Free Mackenzie's Magic by Linda Howard

trees.
    Darkness settled around them as they listened to the sound of the car fading in the distance. MacNeil opened the passenger door of the truck and put his hands on Maris’s waist, lifting her onto the seat. In the darkness, his face was only a pale blur. "Whatever happens, make sure you stay safe," he growled, and bent his head to her.
    His lips were cold, and firm. Maris wound her arms around his neck and opened her mouth to him as he deepened the kiss, slanting his head for better contact. His tongue wasn’t cold at all, but hot and strong, and her entire body tightened with excitement as she leaned closer to him. It wasn’t enough; with the pleasure came frustration. She swiveled on the seat to face him, parting her legs so that he stood between them, pressed hard against her as the kiss changed yet again, into something fierce with need.
    It was their first kiss, but there was no tentativeness, no searching. They already knew each other, had already made the inner adjustment to the hot ache of physical desire, and accepted the hunger. They were already lovers, though their bodies hadn’t yet been joined. The pact had been made. Invisible strands of attraction had been pulling them together from the first, and the web was almost complete.
    He tore his mouth away from hers, breathing hard, his breath fogging in the cold air. "No more," he said, the words strained. "Not now. I’m as hard as a rock already, and if we—" He broke off. "We have to go. Now."
    "Have we given Dean enough time?"
    "Hell, I don’t know! All I know is that I’m about ten seconds away from pulling your jeans off, and if we don’t go now, the whole plan is blown."
    She didn’t want to let him go. Her arms didn’t want to release their hold on him, her thighs didn’t want to loosen from around his hips. But she did it, forced herself to open her embrace, because she could feel the truth pushing against her.
    In silence he stepped back, and she turned in the seat so that she faced forward. He closed the door, then walked stiffly around the truck to climb in under the steering wheel, a look of acute discomfort on his face.
    She wasn’t good for his sanity, he thought as he started the truck and put it in gear. She made him forget about the job and think only about sex. Not sex in general, but sex in particular. Sex with her. Again and again, holding that slim body beneath him until he was satisfied.
    He tried to imagine being sated with her, and he couldn’t. Alarm tingled through him. He tried to think of some of the other women he’d slept with over the years, but their names wouldn’t come to mind, their faces eluded him, and there was no concrete memory of how any of them had felt. There was only her mouth, her breasts, her legs. Her voice, her body in his arms, her hair spread across the pillow. He could imagine her in the shower with him, her face across the table from him every morning, her clothes hanging beside his in the closet.
    The most frightening thing was that it was so damn easy to imagine it all. The only thing that frightened him more was the thought that it might not happen, that he was actually using her in a setup where she could be hurt, despite all the pains he was taking to keep her safe.
    They left the cover of the woods, and he eased the truck across the rutted ditch and onto the highway. No headlights appeared in either direction. Fat snowflakes swirled and danced in the beams of their own headlights, and the low clouds blocked any hint of the approaching dawn.
    The radio remained silent, meaning Dean hadn’t seen anything suspicious. After several minutes the lights of the motel sign came into view, and a few seconds after that they passed the Oldsmobile, pulled off on the side of the road and were facing back the way they’d come. It looked unoccupied, but Mac knew Dean was there, watching everything. No vehicle could approach the motel without being seen.
    He pulled into the parking lot and backed into a