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against his, and he strangled on his own breath. His head dipped as he struggled not to react. She moved again.
    “ Don’t, ” he barked. “We’re not going to play this game, Embry.”
    “ Gage.” At her soft voice, he looked up and met her eyes. The gold ring that circled her pupil was pulsing. “Let go of my hands.”
    He released her, planting his own hands on the mat and pushing up to keep them from touching her anywhere else. He tried to find somewhere else to look. Straight down put him on eye level with her breasts, and his mouth watered at the thought of suckling one puckered peak. Straight ahead gave him a full on view of them in the mirror, and his all too active imagination decided to treat him to what those tangled limbs would look like if they were both naked. Christ.
    Her hands, soft and insistent, framed his face and forced him to look at her. And it wasn’t a girl beneath him. Wasn’t anyone he could convince himself to think of as a sibling. She was a woman, fully aroused, fully aware. Her extraordinary sunburst eyes stayed focused on him as she rose up and captured his mouth.
    His arms and shoulders trembled. He was not so weak a fighter that he couldn’t extricate himself. He should throw her off, end this madness.
    But the taste of her seeped into his veins and fired his blood. She would burn him up from the inside out, leaving nothing but cinders. Yet he couldn’t pull away.
    She shoved at him until he rolled, reversing their positions. Rising over him like some kind of fire goddess, she pulled the tight t-shirt over her head, growling a little in frustration as it caught in the long tangle of auburn. The sports bra she wore zipped in the front. The zipper was already partially down, and her breasts strained against the cotton. He ached to fill his hands with them. Because he didn’t trust himself, he clutched her thighs and held still.
    She bent over him again, her hands sprinting over his chest. Everywhere she touched, he burned, a delicious edge one step away from pain that left him wanting more. If this was lunacy, he reveled in it.
    “ Gage,” she murmured, her lips barely brushing his.
    “ Mmm?”
    “ Touch me.”
    Embry sat up, her eyes fixed on his in challenge, and slowly unzipped her sports bra. Her breasts spilled out as she shrugged the thing off. “Touch me,” she ordered again, lifting both his hands and placing them over her breasts. A hum of pleasure escaped her, and he was lost.
    He reared up to take her mouth as he shifted his hands to cradle her breasts. They were full and heavy in his palms, the nipples budding taut and hard beneath the stroke of his thumbs. In his lap she began to move to the rhythm of his stroking. On a gasp he broke the kiss and stilled her. “You’ll need to stop that unless you want this over before it’s started.”
    “ I need you,” she whispered, and the plea brought him one step closer to madness.
    Gage dropped his forehead to hers. “I have to know, Ember. Have you ever… ”
    “ No. I wanted it to be you. I always wanted it to be you.”
    Her first. God, he’d never imagined she would want him.
    Gage stroked the hair back from her temple. “Embry, I… ”
    “ Let her go.” The voice echoed through the dojo and froze his blood, drying up the words he’d been about to speak
    Instead of obeying, Gage pulled Embry closer to shield her from the intruders as he watched them step out of the shadows. There were three of them, each clad in the dark gray or black that was the standard issue for Shadow Walkers. He didn’t know them, but he knew their kind. After all, he’d been trained to be one of them. As Adan wasn’t among them, Gage could only assume the powers that be had finally found out about him and the vigilante missions Adan had trained him for.
    “ What do you want?” he asked, carefully easing up, keeping Embry’s body pressed close to his as he shifted to put himself between the intruders and her, both as a means