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lost himself in her body’s sweet response.
    Hell, he’d been more than halfway there before he picked up the sound of someone approaching the apartment door. A key jiggled in the deadbolt.
    Ethan reacted on pure instinct. Letting go of Tori, he swept her behind him in less than a second, prepared to protect her with his body and his life.
    But as the door swung open, it was her friend, Hoshi, who stood there. She had a carry-out bag gripped in one hand, the key still held in her other.
    Her dark, almond-shaped eyes slid to Tori in question, then to him in blatant disapproval. “Is everything all right in here?”
    Ethan cleared his throat. He didn’t have to look at Tori to know her cheeks were likely flushed with color and her lips moist and kiss-swollen.
    As for himself, Ethan couldn’t even try to hide his rampant erection.
    “Let me help you with dinner,” Tori blurted as she ducked around him. She shot him a meaningful look over her shoulder. “We’re not finished here. And don’t think I’m going to let you dodge my questions after a kiss like that.”
    He didn’t have the words to deny her. Still weathering the need that had slammed into him like a hurricane, he wanted nothing more than to haul Tori back into his arms and do what she threatened—to finish what they had started.
    As she pivoted around to follow her friend into the small kitchen, Ethan considered that this would be an ideal opportunity for him to walk out the door as he’d planned, before things got any more complicated with Tori.
    Hell. Things had been nothing but complicated with her, starting from the moment he first laid eyes on her that St. Patrick’s night four years ago.
    And like it or not, the fact that his assailant saw Tori with him earlier today meant it might already be too late to shelter her from the secret, dangerous life he’d been hiding from her all this time.
    He might have no choice but to trust her with that secret, and hope he could convince her to get as far away from him as she possibly could.

7
     
    Tori pulled Ethan’s T-shirt out of the dryer and tried to shake out the wrinkles.
    Not that a few creases were going to get any notice next to the frayed knife hole and the rusty ghost of a bloodstain that still clung to the light-colored cotton after it had twice gone through the cold water wash. Better than nothing, and since Hoshi was even more petite than Tori, Ethan’s current replacement clothing options were essentially nil.
    Walking back up the short hallway of Hoshi’s apartment, Tori heard Ethan running water in the bathroom. The door was cracked open a bit, just enough that she could see him standing at the sink, rinsing his face and hair at the tap.
    He took her breath away, just like that. Just the sight of him, standing bare-chested, almost in arm’s reach, doing something as mundane as scrubbing a hand over his face and scalp, left her immobile. Mesmerized. Afraid to move a muscle for fear it might shatter the illusion and he would be gone again.
    As though he were still nothing more than a figment of her desperate, far too forgiving imagination.
    Their kiss had been real enough.
    Tori’s senses still vibrated from the intensity of it. She licked her lips, recalling the hungry way Ethan claimed her mouth.
    And just thinking about that made her also relive in vivid detail the way he’d touched her, with strong, masterful fingers that still knew exactly how to stroke her into a frenzied state of need.
    That need simmered within her even now, banked embers that surged with new heat as she watched Ethan reach for a towel on the hooks behind the door.
    His gray cargo shorts hung low on his athletic form, baring the lean cut of muscle and hip bones she used to enjoy following with her tongue. Ethan had become leaner than she remembered, wilder looking in many ways.
    His sandy brown hair was shaggier than he’d ever worn it. The squared line of his jaw and the angled slope of his cheeks were shadowed