He smelled of hard work, leather, and horses. Concentrate on that, Marilee. He smells like a horse.

As he murmured to her in his low, soothing voice, his breath drifted like a warm breeze across the shell of her ear and the side of her face. Butter mint. She couldn’t think of a single psychopathic killer who had been described as having butter mints on his breath.

“You gonna be still?” he asked softly.

Her body was pressed back into his, reminding him just how soft a woman could be. His line of sight down over her shoulder gave him an unobstructed view of the rise and fall of her breasts as she struggled to slow her breathing. The loose vest she wore had slipped back during the struggle. The outline of a lacy bra was unmistakable, reminding him just how delicate a woman’s underwear could be.

All he needed to do was turn his hand a fraction and he could fill his palm with the weight of her breast. His fingers flexed involuntarily against her rib cage.

Damn. He’d gone too long without. That was clear enough. He didn’t allow himself to indiscriminately want women. He had too many more important things to focus his attention on. He shouldn’t have even considered the possibility with this one. A friend of Lucy MacAdam’s. He didn’t have to know any more about her than that to know she was trouble.

He dropped his hand away from her belly abruptly and took a half-step back, distancing himself from temptation.

Mari turned to face him, her sneakers crunching on the kindling that had once been an end table constructed of raw twigs. Still trembling, she planted one hand on her hip and snagged back a tangled mass of hair from her eyes with the other, anchoring it at the back of her neck.