Return To Sender

by Merline Lovelace

  That her taste had lingered in his mind for two days. But not this sweet. Or this wild. Or this hot.

  That her lips were softer, firmer, more seductive than he remembered.

  That her body matched his perfectly. Tall enough that he didn’t have to bend double to reach her. Small enough to fit into the cradle of his thighs.

  At the contact, he went instantly, achingly, hard. He jerked his head up, knowing that one more breath, one more press of her breasts against his chest, would drive him to something she couldn’t be ready for. Not this soon after Brian.

  Or maybe she could.

  Her eyes opened at his abrupt movement. Harry saw himself in the dark pupils. Saw something else, as well. The passion he’d taunted her about. It shimmered in the green irises. Showed in her heavy eyelids. Sounded in the short, choppy rush of her breath.

  This time, she didn’t have to ask for his kiss. This time, he gave it, and took everything she offered in return.

  By the time she dragged her mouth away, gasping, every muscle in Harry’s body strained with the need to press her down on the nearest horizontal surface. With an effort that popped beads of sweat out on his forehead, he loosened his arms enough for her to draw back.

  “Harry, I...”

  She stopped, swiped her tongue along her lower lip. The burning need in Harry’s gut needled into white, hot fingers of fire.

  “You what, sweetheart?”

  “I want to wind up tight,” she whispered, her eyes holding his. “And take all night to unwind.”

  Few saints would fail to respond to that invitation, and Harry had no illusions that anyone would ever nominate him for canonization. Still, he forced himself to move slowly, giving her time to pull back at any move, any touch.

  He lifted a hand to her throat and stroked the smooth skin under her chin. “I think we can manage a little winding and a lot of unwinding. If you’re sure?”

  A wobbly smile tugged at lips still rosy from his kiss. “Who’s being cautious and careful now? What happened to breathless and dizzy and thoroughly exhausting?”

  Grinning, he slid his arm under the backs of the thighs that had been driving him insane for the past half hour. Sweeping her into a tight hold, he headed for the hall.

  “Breathless and dizzy coming right up, ma’am. Thoroughly exhausting to follow.”

  Sheryl barely heard Button’s startled yip as Harry swept past with her in his arms. She didn’t think about the idiocy of what she’d just asked this man to do. Tomorrow, she’d regret it. Maybe later tonight, when Harry left, as he inevitably would.

  At this moment, she wanted only to end the swirling confusion he’d thrown her into the first moment he’d appeared in her life. To get past the pain of her break with Brian. To do something insane, something unplanned and unscheduled and definitely unroutine.

  She buried her face in the warm skin of his neck. When he crossed the threshold to her bedroom, he twisted at the waist. With one booted heel, he kicked the door shut behind him. Sharp, annoyed yips rose from the other side.

  “I might not hesitate at a little bribery,” he told her, his voice a rumble in her ear, “but I draw the line at voyeurism.”

  “He’ll bark all night,” Sheryl warned, lifting her head. “Or however long it takes to unwind.”

  “Let him.” His mustache lifted in a wicked grin. “And in case there’s any doubt, it’s going to take a long time. A very long time.”

  The husky promise sent ripples of excitement over every inch of her skin. The way he lowered her, sliding her body down his, turned those ripples into a near tidal wave. Her T-shirt snagged on his buttons. It lifted, baring her midriff. Cooled air raised goose bumps above her belly button. Harry’s hard, driving kiss raised goose bumps below.

  Her shirt hit the floor sometime later. His jeans and boots followed. In a tangle of arms and legs, they tumbled onto the downy black-and-white blanket that covered her bed. Gasping, Sheryl let Harry work the same magic on her breasts that he’d worked on her mouth. His soft, silky mustache teased. His fingers stroked. His tongue tasted. His teeth took her from breathless to moaning to only a kiss or two away from spinning out of control.

  Sheryl wasn’t exactly a passive participant in her unplanned, unroutine seduction. Her hands roamed as eagerly as his. Her tongue explored. Her body slicked and twisted and pressed everywhere it met his. She was as wet and hot and eager as he was when he finally groaned and dragged her arms down.

  “Wait, sweetheart. Wait! Let me get something to protect you.”

  He rolled off her. Wearing only low-slung briefs and the shirt she’d tugged halfway down his back, he padded across the room to his jeans.

  Sheryl flung an arm up over her head, almost as dizzy and befuddled as he’d predicted. Harry’s posterior view didn’t exactly unfuddle her. Lord, he was magnificent! All long, lean lines. Bronzed muscles. Tight, trim buttocks.

  When he scooped up his jeans and turned, she had to admit that his front view wasn’t too shabby, either. Her heart hammered as he dug out his wallet and rifled through it with an impatience that fanned the small fires he’d lit under her skin. A moment later, several packages of condoms fell onto the blanket.

  Sheryl eyed the abundant supply with a raised brow. Harry caught her look and his mustache tipped into another wicked grin.

  “U.S. marshals always come prepared for extended field operations.”

  “So I see.”

  Still grinning, he sheathed himself and rejoined her on the bed. He settled between her legs smoothly, as if she were made to receive him. His weight pressed her into the blanket. With both hands, he smoothed her hair back and planted little kisses on her neck.

  “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression,” he murmured against her throat. “Dedicated law enforcement types have all kinds of uses for those little packages.”

  Tom between curiosity and a wild, blazing need to arch her hips into his, Sheryl could only huff a question into his ear.

  “Like... what?”

  “Later,” he growled, nipping the cords of her neck. “I’ll tell you later.”

  Would they have a later? The brief thought cut through her searing, sensual haze. Then his hand found her core and there was only now. Only Harry. Only the incredible pleasure he gave her.

  The pleasure spiraled, spinning tighter and tighter with each kiss, each stroke of his hand and his body. When Sheryl was sure she couldn’t stand the whirling sensations a moment longer without shattering, she wrapped her legs around his and arched her hips to receive him. It might have been mere moments or a lifetime later that she exploded in a blaze of white light.

  Another forever followed, then Harry thrust into her a final time. Rigid, straining, joined with her at mouth and chest and hip, he filled her body. Only later did she realize that he’d filled the newly empty place in her heart, as well.

  The realization came to her as she hovered between boneless satiation and an exhausted doze. Her head cradled on Harry’s shoulder, she remembered sleepily that they hadn’t gotten around to the postcards. They’d get to them tomorrow, she thought, breathing in the musky scent of their lovemaking.

  Tomorrow came crashing down on them far sooner than Sheryl had anticipated. She was sunk in a deep doze, her head still cradled on a warm shoulder, when the sound of a thump and a startled, pain-filled yelp pierced her somnolent semiconsciousness.

  Instantly, Harry spun off the bed. Sheryl’s head hit the mattress with a thump

  “Wh...?”

  “Stay here!”

  With a pantherlike speed, he dragged on his jeans and yanked at the zipper. They rode low on his hips as he headed for the door. Gasping, Sheryl pushed herself up on one elbow. Still groggy and only halfawake, she blinked owlishly.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, and until I do, stay here, okay? No heroics and no noise.”

  Before his low instructions had even sunk in, he’d slipped through the door and disappeared into t
he shadowed hallway. Sheryl gaped at the panel for a second or two, still in a fog. Then she threw back the sheet and leaped out of bed. She had her panties on and her T-shirt half over her head when the door swung open again.

  She froze, her heart in her throat.

  To her infinite relief, Harry stalked in. Disgust etched in every line of his taut body, he carried a tomato-and-grease-smeared Button under his arm.

  “The greedy little beggar climbed up onto the table. He and our half of the pizza just took a dive.”

  Chapter 10

  Although the little heart-shaped crystal clock on her nightstand showed just a few minutes before eleven, by the time Sheryl finished dressing she was experiencing all the awkwardness of a morning-after.

  Button’s noisy accident had shaken her right out of her sleepy, sensual haze. Like a splash of cold water in her face, reality now set in with a vengeance. She couldn’t quite believe she’d begged Harry to kiss her like that. To seduce her, for pity’s sake!

  She walked down the hall to the living room, cringing inside as she realized how pathetic she must have sounded. First, by admitting that Brian had dumped her. Then, by practically demanding that the marshal take her to bed as a balm to her wounded ego. She couldn’t remember when she’d ever done anything so rash. So stupid. So embarrassing to admit to after the fact.

  Heat blazed in both cheeks when she found Harry in the dining room. Hunkered down on one knee, he was scrubbing at the grease stains in her carpet with a sponge and muttering imprecations at the dog that sat a few feet away, watching him with a show of blasé interest.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Sheryl protested, her discomfiture mounting at the sight of Harry’s naked chest. Had she really wrapped her arms and legs and everything else she could around his lean, powerful torso?

  She had, she admitted with a new flush of heat. She could still feel the ache in her thighs, and taste him on her lips. How in the world had she lost herself like that? She hardly knew much more about this man than his name, his occupation, his marital status and the fact that he logged more travel miles in a month than most people did in two years. That alone should have stopped her from throwing herself at him the way she had! Hadn’t she learned her lesson from her parents?

  Obviously not. Even now, she ached to wrap her arms around him once again. Smart, Sheryl! Real smart. Dropping to her knees, she reached for the sponge.

  “I’ll do that while you get dressed.”

  He looped an arm across his bent knee and regarded her with a lazy smile.

  “Unwound already, Sher? And here I promised that it would take all night.”

  His teasing raised the heat in her cheeks to a raging inferno. She attacked the pizza stain, unable to meet his eyes.

  “Yes, well, I know you came here to work, not to, uh, help me get past this bad patch with Brian, and you don’t have all night for that.”

  His hand closed over her wrist, stilling her agitated movements. When she looked up, his air of lazy amusement had completely disappeared.

  “Is that what you think just happened here? That I played some kind of sexual Good Samaritan by taking you to bed?”

  She wouldn’t have put it in quite those words, but she couldn’t deny the fact that he’d done exactly that.

  “Don’t think that I’m not...” She swallowed. “That I’m not grateful. I needed a...a distraction tonight and you—”

  With a swiftness that made her gasp, he rose, bringing her up with him. Sudden, fierce anger blazed in his brown eyes.

  “A distraction?” he echoed in a tone that raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck. “You needed a distraction?”

  Sheryl knew she was digging herself in deeper with every word, but she didn’t have the faintest idea how to get out of this hole. She’d only wanted to let Harry know that she didn’t expect him to continue the admittedly spectacular lovemaking she’d forced on him. Instead, she’d unintentionally ruffled his male ego. More embarrassed than ever, she tugged her wrist free.

  “That didn’t come out the way I meant it. You were more than a distraction. You were...” Her face flaming, she admitted the unvarnished truth. “You were wonderful. Thank you.”

  Harry stared at her, at a total loss for words for one of the few times in his life. Anger still pounded through him. Incredulity now added its own sideswiping kick. He couldn’t believe that Sheryl had just thanked him, for God’s sake! If this whole conversation didn’t make him so damned furious, he might have laughed at the irony of it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost himself so completely, so passionately, in a woman’s arms. Or the last time he’d drifted into sleep with a head nestled on his shoulder and a soft, breathy sigh warming his neck.

  Harry hadn’t exactly sworn off female companionship in the years since his divorce, but neither had he ignored the lessons he’d learned from that sobering experience. As long as he made his living chasing renegades, he couldn’t expect any woman to put up with his here-today, gone-tonight lifestyle. Deliberately, he’d kept his friendships with women light and casual. Even more deliberately, he dated women whose own careers or interests coincided with the transitory nature of his. In any case, he sure as hell had never jeopardized an ongoing investigation by seducing one of the key players involved.

  He’d broken every one of his self-imposed rules tonight Deep in his gut, Harry knew damned well that he’d break them again if Sheryl turned her face up to his at this moment and asked him in that sweet, seductive way of hers to kiss her. Hell, he didn’t need asking. Wide-awake now and still tight from the crash that had brought him springing out of bed, he had to battle the urge to sweep Sheryl into his arms and take her back to bed to show her just how much of a distraction he could provide. Just the thought of burying himself in her slick, satiny heat once again sent a spear of razor-sharp need through him.

  With something of a shock, Harry realized that he wanted this woman even more fiercely now than he had before she’d given herself to him. And here she was, brushing him off with a polite thank-you.

  Despite her red cheeks, she met his gaze with a dignity that tugged at something inside him. Something sharper than need. Deeper than desire.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to insult you or cheapen what happened between us. It was wonderful, Harry. I just didn’t want you to think that I want...or expect...anything more. I know why you’re in Albuquerque, and that you’ll be gone as soon as something breaks on your fugitive.”

  She had just put his own thoughts into words. Harry didn’t particularly like hearing them.

  “Sheryl...”

  Her eyes gentled. Her hand came up to stroke his cheek. “It’s all right, Marshal. Some men are wanderers by nature as much as by profession. My father was one. So, I think, are you. I understand.”

  Harry wasn’t sure he did. He heard what she was saying. He agreed with it completely. So why did he want to—

  The muted shrill of his cellular phone interrupted his chaotic thoughts. Frowning, he extracted the instrument from the jacket he’d left hanging on the back of a dining-room chair.

  “MacMillan.”

  “Harry!” Ev’s voice leaped out at him. “Where the hell are you?”

  “At Sheryl’s apartment.” He didn’t give his partner a chance to comment on that one. “Where are you?”

  “Outside your motel room. I was on my way home when I got the news. I swung by your place to give you the word personally.”

  “What word?”

  “The Santa Fe airport manager just called. He’s got a small, twin-engine jet about two hours out, requesting permission to land.”

  Harry’s gut knotted. “And?”

  “And the pilot also requested that Customs be notified. He wants to off-load a cargo of Peruvian sheepskin hides destined for a factory just outside Taos that manufactures those Marlboro-man sheepskin coats. From what I’m told, the hides stink. Like you wouldn’t believe. Customs isn’t too happy abo
ut processing the cargo tonight.”

  “This could be it,” his listener said softly.

  “I think it is. The FAA ran a quick check on the aircraft’s tail number and flight plan. This leg of the flight originated in Peru, but the aircraft is registered in Brazil, Harry. Brazil!”

  “Get a helo warmed up and ready for us.”

  “Already done. It’s on the pad at State Police headquarters. Fay’s on her way there now.”

  “I’ll meet you both in ten minutes.”

  Harry snapped the phone shut and jammed it into his jacket. Every sense, every instinct, pushed at him to race into the bedroom and grab his clothes. To slam out of the apartment, jump into his car and hit the street, siren wailing.

  For the first time that he could remember, his cop’s instincts took second place to a stronger, even more urgent demand. In answer to the question in Sheryl’s wide eyes, he paused long enough to give her a swift recap.

  “We’ve got a break, Sher. A plane registered in Brazil is coming into the Santa Fe airport in a couple of hours.”

  “No kidding!”

  She was still standing where he’d left her when he came running back, shoving his shirttail into his jeans. He grabbed his holster and slipped into it with a roll of his shoulders. Then he snatched up his jacket and strode to where she stood. His big hands framed her face.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “I know. Be careful.”

  He gave himself another second to sear her eyes and her nose and the tangled silk of her hair into his memory. Then he kissed her, hard, and headed for the door.

  “Harry!”

  “What?”

  “Come back when you can. I, uh, want to know what happens.”

  “I will.”

  The nondescript government sedan squealed out of the apartment complex. With one eye on the late-night traffic, Harry fumbled the detachable Kojak light into its mounting and flipped its switch. The rotating light slashed through the night like a sword. A half second later, he activated the siren and shoved the accelerator to the floor. The unmarked, unremarkable vehicle roared to life.