They'd just reached the sewer sublevel when Alec finally said something. They'd been accompanied until they reached the sublevel, and Alec had been grinding his teeth the whole time. Max knew she'd messed up, but she'd had no choice.

"Can you explain to me why you're always in such a rush to blame me? Not like I haven't thought about it, but Max, I'm not the type of guy to steal another guy's girl."

Max's jaws clenched. "I'm not some guy's girl!"

Alec rolled his eyes. "Oh, save it. I know. You're 'not like that.'"

"That's not what I meant, jackass! I'm not someone's property to be stolen."

"Yes you are. You're the property of the U.S. government."

Max considered hitting him. "You know what I meant. It's disgusting and insulting."

"Then why'd you say it was me?"

Max took a deep breath. She knew the answer. Alec was an endurance model – lean and muscular in all the right places, not to mention he was pretty easy on the eyes and could physically do more than Logan. And he had been hanging around her the whole year. She knew Alec was intimidating to Logan. And when Logan saw them together, everything fell into place. "I had to push him away," she finally answered.

Alec turned his stare back forward and kept walking, playing through the scenario in his mind. It made sense that Max would push Logan away with him, but only if there was something already there between them. If it was believable, it was because there was something between them.

He was so caught up in his thoughts, he almost missed her question.

"Wait a minute, you've thought about it?" she accused, on the verge of smiling.

"Of course. I'm a red-blooded American man," he started. "I'd have to be dead not to have thought about it."

Max was taken aback. As Alec continued forward, she asked, "Really?"

For a moment, Alec didn't answer. He stopped walking, turned to face her, and with a serious and honest expression, answered. "Yeah, really."

"Well how come you never said anything?"

Alec turned to start walking again, sighing in frustration that he had allowed the conversation to continue this long. "Because I'd rather not be castrated. Besides, I kinda did."

Max caught up to him, thinking back through the things he had said in the past.

"You were always distracted," he added.

"No I wasn't. I'd remember if you said anything. You haven't. You've never even looked at or talked to me the same way you do other women."

"That's because you're not some vapid, obvious automaton," he bit back at her audacity to presume she knew his style.

"Is that a compliment?"

"Besides, I did try that when we first met, but as usual, you were distracted, and it never would have worked anyway."

"So you're saying you are the kind of guy who'd steal another guy's girl."

"No. I'm only suggesting that given our history, now you'd know if I was coming on to you."

"By all the intense staring and sweet caresses you're known for?" she replied sarcastically.

Finally fed up, Alec stopped in his tracks, pushed her to the wall, and held her body there with his. "You'd know because I wouldn't love you from a distance, I'd love you up close with every piece of me. And it wouldn't be pansy-ass hand holding and eternal stares, it'd be the way we were built: hard and rough," he said through gritted teeth, pushing his body intimately against hers until she gasped, wide-eyed and with expanding pupils, before continuing, "breathless and with bared teeth and pounding hearts, and always riding that wicked line between misery and ecstasy."