Was he actually blaming her for failing at what he himself had been unable to accomplish? With all his training and advanced degree, with the support of the police department behind him, he hadn’t brought these criminals to justice, either.

And he hadn’t denied himself a personal life in order to do it. Elise had.

But he hadn’t been so much angry as jealous. That’s what it boiled down to. He’d become angry because he couldn’t stand the thought of her with Cato Laird. With any man. Except himself.

He didn’t think about it, he just left the paper filter and the empty carafe on the counter and walked to the bedroom door. Without hesitation, he opened it.

She was lying with her back to him. When the door hinge squeaked, she raised her head from the pillow, then rolled onto her back and looked toward the door. Seeing him, she came up on her elbows. “Is something wrong?”

“No.”

She glanced toward the window. “What time is it?”

“The sun’s not quite up.”

“Oh.”

And then there was silence except for their breathing while they stared at each other across the dim room. Duncan walked to the side of the bed. She smelled of warmth and sleep. She was wearing the new pajamas she’d bought yesterday. Under the thin cotton tank top her breasts lay soft.

His voice a harsh whisper, he said, “Did you fake it?”

For several moments, she looked at him with dazed puzzlement, then her eyes cleared with understanding. “Yes.”

His heart plummeted.

“Every time while I was married.” She gave a small shake of her head, adding huskily, “But not with you.”

He dragged in a deep, restorative breath. Never breaking eye contact, he unbottoned his jeans and pulled them off, then stepped out of his boxers. He pulled back the light covers and got in beside her, stretching out above her, trapping her head between his hands.

He lowered his forehead to hers, resting it there, inhaling her scent. “You’re married to him.”

“Legally. But I’m not his wife.”

She angled her head and touched her mouth to his, tentatively. He made an inarticulate sound of surrender and sank into the kiss. His fingers burrowed in her cropped hair, but the passion was tender, not turbulent.

For a long time they kissed, sometimes deeply and wetly and sexily, sometimes just the mere brushing of their lips. Eventually he raised his head and gazed down into her face, now flushed with more than sleep.

“Let me…” She pushed him away so she could remove her tank top and matching shorts, then pulled him back down to her. Skin to skin, they sighed with pleasure as his mouth melded with hers once again.

His sex was hard, probing her middle, and by the time the lengthy kiss ended, they were restless, wanting more. He levered himself up so he could look at her. She was the stuff of dreams. He brushed his fingertips through her pubic hair, trailed them around her flat navel, up to circle her breasts before settling on one.

He gently reshaped it, then took her nipple into his mouth and made love to it. She covered his hand with hers in a gesture of offering, while her other hand cupped the back of his head and held him close. He was guided by her sighs, told what she liked by her soft groans, and learned what she best responded to when her hips came off the bed and she gasped his name.

He kissed his way down her torso and nuzzled the delta between her thighs. Sliding his hands beneath her hips, he scooped her up toward his face and pressed it into the soft hair. He spoke her name, God’s name, love words, swear words.

Finally, his lips damp with her, he raised himself above her, and kissed her mouth as he sent his penis deep into her. He thought he had remembered. He hadn’t. It was better than memory. From tip to root, she gloved him. Snug and hot. Woman. Elise.

When he started to move, he pressed one of her thighs toward her chest to increase the friction and her pleasure. Her fingertips caressed the small of his back, lower over his butt cheeks, flirted with the crevice, driving him mad.

His strokes grew faster, deeper. He wanted to hold back, make it last. But his climax was racing toward him. He slid his hand between their bodies, applied his fingertip to her in tight, slippery circles.

Her body arched. She called his name and clutched him to her.

He emptied himself into her, thinking: How could anything that felt this right, this perfect, possibly be wrong?

They lay face-to-face, heads sharing the pillow. His penis was limp in her hand, but each time her thumb glanced the tip, it sent a frisson of sensation through his entire body.

“I couldn’t fight it anymore,” he said.

She gazed at him a bit sadly. “Will I be something you regret?”

He hugged her closer, whispering into her hair, “No. No. No matter what happens, I’ll never regret this.”

They kissed. When they pulled apart, he said wryly, “I had my nerve coming to you this morning after what I said to you last night. Why didn’t you tell me to get the hell out and leave you alone?”

“Because you might have.”

“You didn’t want me to get the hell out and leave you alone?”

“Shamelessly, no.”

They exchanged affectionate smiles. His hand was cupped between her thighs. He squeezed gently. “It’s not only about this, Elise.”

“No?”

He gave a negative motion of his head. “Maybe the first time I saw you, yeah. But even after discovering who you were, and thinking I’d probably never see you again after that awards dinner, you stayed in my mind. You haunted me. The night Trotter was shot, I realized why, and it was more than the obvious. You looked…solitary. Alone. Sad.”

She touched his cheek.

“Here you were, a rich lady of leisure, with a handsome, influential husband who worshiped the ground you walked on. It didn’t make sense to me why you would look so unhappy and…Jeez, I just realized the right word. Afraid. You looked afraid. And, even though I was investigating you for a possible crime, my first instinct was to help you.”

“It certainly didn’t seem you wanted to help when I came to your house that morning.”

“I was scared.”

“Of me?”

“Big-time scared. Because for all my honorable posturing, I also wanted you naked, like this. Don’t smile. That’s quite a conflict for a cop.”

“I’m only smiling because I’m glad you have me naked, like this. But I don’t make light of the conflict. That conflict is a measure of the man you are. If you hadn’t been conflicted about me, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you.”

His head went back several inches. He looked at her with an unspoken question. She nodded. “I said as much that night in the old house. Weren’t you listening?”

“I was listening. I thought you were speaking generally.”

“No,” she said. “You were as much a surprise to me as I was to you, Duncan. I thought the years with Cato had destroyed that part of me. I thought I would never feel attraction for another man. Then you spoke to me at the awards dinner, and you took my breath.”

“I took your breath? Really?”

“Hmm. And you have every time I’ve seen you since. I was desperate for your help, Duncan. But I was equally desperate to be with you.” She leaned forward and kissed his chest, took a love bite out of his pectoral, then did something incredible to his nipple with her tongue.

He grew hard in her hand, but he angled away from her. “We can’t,” he said unevenly. “We’re oh for two on safe sex, and I don’t have anything to use.”

Like a cloud moving across the sun, sadness dimmed the lambency in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter.” She paused, drew a deep breath. “Cato made clear that he didn’t want a child. He insisted I have a tubal ligation before we were married.”

Duncan lay perfectly still, assimilating that.

“I agreed to it because I certainly didn’t want his child. I didn’t think beyond getting vengeance for Chet. I thought being childless was a small price to pay.” A tear slid from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. She touched his lips. “I may have been wrong.”