Darkfall by Denise A. Agnew Page A

is gone. Apparently the new security system your father had put in the SUVs doesn’t work worth dick. You should have stayed—”
    “Stop.” Her gaze tangled with his. “Stop trying to control me. I won’t get involved with a man who acts like my father. I won’t. It isn’t going to happen.”
    “Who are you trying to convince? Me or yourself?”
    That stung, because she knew the answer. It was her all the way.
    He moved in closer, and though he wasn’t touching her anywhere, his strength, purpose and masculinity affected her on a very deep level. Her breath quickened as her gaze landed on his mouth.
    “I’m angry. That’s why I cried,” she said.
    “I see.”
    Did he? She wouldn’t enlighten him. She’d never felt more on the edge of a discovery, more heightened in her awareness of him. Fragility threatened to break her into tiny pieces.
    “I left the shelter because I thought something bad had happened to you. That you might need rescuing, you big idiot,” she said, her voice raspy. “Then you and Frank…I didn’t know what would happen.”
    “You were worried about me?” he asked softly, that damnable sexy accent turning her inside out and liquid with longing.
    “Of course not. You can handle yourself.”
    Ian didn’t answer at first.
    Eventually he snorted softly. “You’re contradicting yourself. Which is it? You were worried about me or you weren’t?”
    She felt irrational. Admitting feelings to him would mean he’d won. The dominating male with his soul-stealing looks and off-the-charts sexuality wouldn’t win over her resistance. “Weren’t.”
    He shook his head. “You can’t deny this .”
    “This what?”
    He gestured to his chest. “This thing between us. It’s so hot I’m scorched. I’m afraid if I touch you right now I’ll burn up and there won’t be any of me left.”
    Whoa. I didn’t expect him to say that.
    Arousal prickled under her skin. “It’s just…the heat of battle. You’re feeling that thing they say happens to soldiers afterwards. Bleeding off testosterone.”
    A slow smile crept across his mouth, but the flames in his eyes didn’t cease. “Oh, yeah. There’s some of that. But it’s always this intense when we’re in a room together. Always. Damn it, Penny. You don’t get it do you?”
    “Get what?”
    “You drive me mad. Have since the day I first saw you. I don’t want this with any other woman. And yet I can’t touch you.”
    Heat flamed in her face. “You’ve touched me. A lot.”
    “Yeah, but if your father caught me I’d be ripped into little pieces and tossed out on my ass.”
    “I’m thirty years old, damn it! My father doesn’t get to dictate what I do.”
    “But I think he does.”
    She frowned and planted her hands on her hips. “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “You’re letting him decide who you want to be with. You’re so afraid I’m going to be like him in every way that you won’t let me get close enough to find out if it’s true.”
    “Ho! That’s rich. You’ve been saying since you got here that you betrayed my father by almost sleeping with me. What’s so different now?”
    He touched her shoulders, cupping them gently and drew her closer. His touch didn’t insist, didn’t pressure. But the heat of his hard, amazing body so close set her on fire. She trembled.
    “I’m sorry I snapped at you for not staying in the bunker. I was scared,” he said.
    She saw the sincerity in his eyes and heard it in his voice.
    He continued, “Penny, every time I’m near you is damned torture. Every time you smile at me, hell, even when you yell at me, I’m like fuckin’ silly putty. I can’t get you out of my head.”
    “Do you want to?” she asked.
    His voice lowered to a husky rasp. “No.” He edged even closer until they were inches apart. “All I want is to get inside you.”
    A wild shiver raced through her body at his blunt statement. She couldn’t speak.
    “All I want,” he said, “is to make