“Then that makes us even.”
She smiled. He brushed a fingertip over her lips.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Breakfast. No promises. And no handcuffs.”
He merely raised an eyebrow.
“Surely you can come up with some other way of controlling my wild and willful self.”
The look he gave her then shot straight down her spine…and spread heat from there.
“I’m sure I can come up with something.”
“We’ll see about that.” This time it was she who tucked in, stole a kiss. She’d meant to make his head spin a little, give herself some breathing space, a little control of the situation. But it had snapped back on her, leaving them both with the sensation of having been left dangling.
“How early is early?” she asked, hoping to mask the need and confusion in her voice.
He traced a finger over her lips, pushed the tip of his finger inside her mouth, then slipped it out again. “Sure you don’t just want to stay here?”
She slid from his arms, far too close to saying yes. She might want him, might be confused by the needs he was stirring up inside her, but she’d never regain the perspective she sorely needed if she stayed here, in his lair, so to speak. And she definitely needed some distance. Because she’d heard the same need and confusion in his voice that he’d likely heard in hers. “You go tend to your fire. I’ll be up here when I get up here.”
He grinned. “I guess I had that coming to me.”
She laughed, still feeling shivery with that delectable sexual tension that ebbed and flowed around them so effortlessly. “You haven’t had anything coming to you. Yet. But we can discuss that over breakfast.” She slid into her car before he could do or say something that would have her changing her mind. Or worse, tugging those cuffs from the waistband of his jeans and luring him back to his kitchen.
She gunned the engine and he leaned down, bracing his hands on her door. “Follow me,” he told her. “And put the top up. It’s too cold to have it down.” He leaned the rest of the way in and snagged yet another swift, deep kiss from her, robbing her of the chance to tell him where he could stuff his orders.
She could only sit, dazed, and watch his very fine backside retreat around the back of her car and climb into his truck. “Big-time danger, danger,” she whispered, rubbing her own lips as his engine roared to life.
She put the car into reverse and maneuvered around so she was facing downhill. She tucked her little car right in behind his big old police-issue truck. But, just to be perverse, she cranked on the heater and left the top down. Wiggling her fingers at him in a little wave, she laughed when he paused and looked pointedly out the driver window at her. Finally he shook his head, and she thought he might have been laughing as they headed down the mountain.
Halfway down, she put the top up, praying her fingers would thaw by morning. Making a point was only good when she didn’t have to suffer personally to make it.
Besides, he’d gotten the message.
“Question is, Liza,” she wondered aloud. “Have you?”
DYLAN PULLED OVER in front of the hotel, but Liza buzzed past him and swung into the small parking lot next door. She waved him on when he started to get out.
“Go play sheriff. I’ll see you in the morning. Leave a message at the desk if something comes up.”
He nodded. He didn’t want to. He wanted to follow her inside, up to that room and into the bed. Forget all about his job. All about the meeting with Pearl. All about what was waiting to be dealt with minutes from now.
Because this was no simple motel fire. His instincts were already screaming and he knew he wasn’t going to like what he found when he met up with Tucker at whatever was left of the Mims Motel. He closed the truck door, but waited until she was in the lobby before pulling away.
Normally his mind would focus fully on whatever task was at hand. But as he wound through the quiet night streets of Canyon Springs, his mind was more on what he’d just left behind than on what he was driving toward.
This entire evening felt surreal. And yet he had no doubts—just ask his body!—of what had taken place, or started to anyway, right there in his kitchen. God almighty, what the hell had he been doing up there with her?
Whatever the hell it was, he wanted to do it again. And go beyond. Liza Sanguinetti had cruised into his life mere hours ago, and she was already in his blood. He knew he was foolish to believe she’d really be there in the morning. She’d been as uncomfortable with what they were uncovering about each other as he had, maybe more so. Although if she knew the half of what he’d been feeling back there, she’d know she wasn’t alone. Not by a long shot.
His lips twitched in a smile. Christ, she could tie him in knots with the arch of one perfectly plucked eyebrow.
He swung around the corner, the flash of multicolored lights over the trees ahead indicating he was almost there. Yet instead of contemplating how in the hell Dugan had found out about his little meeting with Pearl quickly enough to send him a warning, and what Dylan was going to do about it, he was thinking about swinging by Liza’s hotel on the way back home. No matter the hour. She wouldn’t expect that.
And, after all, doing the unexpected where Liza Sanguinetti was concerned had served him well up to this point.
He turned the last corner and slowed as he neared the scene. Two ladder trucks were still there, along with one emergency squad. He was heartened somewhat by the fact there weren’t any others lined up. He hadn’t heard any sirens heading out to the hospital on his way in, so hopefully that meant everyone had gotten out in time.
He hadn’t radioed in that he was coming down. That, he admitted, was mostly payback for Tucker not following protocol. Dylan preferred his old friend not be prepared for their ensuing showdown.
“Dammit, Quin, who screwed up on this thing?” he muttered as he swung in behind Tucker’s truck and shut the engine off. He should have made the reservation himself. But Quin had assured him no one knew about the meeting. Thinking how cavalierly he’d had Quin make the reservation in Liza’s name, Dylan felt his stomach roll, just as it had when he’d heard his mother’s message. He knew better than to involve civilians, even in name only. His lips twitched and he shook his head as he got out of his truck. He hadn’t exactly used her real name, as he recalled. Because he hadn’t known it at that point.
He paused and took in the scene, most of his brain already clicking into gear, processing information, noticing details, filing away questions with which to grill Quin. But as he strolled over to Tucker, a part of him couldn’t help but wonder what the assembled group would think if they’d known what their sheriff had been up to before being called in.
10
LIZA FELL ACROSS the surprisingly soft hotel bed and simply lay there, trying to gather her thoughts. She rolled on her back and stared at the ceiling. That didn’t help, either. Maybe a shower. A steamy cocoon, relaxing…
Images of her and Dylan, entwined in that steamy shower, assailed her. Images of them playing, toying, teasing… She sat up and grabbed the phone, and did what she always did when she couldn’t stand to be alone with her own thoughts. She called Natalie.
She was planning her apology for calling so late when Nat’s answering machine clicked on. “Great. Lovely.” Liza clapped the phone back down on the base. “Desert a friend in need, why don’t you.” She rolled to her back again. “And do I ever have needs.”
The sudden jangle of the phone made her jump. She snatched it up before the second ring. “Dylan?”
There was a pause, then a female laugh. “Nooo.”
“Natalie! Oh, thank God. You saved me.”
“Who’s Dylan?”
“Wait a minute. How did you know where I was?”
“I was…occupied when the phone rang. But recognized that disgusted ‘Great, lovely’ and pressed star-sixty-nine to trace this number. What are you doing and where in the hell is the Canyon Springs Inn? Are you at a spa? You swore you weren’t going t
o do anything normal. Normal for you, anyway. No hiding out, getting pampered while you ponder your destiny. And your destiny is not a masseur named Dylan, no matter how great his hands are.”
“He’s not a masseur, he’s a sheriff.”
There was a pause. “A sheriff? Oh my God, Liza, what have you done now? Are you calling for bail money? Wait, you have plenty of money. Oh!” Nat gasped, barely taking a breath. “You need a lawyer. Okay, okay, well, I’m here now. Start from the beginning. Tell me everything. Wait. I need a pencil. And paper. And—”
“Natalie!” But it was too late. And yet Liza was smiling, glad her friend had called back, even if she had interrupted her and Jake doing the wild—
“Okay, I’m back. Now, what did you do?”
Liza sighed, still smiling. “First of all, I love you. And second, what happened to my oh-so-organized best friend? Since when don’t you have a pad, pencil, mini-recorder, calendar and fax machine on your nightstand?”
“Since I left the fast track to become a small-town lawyer. But we’re not talking about me. Wait a minute. Why are you calling the sheriff by his first name?” There was a little huffed out breath, then she said, “Liza…” She’d dragged that last syllable into a warning note. “Tell me you didn’t break the no-sex-until-I-know-what-I-want-from-life rule. You only had one rule, for God’s sake.”
For the first time in hours Liza felt like herself. No one did that better than the only person on the planet who understood her better than she did herself. “Well…”
“Tell me you didn’t call me in the middle of, well, the night, to crow about your latest sexual conquest, because you know I’m not going to congratulate you on—”
“There was no sexual conquest.” At least not how Natalie meant it, Liza thought. Besides, if there’d been any conquest, it had been Dylan doing the conquering.
“No? So you didn’t?”
“I can’t tell if you’re more shocked or relieved.”
“So what happened? You had a sudden attack of guilt? No, that can’t be it.”
“Hey!” Liza retorted, but she was chuckling.
“No? So what, then—he was gay?”
“Well, his mother thought he might be.”
There was another pause. “Okay, I was kidding. So you’re going to have to start at the beginning at some point and explain that one to me. But assuming his mother is wrong—and how in the hell his mother got in the middle of this I am dying to hear—then I’m assuming some rule breaking of some sort was going on. Or will be going on.”
“Well…”
“So I’m what? Your sex intervention squad? You want me to talk you out of doing it? Or, worse, you want me to tell you it’s okay to do it? Where exactly are we on the sexual map here? I can’t plan a strategy if I don’t know where the battle lines are drawn.”
“I’m still on the straight and narrow. Well, more narrow than straight, if you want to get technical. I just took, well, I prefer to think of it as a tiny detour. Finding my way around a sudden roadblock, if you will, on my journey to destiny.” Liza pulled a pillow onto her lap and settled back against the headboard. “Which I still don’t have a single clue about, by the way. And, for the record, technically speaking, I didn’t break the no-sex rule.”
“Yet. I heard the ‘yet’ plain and clear. And why, might I ask—technically speaking, of course—did things stop shy of a complete pit stop?”
“Fire.”
Natalie burst out laughing. “Well, now that’s a new one, even for you. What, did you get him so hot he forgot dinner was cooking? Or no, let me guess, you had him in the squad room and managed to catch the whole damn police department on fire.”
“Hey, even I’m not that good. Or bad, depending on how you want to look at it.”
“Don’t sell yourself short.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
“You would.”
“And you love me for it.”
“Somebody has to. So, all joking aside, why are you calling me?”
For the first time in probably her whole life, Liza wasn’t quite sure what to say.
“Wow. That bad, huh?”
“I’m not sure it’s bad. Actually, it was damn good.”
“You said you didn’t—”
“I had an orgasm, okay? But that’s not the same thing as sex.”
“Depends on your definition, but okay, I’ll grant you a stay on this one. Go ahead.”
“It’s just that— I knew I shouldn’t have, but he’s, well— And it was just going to be dinner, only we both knew— And he had handcuffs and I—”
“Please tell me you didn’t leave him shackled up somewhere.”
“The handcuffs weren’t for him.”
There was a moment of silence. “Oh.”
Liza blew out a deep sigh, waves of remembered pleasure and confusion rolling through her at the same time. “Yeah. Big oh.”
“But that’s not like you.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So, tell me about him.”
“I’m not sure how to describe him. He was a vice cop in Vegas, returned home to New Mexico to become a hometown sheriff when the big city slime started to eat down under his skin. His mom rescues big exotic birds and spends more time with them than him, but he seems to have come to terms with that. The town loves him and his high school rival is the town fire marshal. He’s dedicated and straightforward, but he’s got these dark edges to him. Probably all that time in Vegas. He’s confident without being cocky. Assertive without being pushy. And sexy as all hell.”
“Phew. You know, I think that’s more than you generally know about a guy by the time you’re already breaking up with him.”
Liza shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, we talked over dinner. We said things.”
“Does he know this much about you?”
“He knows some. We got, um, sidetracked.”
“Orgasms can do that to a conversation.”
Liza smiled, but it faded. “I don’t know what to do here. He’s…he’s not like anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Well, it’s a little telling that you described the personality before the physical attributes. He sounds…promising.”
Liza thought about that. “He also irritates me, frustrates me, pushes me.”
“And it was the best orgasm you’ve ever had.”
“What, you were watching?”
Natalie laughed softly, then said, “No, this just sounds kind of…familiar. That’s all.”
Liza ignored that for the moment. “Dazed and confused, that’s the state he keeps me in. I think I have the upper hand one minute, and the next, pow. He’s in control. I’m not used to this, Nat.”
She was chuckling again. “No. No, I guess not.”
“Yeah, easy for you to laugh. You weren’t the one handcuffed half-naked on the man’s kitchen counter.”
“Kitchen counter? No, I’m not even going there. Question is, are you going back there?”
“That’s just it, I don’t know where this is going, or even if it should. Nothing like this was supposed to happen yet. It was just supposed to be a little detour, that’s all.”
“Uh-oh. We’re not just talking about finding sexual nirvana among the kitchen utensils, are we?”
“It should be just about sex. We’ve both basically agreed it’s supposed to be about sex.”
“Only?”
“Only I don’t know. And I don’t think he does, either. He looks at me sometimes, Nat, and I…I feel things I don’t completely understand.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. Big so-potentially-not-a-detour whoa.” Liza sighed. “I think I understand now why it was so hard for you to tell me about Jake, in the beginning. It’s so impossible to describe why it’s different, but it is. Maybe it’s the way he…pushes me.”
“Pushes you how?”
“It’s like he understands the way I operate. And he enjoys shifting me away from my
comfort zone.”
“Which is being in charge.”
“Exactly.”
“And you let him.”
“Well, not necessarily let. He sort of, I don’t know, made it worth my while that he be the one in charge. I could have stopped him.”
“But you didn’t.”
She sighed. “No. And I think what was happening between us was as much a new path for him as it was for me. At least he said as much. I think I believe him.” She laughed. “I’m not making any sense at all, am I.”
“More than you think, sweetie,” Nat said, all quiet and pondering again. “More than you think.”
“What in the hell does that mean?”
“It means this sounds familiar. He’s a rush, but confusing, scary because you want him really bad but you know it’s probably really wrong to give in to it because it’s supposed to just be about pleasure, and it is about that…but then he makes you look at yourself in a new way, and you know it could be about a whole lot more. Doubly scary given where you are in your life. Totally different from me, but yet a lot the same. Possible same outcome.”
Now Liza laughed, but it wasn’t the confident “yeah-right-sure” snort she’d intended. “Me? End up married to a small-town sheriff? I don’t think so.”
“Hey, watch it. You’re talking to a small-town lawyer here.”
“I know, I know.” She gave a long sigh. “This isn’t about falling in love, though. It’s not like you and Jake, Nat. We’re just…exploring. Things.”
“Uh-huh. Sounds exactly like me and Jake, at least in that we swore that sex and pleasure was all it would ever be, could ever be. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be exactly what you both want. Whatever that might be.” She blew out a breath and half laughed. “I can’t believe I’m telling you to go for this. Like you need to be encouraged to be incorrigible. But…well, I don’t know, Liza. Something about the way you sound…it strikes a chord in me. The new married-and-in-love me, anyway. As long as you think you have a handle on things—”
Liza snorted. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? Every time I think I have the upper hand, he flips things around until I don’t know what end is up.”
His Private Pleasure Page 11
