Always Look Twice

by Dawson, Geralyn

  He’d just stepped from the water and reached for his T-shirt to dry off when Annabelle came marching into camp. She stopped abruptly. ‘‘Oh, you dirty dog.’’

  ‘‘Huh?’’

  ‘‘This is not a hotel, Callahan.’’

  He gawked at her, then glanced around. What was she talking about? ‘‘No, it’s not a hotel.’’

  ‘‘We are not married!’’

  Oh. He pursed his lips. Now he understood. She was thinking about sex. Thinking about sex and looking a little wild. ‘‘No, we’re not.’’

  ‘‘Okay, then.’’ Her gaze raked him up and down. She closed her eyes, grimaced, and whirled around. ‘‘Okay.’’

  Mark’s lips quirked in a slight grin. Well . . . well . . . well. Heat surged into places diminished by the mountain stream’s icy chill and as his body stirred to life, he glanced down, halfway expecting to see steam rising off his pecker. But no, just the Seven-Star General stiffening to attention.

  ‘‘Put your pants on, Callahan.’’

  ‘‘Hey, you’re the one who came busting into camp before I was finished with my bath.’’ Unlike Annabelle, he hadn’t packed an entire change of clothes for the trek down the mountain. He did, however, have a pair of gym shorts, which he’d figured to sleep in, since he avoided the confinement of denim while he slept if possible. While he tugged them on, he considered how he wanted to play this.

  If he put his mind to it, he could probably seduce her, though it wasn’t guaranteed. Annabelle was a strong-minded woman, not the type to be swept away by her hormones.

  Well, except for that night in Las Vegas. And the one in Paris. Melbourne. That afternoon in Madrid. Holy crap. The beach in New Zealand.

  Come to think of it, the woman had no control whatsoever.

  It wasn’t unheard of to have sex with your ex. In fact, he was pretty sure he’d seen the topic touted on a magazine cover. Maybe even a book cover. Surely they had a segment on Lifetime TV about it.

  His gaze drifted over her. She’d changed into sweatpants and that basketball jersey and piled her hair on top of her head. Damp tendrils escaped the rubber band and danced in enticing curls at her neck.

  Need grabbed at him with sharp, tearing claws. When she glanced at him over her shoulder, heat flared as if a half dozen logs had been tossed upon the fire. ‘‘Belle . . .’’

  It was there, hovering between them—the chemistry, the past, the knowledge of the pleasure each could give to the other.

  ‘‘Honey . . .’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  For a one-syllable word, it sure came out shaky. Uncertain. It wouldn’t take much to change it to a yes.

  He took a step toward her. ‘‘I’m working on a long dry spell here, Annabelle. The last time I had sex was with you in New York.’’

  That gorgeous mouth of hers gaped. ‘‘You are kidding.’’

  ‘‘Nope. You’re a hard act to follow.’’ He took another step toward her. ‘‘You pretty much spoiled other women for me.’’

  She moved back. ‘‘You are so full of it, Callahan.’’

  ‘‘No. Not about this. Never about this. After we split, I went looking a time or two, but my heart wasn’t in it.’’

  Emotion flashed in her eyes, a flicker of hope that, once recognized, she quickly doused. She lifted her chin and scoffed. ‘‘That never stopped you before.’’

  He clicked his tongue. ‘‘Now, Annabelle. You wound me.’’

  ‘‘As if.’’

  ‘‘So, tell me.’’ He ran his tongue around the moist inside of his mouth. ‘‘Has it been different for you? Have you found what we had with someone else? Do your other men make you sizzle and shake and scream?’’

  ‘‘I’m not going to tell you anything.’’

  ‘‘It makes me crazy thinking about you with other men, you know.’’

  She opened her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand palm out. ‘‘I know, I know. I have no right. I gave up my rights where you are concerned. That doesn’t mean I don’t miss how right it was between us.’’

  She laughed bitterly. ‘‘How right it was?’’

  ‘‘It was perfect, Belle.’’

  ‘‘It was physical attraction and sexual tension. That’s all.’’

  ‘‘You’re wrong.’’

  ‘‘Am I? I don’t think so. We could have had more, but you wouldn’t let that happen.’’

  ‘‘For me it was more,’’ he said, his tone soft and sincere.

  Annabelle closed her eyes. ‘‘Don’t do this.’’

  ‘‘Do what? Tell you the truth?’’ His mouth twisted in a wry smile and he deliberately pushed one of the buttons he knew so well. ‘‘Grovel at your feet?’’

  ‘‘Seduce me. You’re trying to seduce me.’’

  ‘‘Is it working?’’

  She closed her eyes. Closed him out. ‘‘I’m tired. It has been a very long day. I’m going to sleep now. Alone.’’

  He was close enough to smell the soap she’d used— something coconut. One more step, and he could touch her. If he touched her, he could have her. He knew it and he wanted it. He wanted her. Desperately.

  But dammit, she had said no. A weak no, but no nonetheless. ‘‘Are you sure?’’

  The moment’s hesitation gave him hope, but finally, she nodded. ‘‘I’m sure.’’

  Crap.

  She walked over to the two-man tent, bent, and began to pull her sleeping bag from inside. ‘‘Don’t do that, Annabelle. Rain is headed this way. There’s no need for you to sleep outside. I won’t touch you. You’re safe with me.’’

  When she shot him a doubtful look, he twisted his mouth in a rueful grin. ‘‘Like you said, this isn’t a hotel.’’

  When she still hesitated, he added, ‘‘I give you my word.’’

  She let that hang in the air for a moment, then said, ‘‘Thank you.’’

  She climbed inside the tent and closed the flap.

  Mark let out a long sigh, then turned away and began to tend their camp. As time passed, he kept an eye on the sky. Rain might miss them after all. He sat beside the fire, stirring it with a stick and adding more wood when the flames began to die.

  Fatigue dragged at his bones and he counted it as a blessing. It was hard to maintain a raging hard-on when he was dog-ass tired.

  Clouds rolled in as dusk deepened into night, and as intermittent raindrops began to spatter onto the fire, Annabelle’s voice came from within the confines of the tent. ‘‘Have you honestly not had sex since our divorce?’’

  He straightened. ‘‘No.’’

  A minute passed, then two. Just when he decided that she’d said all she intended to say, she spoke again. ‘‘Me, either.’’

  Those two little words all but knocked the air from his lungs.

  The flap on the tent whisked back and Annabelle crawled from inside, then rose to her feet. Mark would have stood, too, but he seemed to have lost the ability to move . . . to swallow . . . to breathe.

  Because she grabbed the hem of her blue and white jersey and whisked it over her head.

  ‘‘Don’t take this wrong, Callahan. We’re just two healthy, unattached adults with normal human drives.’’ She shimmied out of her pants. Now she stood before him wearing only a hot pink thong. ‘‘This is nothing personal.’’

  Bullshit, he thought as his gaze burned over her. It was personal. Very personal. The epitome of personal. That she would attempt to claim otherwise totally pissed him off.

  ‘‘We’ve had a difficult few days,’’ she continued, ‘‘and we’re likely to have a few more. We’re stressed.’’

  Stressed? This wasn’t stressed. This was chemistry. The chemistry that had propelled them first into a wedding chapel in Vegas, and then into hotel rooms all over the world. It was chemistry that he’d never found with another woman and that, apparently, she’d never found with another man.

  ‘‘It is like the guys on the team always used to say. Sex is the best stress reliever around.
If we do this, we’ll be able to sleep. We need to sleep to concentrate. We need to concentrate so we can put a stop to any more murders.’’

  ‘‘Sex to solve a murder?’’ Mark laughed. ‘‘Hell, babe, the police academies will be overrun.’’

  Her eyes looked a little wild. ‘‘As long as we’re up-front and honest about it, I don’t see what a little casual sex will hurt.’’

  Casual sex. Mark’s jaw hardened and in two steps he stood before her. ‘‘Annabelle?’’ He reached for her uninjured arm and dragged her against him. ‘‘Shut up.’’

  Then he crushed his hungry mouth to hers.

  He devoured her with lips that ravaged, with a tongue that plunged and plundered and took. It was a kiss fueled by more than two years of anger and frustration. Two-plus years of loneliness and guilt. And she responded, by God. She shuddered. She moaned. She whimpered. Nothing personal, my ass.

  His teeth nipped into her at the base of her throat, a little savage, a tiny bit mean. ‘‘Casual sex,’’ he growled. He jerked his head back. His gaze burned down into hers. ‘‘Fuck that. Nothing about us has ever been casual.’’

  He noted a flicker of apprehension before bravado filled her eyes and she lifted her chin. ‘‘This will be.’’

  It was waving a red flag in front of a bull. ‘‘You think so? You think you get to call all the shots? Well, think again, darlin’. You came to me. You asked for this. This time . . . tonight . . . we’re doing this my way.’’

  He picked her up and backed her against the rock wall, then held her there with his body as he punctuated his declaration with another blistering kiss. The blood boiled in his veins, fueled by anger and by passion and by regret.

  I’ll show you personal.

  He allowed her feet to slide to the ground; then he grabbed both her wrists, eased her injured arm above her head, yanked the healthy one up. She gasped and struggled against him a bit as he secured both wrists with one large hand. Her doe eyes glittered in the firelight. In their depths, he saw excitement, arousal, and a bit of apprehension.

  His hand slipped beneath the minimal barrier of her panties and tested the soft flesh between her legs. Oh, yeah. She was wet for him. Ready. He could take her now—fast and hard and hot—and release the tormenting pressure.

  That’s what she wanted. Relief. Mindless, physical release.

  Right at the moment, it sounded pretty damn good to him, too, but he ruthlessly resisted even as she arched and rubbed herself against his hand. Speed wouldn’t do. Speed might be what Annabelle preferred, but not Mark. He wanted more.

  He wanted everything. And he wanted it to last all night long.

  Who knows if I’ll ever get the chance to have her again?

  He yanked his hand from between her legs and she let out a little whimper of loss. ‘‘My way,’’ he murmured, locking gazes with her. ‘‘We’re gonna do this my way.’’

  Surprise flickered in her eyes. ‘‘Mark, I don’t—’’

  ‘‘First, I’m going to eat you up.’’ He brought his fingers up to his mouth and slowly, thoroughly, licked away her delicious honey. ‘‘Mmm . . .’’

  She drew in a ragged gasp and closed her eyes. It was, he knew, surrender.

  He skimmed the backs of his fingers down her cheek and across her neck, then filled his palm with the soft, heavy heat of her breast and rubbed his calloused thumb over its turgid nipple. She visibly trembled. He nipped her chin, then moved lower, replacing his thumb with his teeth, raking them across her hard tip, before sucking her into his mouth.

  She whimpered, thrashed, and tried to pull her hands from his grip, but he held her tight. While his mouth worked first one breast and then the other, his mind went spinning into madness. Belle, Belle, Belle.

  His blood burned. His heart pounded. His cock was hard as steel.

  ‘‘Please, Mark,’’ Annabelle groaned, her hips canting forward. ‘‘Please.’’

  He released her breast, captured her mouth, and thrust his hand between her legs, his two middle fingers into her hot, slick sheath.

  ‘‘Is that what you wanted, Annabelle?’’ he asked as he stroked her, worked her.

  ‘‘Yes . . . no . . . ah . . .’’

  Her thighs clamped around his hand and she ground herself against him. Her head was flung back and her eyes closed. A moan escaped her throat.

  The familiarity of it shuddered through him. God, how he’d missed this. How had he survived without it? How in hell would he live the rest of his life without it? Without her? Not personal, she says. Casual . . . something she wants to forget?

  Like hell. He was raw inside at the idea of this being anything less than incredible for her.

  ‘‘Is this casual enough for you?’’ He reached higher inside her. Let his fingers dance. Ground his palm against her clitoris. ‘‘Just sex. Nothing personal?’’

  She murmured incoherently.

  ‘‘How about this?’’ He removed his fingers from inside her, and sank to his knees. With one hand on her ass, he grabbed her thong’s thin line of elastic and ripped it away.

  Then he leaned in and licked her. And licked her again. And again and again and again. She put her hand on his head and made a halfhearted effort to push him away. But when he slipped his hands palms out between her legs and pushed her thighs apart, allowing him better access, her fingers threaded into his hair and held on.

  He buried his mouth in her damp sex and probed with his tongue, rasped with his teeth, and sucked that hard little nub that made her shudder and shake and share her soft, liquid heat.

  God, she was sweet.

  Casual, my ass.

  Lord, I’m gonna die, Annabelle thought as the climax slammed into her, a hurricane’s wind that sent her reeling,flying, soaring. It must have knocked her off her feet, because she found herself lying on her back, writhing. He wouldn’t leave her alone. Wouldn’t let it end.

  It was the most electrifying sex she’d ever had in her life.

  He’d taken control. Powerful and strong, he gave no quarter, showed no mercy. His fingers clenched on her hips, holding her still while he continued to use his mouth, driving her onward and upward incessantly. Anger hummed through him into her, giving their lovemaking an edge that was new and different.

  He was a male staking his claim, and to her inner feminist’s shame, she found it utterly thrilling.

  Surrender, she discovered, excited her. It was primal, honest, and real. Feminine. Completely, gloriously feminine. He’d taken command and her body no longer belonged to her. It was his. Only his. And to her surprise, she loved it.

  When the second orgasm hit her, she collapsed, spent, sobbing out his name.

  And Devil Callahan rolled back on his heels and showed her a smile that was all teeth.

  ‘‘What do you say, Annabelle? That impersonal enough for you?’’

  Annabelle closed her eyes and returned to reality. She’d really touched a sore spot, hadn’t she?

  ‘‘Look at me,’’ he demanded. He moved, straddling her hips, his sex jutting out before him, huge and straining. A bead of moisture glistened on its tip.

  He put his palms against the ground on either side of her head and stared down at her. His green eyes glittered like a mountain cat’s. A hungry mountain cat about to pounce. ‘‘Answer me.’’

  But Annabelle’s dalliance with surrender was done. Such a thing could get out of hand, she decided. Exerting some control of her own, she opened her legs, arched her hips, and declared, ‘‘No.’’

  With a growl, he thrust inside her. Filled her. Her body clenched, gripping him hard. He pumped and thrust, ramming into her with a feral intensity that left her gasping, stoking the cinders of her desire back into flame. She matched his rhythm, that reckless, relentless need building . . . building. I’ve missed him. Oh, how I’ve missed him.

  He hissed, he snarled, he angled her hips so that he could drive deeper. As he hammered himself into her, Annabelle sensed it coming, another tidal wave of pleasure.
She strained toward it, reached—and she screamed as it broke over her, sucked her down into a swirling vortex of sensation.

  Only then did he throw back his head as if in pain. His hard body jerked and went rigid and he shuddered . . . shuddered . . . shuddered.

  And called out her name.

  Chapter Eight

  Annabelle’s first conscious thought the next morning was that she needed an aspirin. Her head threatened to explode.

  Slowly, she cracked open her eyes and saw not the ceiling of her home on Oahu, not the ceiling of an anonymous hotel, but nylon. Sky blue nylon.

  She smelled fish cooking.

  Her eyes flew open wide as memory came rushing back. Dear God. She sat up, bumped her head on an aluminum pole, and stuck her head outside the tent flap. Her gaze flew to the fire ring where foil-wrapped fish sat over glowing coals, then scanned the rest of the campsite. Mark was nowhere to be seen. Thank God.

  She brought her fingertips to her temples and gently massaged. She let loose a little moan. Not only did her head pound, but her body ached all over. If sex hangovers existed, then she had a doozy of one.

  Memories of the previous night rolled through her mind like a bad dream. A hot, mind-blowingly erotic bad dream, but a bad dream nonetheless. What had she been thinking?

  ‘‘I’m a cliché,’’ she muttered. A pathetic cliché. You read about it in magazines all the time. Sex with the Ex. Surely Oprah had done a show about it. How many times had she scoffed at women who fell into this trap?

  And it wasn’t just sex with the ex. She’d had mind-blowing, superorgasmic, incredibly amazing sex with her ex. Why the hell didn’t Oprah warn her viewers about that?

  Oh, God. She had satisfied an urge and sacrificed her self-respect. Because she didn’t have it in her to detach herself from emotion and simply focus on the way sex with Mark Callahan made her feel. No, she wasn’t that kind of girl.

  Which meant she’d thrown away all the emotional work she’d done over the past two and a half years— especially the last seven months—for an orgasm. Well, orgasms. Plural. Multiple. Heat rushed right to her as the memory of straddling atop him returned full force.