Contents

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      COMING NEXT MONTH

      PROLOGUE

      HE WAS a hard-bodied, six foot four inches of angry male.

      His hair was midnight-black, his eyes deep-sea green. He had the high cheekbones of his half-Comanche mother; the firm jaw of his Texas father.

      Tonight, the elegant savagery of his mother’s people ran hot in his blood.

      He stood in a room where darkness was broken by ivory swaths of moonlight. Shadows lurked in the corners, lending an ominous chill to the air. The sighing of the wind through the trees outside the house added to the sense of disquiet.

      The restless stirrings of the woman asleep in the big four-poster bed were a manifestation of it.

      She was alone, this woman he’d thought he loved. This woman he knew. Knew, intimately.

      The delicacy of her scent, a whisper of spring lilacs. The silky glide of her gold-streaked chestnut hair against his skin. The taste of her nipples, warm and sweet on his tongue.

      His jaw tightened. Oh, yes. He knew her. At least, that was what he’d thought.

      Long moments passed. The woman murmured in her sleep and tossed her head uneasily. Was she dreaming of him? Of what a fool she’d made of him?

      All the more reason to have come here tonight.

      Closure. The glib catchall of overpaid twenty-first-century shrinks who didn’t have the damnedest idea of what it really meant.

      Alex did. And closure was what he’d have as he took the woman in this bed, one final time.

      Took her, knowing what she was. Knowing that she had used him. That everything they’d shared had been a lie.

      He would wake her from her dream. Strip her naked. Pin her hands high over her head and make sure she looked into his eyes as he took her so that she could see it meant nothing to him, that having sex with her was a physical release and nothing more.

      There’d been dozens of women before her and there’d be dozens after her. Nothing about her, or what they’d done in each other’s arms, was memorable.

      He understood that.

      Now, he needed to be sure she did, too.

      Alex bent over the bed. Grasped the edge of the duvet that covered her and drew it aside.

      She was wearing a nightgown. Silk, probably. She liked silk. So did he. He liked the feel of it under his fingers, the way it had slid over her skin all those times he’d made love to her with his body, his hands, his mouth.

      He looked down at her. She was beautiful; there was no denying that. She had a magnificent body. Long. Ripe. Made for sex.

      He could see the shape of her breasts through the thin silk. Rounded like apples, tipped with pale pink nipples so responsive that he knew he had only to bend his head to her, let the tip of his tongue drift across the delicate flesh, breathe against it to draw a guttural moan of pleasure from her throat.

      His gaze moved lower, to the shadow of her mons, a dark umbra visible through the silk gown. He remembered the softness of the curls there. The dark, honey-gold color. The little cries she’d made when he stroked her, parted her labia with the tips of his fingers, put his mouth against her, sought out the hidden bud that awaited him and licked it, drew it into his mouth as she arched toward him and sobbed his name.

      Lies, all of it. No surprise. She was a woman who loved books and the fantasy world in them.

      But he was a warrior, his very survival grounded in reality. How come he’d forgotten that?

      How come his body was turning hard, just watching her? That he still wanted her enraged him.

      He told himself it was normal. That it was simple biology. Part A fit into part B, and part A had a mind all its own.

      Maybe. And maybe that was why he had to do this. One last encounter, especially in this bed. One last time to taste her. To bury himself deep between her silken thighs. Surely, that would burn the rage out of him.

      Now, he thought, and he feathered his fingers lightly across her nipples.

      “Cara.”

      His voice was strained. She whimpered in her sleep but she didn’t awaken. He said her name again, touched her again, and her eyes flew open. He watched as they filled with terror.

      Just before she could scream, he pulled off his black ski mask and let her see his face.

      Her expression changed, went from terror to something he couldn’t identify.

      “Alex?” she whispered.

      “Uh-huh. The proverbial bad penny, baby.”

      “But how…how did you get in?”

      His smile was slow and chilling. “Did you really think a security system could keep me out?”

      For the first time, she seemed to realize she was almost naked. Her face colored; she reached for the duvet but he shook his head.

      “You’re not going to need that.”

      “Alexander. I know you’re angry…”

      “Is that what you think I am?” His lips curved in a smile that used to strike fear in the hearts of those he’d dealt with in what he thought of as his other life. “Take off that nightgown.”

      “No! Alex, please! You can’t—”

      He bent and put his mouth against hers, kissing her savagely even as she struggled against him. Then he grasped the neckline of the flimsy nightgown and ripped it from her.

      “You’re wrong,” he said. “I can do anything tonight, Cara. And I promise you, I will.”

      CHAPTER ONE

      NOBODY had ever asked Alexander Knight if a man’s belly could really knot with anxiety but if someone had, he’d have laughed and said bellies couldn’t knot any more than pigs could fly.

      Besides, why ask him?

      Anxiety wasn’t a word in his vocabulary.

      He knew what it meant to feel his nerves tense, his blood pound. Taut anticipation, after all, had been part of his life for a long time. You couldn’t put in years in Special Forces and then in covert ops without experiencing moments of stress, but that wasn’t the same thing.

      Why would a man be anxious when he’d trained himself to face danger?

      Alex pulled his BMW into a parking slot behind the building he hadn’t seen in three years. Hadn’t seen, hadn’t thought of….

      Hell, that was a lie. There’d been too many dreams where he’d awakened, heart pounding, sheets tangled and sweaty.

      The first thing he and his brothers had agreed on, even before they’d come up with the