In Her Secret Fantasy by Marie Treanor

wanted it to end. She wanted his caressing hand on her naked skin, on the throbbing juncture of her thighs. She wanted— He released her mouth with a breathless groan. “Don’t fancy me, Chrissy. I want you far too much, and I’m a total, total bastard.”
    Reality hit her like a bucket of water. She’d begun this. So much for her quick, punishing demonstration of self-reliance and sophisticated desire. Another moment and she’d have spread her legs and invited him in.
    A further jolt of inconvenient desire sliced through her. Would that really be so bad?
    Yes, because whatever he wanted, he was rejecting her.
    She wriggled out of his hold, and he immediately dropped his arms. She jumped to her feet with a breathless laugh.
    “Don’t panic,” she said, ignoring the trembling of her legs. “I was only kidding you on.” And she strolled off through the trees, leaving him to follow or not as he chose.
    Kidding me on, he thought stupidly, gazing after her swaggering rear. Fuck. Just fuck.
    What the hell had he done? He could still taste her. Her light, sexy scent still filled his nostrils, and his cock was hard as the tree trunk that was about all that supported him.
    Oh no, she hadn’t been kidding. She’d wanted him, and the knowledge fired his blood and deluged his brain with visions of all the things he could do to her if he followed her back to the house.
    He rose and followed her back to the house. At least, he went far enough to see her go inside. Then he veered away to the drive where he’d parked his car. He’d been right to warn her off. Even with his blood on fire, he couldn’t do that to her. She needed time to build a relationship with a good man. He didn’t have time, and he wasn’t a good man. He didn’t know who or what he was anymore, and the last thing she needed in her life was another mess around her neck.
    But it had been sweet to kiss her, he acknowledged as he drove down the winding path to the road, even sweeter to feel her passionate response. There was undoubtedly chemistry between them, hot and urgent, and he wanted nothing more than to explore that, to bury himself in her soft, welcoming depths all night. He’d only exist inside her, be what she wanted, what she needed, and he had the oddest feeling that then he’d be who he’d always been, who he must still be somewhere deep inside… More than that, her desire flattered him, told him he could help her. Sexual healing.
    Fuck, yes.
    Fuck, no! He turned onto the road and drove down to the village, parking his car in the lock-up garage he still paid for, even though his dad didn’t have a car anymore. Neither did Louise. Even if she’d learned to drive, the B & B just didn’t do well enough to let her buy one.
    But then, she couldn’t fill the place and look after their parents. She wouldn’t have the time or the energy. Vicious circle. And one he had to break before he left.
    Several hours later, he pushed the rickety chair away from the desk in his old bedroom and rubbed the back of his neck. Neither he nor his colleagues could find any connection between Gowan and Chrissy, or anyone else at Ardknocken for that matter. The gun was almost certainly Chrissy’s, though—forensics had found traces of earth in it.
    And he was sick of looking repeatedly over the profiles and biographies of the Ardknocken residents. He’d no time to get in among them and read the actual people. That was his speciality, but this was to have been a fast operation, which was why his actual life was his cover here.
    He needed alibis for all of them. He even wanted to vindicate them for Chrissy’s sake, and yet if he did, if there was no connection, it left his investigation dead in the water. There was undoubtedly a connection—someone had shot Gowan with Chrissy’s gun. He just wished he could see what it was.
    He glanced at his watch. A quarter past midnight. Impulsively, he stood, grabbed his jacket from the bed and left the quiet house. He saw