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  Elizabeth snorted, but she was mollified, because she had heard Chickie make that exact comment on a couple of occasions. Still, she would have to have a word with her about discretion.

  “I’ve been busy,” she said, not caring if he believed her or not, though it happened to be the truth. She had deliberately been as busy as she could manage in order to give herself less free time to think about him.

  “I know. You’ve found a lot of lilies to gild.”

  Her teeth closed with a snap. “That’s so people will have a reason to install your fancy security systems. I gild the lilies, and you protect them.”

  “I protect people,” he clarified.

  “Uh-huh. That’s why you set up so many security systems for people who live in rough neighborhoods, where their lives are really in danger.”

  “I can see we aren’t going to agree on this.”

  “You brought it up.”

  “My mistake. Let’s get back to the original subject, namely our respective failed marriages. Go ahead, ask me anything you want.”

  The perfect response, of course, was that she wasn’t interested. It would also be a lie, because she was not only interested, she was suddenly, violently jealous of that unknown, hitherto unsuspected woman who had been his wife, who had shared his name and his bed for a time, and who had been, in the eyes of the world, his mate. Elizabeth firmly kept her mouth closed, but she couldn’t stop herself from glaring at him.

  Quinlan sighed. “All right, I’ll tell you the boring facts without making you ask. Her name was Amy. We dated during college. Then, when college was finished, it seemed like we should do adult things, so we got married. But I was away on my job a lot, and Amy found someone in the office where she worked who she liked a lot better. Within six months of getting married we knew it had been a mistake, but we held out for another year, trying to make it ‘work,’ before we both realized we were just wasting time. The divorce was a relief for both of us. End of story.”

  She was still glaring at him. “I don’t even know where you went to college.”

  He sighed again. She was getting damn tired of that sigh, as if he were being so noble in his dealings with an irrational woman. “Cal Tech.”

  “Ah.” Well, that explained his expertise with electronics and computers and things.

  “No children,” he added.

  “I should hope not!” It was bad enough that he had, for some reason, concealed all the rest of the details of his life. “If you’d kept children hidden, I would never have forgiven you.”

  His eyes gleamed. “Does this mean you have?”

  “No.”

  He gave a startled shout of laughter. “God, I’ve missed you. You don’t dissemble at all. If you’re grouchy, you don’t feel any need at all to make nice and pretend to be sweetness and light, do you?”

  She gave him a haughty look. “I’m not sweetness and light.”

  “Thank God,” he said fervently. He leaned back and spread his hands, then stretched his long, muscular legs out before him in a posture of complete relaxation. “Okay, it’s your turn. Tell me all the deep, dark secrets about your marriage.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Show-and-tell was your idea, not mine.” Her throat tightened at the idea of rehashing the details, reliving the nightmare even in thought. She just couldn’t do it.

  “You asked questions.”

  “I asked where you went to college, hardly the same as prying into your private life.” Agitated, she stood up and longingly looked through the huge windows to the world outside. Only two thin sheets of transparent material kept her prisoner here with him, but it would take a car ramming into the glass at respectable speed to break it. The glass looked fragile but wasn’t, whereas she was the opposite. She looked calm and capable, but inside she hid a weakness that terrified her.

  “Don’t run away,” Quinlan warned softly.

  She barely glanced at him as she edged out of the semicircle of sofa and chairs. “I’m not running,” she denied, knowing that it wasn’t the truth. “It’s cooler moving around.”

  Silently Quinlan got to his feet and paced after her, big and virtually naked, the dark boxer shorts nothing more than the modern version of the loincloth. His muscled chest was hairy, the thick curls almost hiding his small nipples, and a silky line of hair ran down the center of his abdomen to his groin. His long legs were also covered with hair, finer and straighter, but he was undoubtedly a dominating male animal in his prime. Elizabeth gave him a distracted, vaguely alarmed look that suddenly focused on his loins, and her eyes widened.

  He looked down at himself and shrugged, not pausing in his slow, relentless pursuit. “I know, at my age I shouldn’t have recovered this fast. I usually don’t,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s just my reaction to you. Come here, sweetheart.” His voice had turned soft and cajoling.

  Wildly Elizabeth wondered if this was going to degenerate into the stereotypical chase around the furniture. On the heels of that thought came the certain knowledge that if she ran, Quinlan would definitely chase her, instinctively, the marauding male subduing the reluctant female. She could prevent that farce by not running, thereby giving him nothing to chase. On the other hand, if she stood still things would only reach the same conclusion at a faster pace. Evidently the only real choice she had was whether or not to hold on to her dignity. If she had felt differently about him she could have said “no,” but she had already faced that weakness in herself. For right now, in these circumstances, she couldn’t resist him—and they both knew it.

  He drew closer, his eyes gleaming. “For tonight, you’re mine,” he murmured. “Let me at least have that. You can’t get away from me here. You don’t even want to get away, not really. The circumstances aren’t normal. When we get out of here you’ll have options, but right now you’re forced to be with me. Whatever happens won’t be your fault. Just let go and forget about it.”

  She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Pretty good psychologist, aren’t you? But I’m not a coward. I’m responsible for whatever decisions I make, period.”

  He had reached her now, one arm sliding around her back. Elizabeth looked up at him, at the tousled dark hair and intense blue eyes, and her heart squeezed. “All right,” she whispered. “For tonight. For as long as we’re locked in here.” She closed her eyes, shivering with sensual anticipation. She would let herself have this, just for now; she would feast on him, drown herself in sensation, let the darkness of the night wrap protectively around them and hold off thought. The time would come all too soon when she would have to push him away again; why waste even one precious minute by fighting both him and herself?

  “Anything,” she heard herself say as he lifted her. Her voice sounded strange to her, thick, drugged with desire. “For tonight.”

  His low, rough laugh wasn’t quite steady as he lowered her to the cushions. “Anything?” he asked. “You could be letting yourself in for an interesting night.”

  She put out her hand and touched his bare chest. “Yes,” she purred. “I could be.”

  “Cat.” His breathing was fast and unsteady as he swiftly stripped her panties down her legs and tossed them to the side. “You won’t be needing those again tonight.”

  She pulled at the waistband of his shorts. “And you won’t be needing these.”

  “Hell, I only kept them on because I figured you’d fight like a wildcat if I came after you stark naked.” He dealt with his shorts as rapidly as he had her underwear.

  She was already excited by the anticipation of his slow, thorough loveplay. Quinlan was a man who enjoyed the preliminaries and prolonged them, as she had learned during the one night she had spent with him. It didn’t happen this time, though. He pushed her legs open, knelt between them and entered her with a heavy thrust that jarred her. The shock of it reverberated through her body; then her inner muscles clamped down in an effort to slow that inexorable invasion.

  He pushed deeper, groaning at the tightness of