“It’s a single,” she warned.

Will looked to the fireplace. “Hold that thought.”

Leaving her with an amused look on her face, he went into the bedroom and hauled off the mattress to put it in front of the fireplace. She padded across to him as he was throwing the sheet over it. He’d just finished tucking it in when she reached back and undid the zipper on her dress. “Protection’s in the bedside drawer,” she said as the dress slid down her body, the firelight flickering over her proudly naked form.

“I got us covered.” Pulling the foil packets from his jeans pocket and throwing them down beside the mattress, he put his hands on this woman who made him remember he was alive.

Anahera felt as if she was coming out of a long winter. That winter hadn’t begun with Edward’s death; it had started in the years prior, when they’d slowly become strangers to one another.

Will’s hands, rough and large, were as different from Edward’s as she was from the girl who’d once run wild on the beach below the cliffs. Sinking into the sensations, she pushed up his T--shirt until he tore it off, then ran her own hands over the hard ridges and hollows of his chest and around to his back.

The ridges there were unexpected, the skin coarse.

“Burns,” he said, breaking the kiss. “They bother you?”

Anahera devoured his mouth in response. A few scars didn’t bother her. Not when her nerves crackled with an electric heat. All she wanted was to feel more and more and more. Like a prisoner who’d been starved, she wanted to gorge.

The firelight pulsed against Will’s body as he rose to strip off the rest of his clothing, and she had the best view in the house. When he came down over her, she picked up one of the flat packets beside the mattress and slapped it to his chest. “Put it on. We can do the foreplay later.”

She wanted him inside her, wanted to feel sexually alive from the inside out.

Rising up onto his knees, he sheathed himself. “Ready?”

“Since you arrived.” Her words seemed to pitch him over the edge, this controlled man who burned against her.

The next few moments weren’t controlled at all, the two of them coming together in a storm of need and lust and hunger.

Racing heartbeats.

Demanding hands.

A guttural grunt from Will.

A short scream from Anahera.

Harsh breaths.

46

“I haven’t screamed for a long time,” Anahera said long minutes later. It might’ve been a cold crash into reality except that Will had his arm around her shoulders, and she was lying with her head against his chest. Anahera wasn’t sure how she felt about the -intimacy—-sex was easy, it was the rest that complicated things.

Will stroked his hand down her spine. “I haven’t been with anyone for over a year.”

“High standards?” she said with a -self--mocking smile.

“Nightmares.”

“Those nightmares have anything to do with the burns on your back?”

“Same case that led to the inquiry.” He ran his hand down her spine again. “You’ve got some scars of your own.” The words didn’t demand.

Maybe that was why she gave him an -answer… of sorts. “It shouldn’t be such a big scar, but it was an emergency and there were complications.”

Will didn’t ask the obvious probing question, but he raised his free hand to brush her hair from her face. The gesture was oddly tender and it struck her with terror.

Sitting up, she reached for her dress, tugged it on over her head. “Zip me up?” She swept her hair to one side.

Will did as asked, then let her use the bathroom before he did so himself. He’d taken his clothes with him, came out fully dressed. “Should I drag the mattress back to the bed?”

Anahera knew what he was asking. “I don’t have an answer for you yet.” She’d had no intention of tonight being anything other than a physical release, but Will wasn’t a simple man. He was the kind of man who got under a woman’s skin and made her feel. Made her come awake on the -inside—-along with memories of the sterile cold of an operating theater, memories so painful that she didn’t talk about them even with her best friend.

Will said nothing, just set the table before coming back for the pot of stew she’d reheated and was stirring.

Pot on the table, he took her hand and tugged her to a chair. “Stop running, Anahera.” A press of his lips to her temple before he took his own seat. “I can tell you from experience that the demons eventually catch up with you, no matter what you do.”

“Sometimes, we need to run, need to give ourselves time to heal enough to fight the demons.”

“Do you think all wounds can be healed?”

Anahera laughed, the sound more than a little ragged. “You’re a damn good cop, Will.” The wound inside her would never heal.

Will looked at her with far too much insight, but didn’t say anything further. It was Anahera who finally spoke ten minutes later, after they’d served themselves and were eating. “Hysterectomy,” she said without attempting to soften the blow. “I guess that answers your question.”

“My burns were second degree. But that doesn’t answer your question, does it?”