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  her in the throes, but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t, and fisting himself, he gripped her hip, bent his knees, and thrust home.

  She cried out, a primal sound.

  Heat, pure and simple, slid through him. He groaned with the pleasure of it and sank over her body as he gave himself up to what she made him feel, gliding a hand around her front, up her belly, over her breasts, his other holding on to her hip as he began to move.

  He watched as he slid in and out of her, glistening, rock hard to her gorgeous softness, which gripped him like a velvet glove with every thrust. He was drowning in her, literally drowning. Every part of him was so primed to go off that he could no longer see past the sexual haze in his own head. He bent over her, pressing his mouth to her ear, the side of her neck, running his nose over her skin, absorbing the feel of her, her scent. On the very edge, he slid his hand down her belly and further, grazing his fingers over her center, his entire body jerking again when she let out a low gasp as he gently drew her between his thumb and finger.

  When he rubbed, she cried out his name and covered his hand with hers to hold him there as she shuddered and exploded for him.

  Wait, he ordered himself. Wait and get a repeat performance out of her, because listening to her pant out his name, feeling her tremble, for him, experiencing her tighten and constrict around him as she came, was the wildest, sexiest thing he could imagine, and he wanted to experience it over and over. But he just couldn’t hold back, and opening his mouth on the patch of skin where her shoulder met her neck, he let himself follow her over into the abyss.

  She ate, as she’d promised. Noah hadn’t intended for it to be him she put her mouth on and nibbled, but he didn’t utter a single complaint when she’d tasted and licked her way over his entire body. Nope, he lay there and let her feast, and if anything had passed his lips, it had been a groan for mercy.

  Which she’d given.

  Later they made it as far as the shower, where they started all over again, and then finally, they staggered to his bed, where they both collapsed.

  He hadn’t slept well in months, but with Bailey in his arms, he slept like a damn baby, waking only when his obnoxious alarm went off at six. For the first time in far too long, he felt a grin split his face, and more astonishingly, the muscles there didn’t feel so unused.

  He’d grinned a lot last night.

  And he was up for plenty more, say round four—

  Or was it five?

  He rolled over, but the spot next to him was empty.

  Ah, hell. He slid a hand to it.

  Still warm.

  Leaping out of bed, he ran to the bathroom.

  Empty.

  She wasn’t in the kitchen either, nor the living room. In fact, he discovered standing in the middle of his house, she wasn’t anywhere, which meant only one thing.

  She’d gone without him. But the pillow had been warm. He had to be only a moment or two behind her. Whipping open the front door, he was just in time to see a taxi vanish down his driveway. He was halfway out the door after her before the slice of January wind reminded him he was butt-ass-naked.

  Chapter 20

  “To LAX,” Bailey told the cab driver in the still dark morning, and put on her seat belt with shaking fingers. She’d made a tactical error last night, a serious one.

  She’d engaged her heart.

  There was no use beating herself up over it. She should have moved on that first night, separated from Noah at the Mammoth airport and gone on her own.

  But you’d have faced Stephen and those men on your own, too. Twice.

  Okay, she couldn’t have separated from Noah then, but certainly yesterday she could have.

  Should have.

  Instead, she’d gone with him to Catalina, and while she hadn’t had any more luck there than she had in Mammoth, once again he’d gotten her out of a situation she couldn’t have managed on her own.

  She owed him so much.

  And last night, lying in his arms, happier than she’d ever been in her entire life, she’d realized how to repay him.

  By leaving him.

  She’d been over it and over it in her head, and there was no other way to protect him. God. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, as if she could rub away this huge disastrous mess that she’d made out of her life.

  It was still dark outside, with only the tiniest tinges of pink in the far east.

  Was Noah awake? What had he thought when he’d found her gone?

  He’d be furious.

  He’d worry.

  God, he’d worry. She knew it. But she couldn’t let him do this, couldn’t let him take her to Cabo, especially not now that she knew what had happened to him there.

  Plus, a small part of her knew…she was falling for him, hard and fast. Too fast. She was afraid for him, desperately afraid. No, there was no other way to keep him safe than to leave him.

  Then she realized they were passing her street. “Excuse me,” she said to the driver. “I need to make a quick detour.”

  “No detours.”

  “Please, just real quick. Can you turn right here?” In tune to his annoyed sighs, she directed him to the house where she’d lived with Alan in style—and in lies.

  A lifetime ago.

  The place was dark and had a For Sale sign in the driveway. It was being sold as a part of the impending bankruptcy, but hadn’t gone yet despite the fact it’d had some heavy traffic. Looky-Lous, mostly, but it didn’t matter to her. She wouldn’t receive a penny. She didn’t care, she didn’t want a cent of Alan’s tainted money.

  She just wanted her life back.

  And herself.

  She really wanted herself back. Last night she’d felt a glimmer of the old Bailey, and it had been wonderful, so wonderful her heart still ached. “Thank you,” she said to the driver, taking her last look at a house she never wanted to see again. “We can go straight to LAX now.”

  As they drove away, she wondered if her life would ever be the same. How much of herself was she going to have to give up? She thought of Noah, how it felt to give him up, and rubbed a hand over her heart.

  She was truly alone now. She hated the feeling. She slipped her hands into her pockets. Her fingers closed over her cell phone.

  Not completely alone.

  She still had Kenny, and suddenly she needed to hear from him in the worst possible way. Pulling out the phone, she turned it on, and read a waiting text message. BAIL, WHERE R U? K

  She began to type in her answer, then stopped. Every single time she responded to Kenny, Stephen had caught up with her.

  Coincidence?

  She might never have even thought about it, but for Noah’s suspicions. He believed that Kenny was somehow using her texts to locate her. And if that was true, if he was in cahoots with the bad guys, then she was playing right into his hands by answering.

  She stared at the phone as if for the first time. A little frisson of doubt of Kenny’s innocence went through her.

  But if she was being honest, it wasn’t the first time. Truthfully, she’d been fighting with the doubt for days now. She turned off the phone, then stared at it with growing dread as she remembered Noah’s words.

  Don’t give anyone a way to track you.

  With a small cry of pain, betrayal, and a bone-deep despair, she lowered her window and tossed the phone out in the street.

  “Hey!” the cab driver yelled back. “You can’t do that!”

  “Sorry.” She craned her neck to watch as the phone hit the ground, only to be run over by the car behind her—

  Oh, God. The car behind her.

  Noah.

  The sun was rising now, slanting across the low-lying hills on either side of them so that she couldn’t see in past the windshield of his BMW.

  She didn’t need to.

  He was looking at her, right at her. She could feel the weight of his gaze as she’d felt the weight of very little else, ever.

  He’d followed her.