Suddenly she slid off of him and scrambled backward, splashing into the water.
He frowned at her, confused. "Lainie?"
"We can't do this," she said breathlessly, lurching to her feet. "It's not right."
He was breathing too hard to speak for a moment, but when he looked up at her and saw the blatant fear
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in her eyes, the need drained out of him. Without its heat, he felt cold, empty. He sighed. "It felt right. You know it did."
She paled. Swallowing hard, she clambered out of the water and grabbed her clothes, clutching them to her chest.
"That's the problem, isn't it?" he said softly.
Without another word, she spun away from him and disappeared into the night's darkness.
He closed his eyes, bowing his head. A deep, weary sigh escaped him, hung limp in the night air. He could hear her, running again, hard and fast and thoughtlessly.
"Don't go," he whispered, knowing she couldn't hear him, knowing she wouldn't listen if she had.
For the first time in years, he felt lonely.
Lonely.
She'd made him feel something, something he'd thought impossible for a man like him.
And she had felt something, damn it. He was sure that she had. But he was afraid that it wouldn't matter to her, that she'd never give either one of them the chance to feel it again.
And God help him, he wanted to feel it again, wanted to take her in his arms and hold her tightly, to give her a safe place in the world.
The realization stunned him.
He frowned. Jesus, he was a forty-three-year-old outlaw with nothing to offer a woman except a lifetime full of regrets and lost chances, and yet... unbelievably, he wanted to change. For Lainie, because of her. He wanted to change.
If only she'd give him the chance.
Chapter Twenty-one
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She would never kiss him again. No matter what. She didn't care if they were soul mates or blind dates or dying of hypothermia. She would never kiss that man again.
She swiped at her mouth, but it didn't help; she couldn't wipe her lips enough to erase the memory of him. She felt him beside her, around her, inside her, felt the lingering memory of his touch; the scent of him clung to her clothing and haunted her.
Stop it, stop it, stop it.
It shouldn't have meant anything, that kiss. She'd kissed a thousand men in her lifetime, maybe more. She knew what a kiss was?and what it wasn't.
For years she'd kissed any man who looked at her twice, who wanted to kiss her. She'd thought that something magical would?could?happen with one of the men, just one. That one night, one special, never-to-be-forgotten night, she'd kiss the right man and she'd feel something. She'd feel ... connected, a part of something besides herself, maybe even normal.
But it had never happened. Kisses had always been like sex for her?cold, wet couplings that went on in dark, forgotten places with men whose names she could never recall. None?not one man?had ever really aroused her, had ever made her feel anything except a
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vague, queasy sense of selling herself short, of giving her soul to the lowest bidder and walki