hands were unsteady as she started to go through the undeads’ pockets. Win had kissed her. She knew enough of combat to understand that the need for physical contact, or a sexual release, went hand in hand with the aftermath of getting one’s blood up. She ought not make anything of it. Only her heart pounded, and she couldn’t think straight.
He knelt next to her, his trousers straining against his powerful thigh muscles. How he had moved in the fight. She had never seen him like that, his body a lethal weapon, gliding and striking as though he owned the very air around him. It made her dizzy with lust.
“What are you looking for?” His smoky voice was low and even.
She reached into an inner coat pocket. “A guide. The undead cannot think for themselves. They’d need something to guide them to us. Something that identifies what victim they sought.”
Beside her, Win began to do the same, his shoulder brushing hers as they worked. He sat back on his heels as he pulled out a folded piece of what looked like sheepskin paper. Poppy stopped and leaned into his shoulder to watch him unfold it. A coil of red hair fell out and onto his roughened palm.
“Well, that explains it,” she said through her teeth. “They have my hair.”
Win clutched the clump in his fist. “How?”
Poppy rested an elbow on her thigh. “Taken from my hairbrush? I do not know.”
Win rose to his feet and held out a hand. Poppy did not need help, but she took it because she wanted to keep touching him. Foolish. She could not afford to be so weak. She let go as soon as she stood and then glanced down at the undead. “I would say it was Isley, but this is not his modus operandi.”
“Do you believe someone else wants to hurt you?” His cool eyes grew hard and angry. “Have you an idea of who it could be?”
A short laugh escaped her. “The list is long, dear husband.”
His jaw tightened. “You find this amusing?”
No. She found it wearying. Worse, she wanted to punch something, for he had been in danger too. By associating with her. Damn it all. She glanced up to find Win watching her. She’d seen the soft heat in his eyes just after he’d kissed her. The tenderness. He’d looked at her as he used to look at her. Before. This was her life now. Before discovery. After discovery. She wanted that look back.
“Why did you pull away?” She hadn’t meant to ask, but now that she had, she would not flinch from it.
His expression closed down. “What is it that you want me to say, Poppy?” The scar on his lip was white as he searched her face. “That I am human? You know that all too well.”
Her breasts lifted and fell as she fought for breath. “Perhaps that you wanted to kiss me?” That you miss me the way I miss you. So much that it hurts.
His expression was so stern that he might have been a marble carving. “I wanted to kiss you.” He backed her up against the stone wall leading onto the Embankment. “I want you every thinking moment I have. I want you near. I want to hear your voice. Feel you.” He leaned in, drowning her in his scent and his heat. “I want to take you hard, slow, every way in between. And the piss of it is, it’s always been this way. From the moment I saw you.”
She gaped up at him, and his scowl grew. “I want you always. In all things. I want…” He exhaled unsteadily. “It is pain, this wanting you. And I wish it were gone.”
Her breath left in a sharp rasp. But he was past hearing. “Because it isn’t about wanting, is it? A man gets to a point in his life when he realizes wanting isn’t everything. There needs to be more.”
“You will never forgive me, will you?”
His head snapped back, those deep eyes of his clouding for a moment. And then he sighed. “It is not a question of forgiveness. I lied, you lied, we both lied.”
“Are you conjugating? Or is there a point? For I confess, I cannot understand what you are about.”
His mouth twisted as he leaned in. “It isn’t real. What we had was never real. It was an illusion. Our life. Our love.”
“How dare you say that! How dare you belittle all that we had.” He might as well