Hunter. Diana Palmer

      “Yes, sir, is that all, sir?” she asked brightly.

      He caught her chin with a lean hand and his thumb brushed roughly over her mouth, a slow, fierce intimacy that he watched with almost scientific intensity. She knew her eyes were wildly dilated as they looked into his, and she couldn’t help the shocked gasp that broke from her sensitized lips or the shiver of pleasure that ran through her body.

      His dark eyes didn’t miss a thing. Her reaction, he decided, was definitely not fear. He couldn’t decide if he was pleased about it or not. “Don’t be provocative,” he said softly, his voice an octave deeper, faintly threatening. “Get to work.” He moved away before she could find anything to say that wouldn’t be provocative.

      She sat down at her computer, her fingers trembling on the keyboard.

      He closed the bathroom door behind him. His action had been totally unexpected, and it made her even more nervous than she already was. If he was going to start doing that kind of thing, she’d be safer in the lion cage at the zoo.

      She was uncertain of him and of herself. Being around him in such close quarters was going to be a test of her self-control. She only hoped that she wouldn’t give herself away. She’d had some naive idea that because Hunter disliked women, he didn’t sleep with them. But she was learning that he knew a lot more than she did, and the sultry look in his dark eyes really frightened her. If she didn’t watch her step, she was going to wind up with more than she’d bargained for.

      His motives were what bothered her most. He didn’t like white women, especially her, so what had prompted that action? She didn’t want to consider the most evident possibility—that he thought she was fair game, and he had seduction on his mind. She ground her teeth together. Well, he could hold his breath. She wasn’t going to be any man’s light amusement. Not even his.

       4

      When Jenny heard the shower running, she got up from her computer and sat in the chair Hunter had occupied to watch television. The chair still smelled of him. She traced the armrests where his hands had been and sighed brokenly. Jenny felt like a fool. She had to stop this!

      She got out of the chair and went to work on her contour maps, trying to pinpoint the best place to look, given the mineral structure of the area. She’d begged time on Landsat earlier for another project, using the expensive computer time to study the satellite maps of this region of southern Arizona. The terrain they were going to survey was between the Apache reservation on one side and government land on the other. A narrow strip of desert and a narrow strip of mountain made up the search area, although they were going to be camping in several different spots to throw any would-be thieves off the mark.

      She was deep in concentration when Hunter came back out of the bathroom, wearing clean jeans and no shirt, again. She had to bite her lip to keep from staring at him. He was unspeakably handsome to her, the most attractive man she’d ever known, but she couldn’t afford the luxury of letting him know that. Especially not after the way he’d touched her mouth…

      “Found what you’re looking for?” he asked, placing one big hand on the table beside her and resting the other on the back of her chair. He leaned down to better see what she was studying. His cheek brushed hers and he felt her jump. His own breath caught. He wanted her. He should never have agreed to come on this expedition, because being close to her was having one hell of a bad effect on his willpower and self-control. He’d thought of nothing except the vulnerable look in her eyes when he’d touched her mouth so intimately, the yielding, the fascination. He wanted to grind his mouth into her own and make her cry out her need for him.

      She was feeling the same tension. She knew he sensed her reaction, but she kept her head. “You startled me,” she said breathlessly.

      He knew better. His lean, warm cheek was touching hers as he stared at the map on the computer’s small screen. She looked sideways and saw the thick, short lashes over his dark eyes, the faint lines in his cream-smooth tan. “Hunter…” His name was a soft whisper that broke involuntarily from her throat.

      His head turned, and his eyes looked deeply into hers from scant inches away. She could taste his breath on her mouth, smell the clean scent of his body, feel the impact of his bare arms, his chest. He intoxicated her with his nearness, and she saw the hot glitter of awareness in those black eyes. She could see the thick dark lashes above them lower as his gaze suddenly dropped with fierce intent to her parted lips.

      She shivered. All her dreams hadn’t prepared her for the impact of this. Like a string suspended from a height, waiting for the wind to move it, she hung at his lips without breathing. A fraction of an inch, and his mouth would be on hers…!