The press to sob was heavy. How she held it in she didn’t know. She’d pushed him yet again and though she’d not meant to she would suffer more before he took her. Another tear leaked from her eyes. They’d been nowhere near this place before. It was like a yawning chasm between them that she longed to bridge but everything she tried ended up with her being punished. Had she not played the game correctly? What was she doing wrong? Had he returned cruel and unbending—uncaring about her needs? As soon as she gave the thought life another rose to smash it. Sam was different. Though his duties as a Marine had called him away many times before, he was definitively different from the man who’d left her in the middle of night a year ago. His smile was dark, full of things she didn’t want to touch but couldn’t keep from reaching for. And the simple truth was he needed her as much as, if not more than, she needed him. And if this was his method of finding his way back to her, she’d deal with whatever she had to.
