Free To Trust Her Heart by Carolyn Faulkner

any other cavemen in the area. He glanced up, expecting to see her face twisted in anger, and instead he saw the tracks of the tears as they leaked into the baby fine hair at her temples, and it was like being sucker punched.
    Maddie never cried. Oh, she got moody a bit before her period, but nothing terrible. He could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d seen her cry, and all of them seemed to stem from seeing his wounds once he got back from a mission.
    Operating completely on instinct, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him, toe to chest, simply holding her as tight as he could without breaking any bones. Not for the first time, he realized just how his arms had ached to hold her, and how good it felt to have her so close again. Of course, parts of him were none too happy with the platonic nature of their embrace; the bulge in his jeans was becoming a mountain, nestled as it was against her warm belly.
    Desire, as old as the world itself and blazing as if they hadn’t been separated for almost as long as they’d been married, hit her like a sledgehammer and Maddie knew that all he had to do was reach down and cup her bottom, or kiss her in that demanding, fiery manner of his, and she would give up any pretence of exasperation in favor of feeling those masterful hands on her suddenly all too eager body.
    “Why the tears, sweetheart?”
    She could see the real concern in his eyes, and swallowed hard. “I just… It’s just that this is hardly where I expected to end up today, and we’ve had people shooting at us,” Maddie’s voice broke completely on a sob at that statement, but she recovered quickly and continued, “and you’re here and apparently I have absolutely no ability to resist you sexually,” she looked up at him with trembling lips and a breaking voice that cut at his heart. “I’m just trying to get my head wrapped around things, and I don’t think I’m doing very well with it at the moment,” she whispered.
    Ty pressed his lips to her temple, almost overcome by rage at the fear in her tone and eyes. He didn’t care that LaValle had come after him, hell, he would have almost been disappointed if he hadn’t, considering he’d been responsible for LaValle’s worthless son being imprisoned for life in Great Britain on espionage charges. Ty had had it out for the man ever since he killed the closest thing to a best friend he had, Rafe Estevez. But LaValle was slippery as an eel, and he’d wiggled out of a very carefully laid trap Ty and his men had set for him.
    But this was it. This was the last straw. He would never let Maddie be hurt and it stuck badly in his craw that she was even so much as aware of the situation, much less actually scared about it. Ty’s teeth ground together tightly until his jaw ached. By involving Maddie, LaValle had signed his own death warrant.
    Ty tipped her face up so that she had to look him in the eye. “I’ll keep you safe, Maddie. I’d lay down my life for you in a minute, you know that.”
    She switched from looking vulnerable and scared to slightly annoyed in a split second. “That’s not right either, Ty. I’m not your wife or your girlfriend. I don’t want you dying for me under any circumstances.”
    Ty leaned, just a bit, turning her onto her back and fitting himself intimately between her legs effortlessly, before she had a chance to protest in any way. He brought his lips to hers in one of the gentlest, yet most dominant kisses she’d ever experienced. Withdrawing just the slightest bit, so that his lips still bumped up against hers as he spoke, “You’re mine. You always have been, and you always will be. And I take care of my own.”
    His hands moved slowly, deliberately up under her shirt, claiming that which he apparently had never stopped thinking of as his personal possessions. And, dammit, her body was hardly complaining the way her brain was screaming what should have been complete outrage.
    But he’d