"And then I would have remembered that you're my client and I'm your protector, and that crossing that line puts you at risk."
"How does it put me at risk?"
He sets the gun down carefully, giving me his full attention. "Because it compromises my judgment. Because it creates emotional variables in a situation that needs to be handled with clinical precision. Because it makes you more than a responsibility, and that's dangerous for both of us."
"What if I want to be more than a responsibility?"
"It doesn't matter what either of us wants." His voice is hard, but I can hear the strain beneath it. "What matters is keeping you alive."
"And you think you can't do that if there's something between us?"
"I think it creates unnecessary complications in an already complicated situation."
"Life is complicated, Finn." I unfold myself from the couch and move toward him, drawn by something I can't name and don't want to resist. "Sometimes the complications are worth it."
I stop in front of his chair, close enough to touch but not touching. Giving him the choice to retreat or advance.
"Nova." My name is a warning on his lips. "Don't."
"Don't what? Don't acknowledge that there's something happening between us? Don't admit that I think about you in ways that have nothing to do with your professional qualifications? Don't tell you that for the first time in years, I feel like someone sees the real me?"
He stands abruptly, towering over me, his eyes stormy with conflicting emotions. "This isn't real. It's a trauma response. Emotional transference. You're vulnerable, I'm your protector, of course, you feel a connection."
"Don't you dare psychoanalyze me." I step closer, eliminating the distance between us. "I know what I feel."
"Do you? Because from where I'm standing, you're a woman running from a stalker, isolated from everything familiar, dependent on me for safety. That's not exactly a foundation for genuine emotion."
His words sting, but I recognize the deflection for what it is. "If you're not interested, just say so. But don't hide behind psychology and professional ethics."
"You think that's what this is? That I'm not interested?" He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Nova, I haven't been able to think straight since the moment I saw you. And that terrifies me, because the last time I let my guard down on a job, people died."
The raw honesty in his voice stops me cold. This isn't just about professional boundaries or inappropriate attraction. This is about ghosts that still haunt him.
"I'm sorry," I say softly. "I didn't know."
"How could you?" He runs a hand through his hair, a rare gesture of agitation from a man who's usually so controlled. "It's not something I talk about."
"Maybe you should."
"It wouldn't change anything."
"It might help."
He looks at me for a long moment, as if weighing something in his mind. Then he steps closer, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact.
"What would help," he says, his voice a low rumble that I feel in my chest, "is if you were safely back in your life, and I was back in mine, and neither of us had to think about what might have happened if that phone hadn't rung."
"Is that what you want?"
"What I want doesn't matter."
"It matters to me."
For a moment, he doesn't respond. Then, so quickly I have no time to anticipate it, his hand is cupping my face, his thumb tracing my bottom lip in a touch so gentle it makes my knees weak.
"What I want," he says, his voice rough with restraint, "is to forget every reason why this is a bad idea."
And then he's kissing me, his mouth claiming mine with a hunger that steals my breath and sends fire racing through my veins. I gasp against his lips, my hands flying to his shoulders to steady myself as the world tilts on its axis.
His kiss is everything I imagined and nothing like I expected. Confident but not demanding. Passionate but controlled. A question and an answer all at once.
I rise on my toes, pressing myself closer, my arms sliding around his neck as I return his kiss with all the confused, complicated, overwhelming feelings I've been fighting since the moment I saw him.
His hands span my waist, lifting me effortlessly until our faces are level, my feet dangling above the floor. The display of strength sends a thrill of desire straight to my core.
He breaks the kiss first, resting his forehead against mine, his breathing as ragged as my own.
"This changes nothing," he says, but the tremor in his voice betrays him. "You're still my client. I'm still your protector. This doesn't happen again."
"Liar," I whisper against his lips.
He sets me down gently, stepping back as if he can't trust himself to remain close. "Go to bed, Nova. Please."
The raw plea in his voice stops whatever argument I might have made. He's fighting battles I can't see, and weighing consequences I might not understand.
So I nod, accepting this temporary retreat, and move toward the stairs. At the bottom step, I pause and look back at him.
"For the record," I say softly, "that wasn't trauma response or emotional transference or whatever other psychological term you want to use to explain it away. That was real."
I don't wait for his response, continuing up the stairs to my room. But I feel his eyes on me the entire way, burning with the same confusion and want and need that's coursing through my own body.
One kiss. That's all it took to confirm what I've suspected since the moment I met him.
Finn McKenna is going to change my life.
I'm counting on it.