Live Wire by Lora Leigh

with herself or with Jordan any longer.
    “Tehya?” Jordan followed, standing in the bedroom doorway as she moved to the pile of empty boxes and protective paper stacked next to the shelves she hadn’t yet begun to pack. Because packing meant leaving, and leaving was killing her.
    Each of the trinkets had been collected over the years. There were pocket dragons, fairies, expensive little keepsake boxes. And there were pictures. Pictures of the team she had worked with, their wives, and a few included the children of those men. In some, there was an unsmiling Jordan. In one, he stood next to Tehya, an arm around her shoulders, as they stared back at the camera.
    These were the past six years of her life.
    She picked up the picture of her and Jordan first, wrapped it, packed it.
    “Why do you think I hadn’t taken you to my bed before now?” he asked from the bedroom doorway.
    She had always known why. Because once he did, she would have no choice but to leave.
    “Why don’t you leave, Jordan?” She didn’t look at him, she couldn’t.
    She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream, and she wasn’t about to do it while he was standing there watching her as though waiting for her to break apart.
    Before she knew it, he was next to her, his hands gripping her upper arms as he jerked her around.
    She saw the anger then. His eyes were bright with it, the blue snapping down at her, his expression tight with regret.
    “I didn’t want to hurt you!”
    “And you haven’t.” She wasn’t backing down from him but she was damned if she would cry for him. She wouldn’t do that to either of them.
    He hadn’t done this to her, he hadn’t asked her what she felt. And how many times had he pushed her away, done everything but told her that it couldn’t happen? She had been the one that pushed for it, that dared him. She had broken her own heart.
    It had been her own stubbornness, her own stupidity, that had led her here. She had known better. At least she should have known better.
    Sex wasn’t love, and she could see now what he had tried to save her from. Sex couldn’t change him and sex wasn’t going to make him suddenly realize he couldn’t live without her.
    Yet the anger was there inside her, as well. A feminine fury she couldn’t escape.
    “Tehya, we’re friends,” he ground out furiously. “If you ever need me…”
    “I didn’t need you before I came here, and I won’t need you after I leave.” Jerking away from him, she stalked to the far side of the room and faced him where the sheer power of his presence would hopefully be diluted. “It’s been fun Jordan, thanks for the memories and the sex, but you can leave now.”
    “God, Tehya!” He raked his fingers through his hair, the long, silken strands falling around his face with such male, sensual disarray that she had to clench her fingers at the overwhelming need to run them through it again.
    “Don’t do this, Jordan.” She had to get away from him, she had to hold back the tears. “Don’t make this harder for me than it already is. For both of us. Just leave.”
    Over the years, that was all she had done, held back her emotions, held back her dreams, hell, she had held back her life in the hope, the dream, that something more than blood could fill her future.
    She had obviously been so wrong. Her time here was over. The Elite Ops was shutting down and the new team coming in didn’t need her. They had their own people, their own specialties. No one needed the daughter of a white slaver. A woman who had no true specialty, no family, and no longer a reason for being there.
    She had no special training. She had no true education. She was an outcast, plain and simple. Unlike the other members of the team, she didn’t have a happily-ever-after waiting for her when she walked out the doors of the base.
    There would be no family waiting for her. There were no friends she could look up. She had a new identity, but she had no idea what the hell to do