She didn’t open her eyes but just lay there in the darkness, savoring the heat of him as he slept beside her. Their coming together had been nothing less than explosive, and the touch of desperate need she’d sensed in him, the need that echoed her own, had been the match to the fuel that had sent them both flying.

She pondered waking him, wanting to feel it yet again, that glorious heat, the building pressure, the luscious feel of him sliding into her, and most of all the way he groaned her name as her body clenched in delight around him. Then she smiled into the darkness, wondering where this hungry, eager woman—who was now Mandy in her own mind, because it was who she was to him—had come from. This woman for whom three times in a night wasn’t enough. She—

The sharp, loud cacophony of barking slammed against her ears. She’d barely gotten her eyes open before Cutter raced into the room. Adam was already sitting up, and he took one look at the dog, who was dancing on his front paws as if barely keeping himself in place, and was on his feet.

Mandy blinked, then focused with no small bit of pleasure on Adam, on his lean, strong body as he picked his jeans up from the floor and pulled them on. She noticed but didn’t care a whit about how he had to shift his right arm to do it. She was so admiring that when he hissed at her, “Stay here,” it took her yet another moment to realize exactly what was happening.

Cutter. Guarding. The barking. A warning.

Adam grabbed up her father’s Colt from the nightstand and was gone.

Chapter 31

For a moment Mandy stood frozen. The jolt from the delicious time they’d spent together—discovering that the spark between them went all the way to the bone, and from the perfect warmth of waking with him beside her—to this was more than she could process quickly. She thought it sourly, remembering how her father had always bragged about how quick and smart she was.

Not tonight, Dad.

But finally she moved, scrambling into her own clothes. She could hear sounds from outside, along the side of the house. Mostly Cutter’s ferocious snarls. But Adam was out there and he had admitted himself he was somewhat limited with a handgun. She supposed with a rifle the angle his arm could take worked, but it was harder to aim a pistol accurately.