Midnight Jewels

gave beneath his weight. "There's no need to talk. Not now."
    She read his intent and her tension flared into a strange anger. She rolled out from under his hand, rising to her knees on the far side of the bed. Her breath came quickly as she faced him.
    "Come here, Mercy. You know you want me. I can make you want me."
    "Who the hell do you think you are to walk into my bedroom like this and try to seduce me? I'm not a convenience for you, Croft." Her own voice was just as low as his, a soft hiss of feminine challenge. The battle was to be conducted in whispers, it seemed.
    "You know you don't want to fight me, honey. You want to feel what you felt the other night in my arms. You want to give yourself to me."
    "Is that right? What are you? The all-knowing, wise male who thinks he knows exactly what women really want? I've got a much harder question for you, Croft. What do
you
want?"
    "That's not a tough question. I want to be inside you. I want to feel you wrapped around me, shivering with your pleasure. I want to know exactly how much you need me."
    "I don't need you any more than you need me." She didn't know whether she had meant the words as a plea for reassurance or as a defiant challenge. They sounded like a challenge.
    "Come close and we'll find out how much we want each other." There was soft satisfaction in his voice.
    "I won't let you do it, you know. I refuse to go to bed with you while you're in this mood. You're nothing more than a cold-blooded male on the prowl tonight. You're only intent on proving to yourself and to me that you can control me in bed and I won't have it. You got away with the heavy-handed seduction routine that first night, Croft, but it won't happen again."
    "Heavy-handed?"
    "Well, you have to admit it was very deliberate. You seduced me as part of your—" She saw his eyes narrow. Belatedly she remembered the warning about watching her conversation in the bedroom. Mercy didn't believe for one minute that Gladstone was a crook or that there were secret microphones in the room, but she had given Croft her word that she would be careful. "It was a deliberate act of seduction. There was no love involved, was there?"
    "I wanted you very badly the other night. I want you even more tonight. If that seems like deliberate, heavy-handed seduction to you, then I can't argue. When it comes to emotional interpretations, everything's relative, especially for a woman. But I think you're being unfair to me and yourself to label our lovemaking that way. There are a hundred different avenues for desire. Most of them don't have names."
    "Don't bother using any of your fancy philosophical logic on me. Not on this particular subject. I don't think you're any kind of expert, and I won't let you trip me up with your crazy reasoning tonight. I have to draw the line somewhere. I won't let you manipulate me."
    "Easy, Mercy. Just relax and come here to me."
    She leaped off the bed, sensing a slight change in the way he was balancing himself. "Stay right where you are. Don't you dare use any of your… your tricks on me."
    His eyes gleamed in the shadows. The starlight that poured through the window provided just enough illumination to define the unyielding set of his jaw and the sleek contours of his shoulders. He had no trouble following her movements. Just as Mercy had known from the first, Croft was very much at home in the darkness.
    As she bounced to her feet, Croft slowly stood up on the other side. He started to circle the bed, coming toward her with smooth, pacing strides.
    "You're the one using tricks tonight, sweetheart. What game are you playing with me? I mink it was a mistake to let you sleep alone last night."
    She backed away from him. "I chose to sleep alone last night and I choose to sleep alone tonight."
    "In a few minutes you'll change your mind."
    "You talk about me playing games, but you're the one who plays them. That's exactly what you're doing with our relationship. You're toying with it the way a cat toys with a mouse, using it for your own advantage."
    He grinned briefly. "You're not much of a mouse, sweetheart."
    "I'm not joking, Croft."
    "Neither am I. So let's stop talking about our 'relationship' and start talking about us. You and me."
    He was very close now. Mercy risked a quick glance over her shoulder and found she was less than two feet from the wall. There was no more room to run. She looked back at Croft, tried to gage the distance as best she could, then dove wildly past