all, and in those moments he watched a blush creep across her face-not the bright hot lying flush he’d come to know, but the sweet shy pink of wild roses.

“Are we? Going to make love?” he asked gently.

She nodded. “Yeah, we are. Now that you know I’m not married, and I’ve proven I’m not too young for you, and after…everything we’ve been through, I think it’s high time. Though I realize that I’m probably going to have to seduce you. With your exalted sense of honor, you’ll probably say I’m not thinking rationally, or I’m too tired or too upset after everything that’s happened, and refuse to take advantage.” She gave an exasperated little sigh. “And you call me Goody Two-Shoes?”

Again for a few moments he could only gaze at her. He felt as though his body had been plugged into a powerful electrical circuit, temporarily shorting out his brain. Only for a moment, but apparently long enough for her to lose the tenuous grip she’d had on her self-confidence. As he watched, her face seemed to blur around the edges. She suddenly seemed almost unbearably young…achingly vulnerable.

“Unless, of course,” she said, her voice gone thick and ratchety and much deeper than usual, “you really don’t want to. If your arm hurts too much or if you’re too tired. I wouldn’t-”

He was across the room in less time than it took her to draw a breath in preparation, and took her face between his hands and stopped her words with his mouth. Stopped them right there. And while he was kissing her he thought of all the ways he’d kissed her before-or she’d kissed him. The first, desperate make-believe-wife’s kiss, then the little thank-you peck on the cheek, standing on tippy toes like a little child, that had made his sleeping heart stir and awaken to remembered pain. Then his own charade back there in the jungle, holding her close in his arms and nuzzling her ear, pretending to be drunk so he could tell her what he needed her to know. And the one after that…like water in the desert, like manna for the wandering pilgrim, the one that had made him believe in miracles again.

He wanted to erase them all. He wished with all his heart for this to be the first, their very first moment together…ground zero, the birthday of a brand-new life. But since he’d never been in on a birth before, anyway not one he remembered, he tried to make light of the awe he felt, did his best to deny the overwhelming joy.

Drawing back from her only a little, he said in his customary growl, “My arm doesn’t hurt and I’m not too tired. Quit fussing over me, woman.” Then he gave her a Snidely Whiplash smile, all the while quivering inside with a giddiness that was more like Little Nell. “Have to say, though, I rather like the notion of you seducing me. What did you have in mind?”

“Well, for starters-” and he could feel her body trembling, too “-I thought we could share the shower. Save hot water-”

“Overkill,” he rasped. And her laughter sang across his lips and danced on his tongue.

He tasted rain and orange blossoms. She smelled of hot cinnamon and brown earth. Her warm body was the Sunday-morning kitchens of his childhood, and the ache inside him the wistful yearnings he remembered from back then, hearing his parents laughing and whispering together behind the closed door of their bedroom. Longing overtook him, so intense he felt a chill of panic, like a gusty little wind through his soul.

He withdrew from her mouth again and stared down into her face, holding it between his two hands like a treasure he’d found, brushing his thumbs across the sprinkle of freckles on her cheeks. Her eyes gazed back at him, shimmering with a soft golden light. “So, seduce me,” he said in a ragged, breaking whisper. “Give it your best shot.”

The only reply she could manage was a tiny whimpering laugh; her lips were hot and swollen, useless for forming words, though ideally suited, she supposed, for seduction. Give it your best shot… If only she knew what that might be! She wasn’t a virgin-she’d ceased to be one much earlier and more foolishly than she’d intended, and hadn’t always been Miss Goody Two-Shoes in the years since-but…seduction? In spite of the brashness of her opening gambit, she wasn’t at all sure how she should proceed. Would it be better to take off his shirt first, she wondered, or her own?

His hands were on her neck, now, so warm and rough…callused and gentle. She wanted to lean and round herself into them, like a kitten; she could feel herself vibrating inside with a deep inner current, like purring. Her eyelids wanted to close.

“I’m not sure…” she licked her lips and felt his lips, his tongue…their moisture blend with hers “…what I should do.”

“Silly girl…you don’t have to do anything, don’t you know that? Just be.”

She looked at him then, really looked at him, her passion-fogged eyes struggling to focus on his familiar beard-stubbly face. And all at once, as if the fog had suddenly lifted, she felt as if she were seeing him for the first time. Oh yes, there was the openness and honesty she’d seen there before, the character and strength and compassion. But now, for the first time she saw loneliness and longing, and realized that they’d been there all the time. And something else, now, too, lurking like a wild thing behind the challenge in his eyes…a hunger so intense and so agonizing, her loving, giving soul cried out in instinctive rejection of it-though all she let him hear of that was a tiny sound that might easily have been mistaken for a laugh.

Confidence flooded her. Her heart felt certain and strong-in bewildering contradiction to the trembling weakness in other parts of her. “Take my shirt off,” she ordered in a shaking whisper.

She heard a low growl of warning that seemed to come from deep inside his chest, and then his hands were on her shoulders, clutching, pulling…gathering the cold clinging material of her T-shirt and peeling it up and off her like an old skin. The growl deepened in intensity when she reached for him, meaning to return the favor, and he put his hands up like a barricade, holding hers at bay while he looked. Just…looked. Her heart flip-flopped. A great shiver tore through her.

Instantly, he reached for her, offering her his warmth, a sigh of compassion on his lips. But now it was she who held him off, with a scolding cluck and a murmured, “Uh-uh-me…”

Then she divested him of his shirt, though not nearly as quickly and cleanly as he had hers. Her fingers fumbled on the buttons, and she had to fight a childish urge to rip them apart. She was whimpering, barely realizing it, by the time she’d managed to pull the two halves of the shirt apart; her breathing ceased…her heart hammered as she pushed them back over his shoulders and down.

And just like that the game of seduction they’d been playing collapsed. A shudder rocked her. She gave a horrified cry and dropped the shirt to the floor. “Oh God- McCall, your arm,” she cried as she reached instinctively toward the ugly, dark-crusted slash across the fleshy part of his shoulder. “Oh Lord-I forgot-we should have-here, let me-”

Again, the sound he made was much like a growl. “Sister,” he warned, “don’t you dare stop now.”

His arms came around her, and she gasped when his cold skin met hers. He trapped her gasp with his mouth and gave it back to her, and then her hungry little cries and deep rasping breaths and thundering heartbeats were blending with his in a duet as old as passion and compelling as drums on a hot and sultry night. She no longer heard the rain…forgot she’d ever been chased through a jungle and shot at in a Mayan ruin. Forgot about the fact that there were men who wanted to kill her, and McCall, too. Only one thing mattered, and that was the man in her arms…and the fact that she was in his arms…and the fact that she loved him.

There was no more talking, no more playing at seduction; the rest of their clothing came off…somehow; neither of them remembered how, exactly, or cared. Then he was bearing her down onto a hasty tumble of bedclothes, and his careless and sensitive fingers were urging her body into quivering compliance, molding it to his wishes like a master sculptor. Sighing, she closed her eyes and let his touch paint her world with the colors of joy…primary colors…sunshine colors…like a child’s box of crayons. Then, with the warmth and generosity of spirit that was her nature, she gave the joy back to him.

Poised on the brink of accepting what she so eagerly offered him, he pulled back, his weight braced on his arms. She gave a soft, inquiring cry; she could feel him trembling, all his muscles taut with self-control. And when he spoke, his voice was guttural with strain.

“It’s Quinn,” he said.

A smile broke like a sunrise across her face. “Quinn…” she softly sighed, and wrapped him in that warmth and brought him home.

Exhausted, McCall lay awake, listening to the rhythms of wind and rain and watching the ceiling fan stir sluggishly in the sultry air. Just below his chin and near enough to brush with his lips if he only tilted his head the slightest bit, Ellie’s cinnamon head rose and fell gently, like a boat riding a swell.

He didn’t wonder about the ache of sadness deep inside his own chest, just beneath that tender weight, when such a short time ago he’d known happiness more intense than anything he’d ever imagined. The course of his life so far had taught him that the flip side of such happiness could only be despair.