Bait

by Karen Robards

  He raised his head to look down at her. The diamond-hard glint in his eyes was enough to make her racing heart skip a beat.

  “Yeah,” he said. “There’s that.”

  “Thought so,” Maddie breathed, and he smiled and she got all gooey inside over his dimples, and while she was still distracted he kissed her again, with a hungry urgency that made her dizzier than she already was. She clung to him, kissing him back as if she’d die if she didn’t, while her head spun and desire coiled tightly inside her body and delicious little shivers of anticipation raced over her skin.

  “McCabe,” she whispered, trembling a little at the hot, wet slide of his mouth along the exquisitely sensitive chord at the side of her neck.

  He lifted his head and looked at her. The gleam in his eyes was almost tender. “Don’t you think it’s about time you started calling me Sam?” His voice was low and husky, but with a touch of humor mixed in there, too.

  Maddie gave a shaky little laugh.

  “Sam,” she said obediently. Then, “Sam,” because his hands were parting the edges of her robe and sliding beneath it, pushing it from her shoulders so that it crumpled to the linoleum with the faintest whisper of sound. Big, warm, long-fingered hands that were moving over the satiny pistachio slip that she’d chosen to sleep in just because it was the sexiest nightgown she owned, and she wanted to be sexy for him. Strong and capable hands that stroked over her breasts and teased her nipples and molded her waist and slid down over her butt to pull her tight against him. Expert masculine hands that slid under the edge of her slip ...

  “Sam,” she moaned as his hands closed on her bare cheeks. Her slip had ridden up around her navel now so that there was no longer any barrier at all between her body and the hard, urgent mound beneath the cool abrasion of his jeans. Rocking her against him, he kissed her mouth, her neck, her ear, while her heart pounded and her breathing came short and fast and her body quaked and burned and throbbed.

  “This is such a bad idea,” he said in a thick voice, pulling her closer yet and sliding a thigh between her legs and moving it against her in a way that felt so incredibly good that all she could do was gasp and shiver and wrap her arms around his neck and hang on for the ride.

  “I don’t care,” she replied, barely able to think, let alone speak. His thigh between her legs was a revelation, a pleasure-giving machine of awesome proportions, and she pressed back against it instinctively. The resulting undulating waves of desire made her moan with dazzled surprise.

  “Hell, me neither.” His voice was hoarse and thick, scarcely louder than a growl.

  His mouth found hers again, and she kissed him back with the kind of abandon that came from being totally, completely, toe-curlingly turned-on.

  She wanted him. God, she wanted him. She wanted him naked and inside her and ...

  First things first.

  Her hands measured the breadth of his shoulders, slipped down the front of his chest, found the edge of his T-shirt. Then they moved beneath it, flattening against his lean middle, loving the firmness of the muscles there, loving the satin-over-steel quality of his skin. She could feel him breathing, feel his chest heaving as if he’d been running for miles, feel the pounding of his heart as she slid her hands up over his rib cage. Her own heart was pounding, too, and her breathing came fast and erratic as she stroked the thicket of hair that covered the center of his chest, flattened her palms over the wide, firm curves of his pecs, then touched his flat male nipples.

  He lifted his head at that and inhaled.

  “You’re killing me here,” he said in a low, shaken voice. For a moment he simply breathed and looked at her, his eyes heavy-lidded and so hot that they made her dizzy, and then with a quick, sweeping movement he pulled his T-shirt over his head. She could see the heavily muscled contours of his wide shoulders silhouetted against the curtains. She could feel the damp heat of his skin all around her, beneath her hands and against her arms and burning through the thin nylon of her gown. She could smell something vaguely sweet—her brow wrinkled; was it strawberries?—and beneath it his own special brand of eau de man.

  Her loins clenched. Her heart gave a great, shuddering leap. Leaning into him, she pressed her open mouth to the salt-tinged column of his neck and slid her hand over the tensile, hair-roughened six-pack of his belly. Encountering his waistband, she slipped her hand beneath it.

  He was there, right there, burning hot, damp, and so huge and hard that he was all but bursting out of his jeans. She touched him, wrapped her hand around ...

  “Damn.” He said it through clenched teeth. Lifting her head, she saw that his face was hard and fierce and his eyes blazed down at her. Wanting him so much that she was dizzy with it, she withdrew her hand and began to fumble with the button on his jeans. For a moment he stayed perfectly still. Then his hands tightened on the round curves of her cheeks and he lifted her up off her feet. Squeaking with surprise, she clutched at his shoulders as he took two steps with her and put her down. Barebottomed. On the cool, smooth oak surface of her kitchen table. And pulled her nightgown over her head.

  Before Maddie had quite grasped that she was now sitting on her kitchen table naked, he was kissing her again and shucking his jeans and spreading her legs and moving between them. It was dark, but not so dark that she couldn’t see that he was huge and hung and ready for action. Her heart pounded, her body burned and clenched, and she trembled with anticipation. She reached for him, but he caught her hands before she could make contact and guided them to his shoulders.

  “Sam ...”

  “Sit tight.”

  Perched almost on the edge of the table, she clung, breathing hard as that huge, hot part of him just brushed her while he slid slow, thrilling hands up the insides of her thighs.

  At the exquisite sensation, she gritted her teeth and curled her toes and almost forgot to breathe.

  “Do me now,” she said, shocked at herself, but wanting him so much that she didn’t care, loving the way he felt between her thighs, so turned-on that she was woozy with it, so ready for him to come inside her that she could scream—but he didn’t.

  “Soon,” he promised, his voice guttural now. He bent his head and put his hot, wet mouth on her breast, and slid one of those big, warm, long-fingered hands down between her legs.

  “Sam,” she whispered. Then, as his mouth tightened and pulled on her breast and his hand started working its magic, she said in a very different tone, “Oh, Sam.”

  He kissed her breasts and delved into the velvety delta between her thighs, finding that part of her that ached and yearned and burned for his touch, then leaned her back against the table and kissed her there, too, keeping at it until she was mindless, until she had no inhibitions left, until she was arching her back and reaching for him and begging. When she was almost there, when she shivered and quaked and dug her nails into the oak and thrashed and moaned, he stood up and gripped her hipbones and pushed into her, filling her to capacity, so big and hard and hot that she cried out and twined her legs around his waist and surged to meet him. Then he took her, hard and fast, plunging into her with a series of fierce, deep thrusts until she lost all sense of time and place, until she was crying out at the wonder of it, until finally she came with a shattering intensity that caused the night to explode against her closed eyelids in a burst of thousands of glittering stars.

  “Maddie,” he groaned then, thrusting himself deep inside her shaking body and holding himself there as, at last, he found his own release.

  THE SEX had been great. Mind-blowing. Earth-shattering. The aftermath was—awkward.

  When a woman had just been thoroughly done on top of her very own kitchen table, there was just no romantic, dignified, or even moderately unembarrassing way to bridge the transition from hot sex to cold reality, Maddie decided.

  However, continuing to lie naked in the center of said table like a turkey on a platter was probably the most humiliating of the available choices.

  She sat up, and
slid off.

  Sam was watching her. He was a few feet away, he was naked, and even with the bloom off the rose, so to speak, he was looking hot.

  Unfortunately, she was feeling cold. And embarrassed. And very, very grateful that the kitchen was dark.

  A lesser woman would have wrapped her arms around herself and scuttled from the room at that point. A more poised one would have come up with something witty and charming to say to ease the situation.

  But with his eyes on her and her mind still semiblown and the memory of really hot sex simmering in the air between them, the best she could manage was a weak, drawn-out, “So ...”

  “Want your robe?” he asked, holding it out to her. She hadn’t realized he’d been holding it in one hand until then. He sounded like himself again, like McCabe rather than Sam, and the familiar, drawling cadence had the unexpected effect of making her tingle, just a little.

  “Thanks.” She took her robe, pulled it on, and immediately felt a little less vulnerable. Okay, no point in pussy-footing around. Might as well get the thing right out in the open and have done with it. With what she considered a very creditable assumption of ease, she tightened her belt and said, “Tell me we did not just do it on the kitchen table.”

  “Yeah,” he said, folding his arms over his chest and leaning a hip against the counter and looking her over. His eyes gleamed at her. “We did.”

  So much for ease. Her heartbeat quickened under the silent perusal of those heavy-lidded black eyes. What was he thinking? Was he sorry? She couldn’t tell. She couldn’t see him well enough to read his expression at that distance—and it was impossible to divine anything from his tone. But he might well be sorry. If she was going to look the truth squarely in the eye, she had to admit it: She had seduced him.

  I’m crazy about you. ...

  She could almost hear herself saying it. The thing was, he’d never actually said it back.

  “Well—I think I’ll just go take a quick shower.” As far as graceful exit lines went, that left something to be desired, she knew. But under the circumstances, it was absolutely, positively the best she could do. What she needed was time alone to regroup. And a little personal grooming wouldn’t go amiss, either, in case he should at some point decide to turn on a light. Her mouth felt swollen, and her hair was a bush.... When she’d recovered her equilibrium and was feeling more like herself, she could pursue this thing between them—maybe.

  Or maybe not.

  Maybe she’d just leave it at a single session of really mind-blowing sex.

  “Sounds like a plan,” he said, and started picking up his clothes.

  Swallowing, feeling as ridiculously uncomfortable as a teenager on a first date, she headed out of the kitchen.

  “Maddie.” His voice stopped her just as she reached the doorway. She turned back to glance at him inquiringly. “Forgot something.”

  He tossed her nightgown to her. Even as she caught it, even as she felt the slide of the silky nylon through her fingers and breathed in the scent of sex that seemed to cling to it, she had an instant flashback to the moment when he’d pulled it over her head.

  Just like that her loins clenched, her breasts tightened and swelled, and she felt a sudden, unmistakable upsurge of heat.

  Her eyes met his, and her breath caught, and she knew: For her, this was already more than a quickie love affair.

  Turning on her heel, clutching her nightgown in suddenly nerveless fingers, she headed for the bathroom and sanctuary. But even as she closed the door and turned on the taps, she could not escape the refrain that beat endlessly in her brain. It was one word, repeated over and over again: Stupid.

  IT WAS the scent of strawberries that was to blame. Sam came to that conclusion as he walked into the bathroom five minutes later and inhaled it along with a lungful of steam. The security system was on, the bathroom door was unlocked, and his firm intention not to fuck his bait was blown all to hell. He was nuts, and he knew it, and that was the only explanation he could find: The faint, insidious smell that had been haunting him since he had first met Maddie had finally driven him totally insane.

  That being the case, he was going to go with it.

  She was still in the shower, and he was still naked. Seemed like destiny to him.

  Pulling the curtain aside—she jumped and squeaked, and he had to grab her arm to steady her—he stepped into the tub and moved under the warm spray with her. Crowded, she backed up and looked up at him, wide-eyed, the shampoo bottle clutched in her hand. Her face was shiny wet and suds were in her hair and water sluiced over her drop-dead body and dripped from her delectable rosy-tipped breasts. His gaze touched on creamy shoulders and those perfect round breasts, then slid over the slender curve of her waist and the satiny flatness of her belly to the soft, sable triangle of curls between her truly gorgeous legs.

  She was so damned beautiful that his stomach clenched. Along with several other notable body parts.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  So far, he realized, he hadn’t said a word, and she was looking at him like he was crazy. Not a surprise, since he clearly was.

  “I forgot to tell you something.” He took the shampoo bottle from her hand and reached around her to set it back in the white wire rack that hung from the shower nozzle. That brought him so close to her that he could feel the jiggle of her soft, warm breasts against his chest.

  He looked down at the strawberry-tipped, creamy pale globes nudging into his chest hair and felt himself getting the mother of all hard-ons.

  “What?”

  “I’m crazy as hell about you,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him and kissed her. Then he proceeded to do what he could to prove it.

  LATER, MUCH LATER, they were in her bed. All three of them. Sam lay on his back with one arm curled beneath his head and Maddie draped across his chest. That damned nuisance of a dog sprawled at their feet. He and Maddie were naked, and she and the dog, whom he’d given up trying to kick off the bed, were asleep. One of them was snoring, delicate rattling gasps that were as rhythmic as the tick of the bedside clock. He was pretty sure it was the dog, but he was too tired to look and see.

  The pretty little strawberry-scented thing on top of him had just about worn him out, Sam reflected, and he would have grinned if he could have mustered the energy. He wouldn’t have believed such a thing was possible if he hadn’t just experienced it.

  She’d been surprising him since they’d met, and she had surprised him between the sheets, too.

  Just as he had foreseen, he’d played with fire and had gotten burned. Or, rather, gone up in flames. Not that, with the wisdom of hindsight, he was thinking that was such a bad thing.

  She’d made him hot. She’d made him crazy. He’d made her his.

  Seemed like a pretty fair trade to him.

  Sam was just thinking that, except for a few minor problems like a killer on the loose, all was nearer to being right in his world than it had been for a long time, when his cell phone started to ring.

  It was on the bedside table, along with his gun. Tensing, he reached for it. Maddie lifted her head. The dog looked up.

  “Sam?” Maddie said on a questioning note, even as he picked the thing up and it continued to ring.

  “It’s my phone.” He fumbled with the bedside lamp. Turning it on, he looked at the ID window.

  Error, it said.

  “Shit.” He was suddenly as juiced as if he’d just taken a hit of speed.

  “What?” she asked, scooting off to lie beside him, her eyes wide on his face.

  “Don’t make a sound,” he warned her, and, sitting up, flipped open his phone. “McCabe.”

  “Hey, asshole,” the familiar voice said. “Miss me?”

  “Like a bad case of the clap.” It hit him that he was talking to the sick bastard who had tried—was trying—to kill Maddie, and he felt a murderous spurt of rage. She was staring at him, propped up on her elbows beside him, flushed with
sex and naked, and he felt a fierce, hard rush of protectiveness and possession. “Where you been?”

  I’m gonna take you down, he promised the guy silently. He listened hard, heard something in the background. He couldn’t quite make out what it was. The computers would automatically pick up the call, he knew. Later they could get the background sounds enhanced....

  “Busy. I’ve been busy.” The son of a bitch sounded almost affable. The sounds in the background—Sam still couldn’t quite place them. But he was getting a bad feeling about this. Something was wrong. “You quit playing the game, McCabe.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Time. He had to play for time. One of these days, the sick bastard was going to talk too long and they’d have him. Just one second too long, and it would be all over. The computers would be busy now, trying to locate him. Gardner would have heard the call come in. She would be up and listening....

  “Our game. The game we’ve been playing. You quit on me. So I’ve decided to up the ante.”

  “We’re not playing any game.” Sam hoped the alarm he was beginning to feel wasn’t audible in his voice. Cool. Stay cool.

  “Say hello to Carol Walter, asshole.”

  The sounds in the background were getting louder, like they were coming closer to the phone, or the phone was coming closer to them. It sounded like—sobs. Someone sobbing.

  Someone who was now weeping into the phone. He could hear gasping sounds, sniffles....

  “Help. Please help me. Please. Please.” A woman’s voice, terrified, shaking, the words interspersed with sobs.

  Jesus. Sam’s gut clenched. He knew. He already knew....

  “I’m going to kill her now. And you’re going to listen.”

  “No!” Sam yelled, catapulting out of bed, but he was helpless, he couldn’t stop it, he could only stand there beside the bed and listen as the woman wept and begged, at a slight distance from the phone now, “Please don’t, please don ...”

  Bang.