it was time to break away, and he almost made it—but not quite.
She opened her mouth wider, and he slid in even deeper, and so it would have gone, down, down, down into the sweet darkness of desire, down to the sharp, bare edge of need cutting through him. He wanted her.
He pressed against her, pulled her closer, felt the pressure of her body up against his—and then came the sounds of stopping cars, doors opening, and guns coming out of holsters.
He dragged his mouth away from hers, then kissed her once more, hard and fast.
“Don’t forget me.” The words came out of nowhere, unexpected, just like her, but the instant they did, he knew he meant them. He’d forgotten everything and everyone—but he didn’t want her to forget him.
“Police!” The shout came from the street, and he turned and ran, a lightning-quick slip into the shadows, more speed than any local cop could understand, and he was gone.
But he could still smell her, even halfway down the alley, where he found the dirt track leading off between two lines of fencing. Even there in the darkness, two hundred feet away, her scent was with him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
J. T. Chronopolous had kissed her.
Jane was stunned, frozen in place up against the back-alley wall of the building two doors down from Mama Guadaloupe’s.
True, he didn’t know who he was, and he didn’t know who she was, but the kiss had been real, as real as the first time he’d kissed her, when things had gotten so out of hand. She’d been eighteen, not the twenty-two she’d told him, and he’d been a Special Ops soldier on the eve of his last mission.
It had been a wild night—steal a wallet, outrun the cops, get about half lost in the tunnels beneath the city, and make love with J. T. Chronopolous on his living room floor.
Yep. That was about right. That’s the way she remembered it, a wild, wild night …
The fire crackled and snapped in his big old fireplace, and Jane figured that’s what had awakened her. They’d eaten dinner sitting on the floor in his living room area with the city lights sparkling in the darkness through the windows on one side of them and the fire keeping them warm on another. The food had been good, the company better, and they’d both been thrumming with the night’s adventure—not much of one for him, she’d learned as he’d talked about his work, sharing parts of some of the missions he’d been on and telling her about the places he’d been all over the world.
Over the course of hours, the conversation had grown more and more intermittent, and now she realized she must have drifted off.
He had fallen asleep, too. He’d told her he was a Special Ops soldier, combat trained, combat ready, which had done nothing to make her feel better.
It must pay good, she figured, looking around at the wonderful place he lived in—and then she looked at him, sleeping on his side with a couch pillow under his head.
She was hurting like crazy already, knowing he was leaving to go off soldiering somewhere in the morning. It was terrible, really it was. She’d gone and fallen in love with a guy who was supposed to have been an unattainable crush.
So stupid to have done that.
And he was too old for her. He’d made that clear.
“You’re not twenty-two,” he’d said while they’d eaten, and he’d said it in a way that had told her she wasn’t going to convince him otherwise.
One kiss, she decided. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, and if she was careful, and kissed him very carefully on the cheek while he was asleep, he might not even know she’d done it. He was snoring softly and looked to her like he was long gone, down for the count.
Yes, she decided. She was going to do this. Another minute passed while she figured out her best approach.
Situating herself closer to him, she leaned down and lightly pressed her lips to his cheek, and his arm came around her waist, slowly, easily, dragging her closer.
“Hey, babe,” he murmured, and then drifted off again, except this time she was wrapped in his arms.
Not such a bad place to be.
She wasn’t stupid, but she was safer than she’d ever been in her whole life, lying there with him in this beautiful place with a warm fire and clean furniture and all the other hundreds of things she didn’t have in