Cover art by Rickey Mallory

August 2004 release
by ImaJinn Books

"That can't be," she groaned. "Not if the plate went green with my palm print."

"Try again. Maybe you keyed wrong."

She did so, choosing the numbers more carefully.

As the intruder's footsteps grew more distinct he calculated they'd soon be discovered, and panicked more for Kaljin than for himself. He'd count himself lucky if he saw another few days of existence. She risked her career, her reputation, and possibly her freedom for this folly.

With two thundering heartbeats to spare, the panel slid open. He gripped Kaljin by the waist and whisked her inside the room.

Dull, amber security lights winked on as the panel closed behind them. Breathing hard, he collapsed against the wall just inside the door. Only when he felt Kaljin's fingers clutching the front of his baggy shirt, did he realize he'd swept her into a snug embrace.

She buried her face into the hollow between his shoulder and chest. Her fragrance - a vibrant, vital contrast to the stench of Jarrit's charred flesh - filled the air. With his left arm about her narrow waist, he held her intimately to his body. Somehow, his right hand had come to rest on her delicate nape. The heat of her exquisite satin-smooth skin against his roughed palm sent prickles up his arm, and chills down his spine. Fine, springy tendrils of her fiery hair teased his cheek.

As she trembled in the circle of his arms, her sweet vulnerability flooded him with a powerful new urgency to keep her safe. Unlike just minutes before, this time he had no will to flee or fight the instinct.

Briefly he wondered if her head whirled and her insides clenched with arousal, too. He should push her away.

He banished the thought as soon as it formed.

She loosened her grip on his shirt and leaned back just enough to look up at him. In the amber light, her eyes shimmered iridescent green-gold. Emotions flickered in her gaze, but changed before he could pin them down. He clearly recognized relief and bemusement.

What else did he see? Fear?

Yes, fear. He saw it in her eyes, and sensed it at the same moment in himself.
But fear of what? That they might be found? Discovery wasn't likely, concealed as they were inside the storage room.

"Tynan?"

The quiver in her voice reflected his own whipsaw emotions. What did she ask of him? What should he answer?

"We're safe, Kaljin."

But her eyes widened, the dusky pupils overwhelming all but a narrow edge of glimmering irises. Her mouth blossomed with a warm, pulsating color. "Are we?"

"Yes."

But he lied, because he did sense danger. From her. From himself. In that moment, he needed more from her than an intimate embrace. He needed to kiss her - hard and with feeling. He needed to drink from her as a man too long in the desert needs to drink of cool, life-giving water.

No longer attending the whining voice of reason, he slid his hand from her nape to her jaw and traced the soft roundness of her chin before testing the full curve of her bottom lip with hesitant fingertips.

Yes, he wanted to kiss her. He would kiss her. And she would allow it, even welcome it. He felt her need, as any man senses when a woman is about to surrender to desire. When she let her eyelids flutter shut and lifted her face toward him, he smiled with satisfaction and gave in to the inevitable.

Her lips were already warm with anticipation and soft as a night breeze. They quivered beneath the flick of his tongue, but opened when he pressed his suite. He drank deeply to quench his long denied thirst.

But he soon realized this one, brief taste of the beautiful Terran would never be enough. As he claimed her lips, she claimed his soul, meeting the force of his desperate kisses with a powerful need of her own. With fingertip caresses on his face and feather-light combing through the bristled strands of his hair, she gifted him with a tenderness he never anticipated. It flowed from her, through him. It left his knees weak, his pulse erratic.

Too late he realized she offered him more than one long, cool drink of pleasure before he died. Instead, she flooded him with a torrent of honest passion. Now he could never leave her without regrets.

Why did she do this to him? Why did he let it happen?

Furious with her and with himself, he pushed away from the wall, then shoved her backward. Deprived of her body heat, he shivered. Kaljin gasped and put her hand to her throat.

Guilt and regret sharpened his voice. "Don't look at me with those sad, sympathetic eyes," he warned. "This is not what I want from you."

The fingers lying at her throat curled into a fist. For a second, he thought she might strike out at him. Good. He could defend himself against physical blows.
But she held her ground. "Just what do what from me?"

He smirked with a false bravado. "Wasn't it plain enough, Little Diplomat? I could be dead in two days. One last time I want a willing woman spread out beneath me."
The crude proposition nearly choked him. But how else could he disguise the true depth of his reaction to her?

She stared at him with hurt in her wide eyes. To halt her stinging, silent accusations, he grasped her forearms and dragged her close until his face almost touched hers again. "Maybe you want bragging rights about a romp with the mysterious condemned stranger? Would you share the details with your friends on a cold, lonely night, Little Diplomat?"

When her stare went blank with bewilderment, he gave her a shake. "What about it? I'll be happy to oblige. If you're not too keen about comfort, I can take you on the floor, or up against the wall."

She tore from his hold. But before she put her back to him and her hands to her face, he glimpsed anguish, not the anger or revulsion he expected.

He swallowed the lump of remorse in his throat, but the sour aftertaste thickened the words he forced out. "Make up your mind. It's now or never. Do you submit to the last wish of a walking dead man? Or do you get us out of here?"

Her back went rigid, and she whirled in place. Even before she spoke, her unflinching gaze warned him he underestimated her again. "I'm no simpering fool, Tynan. I've been kissed before. I've made love, too, in places that would make the floor feel like a soft bed."

Sudden fury at the knowledge she'd taken pleasure with another man, maybe several men, tightened his throat. Yet he waved a dismissive hand at her.

She took a tottering step forward and swatted his hand aside with her own. "I know the difference between raw desire and honest need. Maybe what happened between us wasn't all sweetness and purity, but it wasn't simple lust. And if you didn't feel anything more, then what happens to you the day after tomorrow doesn't matter. Inside you're already dead."

He could take no more of the harangue. "Maybe I am!"

Again he lied. Inside he felt anything but dead. The sizzle of electricity sparked by her kisses still heated his skin. Jealousy of her past lovers clawed at his insides.

He had no right to those feelings. Not one of them. Yet, she dragged them out of the darkest recesses of his being into the light of day. He was better off soul-dead. He should hate her for reviving him.

But it wasn't hate he felt as he glared at her in the dull, amber light. He dared not define the emotion seething inside him. Giving it a name meant giving it power over him. He'd already surrendered enough of himself to this Terran female. "Stop trying to save me, Kaljin. I don't want it. I don't need it..."

"I don't believe it!"

Any other woman, and most men he knew, would cower or sulk in the wake of the last few minutes. Marista Kaljin only lifted her head higher, as if the pose gave her some sort of moral authority. The woman wouldn't give up!

Frustrated to the point of weariness, he balled his hands. "What would you have me do? Start something I can't finish? I've never done that, and I won't now. I have no future. Nor does anyone who takes my part."

She blew out a hard breath of disgust. "Mother Creation, you don't deserve my help."
He snorted. "We finally agree on something..."

Her fierce scowl cut off his words. "You don't deserve my help, but damn it all, Tynan, you're going to get it whether you want it or not. Neither do I start something unless I intend to finish it."