The Phoenix Encounter Read Online Free PDF

standing there in a thick cotton sweater and faded blue jeans staring at him as if he were the one who’d come back from the dead instead of her.
    A thousand words tangled inside Robert, but he choked on every one of them as if they were shards of glass. Emotions snapped through him like thunderbolts, shocking his body with their awesome power. He stared at the woman standing in the doorway, aware of his heart raging in his chest, the dull roar of blood rushing through his veins.
    He couldn’t believe Lily was alive. But it was her; he knew it as surely as he saw the flash of recognition in her hazel eyes. There was no other woman like her. No other who could affect him like this. He would know her anywhere and under any circumstance. He would know her in the dark, just by the feel of her, the scent of her. The energy surrounding her.
    Robert stared, speechless and shocked to his bones. Her hair was longer, but still as radiant as burnished copper. She had the same flawless skin, as fragile as fine German porcelain. Only now there was a tiny scar that ran from her left eyebrow to the hairline at her temple.
    â€œLily,” he whispered after an infinite moment.
    â€œRobert. My God. I didn’t…” She blinked, as if trying to wake herself from a dream. “How did you…”
    Neither of them seemed capable of completing a sentence. Slowly, he once again became aware of his surroundings. The ping of rain against the tin roof. The crackle ofa fire in the hearth. The smell of bread and wood smoke and woman. His leg ached dully, the way it always did when he overexerted himself, but he barely noticed the pain. And for the first time since receiving the injury, he was glad for the distraction.
    â€œC-come in,” she said.
    When he only continued to stare at her, she stepped back. “You’re getting wet.”
    â€œI’m already wet.” But Robert knew the weather no longer rated on his list of concerns.
    His heart raced with his pulse as he stepped into the cottage. Warmth and a startling sense of comfort he didn’t quite trust embraced him. He looked around, seeing immediately that whomever lived here had somehow managed to turn a ramshackle hovel into a home.
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” she asked.
    Robert watched as she crossed to the fire and tossed another log into the flames. Before he even realized he was watching her, his eyes swept over her, taking in every detail. She’d lost weight, but the curves he’d once known intimately still defined her shape. Even through the thick cotton sweater she wore, he could see the outline of her full breasts. Her jeans were snug enough so that he could see the gentle roundness of her hips. And in those fleeting seconds her beauty made him remember all the things he’d tried so desperately to forget in the twenty-one months since he’d last seen her.
    Robert cut the thought short with practiced precision. He wasn’t exactly sure what was going on but knew he couldn’t dwell on it. He couldn’t let himself think of her in those terms. Not when he’d worked so hard to get her out of his system.
    â€œI could ask you the same question,” he said.
    â€œI—I live here.” She glanced at him over her shoulderas she walked into a small kitchen area. “Were you looking for me?”
    â€œNo,” he said quickly and held his ground at the door. “I was supposed to meet someone here.”
    He watched her pour Rebelian black tea into two mismatched cups. She looked cool on the outside, maybe even a little tough, but her hands were shaking, and for the first time he realized she was merely hiding her shock better than he was.
    She carried both cups to the wooden chairs in front of the hearth. “Your contact?”
    That she knew about his contact shocked him all over again. Lily didn’t know he was an ARIES operative. No one did, aside from his counterparts and other ARIES