She bucked under him. "I'm damned tired of people controlling my life."
No way could he let her fly out of the apartment like this. He struggled to make sense of her words, a hard-as-hell proposition with her writhing under him. The glide of her body against his numbed his brain while heating other parts of him.
She clipped him on the chin.
All right, then. Passion tempered. He grabbed her flailing fists, manacled them with his hands over her head. "You need to rein it in, Mary Elise."
"Get off me, you son of a bitch, and I'll be just fine."
She glared up at him, her green eyes sparking with a mix of fury and a desperation that knocked him harder than her punch. She wasn't fighting him but some demon he couldn't combat until she let him in.
God, he never, never wanted to frighten her. As much as he knew of the old Mary Elise, he was beginning to realize he would need new instincts in dealing with this wary woman.
He gentled his grip. "Southern boys get particularly pissed when you talk bad about their mamas. Now hush up and listen for a minute." He trailed a finger down to loosen a strand of hair clinging to her full bottom lip. "You know I would never hurt you."
She stilled under his touch, br**sts pressed to his chest, legs twined. Back and forth, he traced the pad of his thumb over the giving softness of her mouth, felt the steamy rushes of breath gust over his skin.
Into him.
Her eyes darkened to that deep green of late summer grass. Oh, yeah, he remembered the shade well, felt the hitch in her breath that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with wanting.
Adrenaline-fueled desire. Logical explanation. Not that logic would stop him from—
Her face rose to meet him as he angled down. Mouth to mouth, open, ready, hungry. More adrenaline and heat and too long not touching sent his hands into the pooling mass of her hair.
He needed to hold her again and kiss her senseless and find out if being inside her was as un-freaking-believable as he remembered before she hauled ass out of his life. Not that she seemed pointed toward that door at the moment.
She was damned near tearing his flight suit off. Her fingers yanked at his zipper, crawled inside to stroke his shoulders. Sweeping the warm recesses of her mouth with his tongue, he tasted Mary Elise, wondered if the honeysuckle sensation was taste or scent but couldn't tell with her jumbling all his senses.
Daniel struggled for reason. He couldn't let this spin out of control, as much as he might want to roll her to the floor and lose himself inside her with a deep rightness he hadn't felt since … her. He needed to get his head on straight. Two boys waited down the hall, and regardless of what she said, the cops would have to be called. They would have to face her past.
Together, dam it.
He let her soft touch seep into his anger, even feed the protective urges. Whatever it took to keep her safe, he embraced it.
Daniel pulled away, let his gaze land on her, immobilizing her with only his will. "You're not going anywhere without me."
The cloudy passion in her eyes dissipated. "Danny—"
"How closely did you look at that bottle?"
Her head angled to the side, toward the coffee table where the bottle rested. Her hand inched closer to graze the numbers handwritten across the label.
He forced himself to say the words, even knowing they would scare the hell out of her.
Whatever it took to keep her safe.
"You can talk about walking away to protect me all day long, but McRae has already made the choice for you." Daniel pointed to the penciled scrawl across the label on the medicine bottle. "My social security number. He's not just after you anymore."
Time passed in a haze.
Standing by the queen-size bed, Mary Elise sorted through the laundry basket, folding the boys' clothes into a suitcase, her body on autopilot. Beside her, Daniel jammed gear into a big green bag—a webbed vest, canteens, knife.A gun.
His stark announcement about his social security number on the bottle still thundered through her head. She'd brought Kent's wrath to Daniel.
She would never be able to forgive herself.
Danny had insisted on calling the cops and filing the official complaint. Prints had been lifted. A restraining order requested. She'd been this route before.