Jill Shalvis: Her Perfect Stranger

Definitely, morning. And with it, responsibilities.

Damn.

She lay in the embrace of her perfect stranger. They were both deliciously, gloriously naked, pressed skin to skin, heat to heat. For an indulgent moment she just looked at him as he slept on, at all his masculine beauty, wondering at the hard, leanly muscled body that had brought her to paradise and back so many times in the night.

His eyes were closed, his face relaxed, his chest rising and falling evenly. His firm mouth brought back memories of what he could do with it, and made her body tingle all over. His lashes were dark, long and thick, resting against his strong cheekbone. His jaw had darkened with stubble, the same stubble that had rasped so satisfyingly over her skin all night long.

He was curled around her, one arm gallantly being used as her pillow, the other tightly anchoring her to him. His fingers cradled her breast possessively. From this angle, she couldn't see much below his waist, but she could feel him pressed to her, every delicious, rock-hard inch of him. She sighed with pleasure. He was amazingly tough, strong, hard in all the right places, and so beautiful it almost hurt.

Just looking at him made her heart contract. He was someone she could have allowed herself to care for, if she ever allowed such things. But she couldn't, at least not now, not with her all-consuming mission coming up. Some other time, perhaps…

Though she knew that was a lie. She'd always told herself that someday she'd allow Prince Charming into her life, but the tuning was never right.

But damn it, when? When would it be right?

Her heart constricted again, but she ignored it. In her not-so-humble opinion, she had it all, the way her life was right at this moment. She had great parents who supported her incredibly busy lifestyle, and she had the best job in the world.

True, she didn't have her own family, not a husband or children, but she didn't have time for that. She did have needs, like any other normal, red-blooded woman, but those needs were easily met. When she felt the occasional itch, she went out and got it scratched. Carefully, of course, but she wasn't shy.

Just like last night.

And now she would go on with her life. Content. Happy. Fulfilled.

Just as she wanted to.

So why, then, didn't she extract herself? Why did she lie there panting after a man who should have been out of her system by dawn's first light? She couldn't say for certain, but reflecting on the matter would have to come another time.

She had to go.

Slipping out from beneath his arm wasn't easy, but she was a master at stealth. Still, she couldn't help thinking If he wakes up now, it's fate. No way could she look into those warm, inviting eyes and walk away. Especially if he flashed that equally warm, inviting smile and reached for her, which she imagined him doing, then imagined her own open-armed response…

He didn't budge.

Tempting fate, she leaned in close, softly kissed his cheek.

I'll never forget you.

For a moment she stood by the bed, yearning and longing for something she couldn't put a name to. But even if she could, it was no use.

She was simply no good at matters of the heart. Dressing quickly and quietly, she hesitated one last time at the door.

Then, picking up her bag, she finally left, knowing she had no choice. No choice at all.

As always, Mike slept like the dead and awoke by degrees. It was a great fault of his, being so slow to shake sleep. Over the years he'd gotten both ribbed about it and in real trouble, not the least of which was the time he'd slept through his first "SIM"-space shuttle simulation pilot test. He'd been in Russia, and had just battled a week-long flu, which he'd kept silent about so as not to have to give up the chance. The test had been agonizingly long, and his "landing" required a predawn wakeup. Thanks to his cold medications, he hadn't made it, and as a result, the autopilot had kicked in for the simulated event, "demolishing" the entire landing strip and center, "killing" over one hundred people.

That particular mishap had caused him years of jokes at his expense, not to mention requiring some serious kissing up. He'd practically had to beg to be kept in the program.

And now, when he finally managed to crack his eyes open, and saw the bright sunlight pouring in through the hotel window, he knew before reaching out that he was alone.

Still he stretched, touching her side of the pillow they'd shared when they hadn't been rolling, tangled and heated and breathless, across the sheets.

It was cold.

She'd been gone for a while then, and he had no one to blame but himself for the odd mixture of real regret and not so real relief.

As he rose and showered, Mike reminded himself that he had no time in his life for any serious entanglements. Having to fill in for this mission as pilot, when the mission had been in the planning stages for so long, meant he had months of catching up to do. He knew better than to think it would be a piece of cake. It was going to take every single second of every single day until launch to pull this off.

First, he had to get through the initial process of inserting himself into an already established team. They were in Huntsville to immerse themselves in this critical project. In a week, they'd move on to Houston, where they would stay until launch time, with occasional trips back and forth to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

He was looking at a whirlwind of activity.

Which meant this was not the time to be considering a personal attachment. That was actually a good thing, as he'd never wanted a personal attachment.

But last night, what he'd shared with that woman…now that could have been the first time he might have actually paused and considered anything close to a relationship.

But she was gone, and he had to work, so it was over.

Which didn't explain why after his shower he stood staring down at the rumpled bed, yearning and burning for something just out of his reach.

He dressed and ate as if it was just any other morning, and everything was normal. Same old, same old.

But it wasn't. He wasn't.

He knew he had last night to thank for that. He'd known from the moment she'd set foot in that bar, soaking wet, head high and eyes bright, that she was going to shake things up.

She'd done that and more; she'd shaken him to the core. He tried not to think about that, and also about what he could have felt for her, under different circumstances.

How could that happen, he wondered, after only a little conversation and some good sex?

Okay, great sex.

Regardless, it wasn't like him to be mooning on the morning after. He'd always been the one running. But she'd left him, without a word or note, and he would have sworn that's exactly what he wanted.

So why was he entertaining other thoughts, about things like relationships and family and white picket fences? He had missions to fly and hopefully someday command. A wife and kids sounded nice, but for far, far, far down the road. Not now.

At 0900 hours on the dot, he entered the Marshall Flight Center. He expected to leap right into work, expected to be whisked into the whole rush of it immediately.

He didn't expect a conference room filled with smiling people and good food-usually an oxymoron when it came to government-provided meals.

Though he'd spent very little time in the United States since his Air Force days, many of the people milling around were familiar to him. The space industry was like that-very incestuous. Even during the Cold War, when politicians from one country wouldn't speak to, or even recognize, politicians from another, science had managed to remain universal. As countries, Russia and the United States might have ignored each other for years, but their scientists hadn't. They'd been sharing the designing and planning of expeditions and experiments since the very beginning, and nothing had changed since.