There was silence again on the other end. “Narrows the playing field a little. Where did you suddenly get this information?”
He knew he was opening up an avenue for Riley, but this was no time to play games. “Alix saw the two of them talking.”
“Oh.” The word had a very pregnant sound to it. “And just where are you now?”
Terrance blew out a breath, in no mood for any of Riley’s ragging. “I’m in her bathroom.”
Riley laughed. “I take it that there’re no handy phone booths around to change into your superhero costume?”
“Just see what you can find out,” Terrance told him impatiently. “Run all their names and prints through the database.”
“Aye-aye, Captain. I remember how to do my job, McCall. You just be sure you remember how to do yours.”
He didn’t ask for an explanation. He knew what Riley was implying. Kidding or not, Terrance didn’t appreciate it. He never allowed anything to get in the way of his work, not even a woman whose very presence sent his temperature up a few degrees.
Flipping the phone shut, he tucked it away into his pants pocket. Terrance flushed the toilet and then ran the tap water for good measure, to justify his exit.
It was best if he got going, he thought.
Opening the door, he found Alix standing less than two feet away. She was looking at him oddly, as if trying to figure something out.
“Were you talking to someone in there?”
Hindsight told him that he could have said he was just talking to himself. But he said the first thing that came to mind. “My answering service. Were you listening at the door?”
She lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “You were taking a while, I thought maybe there was something wrong.” A smile he’d always found engaging curved her mouth. “Occupational habit, I guess.”
He looked toward the door. He really should be leaving. Especially since he wanted to stay. Still, his feet insisted on remaining planted where they were. “Yes, but most of the people that you come in contact with in your occupation barely reach your waist.”
Again she lifted a single shoulder, dismissing his point. “I can’t seem to rein it in.” And then she looked at him more closely. “Since when did you get an answering service?”
He was really hoping she wouldn’t ask that. Since he had no practice, there was no reason to have a service yet, other than for vanity, and they both knew he wasn’t that type. “I signed up for one last week.” Before she could say the obvious, he beat her to it. “I guess that was jumping the gun, but I’m hoping to get into a partnership with someone very soon.” He lobbed the ball back into her court. “Know any pediatricians who might need to have their workload reduced?”
He meant her, she thought. This time her reaction wasn’t an immediate no. This time, just for arguments sake, she turned the idea around in her head. A partnership with Terrance. Sharing the same office space. Seeing each other on a regular, five-days-a-week basis. That would really be playing with fire.
“I’ll ask around,” she promised noncommittally. “In the meantime, why don’t you give me your service number? I might as well have it if I need you.”
Damn it, she was asking for the number. That was just what he was afraid of. Trapped, he rattled one off to her, having no idea who she would reach if she used it. He supposed he could always tell her it was a momentary lapse on his part, but he doubted if she’d believe him.
“Hold it, let me write it down.” She turned to open the small drawer in the hall side table where she kept a pad and pen.
He needed a way to distract her. Coming up behind her, he placed his hands on her shoulders. He couldn’t help thinking how small, how delicate she felt.
“Do you?”
Alix felt herself stiffening. She was acutely aware of the fact that she was wearing only her nightgown beneath her robe.
And that she was alone in the house.
Alone with a man she’d once loved more than life itself. She could feel pulses begin to throb. “Do I what?”
“Need me?”
Terrance turned her around slowly.
Telling himself he was only playing for time—trying to distract her from copying down a fake phone number—was an excuse so flimsy it vanished. He was caught in his own diversion. Caught in the look that was in her eyes.
Her lips felt dryer than sandpaper. She had no idea how she pushed the words out past them. “You never know. An emergency might come up, your pager might fail, your cell phone signal might not go through…”
She was babbling and she knew it, but she couldn’t center herself, couldn’t think clearly.
“That’s what I always liked about you, Alix, you were always so practical.” So beautiful. “Practicality wrapped in femininity.”
“But you left, anyway.”
Where was her anger? She couldn’t summon it, couldn’t rouse the emotion that would keep her safe from the look in his eyes, from the overwhelming pull of his body as it stood, less than a hair’s breadth away from hers.
It was her only shield, her only defense, and it was gone.
“Everyone makes one major mistake in their lives.” He couldn’t draw his eyes away from her. Couldn’t make himself take the steps he knew he had to, steps that would lead him to the front door, to cool air and sanity. “Leaving you was mine.”
She clenched her hands at her sides to keep from trembling. It didn’t work. “So now what?”
He ran his hands along her arms, his eyes on hers. “I don’t know, Alix. I don’t know,” he repeated, at a loss. “Play it by ear?”
She felt his hands as they began to slide the robe from her shoulders. A shiver of anticipation zigzagged through her.
“Those aren’t your ears,” she murmured.
His smile went straight to her heart, taking no detours, taking no prisoners.
“I’m versatile.” He pressed a kiss to the slope of her shoulder and heard her sigh. Excitement drummed through him like a Sousa march.
This was wrong, he thought. All wrong.
This wasn’t fair to her and she was the one who mattered in this. She always had been.
Terrance drew his head back and looked at her. How could he walk away again? How could he walk away now? “I haven’t heard Julie tonight.”
This was her one lifeline, her one way out. She could say something about needing to check on the child and that he should go. He didn’t need to know that Julie was peacefully sleeping in her grandfather’s house, in the room he had set aside for the little girl.
Tell him. Tell him to go.
But old, familiar sensations were beginning to gather within her, holding a rally, ready to launch into a victory dance. She couldn’t bring herself to lie to him, not even to protect herself.
She didn’t want to be protected, not tonight.
“That’s because Julie’s not here. She’s at my father’s.”
Did that mean that she had set the stage earlier for Harris to stay the night? Don’t go there, he warned himself. Harris wasn’t here. And he was.
He brushed her hair from her face, thinking of the man she’d mentioned. The man he’d always admired. “How is your father?”
She smiled, her stomach quivering as Terrance feathered his fingers along her bare skin. “Still terrific. Still practicing.”
He skimmed his lips along the hollow of her throat. “I always liked your father.”
Her head fell back, her body quickened. “And he always liked you. It was his one lapse in judgment.”
The words were getting harder and harder to utter. He was cutting off her air supply—he and his roaming lips, his roaming hands. They were all conspiring against her, to make her dizzy.
She could feel Terrance’s fingers working away at the knot in her sash, even as his mouth gave her no peace.
And then the sash was free, and the robe was parting from her body. Cool air found her, to be instantly replaced with a surge of heat that went through her the moment his
hands touched her.
They passed softly, lightly, reverently along her waist, moving upward.
Anticipation warred with common sense, struggling for possession. Her breath caught in her throat.
“Terry…”
She only called him that at her most vulnerable moments. She was his for the taking, he thought, and he wanted to take her more than he wanted to breathe.
Terrance could feel his body almost vibrating with intense longing.
But his ingrained sense of right and wrong insisted on intervening. This was an interlude, just an interlude. He knew that. He’d be gone once the operation was resolved. And even if he wasn’t, how would she react to being lied to all this time? To being shut out like some stranger because he couldn’t risk telling her the truth? Not because he couldn’t trust her—he did, he trusted her with his life. But this didn’t involve just him, there were other lives at stake, lives he couldn’t hand to her. The wrong word said at the wrong moment could cost them everything. He couldn’t burden her with that.
With supreme effort he drew back, cupping her face in his hand and looking at her. “Alix, if—”
No. No, he wasn’t going to give her a choice, she thought desperately. He wasn’t going to allow her a way out at the last moment. She wouldn’t let him, couldn’t let him. Everything hummed within her, wanting him. Wanting this.
Before Terrance could say another word, she rose up on her toes, wound her fingers into the folds of his shirt and pulled him to her. She seized his lips with her own, cutting off any last-ditch attempt to spare her. Kissing him as hard as she could.
Despite the anger she’d felt, she always knew Terrance was a good man, a man given to being kind even at his own expense. She didn’t want his kindness, she wanted him, his touch, his body. She wanted to remember what it felt like to be completely alive, to be wanted by the only man who had ever truly mattered to her.
The tentacles of desire closing about him, Terrance tightened his arms around Alix, holding her to him, absorbing her frantic heartbeat as his own. Because it was.
His mouth slanted over hers, reveling in what she offered, his body ignited with a fire that refused to be quenched. That hadn’t been quenched in all these years. Not since he’d left her.
Alix’s robe slid to the floor like an wistful sigh. Terrance struggled to rein himself in. It would have taken so little to shred the nightgown from her body. Instead he coaxed the straps from her shoulders, tugged it away from her breasts down supple hips that begged for his touch.
As he filled his hands with her, the nightgown slowly floated down until it merged with her robe. She was nude, as perfect as he remembered.
More.
Taking a step back, he wrapped her in his gaze. Her waist was still as small as ever, her figure slightly more curved because of the child she’d borne.
He dove his fingers into her hair, framing her face. Wanting her. Somewhere along the perimeter of his mind, a small voice begged him to go slow. Because this would be all he’d have, and it needed to last him the rest of his life.
“Motherhood agrees with you.”
Her heart was hammering in her throat so hard, she was sure it was going to pop out at any moment. “You talk too much.”
Alix caught his lips between her teeth, suckling for a moment before losing herself in one deep, twelve-story kiss.
Even as her mouth was sealed to his, Terrance could feel Alix working away at his clothes. Two buttons didn’t make the journey as she tore his shirt from him. Her hands were trembling as she unhooked the clasp at his jeans. He was vaguely aware that he came to her aid, undoing them when she fumbled.
Quickly, she slid the denim from his hips and thighs, her hands hot along his body.
He wanted to drive himself into her then and there. It was only by exercising the maximum limit of his restraint that he managed not to.
She deserved better.
They both did.
This was not about satisfying lust, this was about revisiting a place they had once inhabited. This was about returning to a time when they had felt that everything was before them, untainted and pure. When there were answers instead of merely questions.
His clothes in a heap beside hers, Terrance picked her up in his arms. Alix twined her arms around his neck and snuggled against him.
“Where’s your bedroom?”
She pointed to the stairs, then smiled. Her eyes were bright with humor and pleasure.
He wanted to share in whatever she was thinking. “What?”
She watched the stairs draw closer. “I always wanted to be Scarlett O’Hara.”
Terrance began to climb the stairs, holding her to him. The image pleased him. “As I recall, Scarlett O’Hara had on clothes when Rhett carried her up to their bedroom.”
She laughed softly against him. “That was the G-rated version.” She could feel her body tingling, priming. Yearning for the last moment, yet wanting to hold it off for as long as possible. Wanting this island of time to go on forever.
“And what version is this?”
Her eyes teased him. “You tell me.”
He was at her door then, shouldering it open and bringing her inside. Very gently he laid her on the bed. Less than a heartbeat later, he was beside her. “Maybe we’ll go for X.”
She raised her arms to him. “Making love with you was always far too beautiful to be rated X.”
There was no holding back any longer, no recriminations, no regrets. There was only the two of them, only pleasure.
No one could make her body hum the way he could. He knew all her secret places, knew how to arouse her to the point of climax, only to begin the process again.
She thought her heart would beat its way out of her chest. Like a gifted musician, Terrance strummed his fingers along her body, playing her like a beloved instrument, too long kept in storage.
She wound her fingers into her comforter, arching against Terrance, against his mouth as it followed a path forged by his fingers seconds earlier.
Crying out his name, panting, Alix used the last bit of her strength to reverse their positions until she was the one on top.
“Now what?” he asked, surprised, his hands about her hips.
“Now I torture you.”
“This isn’t torture.”
“Wait,” she promised, beginning.
Laughter in her eyes, she teased him with her body, sliding it along his, nibbling here, sampling there, until she was filled with his dark tastes. The laughter faded as she became caught in her own trap, bringing them both up to the point of no return.
Satisfied that he couldn’t hold back any longer, she straddled his hips, fitting her legs around him. Her eyes on his face, she drew him into her.
It took everything she had not to lose herself in the moment. Instead, concentrating, Alix began to move ever so slowly.
But the pace quickened almost instantly as his hips rose in response.
“C’mere,” Terrance coaxed, his voice a harsh whisper as he reached for her.
She couldn’t have denied him if she’d wanted to. And she didn’t want to.
Never breaking the ever increasing rhythm, Alix spread her body over his, covering it, their hot flesh mingling and searing each other as they moved faster and faster to a destination they could no longer humanly keep at bay.
“Oh, Terry, I’ve missed you,” she cried as she felt the explosion take hold of her.
She knew by his reaction that she wasn’t alone. That he had gone the distance with her. Terrance caught her mouth with his and kissed her so deeply, she didn’t think she would ever surface again.
It really didn’t matter to her if she didn’t. This was where she wanted to be.
Forever.
Chapter 11
“You know, I didn’t come over for this.”
Terrance wasn’t sure just where he found the strength to tuck his arm around Alix and draw her to him, but he did. It was the wee hours of the night and the
y were still awake. Part of that was because they’d made love two more times, each time being more erotic than the last.
The marathon brought back happier days, and he hadn’t wanted to close his eyes and risk discovering that all of this had been just a dream. A wonderful, passionate dream.
Alix turned toward him, her hair tickling his cheek. Longing made a return appearance. He wondered if there was some Guinness world record that covered this sort of thing.
“As I remember it.” Alix skimmed her finger over his lips, her eyes teasing his. “I was the one who invited you in, not the other way around.”
Catching her hand, he pressed a kiss to her palm and succeeded in arousing both of them. “Did you think we were going to wind up like this?”
She laughed softly. The ghost of better times hovered around in her brain. “There was a time that we always wound up like this.” And then, because she didn’t want him getting the wrong idea about her reaction to tonight, she added quickly, “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not digging out old wedding invitations.”
He raised his head to look at her face. “You had wedding invitations?”
Damn, how had she let that slip out? “Just one package.” Her tone was dismissive. “I got it in a stationery store, one of those do-it-yourself deals for the computer.” And then, because this was Terrance and she’d never lied to him, she confessed, “I just wanted to know what it would look like, seeing your name and mine linked in something official.”
Guilt galloped up on a white charger, holding a lance aimed straight at his conscience.
“Oh, God, Alix—”
Something stirred within her. “That wasn’t said to make you feel guilty, that was just sharing something. The bottom line is that there’s no pressure here, okay?” She tucked the sheet more tightly around her breasts. “I don’t expect either one of us to pick up where we left off. A lot’s happened since then.”
She didn’t know the half of it, Terrance thought, feeling another stab of guilt.
“I’ve had a life,” Alix was saying. “So have you. You’ve undergone changes.”
A look she couldn’t quite read crossed his face. It nudged at her curiosity, just the way seeing him with Harris on more than several occasions did. He’d made it clear earlier tonight that he thought of Harris as lowlife, yet he had spent time with him. It didn’t add up. Just like seeing him hang up abruptly the other day when he saw her approaching didn’t make sense.
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