Affair of Honor by Stephanie James Page A

problem, the one that had to be faced, was that last night had been, in some indefinable way, an act of surrender. She had given herself to Ryder and he had taken possession.
    What if he chose to retain that possession now that the night of passion had passed?
    With that thought, the full truth surfaced amid the chaos of her thoughts and Brenna straightened away from the shower wall. Facing a truth with intelligence and dispassionate calm was something she was normally very good at.
    Unfortunately the kind of truth she was usually compelled to face was of an intellectual nature that made no real impact on her emotions. This was of an altogether different nature and she swallowed unhappily at the implications.
    What was Ryder thinking this morning? Where was he? Perhaps he would make everything easy for her by letting the happenings of the night slip away into oblivion. Perhaps he would make no further demands now that morning had come. He, too, had been sharing her separate reality last night. With the advent of day he might have returned, as she had, to the real world.
    But then she remembered the curious, restrained hunger in him that she had been so eager to unleash and satisfy. Brenna knew instinctively that it was more than a physical appetite. She had sensed that from the beginning. What had she done by giving it herself to feed upon?
    It all came down to an emotion more primitive than she would have imagined could still exist in a civilized, intelligent, reasonably sophisticated human female. She felt claimed.
    Unnerved, Brenna turned off the shower and reached clumsily for one of the thick, striped towels. Claimed. Possessed.
    What if Ryder chose to exercise his claim?
    This was ridiculous, Brenna told herself violently as she furiously towel-dried her dark hair. Utterly ridiculous! What was the matter with her? Number one, he probably wouldn’t dare presume too much on the basis of one night, and number two, she was a mature, independent woman who could handle the matter firmly and politely if he did!
    Oh, lord! Who was she kidding?
    Her scattered thoughts ricocheted around inside her head as she dragged a comb through the wet tendrils of her hair and twisted the dark mass into a long braid that hung down between her shoulders. The severity of the style suited her mood, she thought wretchedly.
    Where was Ryder?
    Sooner of later she was going to have to deal with the man, she told herself tensely as she pulled on her jeans and found a long-sleeved plaid shirt. She was tucking in the ends of it and groping under the bed for her flat sandals when she heard a knock on the door. Brenna froze.
    Blindly she glanced down at the shoe she had retrieved. It wasn’t her flat, casual sandal at all. It was the red high-heeled dress shoe Ryder had removed last night. The knock sounded once more, this time with a note of impatience that surprised her.
    Why was Ryder knocking in the first place, and in the second, why should he sound impatient? He was the one who had left her bed this morning. Knowing him, she couldn’t understand why he didn’t feel quite free to walk back into her cabin at his leisure.
    “Brenna! Are you inside?”
    With a gasp Brenna got to her feet, still clutching the red sandal. The voice outside her door wasn’t Ryder’s. It belonged to Damon Fielding!
    The next knock jolted her into action. As she started down the stairs she shook her head in annoyance. She had to get a grip on herself.
    It should have been harder to open the door to Damon Fielding than it would have been to open it to Ryder. Damon, after all, occupied a much more important role in her life and there was a great deal unsettled between them. He was the man who could assist her in her career, guide her through the intricacies of faculty politics, and lately, she had begun to think, the man whom she might eventually marry. But somehow, when she turned the knob, all Brenna could think of was how grateful she was that she wasn’t going to