Her Perfect Stranger

In fact, he downright hated that aloofness, and decided to destroy it. He waited until they were in the air and Corrine was fully relaxed, lost in her own little world. Perfect. She was reading an aviation magazine, deeply engrossed, when he reached over and put his hand on her thigh.

She nearly leaped out of her skin.

Oh yeah, he thought, wisely keeping his grin to himself, his good humor restored. He'd gone at this thing all wrong. Letting her build up her defenses wasn't the answer; driving her crazy was, and apparently he could do that with just a touch.

'Could you hand me a tissue?' he asked, gesturing toward the small box next to her right hip. Before he removed his hand from her thigh, he stroked her, just once.

She fumbled and dropped the tissue, then jerked when she finally handed it to him and their fingers touched.

He smiled, and her gaze went to his mouth.

Bingo, he thought, pleased with himself. Very pleased. For the rest of the flight he touched her whenever possible, when no one else would see. He even managed to suck on her earlobe for one delicious second.

She nearly leaped out of her skin then, too, but she didn't say a word. Just glared at him while the flush on her cheeks and her shallow breathing gave her away.

He expected great satisfaction to course through him, as he'd indeed shattered her aloofness, but since she was clearly furious at him for doing so, it was somehow a hollow victory.

In Houston, things were different. Everyone on the team but Mike lived there, so they had their own home to go to every night. NASA had booked a hotel suite for Mike, so there were no more clandestine, late-night bathroom 'meetings' in the barracks.

Corrine missed them.

A week into their training at Johnson Space Center, she knew she had a problem. It wasn't the team; they were working well together. More than well, mostly because now that she knew they thought of her as the Ice Queen, she used it to her advantage. She wasn't there to make friends, she told herself, but to lead a team.

Once again, the problem was Mike.

He was driving her crazy. Yes, he'd kept their secret; he hadn't told a soul about their wild night of passion. But he was no longer ignoring her. Well, that wasn't true. To anyone else, anyone who didn't know of their past, Mike and Corrine were working together. Period. They'd see nothing but a professional link as the two of them continued trying to make their mission a success.

Their chemical attraction remained secret because somehow Mike managed to keep his expression perfectly even, his every thought hidden behind his cool, assessing eyes. And still he strove to drive her insane with hidden touches. Often. All the time, as a matter of fact. Just a finger over her skin. A whisper of a wicked smile. A brush of his thigh to the back of hers. A million different things, each designed to drive her right out of her living mind with lust.

She couldn't take it anymore. You didn't have to be a genius to know he was trying to make a point, but she was already hot and aroused every single second of every single day, so she couldn't figure out what that point was supposed to be.

After one particularly long, hot, frustrating day, after spending hours and hours attempting to coax one of the robotic arms to do as it was told, Corrine snapped. She and Mike had been side by side for hours at a time. All that time she'd been breathing his scent, feeling his own frustration mount.

He was currently on his stomach, stretched out on the platform, toying with the apparatus they were trying to operate, trying being the operative word. Jimmy and Frank were below him; Stephen was in the control room watching the computer images. All of them were deep in concentration. Only Mike drew her gaze.

His dark hair was ruffled, from fingers plowing through it, no doubt. His sleeves had been shoved up long ago, revealing tough, sinewy forearms, tense with strain. Every muscle in his sleek back was delineated and outlined by his damp shirt. That back alone stole her breath, then she allowed her eyes to drop lower.

It shocked her how easily he pulled her out of work mode. This had to stop or she was simply going to go up in smoke.

At the end of the day, she calmly-or so she told herself-followed him out into the hall. 'I can't do this,' she said to his retreating back, making him stop. 'I'm so on edge I can't stand myself, Mike. We have to…'

She steeled herself to look cool and composed, but he whipped around and grabbed her hand, opened another door, to a storage closet, then pulled her into the dark space.

'Mike-'

His name was pretty much all she got out before he hauled her up against him and kissed her, hard. It took her exactly one instant to wrap herself around him like a second skin and kiss him back, just as hard.

Something happened in that desperate moment. It became so much more than a kiss, and far more necessary than breathing. Closing her eyes to the dark around them, to the fact that this was really, really stupid, Corrine concentrated only on Mike, on his rough groan as he felt her with his hands, at the taste of him, at the contact of his big, hard body against hers. After a long heated moment, during which their hands fought with clothing to get as close as possible, she came up for air. 'Mike.'

He pressed his forehead to hers, his breathing ragged. 'I know.' He thrust his hips to hers, his frustration evident in the size of his erection.

'Mike…'

'Please, Corrine, don't turn back into the commander. Not yet. You just sounded so…turned on. I had to touch you.'

Touch her he had. Her body was still thrumming with a burning desire, on the very edge, but she pulled back. He sighed and dropped his hands.

'You go first,' he said, sounding strapped for air. 'I'll stagger out when I can walk. It should only take about an hour.'

She smoothed her clothing, imagining how she must look, all rosy and swollen-lipped. 'We have to stop. You have to stop.'

'Stop what, exactly?'

'Stop…touching me. You know, brushing up against me by accident.'

'We happen to work within very close confines.'

'Yeah, well, it doesn't have to be that close. And stop looking at me,' she added, ignoring his startled laugh. 'I mean it. You look at me and I can't think, Mike.'

'Stop touching you, stop looking at you. Is it okay if I still breathe?'

Now she'd hurt his feelings again. 'I'm sorry.'

'Just go, Corrine.'

With as much dignity as she could, she went, horrified by her yearning to dive back into the closet and attack him like a hormonal teenager. And horrified that anyone, anyone at all, could have innocently opened the storage closet and found them, locked in their ridiculous, uncontrollable passion.

8

Passion was one great big mystery to Corrine.

She'd felt it to some degree over the years of her adult life, but only in a limited way. Such an irrational emotion required letting go of the reins of control. While she could loosen her grip on those reins, she'd never entirely let go.

As a result, when it came to matters of the heart, she'd always been able to take it or leave it.

This time, however, there was no taking it or leaving it. It had taken her, and it had the clamp of a bulldog's jaws.

But she hadn't been born stubborn for nothing. She was tenacious, too, and if she wanted to walk away from what she felt for Mike, well then, she'd walk away. She was in control.