ONE LAST CHANCE

by Justine Davis

  "Where's your clone?" Chance asked sweetly when the bulky man, clad in the customary tuxedo, moved to block his way. A snarl was his only answer. "Go ahead, pal," Chance coaxed. "I'm feeling just about mean enough to pull your tongue out through your ear."

  A long, tense moment spun out between them before at last Chance's eagerness to see Shea won out and he shouldered his way past the tuxedoed wall.

  She was in his arms the moment he closed the door.

  "God, I missed you," he breathed.

  "Good," she said simply.

  A pure, joyous laughter bubbled up inside him as the impossibility of it all slipped away in her intoxicating presence.

  "I love that sound," she whispered, her arms sliding around his waist beneath his jacket. "It sounds so much better now."

  He bent his head to press his lips against her hair. "I … hadn't used it for a long time."

  "I know." She looked up at him shyly. "Did you like the new song?"

  "You know I did. Is that what you were working on this morning?'

  She nodded. "I've had the music in my head for a long time. I just couldn't find the words. I guess the time wasn't right before."

  He let out a sighing breath. "Oh, Shea," he murmured. She moved closer, and he knew in a minute she was going to realize exactly what kind of effect the song had on him. He took a step back, holding her shoulders as he let his eyes sweep over her.

  "You got a license for that dress, lady?"

  She smiled shyly. "I don't wear it very often. It takes more nerve than I usually have."

  His eyes went soft, glinting deep blue in the soft light of the room. "But you had the nerve to do it today?"

  She lifted her head to meet his warm gaze. "Today," she said softly, "I could have done anything."

  He hadn't meant to kiss her. He'd thought he didn't dare; he was too close to the edge already. If he kissed her, he wouldn't want to stop until they were both hot, panting and naked, crying out for each other with desperate need. But when she said those quiet words, then stretched up to press her mouth to his, his resolution vanished in the flaring heat.

  He jerked her tight against him, not caring anymore if she knew what she'd done to him. She gasped as she came in contact with his hardened body, then went soft and warm in his arms, arching to press her hips harder against him. Her tongue flicked over his lips, then past them, to find and stroke his own. He groaned, catching the tip of the sweet, welcome probe and sucking gently.

  Shea's arms tightened around him, then loosened as her hands slid down from his waist. She could feel the tautly muscled body beneath the heavy linen of his slacks, and a sigh of pleasure slipped from her lips when her fingers curled around the swell of his buttocks.

  And then the kiss wasn't deep enough, hot enough, or hard enough, and she raised her arms to encircle his neck. Her fingers tangled in his hair, then tightened, pressing his head down to her even harder.

  Chance let his hands slide down her back, over the sparkling fabric of the dress, to the gentle swell of her buttocks. In a convulsive motion he cupped her, pressing her tight against him, his breath escaping in a rush against her lips as his hips jerked involuntarily forward.

  He tried to stop, tried to pull away, but she made a breathless little sound of protest that sent a rocket of heat through him. And then her hands were up under his sweater, stroking his bare skin, making every muscle quiver beneath her fingers. He shuddered, then gasped when her caressing fingers reached his nipples and rubbed them lovingly. He wrenched his mouth from hers.

  "Shea," he growled warningly against her ear.

  "Please." It was a soft breath of sound. She moved, arching her back, rubbing the swollen heaviness of her breasts against his chest.

  "God!" It burst from him. "Shea, stop. If you don't, I'm going to take you right here against the damned wall."

  "Yes," she moaned, "please."

  A harsh, ragged sound came from deep in his chest. "God, don't say that."

  "Now," she said, her gray eyes smoky and begging beneath the thick fringe of lashes. "Right now. It's been so long."

  He forgot everything he'd learned about control. He barely had the presence of mind to reach back and lock the door. Even as he did, Shea's hands were busy, tugging at the buckle of his belt, then his zipper. Her eagerness stunned him in the seconds before a firestorm flared inside him at the first touch of her hands on him as she freed him from his clothes. He shuddered violently as she clasped him in her hands. Then he erupted into motion.

  He tugged at the red dress, pushing it up out of the way, its glistening length only a nuisance now. His hands found the silken flesh of her legs and slid up her slender thighs. He was hanging on by a thread of control; only the fear that he might hurt her if she wasn't ready for him slowed him.

  His fingers encountered a brief triangle of silk at the top of her thighs, and when he tugged at it and heard the fabric rend, he realized that thread of control had dwindled to a mere fiber. He shuddered again at the heat that radiated from her body when she was free of the interfering cloth. When his seeking fingers found her, hot and wet and waiting, he groaned her name harshly.

  She was raining sweet, blazing kisses over his mouth, his face, his jaw, his throat, all the while her hands were caressing his swollen flesh urgently, almost demandingly. He truly meant to at least carry her to the couch, but when her fingers squeezed and coaxed the blunt tip of that male flesh his only thought was that he would die if he didn't get inside her now. Right now.

  His hands cupped her buttocks, kneading them, then lifting. She locked one arm around his neck, the other lowering as she reached to guide him home. He groaned as her wet, hot flesh closed around him, yielding even as it gripped him, stroked him.

  "Oh, Chance," she moaned, "I—"

  She broke off with a sharp cry as he lowered her fully onto him. He turned slightly, pressing her back against the wall of the dressing room, and thrust his hips forward, pushing himself inside her to the hilt. She gasped, shuddering.

  "Hold on, songbird," he said hoarsely, and she fastened her arms around his neck. He slid his hands down her legs until she locked them around him, then put his palms flat against the wall on each side of her lolling head. Braced, he began to move, thrusting fiercely, savoring the tiny cries of pleasure she made as much as the incredible waves of sensation that swept him as she took him so hot and fast and deep.

  It was strange, and oddly erotic, touching her nowhere but in that most intimate place. His fingers curled against the wall, but he didn't dare sacrifice the support. She clung to him desperately, arms and legs enfolding him, her legs tightening with each thrust to urge him deeper.

  His entire world narrowed to those inches of flesh buried deep in her body. The only place he touched her was all the meaning he needed in his life, that it was Shea, and that she was giving herself to him so freely.

  "Shea," he said raggedly, "Shea … I can't … wait."

  "Don't," she whispered hotly in his ear. "Now. With me."

  Shea thought the thick, guttural sound he made the most beautiful thing in the world. And then, as she felt him swell and burst inside her and her own soaring flight began, she knew she'd only touched the tip of the beauty he would show her now. With a breathy little cry of his name, she went soaring after him.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  «^»

  Chance didn't know which had awakened him, the smell rising from below or the growling response of his stomach to the delectable odor. He yawned, opened his eyes and snapped to full alertness when absolutely nothing looked familiar.

  Then Shea stirred beside him, making a sleepy sound as she snuggled against his shoulder. The night came rushing back to him then, the two remaining shows at the club that had had him in perpetual heat when he thought of what had taken place in her dressing room. Afterward they had gone to dinner as usual, but the memory of their own hunger of a different kind was there to read every time gray eyes met blue.


  He'd been hesitant when she had shyly invited him to stay at her place, the unpleasant recollection of a dark blue sedan intruding. But he decided if he left his car at the club and they walked, taking a back way he knew, cutting through quiet alleys and between commercial buildings, it would be safe enough.

  They'd made love again, in the lovely, carved carriage bed that unexpectedly graced her small bedroom. But he hadn't really looked at the room then. He'd been too intent on showing her that slow, sweet, drawn-out love could make her fly as high as the frenzied coupling in her dressing room. But he looked now, noticing that she had brought the same charm and warmth to this part of her temporary home as she had to the living room.

  The colors were bright, the plants were healthy and flourishing, and the room was neat but not obsessively so. What he liked the most, he realized with a little stab of surprise, was the organized clutter of feminine trappings on the small dresser. A couple of bottles of perfume—one, he guessed, the spicy scent she wore that drove him nuts—a hairbrush with a beautifully carved wooden back, a loose lipstick and a pair of gold hoop earrings. It tugged at him in a way he didn't quite understand, a way that made his life without her seem more empty than he had ever realized.

  He lay there for a long time, just enjoying the way she cuddled against him. If somewhere buried in his subconscious was the motivation that someday memories of this might be all he had of her, he refused to acknowledge it.

  When dawn passed to the full light of morning, he gently slid out of the bed, grabbing his watch off the nightstand. A much more traditional nightstand, he thought with a grin, a grin that was followed by a rush of pleasure at the memory of Shea so embarrassedly trying to tell him that the precautions they'd been using weren't necessary anymore, that she'd stolen some time to go to a doctor.

  "You didn't have to do that, songbird," he'd said, touched.

  "It's a good thing I did, though," she said, a mischievous grin curving her full mouth delightfully despite her blush. He knew she meant neither one of them had stopped to think about it in her dressing room. "Besides," she'd added in a whisper, "I don't like … anything between us."

  It had been at that point, his body rising to the flash point faster than he'd ever thought possible, that he had been introduced to the ornate antique bed she slept in. He looked back at that bed now, at the slender shape still huddled in the tangle of covers, at the silken tangle of dark hair spread more over his pillow than hers.

  He felt the familiar tightening of his body at the sight, but the lump that threatened to close off his throat and the stinging of his eyes overpowered even that fierce response. She was so sweet and warm and open, she made him feel alive again, as if there were some point to his existence beyond just surviving from day to day.

  He tugged on his clothes and quietly let himself out. He went down the stairs and turned right, letting his nose lead him to the open bakery door. He didn't know what she liked, so he asked for one of just about everything, then waited as the delighted clerk started to fill a large white bag.

  He yawned and ran a hand through his tousled hair, thinking that maybe he wouldn't get a haircut after all. Shea said she liked running her fingers through the hair that brushed the top of his shoulders, and the little shivers that activity sent rippling down his spine weren't something he wanted to give up.

  He locked his laced fingers behind his head and stretched, wondering at how lazily content he felt. It was a feeling he'd never known before, and he was loving every minute of it. When he went back, he thought, he'd wake her up slowly, planting a row of kisses from the graceful arch of her feet to the graceful arch of her brow, and he'd take at least an hour to do it. He'd kiss every—

  He almost heard the thud as reality kicked down the door of his fantasy house of cards. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw, sitting a half a block past the bakery, a dark blue sedan, the mirrors angled so that the car's occupant could watch the front door of the bakery. And the stairway that led to Shea's door.

  The sinking sensation in his chest was followed by a surge of anger. He hated being followed. And he hated it even more because, as a cop who'd spent his share of time doing just what that man was doing, he knew that some lurid speculation about what he and Shea were doing was no doubt uppermost in the driver's mind. The beautiful, private moments they shared were being sullied, and he had had enough. After yesterday, they had to know he knew they were tailing him, so he had nothing to lose.

  "That's four seventy-nine, sir."

  Chance turned back to the clerk and handed her a ten. "The change is yours if there's a back door out of this place."

  She looked at him oddly, but apparently decided that a man who had time to stop and buy donuts wasn't a real hazard, and gestured down a narrow hallway.

  It took him a few minutes to work his way down the narrow alley. When he peered around the corner, he saw the man in the car slumped down in the front seat, yawning as he kept a careful eye on the outside mirror. Chance reached into the bag he carried, then crept forward soundlessly.

  "Mornin'," he drawled as he casually leaned against the driver's door of the car. The man leaped up, banging his knee sharply against the steering wheel. "You look hungry. And tired." He held out a donut generously frosted with chocolate. "Why don't you eat this and go home and go to sleep? Just leave me a number, and I'll call and tell you where I'm going. It'll save us both a lot of aggravation."

  "You really are crazy," the man muttered, reaching for the ignition.

  "Me?" Chance raised his eyebrows in mock innocence. "I'm just trying to help out a fellow being, that's all. I—Oops."

  He smothered a grin at the man's roar of outrage as the dropped donut smeared its way down his shirt to his lap.

  "Gosh, I'm sorry. You be sure and send me the bill, okay?"

  "I'll send you more than that, hotshot!" The man was still fuming as Chance stepped aside with an elaborate bow, and ushered the car back into the street. He was still grinning as he started back up the stairs to Shea. He might not have accomplished much, but he sure felt better.

  Shea was huddled on the sofa, her lower lip caught between her teeth, when he opened the door. For one brief second he saw pain and naked vulnerability there before joy leaped into her eyes even as she sprang to her feet.

  "What is it, songbird? What's wrong?"

  "I thought … you'd gone."

  He dropped the bag onto the table and pulled her into his arms. "Without even saying goodbye?"

  "I didn't know… I thought…" She shivered slightly. "I don't have much experience at this."

  He hugged her fiercely. "Neither do I, love. I should have waited, or left you a note or something. I'm sorry. I guess I've been alone too damned long."

  She lifted her head to look at him. "Then I guess we'll just have to keep practicing, won't we?"

  He smiled at her tremulous tone. "I guess we will. But I warn you, it may take a long time to get it right."

  "Oh, I hope so," she whispered, turning her head to press a soft kiss in the hollow of his throat.

  "You keep that up, and you'll miss out on breakfast," he warned.

  "Breakfast?"

  Resolutely he broke away from her to pick up the bag. "I couldn't resist," he said sheepishly. "I don't know how you sleep through that smell in the mornings."

  "Easy, once you get used to it," she said, laughing softly as he spread out on the napkins every possible kind of pastry she could imagine, "although I have had some strange dreams about singing to an audience of apple fritters."

  He echoed her laugh. "A shrink could have a field day with that one, songbird."

  She grinned as she reached for one of the mentioned fritters. "Not anymore. My dreams have definitely improved lately. Much more … exciting."

  "Oh?"

  The one syllable came in a husky tone that made her want to forget all about breakfast and see if she could lure him right back to bed with her.

  "Yes. And now when I wake up, I find out
they're not just dreams anymore."

  She didn't finish the apple fritter until much, much later.

  * * *

  They arrived back at the club, for Shea to go inside and for him to pick up the car—he had the BMW, needing the radio in it to keep in touch now that he had to be careful about going to the station—and found Pete Escobar leaning on the fender.

  "Nice welcoming committee," Chance muttered as they crossed the parking lot. "All it needs is the dynamic duo."

  Shea laughed. "They're off running errands, I imagine. Paul keeps them pretty busy. Seems like one or the other of them is always running to the bank or somewhere." She wrinkled her nose in a way that made something warm and comfortable begin to glow inside him. "The other one is always glued to me, it seems."

  "Not always," Chance said with an exaggerated leer.

  "Hush," she said with a stifled giggle. "I meant in the club and you know it."

  They arrived at the car, and Chance looked pointedly at the fender Escobar was leaning on.

  "You scratch it, you paint it."

  Escobar glared at him but straightened up. Then he zeroed in on Shea.

  "Your brother is not a happy man," he said sternly.

  "Buenos días, Pedro," she said sweetly.

  "Pete!" Escobar snapped, then spoke sharply in Spanish, the words too rapid for Chance to understand.

  "I have told my brother," Shea answered coolly in English, "that he'd better back off. And that goes for you, too, old friend or not."

  Escobar spat out a curse Chance had heard before, the last time Quisto had slammed his finger in a file cabinet drawer.

  "Testy in the morning, isn't he?" Chance observed mildly to no one in particular. Shea giggled.

  Escobar whirled on him, fury flashing in chocolate brown eyes. The book on him was accurate, then, Chance thought. It didn't take much to set off his volatile temper. More words came, low and hissing. Then the angry man turned back to Shea.