every turn from her pilot, Mike Wright. She still couldn't believe her rotten luck. How was it that she couldn't even manage to have an anonymous affair? If Mike had his way, it wouldn't be anonymous at all! She couldn't have that, absolutely could not let the others on the team know what she'd done with him in a moment of selfish weakness. And what she'd done was still interrupting her sleep. She couldn't close her eyes without feeling his body brush hers, without remembering how he tasted, or the incredibly sexy sounds he made when he— She flopped over in bed yet again and stared at the ceiling, but an almost unbearable sense of loneliness came over her. Why now? This was the life she'd wilingly chosen. She'd known it would be a dog-eat-dog world, that she'd be forgoing any indulgence of her femininity to make it. She'd known that, had even craved it—she who'd never quite mastered being...well, a woman. So what was this sudden longing to be just that, to let someone in, to be vulnerable, soft? Giving. Even loving. With Mike. Wow, that thought came from nowhere and extinguished any amount of sleepiness she might have mustered. She flipped over again, but the damage had been done, Mike was back in her mind. And all she could think of was how he'd looked coming out of the water simulator earlier, when he'd stripped out of his cumbersome gear down to nothing but a pair of wet, clingy swimming trunks. Sleek, wet and muscular, that had been Mike, standing there on deck. She'd taken one look at him and had lost every thought in her head. He'd known it, too, damn him; she could stil see the slow, baby-here-I-amsmile he'd sent her. This had to stop. She'd had him once and that should be enough. It should be over. But it wasn't. She couldn't even look at him without having that stupid, adolescent, weak-kneed reaction, and it was really making her furious. She'd read his personnel files, shamelessly soaking up his private information. He had four brothers, al in the military. His father, too, was a military man. His mother, a Russian, had died when Mike had been only four, so it was no wonder he was so incredibly masculine. He'd grown up in a house full of Y chromosomes, and then had gone into an industry overloaded with testosterone. That was a problem, she decided, rolling over to punch her pillow. Because while Mike definitely knew how to treat a woman—he had, after all, made her purr more than once—he had no idea how to do anything other than pamper a female, much less work for one. To work beneath her command was going to be utterly foreign to him, and with both of them needing their control... well, it wasn't going to go smoothly, this mission, she could see that. What she couldn't see, exactly, was what to do about it. She wasn't herself around him. She had a hard time sticking to that cool, icy facade she favored, mostly because he saw right through her. She hated that. With a sigh, she heaved herself out of bed for her usual middle of the night run to the bathroom. It was annoying, but then again, if she'd just sleep the night through like normal people, instead of obsessing, she wouldn't have to go at all, would she? The hall was silent, both when she crept into the bathroom and when she came out two minutes later. Which was why she nearly screamed when she ran into a solid rock wal of a chest. Even as those big, warm hands came up to steady her, she knew. "Mike," she said in a breathless whisper, blinking through the dark. "Fancy meeting you here." "You have a weak bladder, too?" "I don't have a weak anything." "Everyone has a weak something." "What I have," he said softly, reaching up to tug on her ponytail, "is a weakness for long dark hair flowing wild and free, and dark-blue eyes melting with desire when they look at me, instead of two icicles." "I'm going back to bed." "Not until we talk." "It's late." He flicked the light on his watch. "Actualy, it's early. I've been listening for you,
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