A Darker Place by Laurie R. King Page B

foreplay, but he wasn’t about to get in the car and drive meekly away without knowing for sure.
    He found her in the bedroom, and took the fact that she was rapidly throwing off her clothes as a sign that she did not intend him to leave. He watched her push her thumbs into the waist of her jeans and peel them down, and when she stood naked before him, strong and middle-aged and bearing the scars he had given her, he took a shaky breath and decided to make a joke out of the past five minutes.
    “Look, Anne, if you’re still hungry, I’d be happy to bring you something from the fridge, but try not to bite any more pieces out of—”
    Only his training saved him from a split lip, if not a concussion. He caught her arm as it came toward him, and then nearly fell victim to her knee. He was bigger, he was stronger, he was eight years younger, and he was trained, but she was wild and fast and she wanted seriously to hurt him, and all he could do was to wrap himself hard around her like a human straitjacket and ride out whatever storm had hold of her. It took an ageto pass, and his arms were aching and his mind was torn between the wish simply to slap her hard to stop her from trying to bite him through his padded coat and the growing and genuine alarm for her sanity, when between one moment and the next she went limp and stopped struggling against him. He held her, fully clothed against her nakedness, and rocked her gently until he was sure it was not a feint. When her arms moved to free themselves, he allowed her to reach up and pull his mouth down to hers.
    Still, the skirmish was not over. The outright violence turned to a slow struggle, with Glen gradually realizing that her arms were content only when they were pinned down, her body free to respond only when it was hedged around and wrapped by his. Putting on the damn condom one-handed while he was lying across her, the other hand clasping both of her wrists together behind her back and his legs wrapped around hers holding her down, was one of the most difficult and grimly ridiculous things he had ever done. When he finally had it on, he was aroused in more ways than the one. He bruised her mouth with his, grabbed her and pinned her down, and finally entered her with no more thought of lubrication than a drunken teenager. He held her down and thrust against her, knowing that he had to be hurting her, wanting to make her ask him to stop. She did not ask, but eventually, finally, she arched herself away from his restraining hands and gave a brief shuddering cry like a sob. He shouted his relief into the hollow of her throat, moved against her slowly two or three more times, and collapsed.
    He lay with his chest heaving, wondering what the hell had gotten into him, hurting her like that, and wondering how the hell he was going to begin to apologize, when to his astonishment he felt her arms go aroundhim and he felt her mouth kiss his hair in an unprecedented gesture of affection.
    He turned his head, heavy and damp with sweat, to rest against her breast. “Next time you want to do that,” he gasped, “give me a little warning so I can bring along my cuffs and some rope.”
    “Duct tape,” she said indistinctly, and he snorted in astonishment. Then, to his even greater disbelief, he heard her say, very clearly, a thing she had never told him before. “Thank you, Glen.”
    He buried his face into her body and lay there. He listened to her heart slow, and heard her breath return to normal, and gradually he fell asleep.

CHAPTER 5
    case an individual can achieve results that a concerted effort cannot. Small, niggling, low-key intrusions by an intensively trained individual, who always has at the top of his or her priorities the need to keep a low profile and avoid escalation of the situation’s tension, can result in the slow collapse of the group’s structure.
    Some of you may remember the case of the separatists in White Rock, Illinois a few years ago. I say some of you