“Stop.” I raise my voice loud enough for him to hear. “Back away. You’re scaring me.” This time when I push, I put all my effort into it. This time Jake takes a step back, and suddenly I can breathe again.

“I’m scaring you?”

“Yes. You’re bigger than me, stronger than me, louder than me, and angrier than me. Not only that, you’re a professional fighter and—”

“You think I’m going to hurt you?” He cuts me off and his voice rises to a disbelieving growl.

“I think you’re out of control.”

He takes a step forward and I flinch, turning my head away, bracing myself for the inevitable, but the inevitable never comes.

“I am always in control,” he says through gritted teeth. “And I would rather cut off my arm than hurt you. But when I went to your office and Ray said you were at Hunter’s Point…fuck, Amanda. I didn’t know what to do.”

Swallowing past my fear, I meet his furious gaze. “Shouting and pounding your fists and trapping me against the car sends me a different message. I understand you were concerned and worried, and if I didn’t think it was coming from a good place, I’d walk…maybe even run away right now.”

Jake bristles and opens his mouth, but I press on. He needs to hear what I have to say.

“You have to understand,” I continue. “I’m used to doing things on my own. I rarely ask for help. And I’ve never had anyone worry about me. I’m not someone who needs to be protected and looked after. This is why I don’t get close to people. If I’d known you were going to react like this…that you would care this much…I would have handled it differently.”

“Would you?” His cold, bitter tone takes my breath away.

“Yes.”

For a long moment, we stare at each other in a mini-standoff, chests heaving, nostrils flaring, eyes flashing. Finally, his tension eases—a slight drop of his shoulders, a loosening of his fists. “Next time, you ask me for help.”

“Next time, you try to deal with the situation without using violence and anger, and you don’t scare me.” I smooth my hands over the heaving chest of the sweaty, pumped up alpha-male glowering in front of me and whisper, “And you accept I can handle some dangerous situations that aren’t really dangerous situations on my own.”

He grunts and suddenly I am hyperaware of his body so close to mine, the heat of his skin radiating through his shirt into my palms, the rapid beat of the pulse in his neck, and the full, sensuous lips only inches away from my mouth. Fueled by adrenaline and emotion, electricity sparks between us, igniting the flame of my desire.

Through half-lidded eyes, his gaze follows my fingers as they drift down over his tight abs to his belt buckle. When I tug on his belt, he grabs my hand and draws it away.

“You’re heading for a dangerous situation right now.”

“I like to live on the edge.” I lean up and nuzzle the side of his neck, inhaling the scent of sweat and cologne and the unmistakable musk of arousal. Does he want me as much as I want him? I hope so. Fear and anger and lust make for an intoxicating cocktail, and right now I want to get drunk.

Jake groans but doesn’t move. “Stop, baby. I’m barely keeping the lid on my control as it is.”

“So let it go.” I lean up to nibble on his earlobe. “There’s no one around.”

“Fuck.” He grabs my wrists and brackets them behind my lower back with his hand. My back arches, pressing my br**sts against his hard chest. My ni**les tighten painfully. If this is his way of stopping me, it’s not going to work.

“Don’t you understand? If I lose control, you’ll get hurt, and hurting you is the last thing I want to do.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

A pained look crosses his face. “You don’t really know me, Amanda. And that’s my fault as much as it is yours. The more I let you in, the further you drew away, until I was afraid to be totally honest with you about what I needed.”

“What do you need?” I know what I need. I need him inside me. Touching me. Stroking me. Showing me he wants me.

With a low growl, he tightens his grip on my wrists, pressing them against my lower back while his other hand tangles in my hair. He kicks my legs apart and presses his thigh against the curve of my sex. Holding me immobile, on the threshold of pleasure and pain, he kisses me so hard and rough and dirty, a moan tears out of my throat.

“This is what I need, baby. I want all of you. I won’t settle for anything less, and until you can give that to me, this is as far as I’m willing to go and as close as I’m willing to get.”

***

“Thanks for inviting me for lunch, but we could have had our meeting at the office.”

I slide into the booth across from Ray and pull out my notebook. The little Italian café in the SOMA District is packed, and the waiters have to run an obstacle course of briefcases, backpacks, chairs, and feet between the kitchen and the tables. My mouth waters at the rich, spicy scent of tomato sauce laced with the yeasty fragrance of baking bread from the brick pizza oven.

“Shhhh.” Ray puts a finger to his lips and I frown. The restaurant is a cacophony of sound, from the ring of cell phones to the clang of cookware, from the shouts of the cooks in the open kitchen to the very loud buzz of the crowd.

“Why shhhh? No one will be able to hear us.”

He lifts his chin toward a table in the corner. I follow his gaze and freeze. Farnsworth and Evil Reid.