The Renegade

by Rhonda Nelson

  He quickly reattached the curtain as best he could, then bent and nuzzled the side of her neck. Her eyes closed, she smiled. “That feels nice.”

  “Brace yourself, baby, because what I’m about to do is going to feel even better.” He kicked her feet apart, then dropped to his knees and attached his mouth to her sex. She was velvety soft against his tongue and her womanly taste exploded over his palette.

  She groaned and her knees trembled, threatening to buckle.

  He smiled against her.

  He licked and laved, paying special attention to little nub of sensation at the top, then inserted a finger deep within her channel and began to stroke.

  She squirmed against him, reaching up and grabbing hold of the rod. But she was so short, he knew it was a stretch for her. “Put your leg up here,” he said, indicating the side of the tub.

  Amazingly, without argument, she did. “And you call me Bossy,” she said, her voice raw with longing.

  He tented his tongue over her clit and methodically stroked, coupling the rhythm of his finger with that of his mouth. He felt her contract around him and knew she was close.

  “Inside me,” she whispered brokenly. “I need you inside me. You don’t know— It’s been so long— I—”

  Tanner stood, filled his hands with her ripe breasts and pushed into her from behind.

  Hot, silky skin enclosed him and he locked down every muscle to keep from coming right then. Too late he realized his mistake and he swore hotly. “Mia, I didn’t bring a condom. I—”

  “You’d better have a clean bill of health, otherwise I’m going to unman you.” She clenched around him, betraying the threat with her own body’s response.

  “I do.”

  “So do I and I’m protected.”

  Profound relief swept through him and he rested his head between her shoulders, then pushed up into her again. Her body tightened around his, signaling a need that was deep-seated and old as time itself.

  It was the first time in years that he’d had unprotected sex—in fact, the last time had been with her in the library—and the sensation was almost more than he could bear. Sex in any case was good, but going bare into a woman, feeling skin on intimate skin…

  It was beyond amazing. Unequalled.

  And Mia felt so damned good. He pushed into her, pounded harder and harder, the water at his back, her at his front, her beautiful round rear end against him as he thrust repeatedly into her welcoming heat.

  She grunted and groaned, made all sorts of nonsensical little sounds that told him without words how much she was enjoying this, how much she loved the feel of having him inside of her.

  It turned him on more than anything else, this knowing that he was lighting her up, that she needed him as much as he needed her, that this unholy attraction wasn’t now nor ever had been one-sided.

  She suddenly clamped around him, her feminine muscles seizing, and she screamed his name.

  His name.

  He came again, even harder than before.

  Whether he’d marked her or she’d marked him, Tanner didn’t know. All he knew was that this was right.

  She was right.

  And that was all that ultimately mattered.

  MIA WASN’T QUITE SURE when she’d turned into such a wanton, but she had to admit she rather liked it. It was fun to say exactly what she thought, to do exactly what she’d been thinking about for years. Tanner was like her own personal sex toy and, though she knew a reckoning would come when they arrived in Dallas and parted ways, she’d decided that she was going to ride out the rest of this trip exactly as she wanted to.

  Selfish? Stupid? Foolhardy?

  Yes, to all of the above, but dammit, she was due. Or at least that was what she was going to tell herself. It sounded so much better than “desperate” and “deprived.”

  She just wanted him. And since he wanted her, too, she honestly wasn’t going to look too closely for the harm. They had, at best, another couple of days. And fore warned was forearmed, right? There was no expectation on her part this time because she knew he had no intention of sticking around.

  Strange how their lives kept intersecting at the wrong time. In college he’d had his gaze attached firmly to his career and, though she’d registered in his peripheral vision, she’d never been able to shift the focus enough to include her.

  This time around, he was in the process of putting his life back together, starting over in a new career, hounded by nightmares and an estranged relationship with his father. Now wasn’t their time, either, Mia knew, but damn how she wished it could be.

  The horrible truth was that Tanner Crawford had always owned a little part of her heart and she’d never gotten it back. The memory of him, of what he’d meant to her, had always hovered on the fringes, reminding her of what could have been. What truly loving someone was all about. Her gaze slid to him, where he sat next to her in the SUV.

  Other guys had come and gone, but only this one had touched her soul. Only this one had laid her bare, made her vulnerable.

  As though somehow managing to read her thoughts, Tanner squeezed her hand. “Do you have any idea how frustrating this is?”

  She blinked. “How frustrating what is?”

  “You’re being too quiet. I get nervous when you get quiet. It means you’re thinking.”

  He sounded so ominous she had to laugh. “And my thinking scares you?”

  His gaze slid back to the road. A big red barn with a John Deere logo painted on the roof loomed in the distance and cows dotted the landscape behind barbed-wire fences. “Depends on what you’re thinking about.”

  Ah. So that was what was driving him nuts. He wanted to be in her head. Too damned bad, Mia thought. Being in her heart was going to have to do. She was sharing her body with him, her time, everything else that she had.

  Her thoughts, though, were going to have to be her own.

  “I’m thinking that I’m hungry, if you must know,” she improvised. She shoved her knitting back into her bag and flexed her fingers.

  “You’re not sorry, then? No regrets?”

  Now this was a new side, a rather endearing one, actually. He was nervous. “Tanner, if I’d had any regrets, you would have woken up alone this morning, not with my ass squished up against your privates,” she remarked drolly. “Furthermore, the shower should have erased any lingering doubts as to whether or not I had any regrets.” She heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Much as it pains me to admit it, I find you sexually irresistible.”

  He looked pleased for about five seconds, then his smile slowly capsized. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you only want me for my body?” He grunted and drummed his thumb against the wheel. “I had no idea you’d grown so shallow.”

  She shrugged, playing along. “You’ve been gone a long time. There’s a lot you don’t know.”

  He sent her a glance. “That sounds extremely cryptic.”

  She winced dramatically. “Damn, I was aiming for mysterious.”

  She waited, knowing her silence would get to him.

  “Okay,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll bite. What do I not know?”

  “Are you sure this is a conversation you want to have?” she asked him, sending him a sidelong glance. “You’ve been a lot less forthcoming about what you’ve been doing the past ten years than I have, you know.”

  “Fair warning, eh?” he said, insightful as usual. “You’re going to want tit for tat?”

  Mia took a sip of her drink and popped a few peanuts into her mouth. “I don’t know that fair warning is exactly right, but I’d advise you not to ask me any questions you wouldn’t want asked in return. I haven’t pried, but if you’re going to, then so am I.”

  He paused, seeming to consider her for a moment. “I’ve appreciated that more than you know, Mia. Any other woman would have cross-examined me like a hostile witness by now and yet…you haven’t.”

  Touched, she swallowed. “Not because I haven’t been curious, I can as
sure you,” she told him. “But I figure there are very few things that we genuinely get to own in our lives and pain, at the very least, should be one of them.” She meant it. Grief was personal, much more so than sex or love or anything else, in her opinion.

  Something in his gaze shifted, softened. “You know, that’s one of the things I always loved about you. You’re intuitive. You get me.” A little sigh slipped past his lips. “You always did.”

  Something like regret colored his tone, giving her the first glimpse into how he’d truly felt about her. Her heart lightened, making her feel less foolish. Maybe it hadn’t been as easy for him to leave her as she’d thought, Mia decided.

  “Okay,” he said. “Your warning is dully noted. Now…have you ever married?”

  She chuckled, relieved. “That’s the burning question? That’s what’s been bugging you?”

  “Yes. I seem to remember that it used to be pretty important to you.”

  She couldn’t tell him the truth, that no one else had ever measured up. That it had taken years for her to even consider another long-term relationship, much less marriage. And it had been important to her. She’d wanted the whole thing, the burning romance, the passion, someone to trust, to love. She’d wanted a family. It had been hard for Mia to watch her mother do it all alone. And, though her mother had never complained, it had to have been even harder for her. Funny the things you appreciate more as an adult than you ever did as a teenager. Her father, the only man she’d ever really had in her life had been a loser. Was it so terrible to want a good one? An honorable one? Was she wrong to want a real family?

  But to answer his question… “No, I haven’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Priorities shift,” she murmured evasively. “I fell in love with history, with my job. It hasn’t left much room for anything else.” You ruined me for anyone else. I stopped waiting for lightning to strike twice.

  “What about superlover Harlan?” he asked, his lip curling with distaste. “You never wanted the white picket fence and minivan with him?”

  Mia smothered a snicker. That jab about Harlan and his so-called sexual prowess had definitely hit the mark.

  Superlover Harlan? She cleared her throat to cover a laugh. “No,” she said. “I told you that we could never quite make the happily-ever-after idea gel.”

  He stared straight ahead. “So you don’t want it any more? Is that what you’re saying?”

  She couldn’t imagine why he was so interested. If memory served, that had never been his dream, even when it had been hers. He’d wanted to be a Ranger, to follow in his grandfather and father’s footsteps. Even football hadn’t mattered as much as chasing the military dream, one that, from the looks of things, had recently quite literally turned into a nightmare.

  “It’s grown a bit dusty,” she admitted truthfully. “But I suppose if the right person ever came along, I’d be willing to pull it down off the shelf and polish it up a bit.” In all honesty, the only “right person” had ever been him and considering how unlikely his sticking around was, she didn’t see the point in even allowing herself to entertain the idea. It was too…difficult. It made her want to look at what-might-have-been and examine the if-only’s.

  Water under a bridge that had burned.

  “What about you?” she asked, turning the question around on him. She stared at the wildflowers growing alongside the road. Black-eyed Susan’s and Queen Anne’s lace, the occasional poppy. “Did you ever marry?”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Nah, never even came close. The job wasn’t conducive to dating, much less building any kind of a permanent relationship.”

  “Was it worth it?” she asked, hoping he didn’t detest the hint of bitterness that leaked into her voice.

  Tanner turned to look at her, his gaze inscrutable and a weary smile formed on his mouth. “Ultimately…no.”

  And with that shockingly glib comment, he pulled off the highway into the parking lot of a series of buildings—an old gas station, a seed and feed store, a small antiques shop and a little barbecue joint that promised a sauce “hot enough to melt the wax outta your ears.”

  Which was good, considering hers were still ringing from his honesty, a truth she’d never expected.

  Tanner Crawford had many regrets and, from the sounds of things, she was one of them.

  Breaking news: Hell had frozen over.

  Funny then that her heart had thawed.

  11

  “DO YOU MIND IF WE go into the antiques shop before we eat?” she asked as she climbed out of the car.

  The bag holding Moe securely over his arm, Tanner looked down at her, watching her stretch. It was nice. “I thought you said you were starving.”

  “I said I was hungry, but—” she nodded toward the old building “—that looks promising.”

  He shot a skeptical glance in the direction she indicated. A bottomless chair and an old wringer washer sat outside, along with a clump of ancient school desks and various gardening tools. A rusty sign over the door said Bubba’s Antique Mall, Pawnshop and Taxidermy.

  Promising was not the description he would have used to describe it, but he’d indulge her. “Come on,” he said, slinging an arm over her shoulder. “To the junk store we go.”

  Despite not traveling via the interstate, they were still making excellent progress. He suspected the GPS had bought them the time they’d needed to go off radar. Ackerman and Ramirez knew their ultimate destination, of course, but he’d already been thinking about extra precautions he would take going into Dallas.

  She tsked under her breath, but smiled all the same and that grin did something funny to his chest. Made it feel lighter and fuller than it had in years. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” she admonished.

  “Haven’t you ever heard that before?”

  He grunted as he opened the door, the scent of old stuff and pipe tobacco wafting to him on a hot breeze.

  “One man’s trash is another fool’s garbage,” Tanner told her, his gaze immediately drawn to the stuffed armadillo on the long counter. Ghastly.

  “Shut up,” she said, laughing softly. “This is my kind of store. More than half the stuff in my house has come from places like this. You never know what you’re going to find.”

  “Don’t tell me you have a stuffed armadillo in your house.”

  She shushed him, immediately drawn to an assortment of old dishes. “Of course, not. Just let me look for a few minutes,” she said. “I’ll hurry.”

  Tanner picked up a pair of salt and pepper shakers in the shape of pigs and shook his head. “Take your time,” he told her.

  She nodded, too distracted with a dark blue iced-tea pitcher to heed him. His cell phone suddenly vibrated at his waist, snagging his attention. “Crawford,” he answered.

  “It’s Payne. I’ve sent the information you requested regarding Mia’s father to you via e-mail.”

  “Good,” Tanner said. “I appreciate it. Anything interesting turn up? Any connection to Ramirez?”

  “Not directly, no,” Payne told him. “But his last address was in New Orleans—”

  “Ramirez’s home turf,” Tanner interjected.

  “—and he’d clocked six months in a parish jail for narcotics possession.”

  “Dealing, you think?”

  “Possibly,” Payne said. “He’s got a record a mile long. Mostly petty theft, but there’s a couple of drug charges, assault and battery and cruelty to animals. Dog fighting. He’s a nasty bit of work and he’s been in Mia’s area. He picked up a speeding ticket outside Alexandria two weeks ago. Has she mentioned seeing him?”

  “No, not in D.C., anyway. She thought she saw him yesterday, though, which is why I asked for the background check. Did you happen to get a list of visitors from the jail?”

  “It’s in the file. He’s quite the ladies’ man. He had several women coming to see him, bringing him books and cigarettes. None of the names rung a bell, but you might have bett
er luck. I managed to pull driver’s license photos on most of them.”

  “Thanks, Payne.”

  “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  Tanner told him he would, then disconnected before his employer could ask him any other questions. Though Payne hadn’t said a word, Tanner could hear the distant curiosity in his voice. Or maybe that was just his own guilty conscience. At any rate, he looked forward to accessing that file. They’d need to stop at a coffee shop with Internet access soon so that he could take a look. He hated that Mia’s father had become a suspect of sorts, but at this point, no one was above suspicion.

  He wandered over to where Mia stood, poring over a jewelry case, a small photo in her hand.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Just looking,” she murmured.

  “For something specific?”

  “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

  “I know you’re crazy,” he told her. “It’s part of your charm. What are you looking for?”

  Mia sighed and handed him the photo. It had been enlarged to show a woman’s hand, a ring on her fourth finger. “This,” she said. “I always look, keep hoping I’ll get lucky.”

  Tanner inspected the ring. It was quite different. A big opal surrounded by diamonds and rubies. “This was your mother’s?”

  “Yes,” she said, releasing a sigh as she straightened away. “It had belonged to her grandmother. My dad pawned it…and I’ve never stopped looking. Crazy, huh? I know the odds of me ever finding that ring are practically nonexistent, but I can’t not look. I always look.”

  Another reason to pummel her father, Tanner thought. He swallowed back his anger, hoping to keep his voice passably even. “That’s not crazy, Mia. That’s admirable.”

  Her gaze softened and she smiled up at him. “Thank you,” she said. “Do you know, I think that’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me?”

  He slid a finger down her cheek, reveling in the softness. “Then people need to try harder. Did you find anything you want?”

  Something shifted behind her gaze—anguish, maybe?—but vanished before he could properly identify it.