Dangerous to Touch

by Jill Sorenson

  Gathering up his clothes, he went to the woman he really wanted, instead of staying with the one he could actually have.

  Sidney stretched like a cat, reveling in the sound of raindrops hitting the windowpane and the smell of freshly washed sheets.

  She loved sleeping in on a rainy day.

  The weather had broken. A cool, misty breeze drifted through the open window, and it was a welcome respite from the stifling heat of the past week. Snuggling deeper into the covers, she let herself doze off again, knowing the alarm would wake her in time for work.

  In her dreams, Marc was there with her, a tantalizing warmth against her back. She arched against him, wanting to feel more.

  He slipped his arm around her waist, smoothing his palm over her belly and brushing his lips across her nape. Her nipples tightened with arousal and heat pooled in her lower body. Encouraging him, she covered his hand with hers, pushing her bottom against his erection. With a low groan, he drew her even closer, sliding his naked thigh between her bare legs. The skin-on-skin contact was shocking; the hard pressure of his muscular thigh nudging the sweet ache between her legs, exquisite.

  The hand on her belly moved up under the hem of her T-shirt. He cupped one breast, then the other, teasing her taut nipples with his fingertips until she moaned her pleasure. When that hand wandered down beneath the waistband of her panties, her eyes flew open.

  This was way too real to be a dream.

  Sidney scrambled off the bed, taking the sheet with her, clutching it to her tingling breasts. Too late, she realized the error of her ways.

  She should have left the sheet with him.

  Marc was stretched out on her bed, mostly naked, a devastating image of masculine perfection. He was all sinewy muscles and dark skin, the thin cotton boxer shorts he was wearing showcasing rather than concealing his heavy arousal.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Uh…” He followed her gaze to his erection. “Getting you off?”

  She threw the sheet at his chest. “Getting yourself off, more like.”

  “That, too,” he admitted with a wince. “Your sister came in last night and stole my spot on the couch.”

  “And that gives you the right to touch me?”

  “No,” he said, pushing the sheet away and rising to his feet.

  “When you started rubbing your sweet little ass all over my hard-on, I considered it an invitation.”

  “I was asleep!”

  He located his pants on the floor and jerked them up his hips.

  “Some parts of you were awake,” he said, glancing at the points of her nipples, poking at the front of her T-shirt.

  She flushed darkly.

  “I don’t know what you’re so upset about,” he continued. “The other day you were panting for it.”

  “That was before…” She gestured to the middle of the bed, where the cat had been. “And then you just took off afterward, with no explanation.” Her eyes narrowed. “If anyone’s been running hot and cold, it’s you.”

  “I couldn’t stay,” he said, pulling his T-shirt over his head. “Don’t you get it? I can’t be seen with you.”

  “But you said-” She broke off. “Who assigned you to protect me, then?”

  “I assigned myself. No one else believes you.”

  “You believe me?”

  His gaze moved from her bare thighs, and the pale blue panties peeking out under the hem of her T-shirt, to her face. Instead of answering, he collected the rest of his belongings, slipping on his shoulder holster and pocketing his keys.

  “I can’t stay here with you again tonight,” he said.

  “Fine,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. She didn’t need a bodyguard. Or a babysitter.

  “I’ll pick you up after work,” he added.

  “Why?”

  “You’ll have to spend the night at my house.”

  Marc left Sidney’s, bagged cat in hand, and drove to Vincent Veterinary Clinic. After the late dinner last night, he’d slept very little, and knew from the restless sounds Sidney made upstairs that she’d had similar trouble.

  Her futon couch wasn’t comfortable, but he’d slept in worse conditions, on cots and in chairs and atop the desert sand with only his fatigues between him and the sun-baked ground.

  The problem wasn’t physical comfort, but his own hyperawareness of her. Every time he heard the bedsprings shift, he imagined her long, silky legs, kicking off blankets. He wondered what she was wearing and ached to know how she smelled.

  He hadn’t meant to touch her this morning. Hell, he’d been half-asleep himself, and fully aroused by the time he knew what he was doing. The hand he’d reached into her panties still itched to test her heat, but he hadn’t felt anything more than her silky pubic hair under his fingertips before she pulled away. A mere wisp of a touch, the memory of which was powerful enough to make him hard all over again.

  He pulled into the parking lot at Vincent Veterinary Clinic, shelving his bedroom fantasies. A glance in the mirror before he left Sidney’s showed a shadowed jaw, wrinkled clothes and bloodshot eyes. He already looked like he’d been on a bender; he didn’t need to walk in with a stiff cock, too.

  Inside the clinic, Bill was as sunny and insincere as ever, chatting with a pair of pretty receptionists who gazed up at him through worshipful eyes. When he saw Marc, his expression cooled. “Lieutenant Cruz,” he said. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “Dead cat,” Marc replied, setting it down on an aluminum examination table with a thud.

  “How delightful. Did you run it over with your car, or did your personality kill it?”

  One of Bill’s girls giggled uneasily, not sure of the joke.

  “I found it on Sidney’s bed, actually,” Marc said, watching the other man’s face for a reaction. “Tied up on its back. Guts all over the place.”

  “Go on up front, ladies,” Bill murmured, dismissing his receptionists. With businesslike concentration, he let the cat out of the bag. “Refrigerated?”

  “Overnight.”

  His eyes raked over Marc’s unshaven face and disheveled clothing. The implication that he’d been with Sidney all night did not appear to sit well with Bill. “She’s not one of your two-bit bimbos, you know,” he remarked as he examined the remains.

  “I defer to your greater experience with bimbos,” Marc replied, his voice laced with sarcasm.

  “I mean it,” Bill said, looking up. “If you hurt her-”

  “You’ll what?”

  Bill’s face flushed an angry red. He was much too reserved to engage in a fistfight.

  Marc wasn’t. At that moment, he would have gone a round in the parking lot with the smarmy vet, for no greater reason than he didn’t like picturing Bill with Sidney.

  “I care about her,” Bill said defiantly, gaining more respect from Marc than if he’d rolled up his cuffs.

  “Speaking of bimbos, Sidney’s not really your type, either, is she?” He lowered his voice. “And let’s not pretend we don’t both know exactly what your type is.”

  Bill took out a scalpel, cutting into what was left of the cat’s stomach cavity.

  “Did she discover you had a secret life, Vincent? Follow you to one of those late-night, underground clubs, catch you out on the prowl?”

  His mouth thinned with displeasure.

  “She didn’t have to, did she? All she had to do was touch you to know where you’d been.”

  Bill’s patience broke. “And what will she find out about you, Cruz? How will you feel when she touches you and recoils, when her face goes pale as she unearths your dirtiest secret? Mommy never loved you? Daddy was never around? The neighborhood priest took you into his rectory for a private confession?”

  “Don’t get my lurid past confused with yours, Doc. I’m sure you were every padre’s favorite altar boy.”

  Bill lifted his chin a notch, maintaining a thread of dignity. “We all have skeletons, Lieutenant. That’s why Sidney’s not f
or you. You can’t compartmentalize her, keep her out of your personal life, hold her at a safe distance. It’s all or nothing with her.”

  Marc resented being told how to treat Sidney by a man who couldn’t possibly have handled her well. “Tell me what you know about this cat,” he said, changing the subject.

  Bill sighed, giving him a brief overview. “It’s emaciated. Not spayed. Nothing in the digestive tract but plant material and mouse bones. Just your basic barn cat, I’d say.”

  “Why not a city stray?”

  “Teeth are worn and stained. With the coyote population around here, most strays don’t live long enough to get this old.”

  “A pet, then?”

  “Not one that was well cared for.”

  Marc nodded. “What else?”

  “Died from blood loss, as far as I can tell.”

  From the amount of it on Sidney’s bed, that much had been obvious. The man had killed the cat inside, but had he drugged it first? “Do you know anything about the effects of marijuana on animals?” he asked, thinking aloud.

  Bill raised his brows. “Sure. I get a client in every few months with a dog that ‘ate the neighbor’s plant,’ or a cat who ‘got into something.’”

  “Doesn’t anyone ever tell the truth?”

  “No. It’s silly, because I have no legal obligation to report them to the ASPCA or the police. Nor would I, if asked to,” he added, letting Marc know his patients were granted confidentiality. “The effects are varied, from excitability to extreme lethargy.”

  “Loss of consciousness?”

  “In extreme cases.”

  “As a sedative, how effective would marijuana be?”

  Bill shrugged. “Unreliable, in my opinion, but I’m no expert. There aren’t a lot of clinical studies on accidental ingestion of illegal drugs.”

  Marc decided it was time for another trip to the crime lab. “Can you bag the stomach contents?”

  Sidney brought her cat to the kennel for boarding because she was afraid to leave her at home by herself. Those brief moments she’d thought Marley had been tortured and killed had been excruciating.

  She went through her workday in a daze, disturbed by images both sensual and sadistic, seeing dead cats and live men around every corner. By closing time she was completely strung out, awash with sexual frustration and reluctant to engage in another test of wills with Marc.

  Sidney wasn’t used to interacting with men, period. Using her sense of touch as an investigative tool and facing the atrocities of a serial killer were scary; spending another night with Marc, terrifying.

  As promised, he picked her up from work and took her home with him. He was even hospitable enough to feed her before he disappeared upstairs. While she waited for him to come back down, she munched on an apple and a peanut butter sandwich, studying her surroundings. His house was bigger than hers, his appliances newer and his furniture more expensive, but the place had no soul. It was…boring.

  She sat down on his leather couch, discovering it was more comfortable than it looked, and flipped on the TV to see what channel he’d been watching. Sports. Sighing, she turned it off again, disappointed that his personal belongings were as rigid as his personality.

  “Getting any ‘impressions’?”

  Sidney turned at the sound of his voice, low and intimate in the darkening room. They’d arrived at just before sunset; now night was fast approaching. “I don’t try to get impressions,” she replied, offended by the sarcastic question. “They just come.”

  He took a seat at the opposite end of the couch, close enough for her to smell his Old Spice. In worn jeans and an old T-shirt, he should have appeared relaxed. He didn’t. He looked ready to pounce.

  Tucking her legs in, she curled one arm behind her head, getting cozy. When his eyes darkened, she suppressed a smile. Taunting him wasn’t nice, but he deserved it. “Why are you so distrustful?”

  “I’m a cop.”

  Pursing her mouth in concentration, she surveyed the living room once again, looking for clues with her eyes, not her hands.

  “You have a cross.”

  He followed her gaze to a carved wooden cross hanging near the front entrance. It was the only wall decoration he owned from what she could see. “So?”

  “Faith implies trust.”

  “My mother put it there,” he explained with a scowl.

  Laughing, she stretched her arms over her head, feeling lazy. She hadn’t slept very well last night, but she didn’t need to be alert to pick up on his concern for his mother. She could hear it in his voice.

  “You worry about her,” she murmured. “She trusts too much.”

  “She spends too much,” he corrected, eyeing her derisively. “On second-rate con artists and religious scams.”

  Sidney’s jaw dropped at the implication. “You think I’m a second-rate-”

  “No,” he interrupted in a soft voice, his gaze lingering on her breasts. “You’re first-rate all the way.”

  A war of emotions waged inside her. She was angry with him for insulting her, and with herself for wanting him anyway. The only consolation was that she knew he fought the same battle. He thought if he kept pushing her away, he wouldn’t succumb to temptation.

  She also felt closer to understanding his motivations than ever before. “You believe me,” she said, stunned by the realization. “You’re mad at yourself, because you believe me, and you’re afraid I’ll scam you.”

  Something dangerous flashed in his eyes, and she felt an answering jolt in her stomach. Marc was not a man who liked to be told how he felt. He was also quite adept at reasserting himself into the position of power with women.

  Bracing her hands on the couch cushions underneath her, she scooted back a few inches, trying to put some space between them. Not about to let her off so easy, he grasped her bare ankle and tugged her back toward him.

  Just like that, she was struck by another insight: The last time he’d been on this couch, he’d been fantasizing about her. “You…”

  He leaned into her, focusing his attention on her mouth. “I what?”

  She moistened her lips. “You were thinking about me. That day we went to Guajome Lake.”

  “I was doing a lot more than thinking,” he said, bending his head to kiss her. He probably just wanted to shut her up, but Sidney offered no resistance. At the first touch of his mouth, every reason she had for not getting involved with a man like him just sort of…burned up. She melted against him, her mental protestations evaporating like mist. Flattening her palms on his chest, she kissed him back shyly, nibbling at his lower lip.

  Her pulse throbbed with sensual awareness. Her body ached for his touch.

  He pulled her over his lap, fitting his erection into the notch of her thighs, and she gasped at the intimate contact. Then she moaned, pressing herself harder against him, digging her fingernails into his shoulders and twining her tongue with his.

  His hands snuck up under her shirt, splaying over her bare back.

  Breaking the kiss, she drew her shirt over her head, offering him even more. Her nipples pebbled under his gaze, jutting against the soft cotton bra, and she reached back to unfasten the clasp. Letting it fall from her shoulders, she watched his face, holding her breath in anticipation.

  He slid his hands up her rib cage to the undersides of her breasts. “You’re very beautiful,” he said, cradling her in his palms.

  “So are you,” she sighed, brushing her lips over his once again.

  At the sound of someone approaching the front door, he froze. Looking over her shoulder, Sidney watched in horror as a small, dark-haired woman walked into the room, chattering in a foreign language.

  With a tiny yelp, she clutched her shirt to her chest, preparing to flee.

  “Don’t you dare,” he said in her ear, holding her in place. “It’s just my mother.”

  “Marcos?” she said, squinting in the dim light. “¿Que haces?”

  “What am I doing?” he transl
ated in a mutter, as if he wondered that himself.

  “You live with your mother?” she whispered.

  “No, she’s just visiting. How was bingo?” he inquired politely, as if he didn’t have a half-naked woman in his lap, hiding his erection.

  “It was fine,” she said in heavily accented English, regarding Sidney with undisguised curiosity. “Who do you have there?”

  Sidney blushed to the roots of her hair, visualizing the debauched picture she made. “Oh my God,” she moaned, burying her face in Marc’s shoulder.

  Chapter 11

  When Sidney awoke to the smell of good things cooking, she was so surprised she almost fell off the couch in a tangle of blankets.

  Remembering where she was, and what she’d been doing the night before, she groaned, pulling the covers over her head in shame. She couldn’t believe Marc’s mother had walked in on them last night. Hasty introductions had been made, after which Mrs. Cruz had gone to bed early, Marc had retreated to the safety of his study to work and Sidney had spent a lonely evening trying to figure out the secrets of digital television.

  Although she’d been exhausted, sleep had eluded her. Maybe it was the way Marc’s borrowed sleeveless undershirt and cotton boxer shorts felt against her bare skin, or the faint smell of his laundry soap on them. Maybe it was the cool, smooth leather of his living room couch, the comfy blanket from his closet, or the pillow off his own bed.

  She lay awake for what seemed like hours, all of her senses on overdrive, her body humming with frustration. Now, the clock on the DVD player said seven-thirty. She was going to be late! The kennel didn’t open until nine, but she needed to go home and get ready first, and she still had to feed and clean. Saturday was her busiest day.

  Hurrying away, she ran into Marc at the foot of the stairs. Literally.

  “What’s the rush?” he asked, steadying her.

  “I have to shower and change clothes,” she said, her voice throaty from lack of sleep. “I can’t go to work like this.”

  “Shower here,” he offered. “And borrow my clothes.”

  Her gaze dropped to the fly of his jeans, which was well-worn and well filled out. “Your clothes won’t fit me,” she said, feeling her cheeks tinge pink.