by Anna Sugden
He wanted to be that man for her...in all ways.
This crazy moment wouldn’t last. She would come to her senses and would pull back from him in less time than it took to flip the switch in a patrol car for the lights and siren. So each time he kissed the corners of her mouth and each chance he had to nibble the softness of her lower lip, he considered a gift. Only instead of disappearing, the gift kept expanding until it felt like Christmas and a couple of birthdays were sitting there in his passenger seat.
And suddenly she wasn’t sitting anymore.
Somehow Delia had lifted up on her knees, her hands landing on his shoulders. Releasing one side and then trading, she shrugged out of her coat before kicking off her snow boots. Ben was torn between closing his lids and just going with the kiss that he felt everywhere, and keeping his eyes wide-open because he wanted to see what she would do next. She must have recognized his quandary because she lifted his glasses from his face and rested them on the dashboard.
He was just adjusting to the new, slightly fuzzy image of her when she put her hands on his shoulders again. She pushed him back toward the window, but he steeled himself against the movement and shifted his hand to cover hers.
“Whoa. Whoa. Wait, Delia. Maybe this isn’t such a...” Great idea? Who was he kidding? He couldn’t think of a more perfect idea. It was the only thing that was clear to him when the rest of the world remained a transient blur.
But her disappointed moan as she wiggled closer to him shook him to his core. She kissed him with a determination that was so Delia-like, but with an abandon that seemed like someone else altogether. Delia was all about boundaries and rules, and she was crossing and breaking even her own.
He knew he should pull back. The timing, the situation, everything, was wrong about this. But she was so beautiful in the dashboard lights, and she smelled like flowers and tasted so sweet that the idea of becoming lost in her was sounding more rational by the second.
With a strength he hadn’t known was inside of him, he pulled his mouth away from hers again. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I want this. Believe me. I want this. But shouldn’t we think about things before—”
“I don’t want to think.”
The words he’d been planning to say about regrets she would have later vanished as she dipped her head and caught his bottom lip with her teeth. He hadn’t even tried to suggest that he would regret it. No sense in lying now when his racing heart would give him away. As Delia flicked her tongue over that sensitized spot on his lip and rolled it between her tongue and teeth, a sound emerged from his throat, more like a cheer than anything resembling dissent.
She released his lip and began a love affair with the sensitive dip at the base of his throat.
Ben swallowed, losing ground with each brush of her beautiful lips. “Come on, Dee.”
“I like when you call me Dee.”
“But remember what you said before?”
“I don’t care what I said.”
Ben would have offered another token argument, but he could only stare as she climbed across the center console onto his lap. Then digging down next to him, she found the seat controls and jerked the seat back. All the way back.
His resolve was crumbling fast. How was he supposed to behave like a gentleman when she was so insistent about what she wanted? What they both wanted.
He searched his spinning thoughts for one more decisive excuse, one more attempt to stop the roll of water amid a tidal wave. But Delia picked that moment to scoot closer, straddling him. She leaned back slightly and fumbled with his belt buckle.
“Now,” she said as she leaned in and breathed a word against his lips. “Please.”
She’d said “please,” after all. Ben did the only other thing a gentleman could do: he helped her to undress him so they could get started on her.
* * *
SOMEONE ELSE MUST have been in that car tonight. That was the only way that Delia could explain this out-of-body experience. Someone else had been frenetic as she shoved away his clothes. And tore off hers. That other person had demanded and pleaded, seeking heat and relief.
So how could she explain that she was the one lost in a sea of sensation and emotion? That the five o’clock shadow abraded her tender skin. Calloused hands welcomed and touched her everywhere at once. Two hearts pressed so close beneath sweaty skin that they chorused their frantic rhythm.
A voice called out as they fully joined, and Delia recognized it as her own. Ben heard it, too, immediately stilling beneath her instead of beginning to move as her body implored.
“Are you...okay?” he managed between halting breaths.
He pressed his forehead to hers, the hands that had left a trail of tingles and heated skin in their wake dropping to his sides.
“We can stop,” he whispered. “Tell me what you want to do, sweetheart.”
But she couldn’t answer as the tender way he’d spoken to her played in her thoughts. How could she tell him that the sound she’d made had come from a place so far from pain that it defied description? How could she let him know that his offer to stop was amazingly sweet? Though her absolute certainty that he would stop—even now when they were far beyond the point of no return—terrified her, it thrilled her, as well. Maybe there really was a man she could believe in after all.
She answered with her body instead of with the words she could never say aloud.
* * *
ENFOLDED IN A cocoon formed by fogged windows and a backdrop of night, Ben held Delia to him, her partly clothed form still draped over his lap, his face buried in a curtain of her hair. He’d pulled out every last restricting pin and would probably find those tiny metal hindrances all over his car for months, but he didn’t care. The freed mass had fallen so beautifully past her shoulders, just as he’d imagined it would. He hadn’t been able to keep his hands out of the waves, and even when spent, he continued sliding his fingers through the silky strands.
She was so beautiful, so sexy in her dishabille. Here with him. Like this.
Ben traced his free hand along the curve of her neck to the dent near her collarbone. Her skin felt like satin beneath his touch, still slightly damp. In the light, would she discover marks where his hands had touched her and where his lips had brushed? Even in the dark, he could tell that she’d left her mark on him. Only hers was beneath his skin.
Okay, the event hadn’t unfolded the way he’d imagined it would, or hoped, even after he’d sworn it would never happen. Tonight wouldn’t make the record books in the romance department. Or ever warrant any description beyond hot and embarrassingly fast.
But he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. Not when making love to Delia had felt like finding home after he’d spent a lifetime of never belonging anywhere, at least in his personal life. He’d been certain he would never be worthy of belonging.
Now the idea that he’d ever tried to resist Delia, not just physically but in every way, made no sense to him. Even if it was dangerous putting his heart on the line, he no longer had any control over that. The heart wanted what it wanted, and his wanted her. He couldn’t deny the truth that he cared about her. He would be with her to whatever extent she would allow. Would accept whatever level of trust she was able to put in him.
Was it enough? He refused to listen to the unwelcome voice inside of him that asked questions he wasn’t prepared to answer. Anyway, she’d proven that she trusted him at least a little. She’d welcomed him into her body, after all.
As if she’d read his thoughts and wanted to vehemently disagree, Delia shuddered and pulled back from him then. Her movement and the immediate chill on his chest from the loss of her skin’s warmth snapped him out of the spell of the moment. The perfect breasts that Ben had so recently memorized, she covered with one of her arms as she used the other to shift herself from his lap. He tried to help her, but she backed away from his touch all the way to the car door.
It would have hurt less if she’d slapped him. With her gun. Was he
the only one who saw any magic in their lovemaking? At once, the bright beauty of the moment melted away like a perfect photograph as flames lapped at its edges.
“Sorry. Are you cold?”
Are you cold? Was that the best he could do? On the other hand, he had several things to apologize for tonight, so maybe it was best to start with a small one.
“No. I’m...fine.”
She appeared to be a lot of things as she yanked up the bra that had ended up around her waist, pulled that strappy tank thing over her head and then struggled with the buttons on her sweater, but fine wasn’t one of them. Maybe infinitely uncomfortable, quietly furious or just ashamed, but she was not fine. The woman who’d always seemed to have a chip on her shoulder, a solid block of resentment that made more sense now that he knew about her mother’s desertion, was curling both shoulders inward toward her collarbones.
Though her reaction confused him, he couldn’t blame her for being upset. What had seemed to him to be an amazing, inevitable moment probably had reminded her of two desperate teenagers fooling around in a car. He’d been desperate, all right. Enough to make himself believe that he wasn’t the only one.
He cleared his throat, trying to ignore the lump that had formed there. “I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing.”
It was a stretch since he had on far more clothes than she did. There hadn’t been time to remove all of his. He had to do something now to help her stop shivering. Especially since he guessed that if he reached over to warm her with his hands, she would jump out into the snow again. He leaned forward and flipped the heat on high.
Delia was too busy wiggling back into her panties and jeans to notice anything he did anyway. She didn’t stop when she had those on, either. She slid into her coat and jammed her feet back into her boots. Even then, she still crossed her arms, continuing to shiver.
What was he supposed to do now? He dug for the controls next to him and moved his seat forward, stalling. This was so confusing. She’d seemed willing. Enthusiastic even. She’d raced toward her own release with a fervency that had sent him careening over the edge along with her. But now as she cowered in the corner, nervously finger-combing her hair into some semblance of order, he figured he must have imagined her eagerness, as well. Even that sigh of what had sounded like bliss.
Shame filled him over remembering those details when she was so obviously upset. This wasn’t about his pitiful performance insecurities. It was only about the act he should never have allowed to happen in a car, whether she’d seemed to be on board with the idea or not. He wasn’t some rutting teenager. He was a man who’d just taken the woman he adored in a way that made her feel ashamed.
He’d proven once again that when the chips were down, he was no hero. Another selfish loser. Just like his old man.
“This road seems deserted.” He’d said it to fill the silence as he pulled his dark T-shirt over his head and shoved his arms into the sleeves of his flannel shirt, but he was immediately sorry as she stared out the steamy window as if she was being watched. She’d believed that earlier after all.
“Third shift hasn’t been patrolling the park area since it’s closed at this time,” she managed.
He would have said illegal activity rarely took place when establishments were open, but he was so glad she’d spoken at all that he kept it to himself. Besides, as he repositioned his boxers and jeans that had never made it past his hips, he discovered a bigger surprise that could signal a more significant mistake than even the event in the car.
Telltale dampness.
He would have asked himself what he’d been thinking to take a risk like that, but it was clear he hadn’t been thinking. Even with all the chances he’d taken in his youth, on those rare occasions when he’d been lucky enough to have sex with someone, he’d always used condoms. So why now? Why with Delia had he lost all claim to his good sense?
Backing the car onto the snowy road that was becoming slicker by the minute, he flipped on the high beams and crept in the general direction of the park. She sat as still as a Da Vinci sculpture, and though he couldn’t tell for sure, was probably as pale as some of them, too.
“Delia, I’m really sorry.” He paused, not even sure how to phrase this one. “If it turns out that—”
But she shook her head sharply to interrupt his apology and his promise. Maybe she was so freaked out by the possibilities that she couldn’t bear to hear them spoken aloud. Didn’t she realize he was a stand-up guy, who would be there for her if she was pregnant? But then nothing about tonight would suggest that he was a decent guy.
“Just talk about the case.”
“But we really should talk about this—”
“Please!”
The word she’d used before to beg him to make love to her had now become a plaintive cry for him to forget it had ever happened. Didn’t she understand that those shadowed images, her sounds, the sweet scent that was uniquely hers, all those things had engraved themselves on his brain and burrowed beneath the layers of his senses?
But because he would do anything to relieve her obvious discomfort, he cleared his throat and started again. “Okay. The case.”
Strange how none of that mattered now, even if it was probably naive of him to look at his own future through such a cavalier lens. Still, in this moment, nothing was as important as finding a way to relieve her distress. To convince her to forgive him for causing it. As he entered the park and continued down the curvy roads back to the Possum Hollow area, he searched for anything to say that would give her the distraction she craved. When he backed into the space next to her car and shut off the engine, he turned in the seat to face her.
“Now, I know that some of the business owners that Jackson dealt with were eventually convicted and served time for other crimes.” He stopped, watching the side of her face, since she wouldn’t look at him. “But I want you to tell me once and for all, am I grasping at straws to think there might be a connection between the current investigation and Jackson, or any of his associates?”
Of course he was grasping. Reaching like his dad always had when he tried to explain away one more drink and one more pain pill. If anything, he expected a flat denial from Delia. From the beginning, she’d said it would be a waste of time to look at her family. But he’d only kept looking. For what? Something that could explain the puzzle that was Delia Morgan? Something that would lay flat on the table the hand of cards that, until tonight, she’d always kept so carefully to herself?
But she didn’t answer. Since she was the one who’d insisted on this conversation, he tried one more time.
“Could it maybe have been revenge against you because you didn’t believe in him?” As he said it, he knew how nonsensical it sounded. Even if the man were targeting Delia, and that was a stretch, then why set up Ben? Could he have gone after him to get to the both of them? But that only sounded crazier. There wasn’t really a them yet, except in his mind.
Still, she didn’t answer. The temptation to reach over and shake her out of her stupor was so strong that he had to grip the steering wheel to stop himself. If he touched her at all, she would probably just run to her car and drive away. And he would be left with those questions...and more. So he waited.
Finally, her head shifted, and her mouth opened as if she was going to speak, but instead of answering his questions, she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I’M FINE TO DRIVE. Really.” Delia’s voice cracked, but only a little this time. That was progress at least. Her voice sounded almost normal in her ears. Well, not too far from it.
She rubbed at eyes that felt as if she’d been through a sandstorm. Her lids were thick, swollen, leaving only slits of openings behind. Why it mattered after everything that had happened tonight, she wasn’t sure, but she had ugly cried, and she didn’t want him to see the splotchy results.
“Besides, we can’t leave my car in the parking lot.” She rubbed her upper arms over
her coat, but the gooseflesh beneath the material refused to settle. “It would be as suspicious as the one we found several weeks ago.”
“You think a parked car will raise as much suspicion as a charred one with all the serial numbers filed off?”
She could almost picture his eyebrow sneaking above the rim of his glasses. “Well, maybe not that much.”
“And you said yourself that forty-five hundred acres was a lot to patrol at once for the Metropark Police, even with the state police providing extra patrol.”
Delia frowned. She had said that, on another day that was nothing like this one, so it wasn’t fair for him to use it against her now. “That doesn’t mean we should leave the car here.”
The discussion had been going on that way for about fifteen minutes, with each side volleying, but neither gaining points. Ben had never seemed especially stubborn to her before, but he was digging his heels in this time in a disagreement that had more to do with worry than any car left in a parking lot.
She could feel Ben’s gaze on her now just as he’d pretended not to watch her earlier, waiting while her sobs had turned to cries and then trickled to sniffles. The process had taken so long that he’d been forced to start the engine and flip the heat back on—twice—so they wouldn’t freeze to death.
As if he’d guessed that she would shy away from his touch if he tried to comfort her, he’d kept his hands to himself the whole time. But he’d gripped the steering wheel so tight that his hands had to ache now.
“I told you we could get your car as soon as the park opens tomorrow.” His gaze shifting to the dashboard clock, Ben cleared his throat. “I mean today. Still, it’s unlikely anyone will even see it before then.”
“But with my luck...”
She didn’t finish her comment, but from the way he shifted in his seat, his back braced against the door, she could tell that he’d filled in the blanks himself. With something about the kind of luck it had taken to end up with a guy like him, surrounded by steamy car windows.
