The Good Daughter

by Jean Brashear

  And she mourned the loss of him. Scrambling to figure out where this conversation had derailed, she was opening her mouth to argue, when he whirled.

  “Well, to hell with that,” he said. “Just to hell with that. You go find some other mutt to sully your lily-white body, because this bastard isn’t bastard enough to do that. I don’t play stud for anyone, not even spoiled rich girls—”

  “Stop it.” Chloe closed the gap, grasping his head in her hands and standing on tiptoe to press her mouth to his. He stiffened, and she nearly lost her courage.

  She forced herself to persist. “You matter, Vince. I came here tonight because you matter. Make love to me. I want my first time to be with you. No one’s ever made me feel as you do.”

  A shudder ran through Vince as he stared down at the woman who’d crowded all others out of his mind since the day they’d met. When she tried to pull him close again, he balked. “You have to be sure,” he warned. “I’m not doing this if—”

  “I’m sure.” She slid her arms around his neck, kissing him until he could barely remember his name, much less resist her.

  So he wrapped her tightly into his embrace and turned the kiss hotter. The top of his head was going to blow off, and he couldn’t care less. Everything in his life shrank to nothing in comparison with how much he wanted Chloe, how much he needed—

  Vince went still. He couldn’t need her. He wouldn’t.

  “Shh,” she said, and ran her tongue over his lips. “Forget everything but me, Vince. Please…let us have this one night without the world interfering.”

  Her eyes were huge and dark and so damn beautiful he couldn’t do anything but hold her closer. “I don’t know if I have any candles,” he murmured, sliding his mouth to her jaw, nibbling at the tender underside of it and hearing her sigh.

  “Maybe the dark is better, anyway.”

  He heard the nerves and drew back a few inches. “Oh, no, you don’t. I want to see every last gorgeous inch of you.”

  Chloe’s fingers trailed across his chest. “I want to see you, too,” she murmured. There was mischief in her eyes. In the curve of her lips. “Every last inch.”

  He groaned. “You’re killing me.”

  “I am?” She sounded thrilled.

  Vince couldn’t stop a chuckle. He swept her off her feet and headed for the front door. “But I’m not anywhere near dead yet.” Using his shoulder, he eased inside, then closed the door with his heel and locked it behind him.

  Just then, Chloe fastened her mouth to his throat.

  He almost dropped her. Tightening his grip, he made short work of the distance to his bedroom.

  But once there, he slid her slowly down his body until her feet touched the floor. Then he stepped back, somber. “Why did you come here tonight, Chloe?”

  Her eyes a little glazed, Chloe frowned faintly. Then it was as though the sun had come out after long, cloudy days. “I found my sisters.”

  He goggled. “Already?”

  “They want me, Vince.” Her eyes were warm melted chocolate. “They’ve been looking for me.”

  “I’m glad,” he said. She wouldn’t be so alone anymore.

  And she wouldn’t need him. He should be happy about that.

  Chloe’s gaze dipped as if suddenly shy. “I was too excited to sleep. I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid you might have—” She glanced around the room and shrugged. “I thought you might not be alone.”

  Just like that, the day’s events crashed in on him. “Chloe, you shouldn’t be here. You have to go,” he said. “Barnes is right. You can’t afford to be anywhere near me.”

  Her eyes fairly crackled then. “Roger is a pompous jerk. He has no idea what I need—” She looked Vince over with a thoroughness that should have made him uncomfortable.

  It only made him stone hard.

  Vince took a step back, grasping for the lost reins of his control.

  Chloe advanced. “Don’t change your mind, Vince. Please.” Her tongue took a nervous swipe over her lips, and he barely stifled a groan. “I want to know what it’s like, and I want you to be the one to teach me.”

  “Chloe—” His voice came out strangled. “I’m trying to save you, and you’re not helping.”

  The woman who’d challenged him at darts smiled, eyes sparkling. “Maybe I don’t want to be helpful.” Then she did the one thing he couldn’t fight: she visibly lost her nerve. “You said you wanted me,” she whispered.

  He saw just how vulnerable she was but tried to keep perspective. “One of us has to have some sense. There’s no percentage in anything between us. You know that.”

  “Do I?” she asked softly, and placed her hands on his chest, sliding them up to tangle in his hair. She rose to tiptoe and paused a micron away from his mouth, throwing his challenge right back at him. “I never took you for a coward, Detective.”

  Then her breasts pressed into him and that fallen-angel mouth closed over his. Vince scrambled to hold on to his rapidly vanishing logic.

  She slid her tongue inside his mouth, moaning softly, and logic went up in smoke.

  Chloe felt it when Vince gave up on protecting her from himself. The kiss turned so carnal and consuming she had to fight for breath.

  Oh. Oh, my— Had she ever dreamed anything could be like this? Any pretense of distance vanished, and Vince’s desire rolled over her like the last wave before drowning.

  And all Chloe could do was hang on for dear life.

  Inside Vince pounded a drumbeat of possession.

  Mine. She’s mine.

  For one wavering second, Vince glimpsed the faint possibility of pulling back, of remembering some trace of why he should resist her.

  Then the riptide swept him under, and all he could do was try not to devour her whole when every beat of his heart shouted for him to take her and keep her and never, ever let her go. “Wait—” He tore his mouth from hers. “I’ll be right back.”

  Chloe froze as he left the room, unsure what she’d done wrong. Ready to bolt.

  Then she heard the soft, sensual music. Sade. The man continued to surprise her. Something inside her took a tumble.

  Vince walked back into his bedroom with one single stubby candle in his hand, feeling like a fool. At the sight of her, he stopped, wondering how he’d ever gotten so lucky.

  “Puccini to West Africa—you’re a man of diverse tastes. Was it a woman who taught you about opera?”

  Vince grasped at the distraction. “Yes.” The older woman’s face rose in his memory.

  “You loved her,” Chloe said.

  He started to deny it, but the time for playing games was past, and Liliane deserved better, anyway. “Liliane saw something in me no one else ever had,” he admitted. “She convinced me that I could make up for my slow start, that my world could be as big as I dared reach.”

  “I’m glad. You’re as smart a man as I’ve ever met. You shouldn’t sell yourself short.” Her lips curved at the corners, and the need to trace them with his tongue overshot the discomfort of her too-keen perception.

  He crossed the remaining steps and set the candle down on the night table, lighting it with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. “I don’t want to talk anymore, Chloe.”

  Her eyes went wide and dark.

  “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  “I’m not afraid of you, Vince. I only want to be enough, and I’m worried that I won’t be, that I can’t—”

  With a kiss, he hushed her.

  Fingers clumsy with a longing that was more than physical, Vince slid the straps of her sundress down her shoulders, tracing the sweet line of her collarbone and tasting her skin on his tongue.

  Peaches. The good doctor tasted of peaches, sun warmed and ripe for the picking.

  Her fingers slipped beneath his T-shirt. He flinched when her nails grazed his belly. She jerked her hands away. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Vince grasped for what was left of his self-control. “That wasn’t wrong,” he b
arely managed to say. “It was—” He picked up her hand and kissed her fingers one by one, then lowered her hand to the front of his jeans. “Just about more than I can handle.”

  Her eyes widened as she felt his response. “Oh.” She worried at her lower lip.

  “That mouth,” he growled. “I wanted that mouth the first time I laid eyes on it.” He bent down, and when her hand closed over him, he couldn’t stifle the groan. “Chloe—” he said against her lips. “I want to take this slow, but you’re making it too—”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think about anything besides how she smelled, how she tasted, how he never wanted her hand to move, but—

  “Hard?” Chloe asked, and he heard the smile.

  He looked up. Her eyes still held jitters.

  Vince shook his head, drawing her down to the bed. “I should have known after you almost whipped me at darts.”

  “Known what?” Her voice was breathy and threatening to drive him out of his mind.

  “You don’t play fair. And you’re never what I expect.” He rolled onto his back and put one arm over his eyes, struggling to back down several notches before he ruined everything.

  The mattress moved. Her warmth left his side.

  Vince sought her out. She was pulling up the straps of her dress, searching for her shoes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m—I tried to tell you I wouldn’t be good at this.”

  Vince bolted up straight. “What?” He vaulted the footboard and grabbed her. “What are you talking about?”

  She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Passion. I’m not a passionate person. I can’t be what someone like you expects.”

  Vince knew he didn’t dare smile. Part of him felt more like howling, anyway. “Darlin’, if you were any more passionate, I’d be terrified.”

  It was her turn to be startled. “What?”

  “Chloe, you’ve singed every last nerve ending I ever possessed. You’re so responsive it’s all I can do not to be a complete animal with you.”

  Color rose in her cheeks. “Why shouldn’t you?”

  “Oh, sweet mercy.” Vince swallowed hard. “Because—”

  Her chin jutted, and her eyes spit sparks. “If you say because I’m a virgin, I’m going to scream. Stop treating me as if I’m crystal. Make me feel like the women in all those books I’ve read, Vince. I never thought a man would ever make me want to—” She stopped.

  “What?” he prodded. “Tell me.”

  Cheeks flaming, her eyelids fluttered down, then defiantly rose again. “Moan,” she said. “Claw. Act like anything but a lady.”

  Every word flashed through him like chain lightning. One more time, Vince tried to remember all the reasons they had no business doing this, all the reasons he had to take it slow and easy.

  Chloe backed away from him.

  Vince squeezed his eyes shut and told himself it was for the best. She’d finally regained her senses.

  Then he heard the whisper of fabric sliding to the floor. He opened his eyes, and there she stood, clad only in the tiniest pair of pale yellow panties he’d ever seen, back straight but hands clenched into fists, while her eyes swirled with a mixture of need and bravado and an uncertainty that broke his heart.

  “You really don’t play fair, do you?” he asked, advancing on her. “But I was right. You’re no coward, Chloe St. Claire,” he said, stripping his shirt off over his head and reaching for the snap on his jeans as he came within a hair’s width of her body and wondered if he’d ever draw a solid breath again. “I’m still going to try to be gentle with you, but that’s seeming pretty damn impossible right this minute, darlin’, so if I fail, I’m just gonna have to give you a rain check and try again. That all right with you?” he asked as he lost the last of his clothing and pressed full length against her.

  Chloe wanted to purr as his naked skin and rock-hard muscles electrified her flesh. “Yes,” she barely managed to say before he swept her from her feet and covered her mouth with his, returning to the bed.

  He proceeded to do things to her she’d read about in books—

  And others she had not.

  Despite his hunger, he patiently lured her along with him, teasing, tormenting…honing her own craving to a razor-sharp edge.

  Featherlight, a finger traced the tender crease where thigh met hip, the silken hollow beneath her breasts. His palm caressed her mound, a slow, tantalizing press against the heart of her…

  His tongue, his lips everywhere, whipping her nerves to fever pitch until she was ready to beg.

  “Vince,” she gasped. “I—I want—”

  He grappled at a drawer of the nightstand and knocked half its contents to the floor before emerging with a condom in his hand and a pirate’s gleam of triumph.

  Chloe was torn between smiling and crying and giving thanks that this man had come into her life and taught her that she could understand passion, that she could feel—

  Love. Even before he did more unspeakably erotic things to coax her body to singing, weeping, screaming bliss, she knew that she was falling in love with Vince Coronado, whether he would welcome it or not.

  “Please,” she begged him. “I can’t—”

  But Vince slid his mouth lower and showed her that she could.

  And then he showed her again.

  Too dazed to move, Chloe could only look at him, at the strain on his features as he held himself in check, and she knew that she’d found her hero, her knight in shining armor, no matter what he called himself. “Now, Vince,” she begged.

  His eyes were troubled. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You won’t,” she murmured, and drew his head down for a kiss, arching her body into him with a new and sure knowledge born of this remarkable night and this unique man.

  Though aroused to the point of pain, still Vince attempted to go slowly, but Chloe wouldn’t wait, wrapping her legs around his waist and opening herself deeper until he was too far gone to resist.

  The power of the joining jolted both of them.

  “Chloe—” Vince wished for a poet’s tongue so he could tell her in beautiful words about this place she’d taken him when he was supposed to be guiding her. Lacking the words, he bent to her and let his body speak for him.

  As she moaned his name and wept with his kisses, Vince knew a knife-edge of longing to stay with her in this moment of rapture where the world couldn’t touch them. Where his heart knew her heart and deserved all the goodness that was Chloe.

  And when they tumbled together into bliss, he held her more tightly as if somehow he could keep the world at bay.

  Until he could find the magic that would bind her to him forever.

  One more kiss that felt like sliding into a cool river of peace. Before sleep claimed him, Vince told her in silence what he could never dare say.

  I love you, Chloe. In another time, another world, they would have been perfect together, he thought as he rolled and kept her against him, feeling her warm breath as benediction.

  But this was the real world, where she was a princess, cherished now by two families.

  While he was a cast-off child no one had ever claimed.

  VINCE JOLTED AWAKE at the pounding on his front door. “Coronado, open up! Police!”

  He leaped from the bed, automatically reaching for a weapon. Coming up empty, he blinked, trying to remember—

  Chloe. “What is it?” she asked, voice rough with sleep.

  “I don’t know,” Vince said, jerking on clothes, searching for shoes.

  But his heart sank. It can get worse. “Stay here,” he ordered. “Don’t leave this room, no matter what you hear.”

  “I’ll come with you,” she said.

  “No,” he snapped.

  More banging. “Coronado, open up now!”

  He fought to mute the dread making him edgy. “Please. Let me handle this.” He stared at her, memorizing her naked curves beneath the sheet, her hair all sleep rumpled and sexy, and wanted the power to turn b
ack the clock. Vowed to protect her from whatever this was.

  “Get in the bathroom and lock the door,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Do it, Chloe.” He wished to hell he could kiss her again, just once. Instead, he forced himself to turn away. “All right, I’m coming,” he yelled. He strode to the door and opened it but stood in front of the gap. “What do you want?”

  “Vincent Coronado, we have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Hector Balderas.” Jim Thompson from Homicide moved toward him. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law….” He continued the Miranda warning, but Vince tuned out the words as he saw who stood behind Thompson.

  Don Newcombe, face grim, contempt burning holes through Vince.

  Then Newcombe’s gaze shifted to something behind him. Vince’s gut seized.

  He looked over his shoulder, and there Chloe stood, clothes hastily donned; she was so clearly fresh from his bed that he nearly groaned, wondering how in the hell he’d save her now.

  “Don?” she said. “What is this?” But confusion slowly gave way to horror. “He couldn’t have done anything wrong. He was with—”

  “Get the hell back in the bedroom, Chloe,” Vince ordered. “You don’t understand—”

  “Coronado, answer me—do you understand your rights?” Thompson grasped Vince’s arm.

  Vince reacted on instinct, ready to fight to protect Chloe.

  Thompson and the patrolman beside him both grabbed at Vince. Thompson caught his arm and yanked him around, bending one elbow behind him. The sharp edge of metal bit into Vince’s wrist as the cuff tightened.

  A sharper edge of fear sliced deep. Vince forced himself to still, mind racing over how to keep Chloe out of this.

  Hot on the heels of that thought came a question: Who wanted Balderas dead and him framed for it? “It was my weapon, wasn’t it?”

  Thompson’s grim look was all the confirmation Vince needed.

  Chloe was pale but shook herself as if emerging from a dream. “You don’t understand. He was with—”

  “No,” he shouted over her. He couldn’t let them taint her. He appealed to Newcombe. “She has nothing to do with this. If you care anything about her, keep her out of it.”