Free Off the Map (Winter Rescue #2) by Tamara Morgan

wanted her, couldn’t live without her, he stepped back. The separation between them would have been absolute and complete, except he bound her wrists in his grip and held her there.
    “Carrie, stop. You can’t do this right now.”
    “I beg your pardon. I’m not doing anything.” She straightened and tried to yank her arms away, but he held them firm. His forearms flexed with the effort of keeping her in place, and she was just foolish enough to feel a shiver of delight at how easily he could ravage her, should he feel so inclined.
    He frowned, decidedly not inclined. “You kissed me,” he said.
    “Um, did you miss a step? I was kissing you back. You started it.”
    “You wanted me to.”
    She couldn’t deny it. She really, really wanted him to—so much that she’d sat alone in her apartment and culled the power of the voodoo to make it happen. But what Scott didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. “I don’t recall asking you to do anything of the sort.”
    “You don’t have to ask, Carrie. I can tell when you want me.”
    What? No. Impossible. “How?”
    “It’s easy,” he said, and brought his lips to hers for the barest whisper of a kiss. Even though she implored every nerve ending in her body not to do it, not to give in, she whimpered and strained against his tight hold, wanting to press herself closer, to feel more than this sliver of everything they’d shared. “The answer is always. You’ve never been able to resist me.”
    She held her breath as she waited for the rest… Just like I’ve never been able to resist you.
    But of course it didn’t come. She could stand there until her lungs gave out, and he’d never admit to anything more than physical desire and the occasional urge to throw her out a window.
    And the worst part was, he was right. She couldn’t resist him. Even after all he’d done to hurt her, all the pain he’d caused, she still wanted him to wrap her in his arms and tell her how much he cared. How pathetic was that? She was a grown woman. She was reasonably attractive. She possessed the ability to control one of the most complicated pieces of machinery known to mankind. Somewhere, somehow, that had to count for something.
    Unfortunately, this was neither that time nor that place. And Scott Richardson was not that man.
    She relaxed her arms. It was one of the only things her father had taught her—self-defense and how to fly were the most she’d managed to glean from the virtual stranger who’d dragged her all over the world in his lieutenant colonel wake—and she knew that if she wanted to catch her captor off guard, she needed to adopt a sudden slackness, to yield completely.
    It worked, of course. Scott was only prepared for battle, never for anything more. He released her at once.
    “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are eminently resistible.” She crossed her arms and tried not to notice the way the sudden loss of his touch affected her, making her feel bereft and lonelier than before. “So, what now? You came, you apologized, you got one last taste of everything you threw away. This was fun. We should do it again sometime.”
    “Like hell we should,” he said darkly. Then, as if realizing the precariousness of his situation—he’d come to her , apologies on his lips and erections in his pockets—he sobered. “Can we sit down and talk? I need a favor.”
    And there it was—the real reason he’d stopped by.
    This was no act of voodoo magic. No passion of the moment. No undeniable bond between them that not even his stubborn will could break. He needed something from her, and would only come crawling back because he wasn’t done trampling on what was left of her self-respect.
    “No.”
    He started. “You haven’t heard what the favor is yet.”
    “The answer is still no.”
    “Carrie—”
    She had to close her eyes against the supplication she saw in his face, the way his entire being turned soft, urging her to do the same. She didn’t