Grier couldn't draw a breath as the cool air hit her bare breasts and her nipples tightened up on a quick sting of pleasure--although her body's response was more from the way his hot eyes latched onto her than the temperature.

And yet she had to wait for him to speak, move, do something . . . anything--

He dropped the sweatshirt.

A gasp sucked down her throat.

Male. Animal. That was all that came to her.

She hadn't seen a lot of men naked, but she was very sure the number could have been a hundred thousand and none of them would have compared to Isaac Rothe: He was built heavy in the shoulders and the chest, and tight in the stomach and hips . . . and fully erect?

His sex more than lived up to the rest of him.

He came down to her through the inky darkness, sliding in against her, his body harder and bigger than her eyes had let on, her breasts cushioning his pecs as his weight settled on top of her.

God, he smelled good.

And damn her, she was panting to have him.

His hand burrowed in, going under her waist, pulling her even tighter into those strong, strong arms of his. And as they drew up hip to hip, the boxers she had on were no barrier at all to the blunt head of him pushing at her core--which was so very ready for him.

"Oh, God--"

He cut her off, his mouth finding hers and taking her lips like he owned her. He kissed her with none of the awkward first-time stuff she was used to; there was nothing hesitant or polite or tentative at all: Isaac kissed her like he meant to have her, and she was ready to be taken.

She'd never wanted anything this badly before.

Abruptly, he rolled over onto his back and took her with him until she was sprawled across his body. Splitting her legs, she straddled his hips and he cursed as she settled on his arousal and rode him up and back, stroking them both. As she moaned, his tongue slipped into her and she dragged her hands down to his lower half, feeling the curling of his muscles as he pushed rhythmically against her.

Before she could touch him, though, he was shifting her up his body, his mouth on her neck, then her collarbone, then--

He latched onto one of her nipples, the hot, wet suction throwing her into a wild arch that nearly cracked her spine. To stay in control of her, his hands dug into her hips and held her steady--and she needed it as he dragged his tongue over her and then resumed the tugging pull.

"I want to be naked," she moaned. "I want--"

He was right on that, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of the boxers and moving them south. She rose up to help him and had to shamble around to dismount him and get the things down . . . because his mouth was still at work, sticking with her, moving to her other breast, nipping and then sucking again.

When she resettled across his belly, her wet sex sealed on the hot skin of his waist, and as his hips surged, the tightening weave of his stomach muscles moved against her, driving her higher sure as if it was his palm between her thighs. With the dueling onslaughts at her breasts and her core, he seemed to be all over her, touching every inch of her body.

And it wasn't enough. There would be time for exploration later--all she wanted was him inside. . . .

Isaac clearly thought the same thing, too. Without her saying a word, he returned her to the mattress, his erection a hot brand on her thighs as he moved into position. Parting her knees with one of his own, he made room for himself--

They both groaned as they brushed against each other down below.

"I'm clean," he said in her ear.

"I know." She raked her nails over his shoulders. "Saw . . . medical record . . . I'm on . . . pill. . . . now!"

They joined together in a rush, his body going rigid above her as he pushed in deep and hit home. He was big and thick inside of her, heavy on top of her, hot against her skin: This may have been wrong on so many levels, but when it came to the fit, he was perfect.

Isaac dropped his head onto her neck and started to move, his body rolling against hers, her head moving up and back on the pillow as he stroked in and out. Sliding her hands down to his lower back, she could feel the growing tension in him already--and he wasn't the only one getting close to release.

On a moan, she widened her legs and gave him more, her nails sinking into his skin, the tips of her breasts and the depths of her core tingling. She breathed through her mouth hard as his rhythm of broad strokes swept her up into the heavens even as she stayed on earth.

And then she was free. Flying and free on a wild ride that made the real world seem so blissfully far away. It was just what she needed, an explosive shattering that took her out of herself and the too-structured life she led and the powerful mind that had gotten her so far and yet trapped her, too.

As she began to come down, Isaac's thrusts got shorter and faster, his arms going all around her and tightening up hard. She was crushed against him but she didn't care--and she was glad she'd gone over the edge first so she could concentrate fully on what was happening to him.

Except . . . he slowed.

And then stopped altogether.

Lifting his head, he braced his torso up on his arms, but didn't look at her.

Just as she was going to ask him what was wrong, he pulled out of her, still fully erect, and got off the bed. The air that rushed in to fill his place was like an arctic blast across her naked skin--and the deep freeze only got worse as he strode into the bathroom and closed the door.

Left alone, she lay in the dark, every muscle tensed up and her whole body flushed with a very different kind of heat.

She waited, and when she didn't hear water turn on or the toilet run, the idea that it might have just been an equipment malfunction of some sort dwindled. And it couldn't be embarrassment over some kind of performance thing because God knew he'd satisfied her and been erect.

Her hands shook as she covered her face, and damn it if reality didn't come rushing back. This should never have happened.

Perfect fit? More like a perfect fix: She'd been in a reckless frame of mind ever since she'd looked into Isaac Rothe's frosty eyes, and just as it had been with her brother, she'd had to take a hit of something very dangerous.

Where had her brain gone? Having sex with some man she didn't know--No, worse than that: a client of hers--who was up for assault? With no protection--even though she was on the pill and she did know he wasn't HIV positive, it was still risky as hell.

In the heat of the moment, she'd made a choice that was hard to defend, much less comprehend.

For some reason, Daniel came to mind, and she remembered the pair of them being thirteen and sixteen and stealing their father's car. It had been down at Hyannis Port in the summer--where night wasn't just dark; it was pitch black. They'd pushed the Mercedes two-seater down the drive, started it up, and gone for a ride, changing places, each taking the wheel. They'd ended up on the breakway in front of the marshes, on the sandy road right on the lip of the ocean. With the sea wind in their hair and the whoosh of the air and the sense of electric freedom, they'd laughed until they couldn't see.

Which was how they'd crashed into a shack.

They'd both been hardwired wrong, hadn't they--Daniel a little wronger than her, granted, but it wasn't just her brother who did crazy things. And in a way, his descent into the seedy needle underlife had been her drug: The peaks and valleys as she made progress with him and then lost it and then got through to him once more became the drum section in her life's orchestra, the driving force that marked all the other notes. And now that he was gone . . .

She dropped her hands and looked over at the closed door, picturing Isaac on the other side.

He was the perfect fit for the vast hole her brother's death had left behind, a wave of drama sweeping into her life and becoming the thing she could throw herself into. After all, Daniel as a ghost wasn't half as vivid as he'd been alive.

Isaac was pure octane.

Yanking the covers over herself, she sat up and drew her hair back behind her ears. The reality was, that man in there had had more sense than she did. He'd wanted to go and leave her; she'd made him stay. He'd given her a chance to go back to bed alone; she'd shut them in together. He was going to take off without looking back; she was going to want to see him after tomorrow. . . .

Frowning, she realized there were still no sounds in the bathroom. Nothing.

What was he doing in there? It had been a while.

Grier dragged a sheet with her as she got up and walked over to the door. Knocking softly, she said, "Are you okay?"

No answer. "Isaac? Is there something wrong?"

Well, other than the fact that he was on the lam from both the federal government and now the state of Massachusetts and was staying at his soon-to-be former attorney's house . . . having had sex with her.

Details, details.

Or wait, did the lack of orgasm on his part mean the hookup didn't count? She had finished, though . . . so maybe she'd been with four and a half men now?

"Isaac?"

When there was no response, she rapped quietly. "Isaac?"

Without much hope, she went for the knob, but the thing turned easily--to her relief, he hadn't locked himself in. Cracking the door, she saw a bare foot and an ankle in the dim light from outside. He was evidently sitting on the floor in the corner by the shower.

"Mind if I come in?" she asked, pushing her way into the room . . .

Dear God . . . he was curled into himself, his face on his biceps, his arm up and blocking his face, his bruised hand lying on his hair. He was breathing hard, his shoulders rising and falling.

He was sobbing. Sobbing in that restrained, manly way where he barely let any of it out, his choked inhales the only thing that clued her in.

Grier approached him slowly and sat down beside him. When she put her hand lightly on his bare shoulder, he jumped.

"Shhh . . . it's just me."

He didn't look at her and she was willing to bet if he'd been able to, he would have told her to get out. But he couldn't. And all she could do was sit with him and gently soothe him with touch.

"It's okay," she murmured, knowing there was no reason to ask about the whys: There were a lot to choose from. "You're all right. . . . It's okay. . . ."

"It's really not," he said hoarsely. "It's so not. I'm . . . not. . . ."

"Come here." She tugged at him, not really expecting him to give in . . . but he did. He turned to her and let her wrap her arms around him as if he were a wild beast who had decided to be tamed for a short time. He was so big that she couldn't reach far, but she made what contact she had count and put her face in his cropped hair.

"Shhh . . . you're all right. . . ." As she murmured the lie over and over again, she wanted to say something else, but that was the only thing that came to her--even though she had to agree with him. Nothing about the situation was fine. Neither of them was all right.

And she had the sense that "okay" was not going to fit the way things ended between them. Or for him.

"I still don't know how," he said after a while.

"How what?"

"That you knew I was having my nightmare."

As she frowned in the darkness, she stroked his hair. "Ah . . . you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

"An angel came into my room." There was a beat of silence. "He was . . . magnificent. A warrior . . . he woke me up and pointed to the door and I knew it was because of you." Just so she didn't sound freakish, she tacked on, "I guess I was dreaming, too."

"Guess so."

"Yeah." Because angels didn't exist any more than vampires and werewolves did.

At least . . . she'd believed that until tonight. Except what she'd seen certainly hadn't felt like a dream.

God only knew how long they stayed like that, curled around each other, their collective warmth amplifying for a different reason than it had out in the bedroom: now, it was skin-on-skin comfort.

When Isaac finally sat up from her, she braced herself for him to thank her awkwardly and tell her to go. But instead, he traded places with her, his arms wrapping around her body, one behind her knees, the other at her back. Then he rose from the floor as if she weighed nothing and carried her out past the messy bed into the hall. He took the stairs without slowing or seeming to exert himself; his breathing barely changed even while he held her.

Up in her room, he laid her out in between her sheets and then just stood over her.

She could feel the hunger in him, but this time it wasn't sexual. It was for something that seemed even more important than all that desperate heat.

Grier moved over to make space, and after a moment, he slipped inside with her. Now, she was the one being cradled, that muscled chest of his somehow making all her problems magically seem smaller. And yes, the idea that she was falling into some kind of Cinderella state made her cringe, but she was too relaxed to put up a fight.

Closing her eyes, she tucked her arm around his waist.

As exhaustion slammed into her and knocked her out cold, her last thought was that it was okay to sleep. There would be time to say good-bye in the morning.

Isaac lay beside Grier, and waited for her to sink down solidly into REM territory. To pass the time, he reviewed vocabulary terms, because his mind was cannibalizing itself and he needed to redirect his neurons.

In the male lexicon of labels, the term nancy usually referred to guys who were a little light in their loafers: the kind who made women kill spiders for them, worried about how much starch was in their dry cleaning, and might possibly have a spice rack that was alphabetized.

Real men did not have spice racks. Or even know how to find them in a kitchen--much less what to do with what was in 'em. . . . At least, that was what his father had taught him and his brothers. And actually, in retrospect, that opinion sort of explained why their mother had gone off, married someone else, and started a new family before she'd died. Clearly, she'd known that a reboot of the system was going to get her nowhere and the only solution was to get fresh components--

What had he been thinking about? Oh, right. Nancys.

Next step up the vocab ladder--or down, as it were-- was probably pantywaister. He wasn't exactly sure where that little ditty had come from, but it was synonymous with terms like sissy, the old-school pencil-necked geek, and the newer little bitch. These were the guys who might well have the impulse to change a tire for a woman, but would have trouble lifting the spare out of the trunk--and forget about working the lug wrench. They were also the sort who threw like girls, shrieked when they saw rats, and would call the police in a bar brawl instead of getting in there to start punching.

His father had always believed women were weaker, and maybe when it came to hefting bales of hay for six to eight hours straight in the ninety-degree heat, he might have had a point. But Isaac knew a lot of females in the service who could not only pitch baseballs like a man; they could punch as good as one, too--and had better aim.

Strength didn't have to be identical to be equal. . . .

God, why the hell was he thinking about his father?

Right. Back to the Dictionary of Dickless Wonders. Which apparently his pops had been an editor of.

The lowest of the low . . . the bottom rung . . . the ball shriveler of them all . . . had to be pussy. That was the kind of thing that, if your buddy was joking with you and busting you for something, he could throw it out and the shit was funny. If the word was said seriously, however, it was a leveler. In general, nonspecific terms, pussy could refer to a guy who, say, couldn't perform in bed with a woman he had the hots for. And then capped that lack of follow- through with . . . oh, say--and this was purely a hypothetical--maybe collapsing naked on the floor of said woman's loo and crying like a motherfucking baby.

Until she had to come and comfort him after he had let her down. After endangering her life and her professional career.

Yeah. Something like that.

As he groaned in the dark, he couldn't believe the fucking mess he'd made out of the whole thing. Stopping in the middle? Going into the bathroom and pulling a hankie routine?

Why didn't he just put a dress and some nail polish on and call himself Irene?

Shit, the sex . . . the sex had blown his mind. Literally. And that had been the problem. Some kind of fissure had been opened in him the instant he'd sunk into her wet heat, and with each pumping thrust, what had started as a hairline fracture grew into a vast pide.

It wasn't about fear. Or second-guessing his AWOL status.

It was the fact that when you were on the job with Matthias, you were so damn busy keeping yourself alive that you had no clue how under-the-gun you were.

And what do you know, bolting from the fold was just more of the same. Having that dream? More of the same.

But making love to a beautiful, warm woman in a soft bed that smelled of lemon in a house even he couldn't doubt the security of?

Too close to normal. Too safe. Too good to be true.

The juxtaposition of that and where he'd been and where he was going in the morning had peeled him wide--which kind of proved what he'd always suspected: It was just too hard to dip even a foot into the civilian way of life. The straddle to be in both worlds was unsustainable.

And on that note . . .

Shifting around to the side table, he reached for the remote of the DVD and hit play. When the menu came up, he chose play all, and after a beat, the Three's Company logo came on over the shot of a beach scene. As the intro credits ran, John Ritter ogled a chick and ended up falling off a bike--and as he hit the sand, Grier's brows tightened . . . then relaxed completely.

Perfect. She'd trained herself to associate the TV with deep sleep, and the bubble of noise and soft flickering light was going to help cover his tracks.

About fifteen minutes into the episode, Isaac slowly slid his arm out from under her head and then he eased from between the sheets. In his absence, Grier rolled over to face the TV and resettled with a sigh. Which was his cue to get a move on.

Hitting the stairs, he went down to the room he'd been given.

Ten minutes later, he headed back to her, fully dressed, with his weapons. Standing over her, he watched her sleep for too long and had to force himself to bend down and pick up her hand. Moving her carefully, he put her thumb on the remote to the security system and deactivated it. After a green light flashed, he reengaged the alarm to see what kind of delay there was.

Which would be none: Immediately the red light glowed, and he was stuck inside.

Made sense. She'd just trigger it after she locked the front door.

He checked his watch. Four a.m.

Grier made a little snuffle and eased her head deeper into the pillow, her blond hair falling onto her cheek.

He didn't trust himself to stay with her until she woke up.

Now or never, asshole.

Thank you, he mouthed to her.

And then with a curse, he disarmed the system and left without looking back.

Downstairs, he was silent and quick as he went and checked the ADT keypad in the front hall. Just as he'd hoped: disengaged. After all, when you had a rottweiler guarding your house, did you really need a yellow Lab as backup?

The front door was solid wood and three inches thick--so even though he couldn't engage the dead bolt, it was going to take a battering ram to get inside. His only concern was the glass doors and windows, but the frames were super sturdy and locked--and if you shattered panes the size of the ones in the kitchen, they made a hell of a noise.

So she was safe as she could be.

After cutting the exterior lights, he took his muscle shirt from his pocket and tore off a strip; then he stepped out and cranked that big ol' door into place. Quick pause to double-check the handle was locked and secure and he tied the strip of cloth around the wrought-iron lantern to the left.

Next move was to walk off into the chilly April morning.

Not a moment too soon, either. As this was New England, the sun rose real early, and he probably had only an hour or so of good darkness before the dawn's rays started to chase away the shadows. Going left, he headed across something called Pinckney Street, and less than ten yards down the hill, he found what he was looking for--one of the smaller town houses was under reconstruction, its windows on the first floor boarded up, a pathway of plaster dust running in and out of the front door.

And there were no lights on, inside or out.

Going in all Spidey and shit, he grappled up the house, using the moldings around the door and the windows to brace his feet and yank his weight up. A quick punch through a dusty pane and he waited for the scream of a security alarm. None came. So he flipped the latch, shoved the sash up, and hello, Lucy, he was home.

Total elapsed time: a minute and a half.

The place was rock cold and covered with more plaster dust, and he hoped like hell that this was a union job, given that it was Sunday--so he could stay as long as he wanted.

Casing the joint didn't take long, and similar to Grier's setup, the back of the house opened to a courtyardy thing that was gated--and there were no chalky footprints on the red brick there. Obviously, the workmen arrived and left the front way.

To clear the exit route for some parkour action if he needed it, he popped the latch on the window above the rear door's transom; then he returned to where he'd broken in and picked out all of the glass shards on the pane he'd smashed--because no glass at all looked, from a distance, like nothing was wrong.

The vantage point he took was by the window on the far front right of the house, and to hide most of himself, he moved a piece of plywood over for cover. From where he took up res, he could see about seventy percent of Grier's bow-front. What was missing was the rear door and the upper terrace, but this was as good as it was going to get.

Leaning up against the cold wall, his eyes scanned the little park with its wrought-iron fence and statue and gracefully limbed trees. Might as well enjoy the view. He wasn't leaving until he saw Grier get into her car and drive away--without anyone on her tail.

Twenty minutes later what he feared most rolled up. The black unmarked was not what Jim's buddy had described from the night before: no dings or dust on this bad boy. And the darkened windows prevented him from seeing the driver or any passenger.

But he had a feeling who it was.

Shit, he hated when he was right.

And this was all his fault.