by Anne Woodard
His fingers slid through her hair at the back of her head, gently forcing her back to him.
“Practice makes perfect, you know,” he murmured an instant before their lips met.
He tasted of ham sandwich and beer, and Maggie couldn’t remember a taste she liked more. Dimly, she wondered how he could breathe with her weight on him like this, but he seemed to be managing all right—the increasingly rapid rise and fall of his chest against her breasts was doing dangerous things to her pulse rate.
She wanted a whole lot more than kisses.
With a low, triumphant growl, she wrapped her leg around his, then rolled him off the couch and onto the floor on top of her.
“So, practice,” she gasped, and grabbed his hair and pulled him back to her.
At some point—she wasn’t certain how, or when—they managed to shove the coffee table out of the way and drag a couple pillows off the sofa.
They also managed to unbutton buttons, unhook hooks and unzip zippers, but the precise how of it got swallowed up in the storm of need and sensation that engulfed them.
His hands were callused and strong and gentle. His body was as lean and well muscled and beautiful as she’d imagined. And his mouth! That worked miracles as wild as the wildest fantasy she’d ever indulged in.
Somehow, though, it all added up to more than she’d expected. It was almost frightening, how easily he could make her lose control, and how little she cared.
His skin tasted of soap and heat. Her breasts and belly were damp from the trace of his tongue, still tingling with the feel of him long after he’d sampled and moved on. Skin scraped against skin in an erotic tug and slide. She rolled and the tip of one breast brushed against the fine hair of his forearm, making her whimper with the sheer glory of the fire that arced through her in response. The carpet was rough against her back, her side, her knees, her hands, but that only added to the wonder of their joining.
“Now,” she said, gasping for air.
“Not yet,” he groaned, nipping at the soft skin low on her belly.
“No. Now.” She shifted, making him laugh, and rolled him onto his back and claimed him. She gasped at the shudder that wracked her. “Like that!”
She arched, thrust and took him deeper. He arched to meet her, thrust and drove deeper still.
“Like that?” The words were almost unintelligible.
“Like that,” she agreed, and wrapped herself around him, and went along for the ride.
It was clumsy and rough.
It was wild and wicked and utterly, brazenly glorious.
She wasn’t really sure when her climax claimed her because it seemed to go on forever, then shot higher as he rolled her onto her back without ever losing the rhythm of their joining, then drove against her harder still, damp flesh pounding against damp flesh.
She cried out, blind, deaf, arched violently upward on the crest and slid over into an endless shuddering fall.
She was still caught in the turbulence when he gave a choking groan and strained against her, held for a moment, then slowly collapsed atop her.
The carpet was something cheap—compact loops of some manmade fiber in a half dozen ugly shades of brown and gray—and it was about a half inch from the tip of his nose.
Which wasn’t too bad, Rick decided, considering his cheek was pressed against Maggie Manion’s shapely shoulder, and the rest of him was covering most of the rest of her. Of course, it helped that he was naked, and she was naked, and they’d just shared some really great sex.
Lazily, utterly content, he stuck out his tongue and licked the tip along her collarbone. Her sweat-slicked skin was cooler now. It tasted of salt.
She gave a little murmur of pleasure, like a low purr at the back of her throat, but didn’t bother to open her eyes. Her arms were wrapped around him, one hand splayed across his shoulder blade, the other cupped over the back of his head as if prepared to keep him pinned against her if he tried to pull away.
Right now, he had absolutely no plans of moving.
He couldn’t remember when he’d last felt this relaxed, or this pleased with himself and life in general. Reality was going to insist on grabbing hold soon enough. For now…
He shifted a fraction so he could suck on that soft skin at the side of her throat.
Still without opening her eyes, she gave another little purr of pleasure and turned her head slightly to give him more room.
“Nice,” she murmured.
“Mmmmm,” he agreed. He lifted his head to drag the tip of his tongue along her warm skin, over the line of her jaw and all the way to her mouth.
Her smile widened.
There was something very satisfying about a smile on the face of a woman with whom you’d just shared incredible sex.
He propped himself on his elbows so he could look down into her face.
He pressed his hips a little harder against hers. Since her legs were wrapped around his, the contact was…nice. Not quite enough to set things off again—not yet, anyway—but it was definitely nice.
Her arms around him tightened.
He covered her mouth with his.
It was a while before he came up for air. Maybe he’d needed the extra oxygen to his brain, but it only then occurred to him that his weight was crushing her, and that her bare back was being scraped raw by the awful carpet.
“Damn!” He rolled off her, then helped her sit up. “You should have told me I was being a jerk.”
He would have stood, but she pulled him around so that they could prop themselves against the sofa, instead. And then she slid into his arms and laid her head against his shoulder, and he couldn’t think of much of anything except how good she felt against him, and how much he didn’t want to let her go.
“You know this can’t last,” she said, so softly he almost couldn’t catch the words.
“I know.” It surprised him, how much that admission hurt.
She slid down a little so her head could rest against his chest, right over his heart, then wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Okay,” she said. She might as well have been addressing his navel. “Just so you know.”
He couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
Instead, he gently massaged her shoulders, then slowly, one delicate vertebral bump at a time, traced down the length of her spine, all the way to the point where the bones disappeared and the soft, tempting swell of her buttocks began. For a moment, he let his hand rest against that firm flesh, savoring the feel of her. And then, one by one, he traced each vertebra back up until his fingers disappeared under the thick, silken curls at the nape of her neck.
His hand curled around the back of her neck protectively.
“Let’s go to bed,” he said.
“And make love again.”
“Yes.”
For a moment, they simply remained where they were, so closely entwined that they could have counted each other’s heartbeats. Then Maggie pulled free, rose to her feet and extended her hand to help him up.
“Let’s go.” She grinned. “That is, if you think you’re up to it.”
And then she raced for the bedroom.
She beat him, but not by much, and laughed when he grabbed her and dragged her down onto the wide bed with him.
Chapter 11
T hey had breakfast in bed. Coffee, well-buttered toast and each other. The butter clung to fingertips and quickly ended up on even more interesting places.
The shared shower lasted long enough for the water to turn cold and their bodies to heat again with that passionate hunger that roused so easily between them.
But the real world couldn’t be kept at bay forever. When Maggie’s phone rang, they both tensed.
Clad only in bra and panties, she tossed the jeans she held on to the bed beside the waiting shirt, then walked around to pick up the cell phone from its charging cradle.
“Hello?”
“What’s going on? Who was that man in the picture you gave me?�
�� The woman’s voice on the other end of the line was tear-choked and shrill with panic. “Who are you people? What do you want?”
“Whoa! Hold on! Who is this?” Maggie demanded.
“Denise. I’m Denise, the art history department’s secretary. Remember?”
“I remember, but—”
“I want to know what this is all about!” she demanded. “Dr. Jerelski came in last night, just as I was leaving. I showed him that picture you gave me. Now this! What are you all involved in? Why—”
It took Maggie several minutes to calm the woman down enough so she made sense. By the time she finally got all the details and could hang up, Maggie could feel the muscles in her jaw and neck starting to tighten.
She set down the phone and looked up to find Rick watching her with a gaze so intense it could have stopped a grizzly in its tracks. He’d pulled on his jeans but hadn’t fastened them. His shirt still lay on the bed where he’d tossed it down by hers.
The sight of him half-naked just made her feel worse. What in the devil had she been thinking of, to let things between them go this far, this fast? Especially now?
“That was Jerelski’s secretary,” she said evenly. “He turned up last night, so she showed him the artist’s sketch of the man last seen with Tina. She says he—Jerelski—claimed he’d never seen the man, but this morning his office is turned upside down, as if someone was grabbing stuff in a hurry without caring what kind of mess he made. And now he’s disappeared again. He’s not answering any of his calls and when the campus police drove by his house, they found the back door unlocked and the place in a bigger mess than his office.”
She drew in a steadying breath, trying to get her racing thoughts in order. Rick stood there, still as a statue, waiting. A very grim and vengeful statue, she thought, then forced the thought away.
“When they saw the house, the campus cops called their boss, who called Bursey. Bursey’s men are at the house now. And the DEA guys are on their way.”
“And the secretary?” Rick demanded. “Denise? What did she have to say?”
“She thinks we’re involved in something nefarious and have dragged Jerelski into it. And she’s really scared that we dragged her in, too.”
“Why didn’t you tell her you were a cop?”
“Because I’m not a cop, but I am in the middle of an important investigation, one we’ve spent months working on. And I’m supposed to still be undercover,” she snapped. “There’s probably at least a dozen people around town who still don’t know otherwise.”
He grimaced. “You’re right. Sorry.”
Maggie forced down her anger. Fighting with Rick wouldn’t accomplish anything except waste time.
“She can’t help us any further, anyway,” she added, more calmly now. “But she did say something interesting. After she discovered the mess in Jerelski’s office and called the campus cops, she showed a couple of the other professors the sketch. One of them evidently thought he recognized the guy. He thought he might have met him at some conference or other, but he wasn’t sure where.”
“That’s not much help.”
“It’s something.”
“Enough to find Tina?”
Her temper shot back up. “Don’t growl at me, dammit!”
“Well, is it?”
The length of the bed was all that separated them, but Maggie could almost see the gulf that was widening between them. For a few short hours they’d been able to forget everything except each other, but now the world had come crashing in and there was no going back.
She’d known it would happen, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
“No, it’s not enough to find Tina,” she reluctantly admitted. “But it’s still more than we had before.”
His gaze locked with hers. He looked like a man who wanted to hit something, hard, but had just enough self-control left not to.
“All right,” he said at last, each word as hard as bullets. “So what do we do now?”
Maggie grabbed his shirt and tossed it at him.
“We get dressed,” she said. “And then we’ll decide what comes next.”
He should apologize, Rick admitted to himself as he followed Maggie out the door a quarter of an hour later. He was out of line, first to last, and he’d had no right to take his worries out on her.
He wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been so damned confused as well as frightened.
Last night had been wild and wonderful and satisfying in ways that went far deeper than mere sexual gratification. But that wasn’t something he could let himself think about. Not now. Not while Tina was still missing. Especially not when everything they learned about her disappearance flat out scared him more than he already was.
He needed Maggie to help him find Tina. He hated to admit it, but it was true. He’d spent years hunting bears, observing them, studying them, but this was a different and far more dangerous hunt. The stakes were too high to risk making a mistake or to allow himself to be distracted. By anything or anyone.
It wouldn’t happen again, he promised himself grimly.
And then he looked up to find Maggie standing by his pickup, staring at him expressionlessly, and he wasn’t sure he could keep that promise, after all.
She was so…real. So alive and strong and passionate.
Last night, and this morning when he’d awakened, he’d found himself thinking of long-term, of years with her, not days or weeks or even months. The thought had shaken him then, and it shook him now. Not because he didn’t want to marry—some day. Or because he thought he would repeat the mistakes his parents had made in their marriage—he didn’t.
No, it shook him because it felt like he was betraying Tina by allowing himself to get involved with someone while she was still missing. He owed Tina better than that. He owed her a lot better than that.
But he owed Maggie something, too.
If nothing else, he owed her honesty. And he owed himself the same.
Easier said than done when he wasn’t sure exactly what it was he was feeling right now.
Maggie must have read something of what he was thinking in his face. Or maybe she was thinking the same thing, herself.
Her chin came up.
“It’s not going to happen again, you know. What we shared last night—” Her mouth thinned, as if she wanted to make sure that whatever she’d been about to say didn’t slip out in spite of her. “It’s not going to happen again.”
It was exactly what he’d promised himself, so why did the words sound so wrong?
“No,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”
She flinched as if he’d slapped her, and something in her eyes went bleak and sad.
He felt like he’d been rammed in the gut.
“To hell with this,” he growled.
In two steps he’d eliminated the distance between them. But when he tried to take her in his arms and kiss her, she slammed her palms against his chest to hold him at bay.
“No!”
His hold on her tightened. “This is crazy! We’re both kicking ourselves for this, and neither one of us deserves it. I wasn’t betraying Tina by making love to you last night, and you weren’t betraying your brother! Whatever this thing is between us, it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with us!”
Her jaw set.
“We had sex,” she said flatly. “We didn’t make love because we’re not in love. We couldn’t be! We haven’t known each other anywhere long enough to be even close to that kind of insanity! And now’s not the time to think about it, anyway, even if we were.”
“No, but—”
She shoved him roughly away “I have a job to do, and so do you. That comes first.”
He was getting mad now. “You’re right, it does. But that doesn’t mean we have to ignore all the rest. Or pretend there’s absolutely nothing between us, when we both know there is. Whether we like it or not, there is!”
She exploded. “What is it with you? Ten minutes
ago you were looking at me like I’d crawled out from under a rock. Now you want to declare undying love or something? Well, forget it!”
With a furious curse, she spun around and grabbed the handle on the truck’s passenger-side door.
Rick swore. If it hadn’t been a heavy-duty truck, she’d have ripped the thing right off.
“It’s still locked, dammit.”
She threw him a look of loathing. “Then unlock it, dammit!”
“I will!”
“Fine!”
Only he didn’t. Instead, he grabbed her again, and kissed her.
For an instant, dimly, he wondered if she would flip him, or knee him or break his neck. Or maybe do all three.
Instead, like a recalcitrant knot that finally lets go, she gave up the fight and leaned into him and kissed him back.
She might as well have clobbered him, because his knees suddenly got wobbly and he couldn’t breathe. His pulse rate climbed out of sight. He hardly noticed because the kiss had all the fire and doubt and hunger and fear and the absolute, soul-deep need that lay between them, every bit of it packed into the few seconds or years or however long it was that that one kiss lasted.
He wasn’t sure who pulled away first, but he was quite sure his knees would have given out from under him if he hadn’t had the truck’s still-locked door to lean against.
“I thought I told you never to grab me like that again.”
“That’s right. You did tell me not to grab you. I remember. But you didn’t tell me not to kiss you.”
“Next time you try it I’ll punch you in the nose.”
“You can try.” What in hell were they fighting about, anyway?
Her eyes weren’t bleak or sad anymore. Now there was a fire in them that he’d swear shot off sparks that were hot enough to burn him.
She poked him in the chest again, harder this time.
“I’m not in love with you. And I do not get emotionally involved when I’m on the job. Ever. Especially not when I hardly even know you.”
“There’s a first time for everything because here we are, whether we like it or not. Whatever this thing between us, it’s not going to go away just because we wish it would.”