“We always were.”

“So that’s all it is. Friends, and not being alone. Giving each other something to take the edge off.”

“Reasonable. Maybe I’m too tired.”

Her lips curved. “Like hell.”

“Maybe I’m not.”

But he stayed where he was, watching her. Waiting.

“You said you wouldn’t touch me. I’m asking you to set that rule or provision, or however you think of it, aside. Come up with me, come to bed with me, stay with me. I need to shut my mind off, Coop, that’s the God’s truth. I need some peace of mind. A few hours of it. Do me a favor.”

He stepped to her. “Doing you a favor’s standing out in the cold until two in the morning. Taking you to bed?” He reached up, ran his hand down her braid. “Doesn’t qualify. Don’t tell me you need peace of mind, Lil. Tell me you want me.”

“I do. I do want you. I’ll probably regret it tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but it’ll be too late.” He pulled her in, captured her mouth with his. “It’s already too late.”

He turned toward the steps, then gripped her hips, boosting her up so she wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck.

Maybe it had always been too late, she thought as he carted her upstairs, and she let her lips roam his face as she had once, long before. Back in time, the familiar. Like closing a circle, she told herself. It didn’t have to be any more than that.

She pressed her cheek to his, sighed. “Feel better already.”

At the bedroom he turned, pressing her back to the door. And those eyes, the ice blue that had always snagged her heart, caught hers. “A hot bath makes you feel better. This is more, Lil. We’ll both have to deal with that.”

When his mouth took hers it wasn’t for comfort, or to soothe, but to ignite. So that slow simmer, never fully banked, came roaring back to full, furious flame.

Peace of mind? Had she thought she would find peace here, with him? There would be no peace with the war raging between them, inside her. Engulfed, she gave herself to it, and to him.

Maybe this time the battle would be done, and that constant flame inside her finally, finally burned out.

The need rose up, riding along her skin, filling her breasts, her belly with heat. Familiar, perhaps. But more and less than what had been. Had his hands been so sure, his mouth so urgent?

She was still wound around him when he strode to the bed. The lights from the compound slanted through the slats of her blinds, thin bars of light that fell over the bed, over her when he set her on the edge. A kind of cage, she supposed. Well, she walked into it willingly.

He gripped her boot, tugged. She heard herself laugh, nervous joy, as he pulled off the other. Then he reached down to unbutton her flannel shirt.

“Unbraid your hair.” He drew the shirt off. “Please.”

She lifted her arms, slid the tie at the end of her braid onto her wrist out of habit, and loosened her braid as he took off his shirt.

“No, I’ll do that,” he said as she started to comb her fingers through her hair.

“I’d think about your hair, the way it feels and smells, the way it looks after I’ve had my hands in it. All that midnight hair.”

He wrapped her hair around his fist, tugged so that her face tipped up to his. The gesture, the flare of heat in his eyes spoke as much of temper as passion. “I’d see you when you weren’t there. Like a damn ghost. A glimpse in a crowd, a tease out of the corner of my eye, disappearing around a corner. You were everywhere.”

She started to shake her head, but he tightened his grip. For an instant she saw that anger flash, then he released her hair. “Now you’re here,” he said, and drew the thermal shirt over her head.

“I’ve been here.”

No, he thought. No. But she was here now. Aroused, a little annoyed, just as he was. To please himself, to pleasure her, he traced his fingers down her collarbone, over the subtle swell of her breasts. The girl he’d known had been a willow stem. She’d bloomed without him.

She shivered at his touch; he’d wanted her to.

Then he pressed the heel of his hand to her forehead, gave her a light shove onto her back. And made her laugh again.

“Mr. Smooth,” she said, then he was on her, his body pressing her into the mattress. “You’ve put on a few pounds.”

“You too.”

“Really?”

“In interesting places.”

She smiled a little, and combed her fingers through his hair as he had with hers. “Well, it’s been a while.”

“I think I remember how everything works. How you work.”

He brushed his lips to hers, a teasing, then a sinking, sinking until it was drowning deep. His hands were on her, reminding her what it had been, confusing her with what it was now.

Strong, hard, working hands, sliding over her, pressing, molding until her breath quickened, until past and present were one brilliant blur over her senses.

He flipped open her bra, tugged it aside, and had her-hands and mouth, teeth and tongue-so quickened breaths became gasps, gasps became moans. She dragged at his thermal, yanking it up and away, impatient now to feel him. Strong back, ridges of muscle. New and fascinating.

He’d been a boy, just a boy really, when last she’d touched him like this. It was a man under her hands now, a man whose body pressed down on hers.

In the dark, barred with light, they rediscovered each other. A curve, an angle, a new point of pleasure. Her fingers skimmed over a scar that hadn’t been there before. And she whispered his name as his lips raced frantically down her body.

She quivered when he unbuttoned her jeans, hitched her hips up to help him pull them away. Rolled with him over the bed as they hurried to strip off every barrier.

Outside one of the cats called out, a wild thing prowling the dark. He took her there, into the dark, and what was wild in her cried out, released in harsh and primitive pleasure.

She moved for him, and with him, her eyes a gleam in the shadows. Everything he’d found and lost, everything he’d lived without was here. Right here. His senses swam with her, a rush of woman, all scent and skin, all wet and warm. The beat of her heart against his hungry mouth, the slide of her skin under his desperate hands.

He pushed her over, felt her rise and break, then gather again.

His name. She said his name over and over.

His name when he drove into her. He held, held himself on that whippy edge, filled and surrounded, entrapped until they were both trembling. Then it was all movement, mad, mindless. And when she broke again, he shattered with her.

She wanted to curl up against him, just fit her body against his like two pieces of a puzzle. Instead she lay quiet, willing herself to hold on to the pleasure, and the peace that had finally come with it.

She could sleep. If she closed her eyes, let her mind shut down, she could sleep. Whatever needed to be said or dealt with could be said or dealt with in the morning.

“You’re cold.”

Was she?

Before her brain could connect with her body he’d shifted her up and over. When had he packed on all the muscle? she wondered. He tugged the sheet and comforter over her, then drew her against him.

She started to stiffen-to ease away, a little at least. Didn’t she need some room, some sort of distance? But he held her there, curled her in exactly where she’d wanted to be.

“Go to sleep,” he said.

And too tired, too undone, to argue, she did just that.

SHE WOKE BEFORE SUNRISE, stayed very still. His arms had stayed around her, and hers had gone around him in the brief hours of the night.

Why, she wondered, did something that basic, that human, break her heart?

Comfort, she reminded herself. In the end, he’d given her the comfort she’d needed. And maybe she’d given him some in return.