Enigma by Moira Rogers

What the hell is your game , McNamara?”
    He tangled his fingers in her hair to hold her still, and the barely healed skin on her throat ratcheted his temper up. “You know what? You’re a coward. You’re a damn coward, because you don’t even have the guts to blow me off. You try to fuck me when only an evil bastard would climb on top of you, and then tell yourself I’m the one who rejected you.”
    “So it’s all me ,” she whispered fiercely. “I may be running scared, but so are you, damn it. And you’re a liar too, because you like to pretend everything would be peachy if only I wasn’t so fucked up and skittish.”
    “When have I run?” His voice was rising, and he couldn’t stop it. “I chase you.”
    “No, you don’t.” She tensed, her eyes cooling to chips of blue ice. “You pretend to chase me, but every time I tried—every time I needed you—” Her words cut off with a growl.
    His heart jackknifed toward his throat. Need. The one thing he’d never felt from her. “Yeah, maybe I’m scared to catch you at the wrong time, because I don’t know if you’d give me a second chance.”
    “A second chance?” Anna covered her face and laughed.
    That wasn’t the response he’d been expecting. “I’m glad I’m funny.”
    “You’re not,” she snapped, dropping her hands. “You’re infuriating, and you don’t understand me at all.”
    He didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know what else to say , so he snarled her name and kissed her under the rapidly cooling water.
    Her lips trembled under his, and she bumped into him as she fumbled with the lever and shut off the water. Then she moaned and slipped her arms around his waist.
    Moving slowly was paramount. It took every scrap of concentration, every higher mental function that wasn’t distracted by the press of her body or the reality of her breasts against his chest. He smoothed his hands up to cup her face, holding her steady because it would be so easy to forget that her shoulder and neck had been torn apart by bullets.
    Slow. Slow, but hell would hurt less than slow when he licked across her lips and coaxed them apart.
    She scratched her nails up his back to his shoulders and bit his tongue. “You’re doing it now,” she panted. “Deciding all by yourself how I get to have you.”
    “Welcome to the world of fucking people who can handle you.” He licked her lip again. “I always get to decide how much I’m going to give. And you get to decide how much you want to offer. It’s called meeting in the middle, honey.”
    “And it only works if what you want comes anywhere near what I want.” Anna pushed at his chest. “I want sex, and you want more. One of us would have to give.”
    “Believe it or not, sex is pretty much the only thing on my mind right now. Second only to the fact that you’re not fucking healed yet.”
    “I’m alive ,” she told him archly. “So are you. Doesn’t it seem like a good goddamn time to prove it?”
    “Can you lift your arms above your head without crying?”
    “No.” Anna groaned and leaned her head against the tile. “You win. I’m an asshole, you’re right, and I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.”
    Patrick laughed and brushed her hair away from her injured shoulder. “Maybe I’m the asshole, for assuming you wanted me to fuck you into the tile. Maybe I’ve spent a little too much time imagining how hard you’d tear things up.”
    “Stop,” she said again, more quietly, an entreaty this time. “It’s not funny anymore.”
    “I’m not joking.” He wrapped his discarded towel around his hips and offered her the clean one. “I’m laughing at myself because you’re right. The only thing I’m good at these days is taking a moment and choking the hot right out of it.”
    “I just need to sleep it off. I’ll be square in the morning.”
    Once she’d folded the towel around her body, Patrick took his life in his hands and swung her carefully up into his arms. “Food