by Anne Calhoun
Of course. Explaining a sexual relationship to anyone from Caleb to Lieutenant Hawthorn to a prosecuting attorney to a jury would be unpleasant at best. But the dispassionate, observing part of her mind suggested that the key part of that confession wasn’t “shouldn’t” or “can’t.” The key part was “I wanted.” Unpredictable, uncontrollable desires seemed to unnerve Matt Dorchester, and yet those desires were the most honest, most real part of what they shared. He wanted her.
With each heartbeat her skin felt more sensitized, the nerves anticipating his touch, his body against hers. Swirling inside her was a dark mixture of desire and anger, potent, irresistible, and very, very tasty. The concoction flickered and skittered along her nerves, striking sparks before settling between her thighs.
It was just an impulse, a physical response to fear and fury in a situation so confined and unreal that anything could happen, then disappear in the bright light of ordinary life.
“Being angry doesn’t seem to be putting the brakes on wanting you.”
As motionless as he was, he went even more still, in a really interesting, intent way, jerking the feedback loop running between them into high gear. The body often wanted something the brain found incomprehensible, except wanting Matt didn’t seem incomprehensible. It seemed inevitable. But he said nothing.
“If anything, it’s making it worse,” she continued.
Sex wasn’t just about happy, cheerful emotions like love or affection. It was about darker things too. Hidden desires. Illogical attractions. Anger or fear or shock all could make people do something they wouldn’t normally do. The shock was gone, the fear receded into the background of her mind, but the anger, the anger had turned up the intensity, making her blood simmer in her veins, making heat gather between her thighs, in her lips, in the pulse thudding against the skin of her throat.
He sat back, looked away, then back at her, and blew his breath out. “I thought about this,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of options. You can go to town on the dishes.”
She blinked. Looked at her plate. Tried to imagine shrieking and smashing things. “Not even remotely close to physical enough.”
He nodded. “We can go down the hall, tape up your hands, and turn you loose on the heavy bag.”
“Better,” she said.
He held out his hand, the commanding move tempered by his watchful, wary eyes, as if the shift in territory from the fast-paced, sexy, loud nightclub brought out a softer side in him. Or maybe he was trying to find his way in all of this too.
She walked down the hall to the mirror-walled studio, and waited while he found wraps and tape. His fingers were businesslike as he wound the wraps around her knuckles, then fitted a pair of gloves over her hands.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted as she took up position across from the heavy bag.
“Just hit it,” he said.
She did, throwing a punch that barely shifted the bag on the chain.
“Drive from your shoulder, then from your hip,” he said, demonstrating. She tried again, adrenaline searing her nerves, sending her heart rate bumping skyward, landed a punch with her right, then her left.
“Better,” he said, watching her judiciously.
She kept at it for a few long moments, but it wasn’t the full body contact she craved, the release she needed. “Still not enough,” she said, breathing a little harder. “How could this possibly be enough, after what we went through?”
His hazel eyes darkened. Lust simmered in the room, flowing hot and sharp-sweet through her veins, bringing a rush of blood to his cheekbones. God, she needed this, needed to struggle under his heavier, stronger body, hands in hair and nails in skin, oh yes, she needed that. In the upside-down world that had become her life, that was perfectly acceptable.
Necessary, even.
Needs always bubble up in other places. They were two consenting adults swimming in a pheromone-lit sea of sheer carnal need, and for the moment, all cards were on the table.
“Don’t make a decision under duress,” he said.
She laughed, but it was a sound so unlike her she would have sworn someone else made it. “Do you have that luxury?” she asked as he stripped off the tape securing the gloves to her hands. “I don’t.”
She stood, turned, and walked down the short hallway to lean against the wall by his bedroom door. Then she waited, emotions twining in her gut. Definitely desire. Fear that he wouldn’t walk down the hallway.
Fear that he would.
Chair legs scraped against wood floor, but his approach, as always, was silent. He backed her into the wall and kissed her, the touch of his mouth soft and knowing. Sensation spilled through her veins like liquid fire. With a gasp she pushed him back.
Hands flung wide in a take it easy, I’m harmless gesture, his eyes assessed everything about her, her hands, her position against the wall, her eyes, her lips. His mouth was wet from hers, she noticed, before his gaze searched hers, intense, aware. Tightly leashed.
A man with that look in his eyes wasn’t harmless. Good thing, because the last thing she wanted was polite, or politically correct.
“Don’t be careful with me,” she said.
He deliberately stepped back into her body, pinning her to the wall with chest and pelvis as he worked a thigh between hers. One hand fastened at her hip, the other at her throat, holding her jaw so he could ravage her mouth, and she felt something dark and very, very desirable flame to life inside her. She arched under his weight, ground her hip into the thick heat of his cock. He pushed back and angled his head to kiss her, mouths slippery, teeth clacking as the pent-up longing blew like a steam valve letting off pressure.
She fisted her hands in his shirt and pulled, more for the sensation of gripping something than an effort to move him. Still, he stepped back and yanked his shirt over his head, then shoved her back into the wall for another explicit kiss. This time her nails found skin, dug in as he worked his way along her jaw and down her neck, using teeth mostly, soothing the bites with licks until he reached her collarbone. With one hand he tugged her tank top strap off while the other hand slid under the shirt to cup her breast. The fierce, hot sensation of his thumb and forefinger on her nipple made her gasp before his mouth claimed hers again.
His body was hard and insistent through her clothes. He leaned into her, using his shoulders to pin her, his hand on her breast sending rivulets of need through her body, his hips grinding against hers in a slow, hot rhythm. If her nails stung his shoulders he gave no sign of it, but when Eve arched and whimpered he stepped back and directed her into his bedroom.
“Strip. Now.”
They watched each other covertly as they undressed, her shirt tugged off and tossed aside, jeans unzipped and shoved down, familiar movements made abrupt by ferocious need.
Sunlight and shadows dappled his bed, and his body, as he watched her work off her jeans and panties. A light patina of sweat gleamed on his shoulders and ridged abdomen. His body was spectacular, all the hard-planed, shifting muscles she’d seen when he put on his Eye Candy T-shirt that first night, plus long, strong legs. His thick erection jutted out from a thatch of dark brown hair, visible proof that whatever else he’d said or done, he wanted her.
She crawled backward to the center of the bed, then he braced himself with an arm on either side of her shoulders and kissed her, sharp, commanding nips that trailed down her chin, along her neck, over her collarbone. When his teeth found her nipple she slid her fingers through his chestnut hair and gripped hard. This wasn’t gentle, or careful. He was using hands, body, and mouth to pour gasoline on the fire burning inside as he gave the other nipple the same treatment, then moved down her abdomen to settle between her thighs.
She couldn’t stand it. It was too intimate, too soon, and she gripped his hair again but then his clever tongue delved into her folds and circled her clit, and she was beyond caring. He held her thigh open with one hand and flattened the other against her belly and quickly le
arned what made her whimper, then moan. Pleasure tightened hard and fierce under his relentless mouth, and as the subtle, circling movements of his tongue set her on fire.
Sensation seared from her toes to the tips of her fingers, seeming to burn through her skin. She noted slats of late-afternoon sunlight lying across her belly and his hair, but closed her eyes at the image. He built the pleasure with an intensity that had her quivering in his hold, eyes closed, head thrown back, arching against him as her orgasm tore through her. When body and soul merged back together, he was braced over her, eyeing her with a heavy-lidded, predatory gaze.
“Damn,” he said.
She refused to feel embarrassed. “More. Come on. More.”
She lay limp on the bed while he yanked open the top drawer of his nightstand and grabbed a condom. He turned the package over twice before ripping it open and rolling the latex down his shaft. Without warning he shifted between her legs, and the fight or flight adrenaline was still there because her heart rate kicked into the red zone. Pinned between his body and the bed, all the vulnerability of the previous night rushed back. She gripped his taut biceps, felt her eyes widen, but he wasn’t looking at her face. His breathing shallowed as he nudged into place.
His face was tight with desire, his jaw set when his gaze met hers. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face, into the stubble. The house was barely comfortable when they were sitting still. Movement, full body contact, made sweat slick their bodies. Reduced to the most primitive state of female, she forgot where she was, her name, or any of his several names as the impulse to finish this tightened her throat, swept through her limbs. She wound her legs around his, gripped his arms, and arched into his body.
He seated himself to the hilt inside her in one smooth, gliding stroke. Something—the sheer mass of his body against hers, the visceral punch of full-body, skin-to-skin contact—tore free the last of her restraints. She went wild under him as his mouth ravaged hers, bringing the copper taste of blood to her tongue, repaying him for her pleasure with the sting of her nails. The pressure of his cock inside her ignited the crackling mixture of fear and rage and shock. She cried out, curved her arms around his torso and held on. The pace wasn’t the fast, frenetic battering she dimly expected, but rather firm, and utterly relentless. Her hips lifted to meet his, need fisting between her legs with each stroke. No escape, no relief from the emotional tidal wave cresting, driven by the pleasure building behind it, promising to obliterate everything in its path.
She couldn’t hold out against his body, the pleasure, the emotions roiling inside her. She clung to him, lifted her head, and his big hand slid into her hair. When the wave hit she sank her teeth into his shoulder, felt more than heard a muffled curse rumble in his chest, but he didn’t stop. He thrust through the spasms pulsing in her core, and this time, the waves swept her into blackness.
Awareness returned just as he dropped to his elbows, the shudders wracking his big body reverberating through hers. The tension ebbed from his muscles in slow stages, and as he relaxed against her she felt his heart pounding against his rib cage. He nuzzled into the spill of her hair, the oddest, most hesitant sigh fanning the still damp strands. When he got up to dispose of the condom she rolled onto her stomach and folded her arms, her face turned to the wall. The bed dipped as he lay down beside her, but didn’t touch her.
Silence. Pleasure ebbed to the edge of her hot, damp skin. Very aware of him lying next to her, she did a quick sweep of her psyche. Not exactly calm, but the passion seemed to have burned away most of the anger, and she was too satiated to feel fear. For now. As for the desire … that lingered, ribbons braided with the pleasure.
Flashes of the encounter came back to her. “What was so fascinating about the condom package?” she asked, the words muffled in the crook of her arm.
A moment of silence, then, in an extremely reluctant tone he said, “The expiration date.”
Even then he’d been thinking, protecting. Reaching over the side of the low bed she plucked the wrapper from the floor and peered at the date stamped into the edge, then dropped it without comment. She lifted her head to look at him. He stared at the ceiling, one hand tucked under his head, the other resting on his abdomen. A bruise the size of the toe of her boot marred the skin above his hip bone. This time he looked over at her, but while all the signs of ebbing passion were there—a dark flush fading from his cheekbones, full mouth—his gaze was unreadable. “What now?” she asked, the question purposefully vague.
Either he avoided the nuance or he opted for the most immediate answer. “Hawthorn and Sorenson are coming over at six. We need to talk about what happens next.”
If Hawthorn was right, if Lyle was dead set on killing her, she had no option but to continue to cooperate with the LPD. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
“People tell us to fuck off all the time, Eve. More often than not, they get scared, walk away. Your family has history with Murphy. If you want to make amends there and walk away, you probably could.”
She could. She never, ever would. Death threat or no death threat, Lyle had to be stopped, and she was in the best place to do just that. But trusting Matt was a completely different story. “Did you sleep with me to keep me close? To make sure I’d take your protection?”
He smiled, but there was no real humor in the twist of his mouth. “Despite all evidence to the contrary, there is a limit to what I’ll do for the LPD.”
A hint of a smile curved her lips at the self-mocking words but she really didn’t feel like liking him right now. “So why? Why give in to the impulse now, after weeks of no?”
“I wanted to,” he said.
Oh.
His expression didn’t change. She rested her head on her folded arms and closed her eyes. The vent emitted tepid air from the softly rattling air conditioner. She lay beside him and wondered how to handle a Matt Dorchester who was actually doing what he wanted to do.
CHAPTER TEN
He’d just made mistake number four. No, mistake number four was going upstairs with her, what was it, less than twenty-four hours ago? This was mistake number five. Making mistakes was becoming a habit, the kind of habit his father loathed, preached against, habits of weakness and emotion. Except this time his emotions weren’t the only ones in the game, and it sure as hell didn’t feel like a mistake.
He lay on his back beside Eve, one arm tucked under his head. She wasn’t asleep, just stretched out on her belly, her ankle resting in the bend of her knee, arms folded under her head, her eyes closed. The pale skin of her back gleamed with sweat and her black hair tumbled around her shoulder and over the pillow.
For a moment he tried for the usual blankness when he could be nothing, no needs, no demands, no pressures, but there was no ignoring Eve in his bed. God knew she had every right to tell him to deliver meals to Luke’s room for the next forty-eight hours, then go fuck himself, but he’d underestimated the unpredictable life force Eve channeled. He’d tried to do this the right way, offering up the option that, until recently, had worked for him. It didn’t work for her. Eve wasn’t the kind of person to stuff everything down, or substitute exercise for emotion, or settle for anything less than what she wanted.
People did atypical things when they were angry. Physical things. They hit things, or each other. Ran. Stormed around, screamed obscenities, made accusations, went cold and hard and silent.
Sometimes, for all the wrong reasons, they had sex.
If he’d been able to pick the circumstances for his first time with Eve, anger-driven sex wouldn’t have been on the list. Except she’d sat in his kitchen, looking like she was going to flare into flames from the inside out. Her tight, clipped sentences told the story as much as the edgy nerves she didn’t even bother to hide. Then she said she still wanted him, despite the anger, or maybe because of it, throwing the words at him like a challenge. Just like every encounter with Eve for the last two weeks, he simply couldn’t resist reaching out to touch that
live wire.
It chapped his ass to hear her list any number of motives for sex, and burned like salt rubbed in the raw spots when she checked the condom wrapper for herself, but he’d earned that. There was more to come. But for now she was relaxed, breathing easily, soft and warm in his bed. It should have been purely physical, a way to ease her stress, scratch the itch and see if it went away. It hadn’t. Instead, he felt sore inside, something similar to the ache left after he took a good pounding to his ribs. He couldn’t name it, so he noted the feeling and set it aside.
He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Less than an hour until Hawthorn and Sorenson arrived. “You want to shower again?”
“Yes,” she said. “You go first. I’ll take longer.”
He eased himself away from her warm body, stood under a lukewarm shower, and repeated his new mantra: no more mistakes. He’d fucked up, but he could rescue this from the death spiral. All he had to do was keep it together, until they got Murphy.
He got out, toweled off, then went back into the bedroom to get dressed. As soon as he reappeared, Eve slid out of bed, gathered her clothes from the floor, and ducked into the bathroom.
She joined him in the kitchen ten minutes later, her combed hair lying wet against her neck. “Do you have any elastic bands?”
“Junk drawer,” he said, pointing under the silverware drawer.
She found a rubber band formerly holding the ads in his Sunday paper, slicked her hair back and secured it with two quick movements. Lightning cracked through him, halting movement and breath for a heartbeat, then another as their eyes locked. He resumed breathing when she broke away to gather the dirty plates and silverware from the dining room table and slide them into the soapy water he’d run to do dishes.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“I need to do something,” she replied.
Framed that way, he was okay with it, so she washed, he dried and put away. While the sink drained, she went into Luke’s room and returned with her iPhone. She swiped and tapped at the screen, then lifted the phone to her ear.
