Dangerous to Touch

by Jill Sorenson

  He remembered what Sidney had said about Blue being spooked by a gunshot. “I’ll bring my Glock. You still have that 9?”

  “Christ,” he muttered. “Yeah.”

  “I’ve got to change first,” he said, looking down at the way his pale gray T-shirt caught the moonlight. After he went inside to put on a black one, he left a text message for Lacy.

  Just in case.

  Tony joined him on the driveway, dressed in dark clothing as well, his long hair pulled back, a brown canvas knapsack slung over one shoulder. He looked like Che Guevara.

  “Why are you bringing me along, anyway?” he said after he got in the passenger side. “Short on deputies?”

  “You should be glad I’m taking you instead of DEA.”

  He found the envelope on the floor mat beneath his feet. “What’s this?” he asked, thumbing through the photos. “Whoa.”

  Marc felt heat rise to his face. With Crystal, he’d been too angry to be embarrassed. Now shame was setting in. Having a number of people bear witness to his most ham-handed sexual performance was excruciating.

  “Where were these taken?” Tony asked.

  “In Bonsall. A couple hundred feet from DeWinter’s.”

  “Jesus, man. Couldn’t you have found a more private place?”

  “Obviously I didn’t know we were being watched,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Who took them?”

  “I don’t know that, either. Crystal said she didn’t.”

  “Derek wouldn’t do this,” he asserted, replacing the photos.

  “How do you know?”

  “I stopped by his house earlier. He talked about her. Sidney.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Talked about her how?”

  “Like a guy who wishes he could have her,” Tony said. “Not like one who just watched her get it from somebody else.”

  Marc struggled to control his jealousy, and lost. “He was planning on calling her?” he asked, his voice hard.

  “Nah. He has a girlfriend. He was just…speculating. You know.”

  “Bastard,” he muttered. “Did he read about her in the newspaper? Know she was involved with the investigation?”

  “No. He didn’t mention it, anyway.”

  “What else did he talk about?”

  “His sister’s dialysis.”

  Marc turned on the radio, noticing his friend’s nervous fidgeting. Tony’s ADD was acting up again. “Did you take your Ritalin?”

  He scowled. “Hell, no. It makes me feel like a zombie.”

  It made him act like one, too, so Marc was glad Tony wasn’t on medication. They both needed their wits about them this evening.

  He drove past the orange grove where he’d parked Sidney’s truck the night before. Down the road a ways he found another secluded spot to park. From there he could see Derek DeWinter’s house and the rolling green hills behind it.

  “The photographer would have been up there somewhere,” he said, pointing at a wide expanse of undeveloped land where sagebrush, beavertail cactus and manzanita grew wild. The native vegetation was interspersed with dry earth and flanked by rows of avocado trees.

  It wasn’t easy terrain to cover, but they managed, cutting through groves and trampling over the thick brush.

  “Madre de Dios,” Tony whispered when they found it.

  The field was so well camouflaged they were practically standing in the middle of it before they realized where they were. Waist-high stalks, bushy with immature buds, quivered in the gentle night breeze. Marc guessed there were about a hundred individual plants. A hundred thousand dollars worth of high-grade stuff.

  Tony’s eyes went wide with greed and black with lust.

  Marc motioned for him to circle the right side of the field while he started off toward the left. The terrain was loose and rocky, with no discernible path. Nor did there appear to be one particular vantage point from which the grower could keep an eye on the entire crop. It covered too much ground.

  There was a flat stretch of land at the base of the hill where a number of large oaks stood alongside a tributary of the San Luis Rey River. A crop this size would require a lot of water, Marc reasoned. If DeWinter was hauling buckets by hand, he probably had to work all night, every night, toward the end of the growing season.

  Even so, it wasn’t a bad gig for the amount of cash he could rake in.

  Under the cover of oaks, Marc waited, hoping he would hear the sound of splashing water or tromping footsteps. After listening to his own harsh breathing, the buzz of insects and the muted gurgle of the San Luis Rey for what seemed like an hour, he gave up and stepped out of his hiding place.

  Looking for Tony, he ran into Derek DeWinter.

  DeWinter raised his rifle before Marc could reach into his shoulder holster. “Keep your hands where I can see them,” he ordered in a shaky voice, sounding more bewildered than authoritative. If Marc could take a guess, he’d say DeWinter had never pointed a gun at a man before, and wasn’t enjoying the experience too much.

  “I’m a cop,” Marc said, lifting his hands slowly. “I’ve got a badge in my front pocket.”

  DeWinter took in a sharp breath, but he didn’t respond.

  “Drop the gun, Derek,” a voice said from behind him, and Marc wanted to groan at the poor timing of Tony’s interruption.

  DeWinter whirled around immediately, pointing his rifle at Tony, and Marc had his Glock pressed against the back of his neck before he could blink. “Set it down, nice and easy,” he murmured. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  For a moment, Marc feared DeWinter wouldn’t cooperate. If he shot Tony, Marc would have to shoot him, and that would be a hell of a mess. Infinitely worse than losing his job over sexual misconduct.

  When Derek engaged the safety and laid his weapon down, Marc felt almost dizzy with relief. Tony secured the rifle, and Marc put his gun away.

  “Are you stealing my plants, Tony?” Derek asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “No,” he replied, shooting a glance at Marc that promised vengeful retribution. “I would never do that.”

  Derek looked back and forth between them. “What are you doing here, then?”

  Marc brought his badge out of his front pocket. “Why don’t you invite us back to your place,” he suggested. “I’ll explain everything.”

  It was well after midnight when he arrived at Sidney’s house. Lacy opened the door to him without a word, her eyes heavy from sleep, strawberry-blond hair tousled.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “DeWinter’s got a couple of different buyers, one who comes down from L.A., another who meets him in Yuma. Last year, someone ripped him off an entire plant. About a pound. He has no idea who, or even when, exactly.” He shrugged. “It could have been anyone.”

  She studied him carefully. “Are you taking over for me?”

  “Yeah. Go on home.”

  At the door, Lacy paused. Marc knew she was aware of his relationship with Sidney. She was a woman, and a cop, and therefore twice as intuitive. “Do you have any idea what you’re getting involved with, Marcos?”

  She used the name on purpose, to get his attention. Marc’s greatest ambition in life was to be nothing like his father, who he’d been named after. In that, he’d failed. He couldn’t make a commitment to save his life. The idea of staying with one woman and giving his heart to her, knowing she might take it with her when she left, as his father had done over and over again, paralyzed him.

  Every time he looked in the mirror he saw the old man’s face.

  “No,” he said, blinking away that image. “I don’t.”

  “Be careful,” she whispered, kissing the corner of his mouth. For the second time of the evening, he was caught in a tender, nonsexual moment with an attractive woman he cared about, but didn’t want to sleep with.

  He was definitely losing his mind.

  Before going upstairs to Sidney, he showered in her outdoor stall on the patio and put his dirty clothe
s in the machine to wash. Raiding marijuana fields was sweaty work, and he didn’t want her to know where he’d been.

  It hadn’t escaped his attention that the man who’d spied on them could have wielded something a lot more deadly than a camera. Such as a sniper rifle.

  While under his “protection,” Sidney had been in constant danger. He’d taken her to crime scenes, used her to lure out Derek DeWinter and allowed her to be photographed in a compromising position. Twice.

  Yeah, he was doing a real bang-up job as her bodyguard.

  In her room, she was lying on her side, fast asleep, both hands tucked under one cheek. Her chest rose and fell with even breathing, drawing his eye to the front of her dolphin T-shirt, which had ridden up above her cotton bikini panties to expose a silky strip of her stomach.

  He lay down beside her carefully so he wouldn’t disturb her, getting as close as he could without touching her. For a long time, he watched her sleep, memorizing the lines of her face and the curves of her body, as if her image could sustain him.

  Maybe if he concentrated hard enough, he could keep this part of her, a picture locked away inside him, to take out and cherish after he’d gone.

  Chapter 17

  Sidney awoke before the alarm was set to go off, as usual, and she knew Marc was with her before she opened her eyes.

  When she turned to look at him, all of the anger and confusion and disappointment she’d felt with him last night got mixed up in a rush of love so intense tears flooded her eyes.

  He was lying on his back, his forearm draped across his lap, one knee bent, touching hers. Sometime during the night, he’d pushed the sheet down past his waist, revealing his naked upper body. His exceedingly masculine presence seemed to take up an inordinate amount of space.

  She’d need to get a larger bed.

  His face was troubled, even in sleep. There were faint circles beneath his eyes and a worried crease between his brows.

  Her need to ease him was overwhelming.

  Pressing her lips to the tips of her fingers, she touched the stubble shadowing his jaw, traced the hard line of his mouth. Trailing her fingertips over the long, brown column of his throat, she skimmed the sexy ridge of his Adam’s apple. As she moved her hand down farther, exploring hard pectoral muscles and warm skin, he shifted, causing the sheet to inch farther off his hips, exposing a dark line of silky pubic hair.

  Apparently his lower body was naked, too.

  Heart thumping with excitement, she sat up and drew her T-shirt over her head, wanting to feel his bare skin against hers. She brushed her fingertips over her jutting nipples, stifling a moan. Feeling a dull ache throb between her legs, she rubbed herself there, too, watching his penis thicken and elongate under the thin sheet.

  Her eyes flew up to his face.

  “Take off your panties,” he said in a rough voice, his heavy-lidded gaze fixed on the apex of her thighs.

  She should have been embarrassed to be caught touching herself while she stared at him, but she was too enthralled by his arousal to be ashamed of her own. She also knew if she took off her panties, he’d bury his head between her legs and pleasure her with his mouth until she couldn’t remember her name.

  Which was all very nice, since he seemed to enjoy it as much as she did, except that making her lose her mind was his subtle, insidious way of maintaining control.

  This time, she wanted him to forget his name.

  Instead of removing her panties, she slipped her hand inside them and began to caress herself lightly, studying his face. He couldn’t see what she was doing, but he didn’t have to.

  “Don’t tease me.”

  “Tease you? Never,” she promised, then bent her head to his lap and proceeded to do just that. Pulling down the sheet, she placed her open mouth on the inside of his thigh. His penis jerked, stiff and upright, saluting her efforts like a proper soldier.

  “Sidney,” he protested, his voice husky.

  “Mmm,” she replied, rubbing her cheek across his engorged flesh with a slight smile, basking in the glory of her feminine power.

  He watched while she circled her fingers around his thick shaft and stroked him up and down. When a pearly bead appeared at the tip, she moistened her lips with it then licked his taste off them with delicate slowness.

  Groaning, he let his head drop back against the pillow, surrendering to her ministrations. Instead of taking the blunt head of his erection into her mouth, as he clearly expected, she touched her tongue to the heavy sac below.

  He shuddered. “Jesus, Sidney-”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  He didn’t say no, so she did it again, lapping at him like a kitten until he moaned, thrusting his fingers into her hair and bringing her head up. With his other hand, he gripped the base of his shaft and brushed the swollen tip across her parted lips.

  Indulging him, she opened her mouth and took him deep.

  “Oh God,” he gasped, his hand following the motions of her head as she moved up and down. She knew he was surprised by her shamelessness, but she couldn’t resist pleasuring him, and herself, in the most explicit of ways. “Sidney, please, stop before I-”

  His stomach muscles clenched and he grabbed fistfuls of the sheet at his sides, but the valiant effort was all for naught. The sound of his harsh cry filled her ears as the salty taste of him flooded her mouth. Tears sprang into her eyes once again, her love for him threatening to burst from her chest.

  After a moment, she stretched out on top of him, laying her head over his thundering heart, feeling it beat against her cheek as he threaded his fingers through her hair.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  Beneath hers, his body tensed.

  A jumble of images flashed through her mind, attacking her senses. He was thinking about another woman. A woman who had serviced him the same way. A woman he’d loved. A woman who had put her head against his chest just like this, just last night.

  Crystal Dunn.

  “You son a bitch,” she yelled, jumping to her feet.

  His eyes flicked over her, but he said nothing.

  “You said you were working!”

  He rubbed a hand over his tired, handsome face. “I was.”

  “With your ex-girlfriend?”

  “I saw her,” he admitted, rising from the bed. Unfazed by his nudity, he strode out of the room, as if the discussion were over.

  Trembling with hostility, she followed him down the stairs and into the hallway, where he began to calmly transfer clothing from the washer to the dryer. Only the hard set of his jaw betrayed his anger.

  “Don’t you have anything to explain to me?” she asked, hands planted firmly on her hips.

  His gaze rose from her bare breasts, which were quivering with indignation. “You expect me to answer to you because you said you loved me? Or is that what the porn-star quality blow job was for?”

  Her hand itched to slap his arrogant face. “Get out,” she said.

  “Not until my clothes dry.”

  Realizing he’d be gone already if that wasn’t the case, tears blurred her vision. “Fine,” she said, heading toward the door. “I’ll leave.” Never mind that she was wearing only a very brief pair of panties.

  She was almost outside by the time he caught up with her. Grabbing her around the waist, he yanked her back against him and held her there while she struggled. “I love you, too,” he said in her ear. “But if you think I’ll stay because of it, you’re wrong.”

  “I never asked you to stay,” she said, trying to break free from his grasp. “You’re incapable of constancy.”

  That made him mad, she could tell. It also made him hard. She stopped wiggling abruptly, aware she was grinding her scantily clad bottom against his naked groin.

  “I went to Crystal’s last night,” he began, “because someone left photos of us taped to my garage door. I assumed it was her. It wasn’t.”

  “Photos of us doing what?”

  “Having sex. In your
truck.”

  She held herself very still.

  “I wasn’t thinking about her because I prefer her to you. Far from it. I was thinking about her because she’s the last woman who told me she loved me, and I…didn’t handle it very well.” As her chest rose and fell with pent-up emotion, the undersides of her breasts rested heavily against his forearm. Despite the tension of the situation, or perhaps because of it, she felt herself responding to the way his body fit against hers. Her nipples peaked in arousal and a renewed heat pulsed between her thighs.

  “I’m committing professional suicide by being here with you, Sidney,” he continued hoarsely, “but I can’t stay away. Every time I look at you, I want you. Even when I close my eyes, I see you. I smell you.” His breath was warm on her nape, his erection hot against her bottom. “I taste you,” he said, pushing her onto the couch in front of him.

  He stripped her panties down her hips and she gasped, bracing herself to be taken from behind. Instead of the heavy thrust of his penis, she felt his hands caressing her thighs, squeezing her buttocks. Panting with excitement, she looked over her shoulder, covering her breasts with her fingertips.

  Making a strangled, urgent sound, he moved his hot, open mouth from the base of her spine to the back of her neck. Biting her there tenderly, he slid the length of his shaft back and forth along the moist lips of her sex until they were both slippery with desire.

  “Please,” she panted, gripping the back of the couch.

  With a low, possessive growl, he filled her, driving all the way to the hilt in one smooth thrust. Almost sobbing aloud at the sheer pleasure of it, she began to rock against him, working herself forward and back.

  “Sidney,” he protested, tightening his hands on her hips to slow her.

  “No,” she said breathlessly. “Do it hard.”

  Groaning, he jerked her bottom against his lap, giving her what she wanted, hard and fast and deep, over and over again until she thought she might explode with ecstasy. He was huge and hot inside her, the slick friction so good it was almost unbearable.

  He reached underneath her to cup her swaying breasts. “I don’t know where I want to suck on you more,” he rasped, pinching her stiff nipples gently. “Here-” he moved one hand down between her legs, delving into damp curls “-or here.”