“Stop this,” he ordered again, shaking her like a rag doll. “Stop it.”

Suddenly she stopped fighting him, fixing him instead with a look that burned right through him. Theirs had been an uneasy relationship at best and he’d gotten used to her smart mouth and monumental attitude. But this was different. Cold, pure, unadulterated hate radiated out at him like a physical force. He knew if he released her, she’d kill him without a second thought.

“You had no right,” she spit, “no right at all. This is my house and these are my things and most especially this is my book. Your Junior G-man license doesn’t give you the right to snoop through my things. Through my personal things. And that book is about as personal as my life gets.”

He glanced down at the sofa, the little light still on, the manuscript on the floor. The pieces fell into place and a wave of embarrassment and remorse rolled over him. His fingers opened and she immediately pulled back her arms, rubbing the red finger marks on her wrists.

“I’m sorry,” he told her softly, his head drooping to his chin. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I thought maybe I could find a magazine or a book to read ‘til I got drowsy. I found the manuscript in your desk drawer. I…I thought it was one of your romance novels. I wasn’t prying but you’re right. I shouldn’t have been going through the desk.”

“Well,” she told him, her voice dripping acid, “at least it wasn’t a total loss. I mean, apparently it did put you to sleep.”

Bending down to retrieve the manuscript, he held it out to her. She took it, pulling it to her, crossing her arms over it in a protective, almost maternal gesture.

“I enjoyed it,” he told her seriously. “Really. It’s very good.”

“You sound surprised.”

Like everything else, this wasn’t going to be easy.

“I was. I mean, I expected heaving bosoms and throbbing rods. That’s the cliché of romance novels. But this,” he nodded to the book, “totally blew me away. The story, your way with words. It’s a love story but it’s more. It’s…it’s…”

“Literature?” she prodded.

“Yes. Literature. Your descriptions of the ordinary, everyday, almost invisible indignities of a slave’s life made me angry and sad and ashamed. You throw the whole, ugly, filthy system in your reader’s lap, narrowed down to the laser point of two human beings on opposite sides of it. I hope you’ll autograph a copy for me when it’s published.”

Elgin laughed, a single caustic, ironic chuckle. “Yes, well don’t sit by the telephone with a tuna sandwich and wait for that to happen.”

“I don’t understand.”

A deep sigh escaped her, resonating with despair and resignation and frustration. “It’s very simple, really. I’ve been writing as long as I can remember. I never wanted to be a schoolteacher or a nurse or any of the other things little girls want when they’re growing up. My mother and I both worked to put me through college.

“Clutching my newly printed degree, I struck out for the center of the publishing world, New York. Worked as a filing clerk in the daytime and wrote like an inspired fiend at night. Haunted agents and publishers, lived in ratty apartments, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and generally suffered for my art.

“One day, I literally bumped into Sheila on the subway. She told me she had a job as a reader at what she termed, ‘Pervert Publishing.’ ‘Alternative fiction,’ they called it. But she’d discovered people were buying it up like rainwater in the desert, especially on the Internet. She also discovered the one area these sleaze bags didn’t cover was women’s erotica. Sex but tied up with ribbons and champagne. She told me they got dozens of inquiries a month asking if they carried that kind of thing.

“So, having maxed out her credit cards for the publishing software and a website, she’d gone into business for herself. Fantasy Publishing; cool stories and hot sex.”

“Well, then, I guess you were all set.”

“Yeah. Right. I told her she was crazy and that she’d be in the poor house in six months. She told me I was probably right but to keep her card anyway.

“Well, winter came and one morning while covering a hole in my shoe sole with one of my rejection slips, it dawned on me that I’d suffered enough for my art. I rummaged around in my desk for a novella I’d written about a ‘soiled dove’ in a western bordello and trundled off to see Sheila who by then had a real office and was printing real books.

“She read the novella, told me to call my heroine a ‘whore,’ write three more sex scenes and see that she ended up reformed in the arms of the hero and I’d have myself a hit. So I did. Of course, since I was only doing it for the money and didn’t want it to reflect on my ‘real’ writing, I created Gillian Shelby. The book came out and presto! After five years of struggle, I was an overnight success.”

“But…?”

“Here’s where the irony comes in. I thought that Gillian’s success would open the right doors for Elgin. No longer a mere ‘wannabe,’ I’d achieved ‘published’ status. Or at least Gillian had. Unfortunately, she’d been consigned to ‘romance’ hell and publishers and agents didn’t take seriously that she might have more meat on her literary bones. And Elgin Collier still couldn’t get arrested. So, Another Love gathers dust in my drawer.”

“You shouldn’t just give up like that. It’s too good to just sit in a drawer. Why doesn’t your friend publish it?”

“Because Sheila’s running a business, not a charity. Another Love does not fit her publishing criteria or her target audience.”

“And she can’t broaden that target audience? Even for a friend?”

“Oh, I’m sure she’d do it if I pressed the matter,” Elgin responded, “but I believe you shouldn’t take advantage of your friends.”

“She must know other publishers.”

“Sure and they’d be glad to read it. Even publish it…if Gillian Shelby agrees to break her contract with Fantasy Publishing and write three or four novels. Just in case Elgin Collier bombs.”

“It’s not right. Not fair.”

“Maybe not, but that’s how the world is. And speaking of fair, I’m sorry about flying off the handle like that at you. It’s not very fair of me to go off on you without even giving you a chance to explain. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I bopped you with the book.”

Harm gingerly put his fingers to his ear. “Ouch!”

“Here, sit down. Let me look at it.”

“No, it’s okay, really. Just a little sore.” He grinned. “Now I know what they mean about a book being ‘weighty.’”

“Please, let me see.” Laying the book on the coffee table behind her, she touched her fingertips to his ear, running them softly, slowly around the edge, bending forward as she did so.

Her skin, smooth and cool and the feel of her made him tremble, feel weak in the knees. Warm breath tickled the morning stubble on his cheek, her lips close enough to touch. The feel of thin satiny robe as it rubbed against his chest. The rich, sweet smell of her.

Wordlessly, she pressed herself against him, raising her other hand to cup his head between them as their lips met. Passion, unexpected and intense, engulfed them, pulling them deeper, closer. Grabbing her ass, he pushed into her body, feeling her sudden heat through his hard cock.

Fingers feeling like sausages, Harm fumbled with the sash of her robe as Elgin quickly unfastened the top button of his jeans, yanking down his zipper to expose the python-like bulge in his shorts. They had to part for a moment so that she could slide off her robe and he could pull off the rest of his clothes.

“You’re beautiful,” she whispered, running her hand lightly up and down his shaft, feeling the rigid heat of him as lust pounded through it with every heartbeat.

“So are you,” he answered, running his fingers across her nipples, watching them get hard like his cock, cupping them and feeling their soft weight in his hands. Tenderly, he bent his head, suckling each one in turn, feeling her trembling, her breath catch.