by JoAnn Ross
"If you're referring to me skipping out on my hospital bill—"
"I'm referring to you breaking into Alan Fletcher's hotel suite."
How could he possibly know that, Mariah wondered. Deciding it wasn't important how he'd discovered her subterfuge, she did the only thing she could think to do. She tried to bluff her way through.
"Gracious, news travels fast."
Trace controlled the wave of fury. "Next time you decide to search a guy's underwear drawer, perhaps you ought to take note of how he folds his socks."
Damn Alan Fletcher anyway! Who would have suspected anyone could be so anal retentive as to notice a stupid thing like that. As it was, it had taken her twice as long as she'd expected to go through his things because he was so ridiculously neat.
Anger at her former brother-in-law created a flare of heat that had her tossing her head. "He called you."
"As soon as he got back upstairs from Maggie's—who, it seems, has had nearly as busy a day as her meddling daughter—and discovered that someone had been rifling through his things."
"Dammit, Mariah, what kind of crime writer are you? Haven't you ever heard of the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' doctrine?"
"Of course I have. It prevents the use of evidence originating from illegal conduct—"
"Like an illegal search," he interjected.
"From illegal conduct," she repeated, ignoring his pointed interruption, "on the part of an official on the grounds that the evidence is tainted, and therefore can't be trusted."
"Very good. So you want to tell me what you were going to do if you did find anything that pointed to Fletcher?"
"I was going to tell you, of course," she answered promptly.
He swore in response.
"Really, I was," she insisted. "Besides, if you want to get really technical, the poisonous tree theory doesn't apply because I'm not an official."
His grim expression told Mariah that Trace was less than impressed with her distinction. "Spare me the legal loopholes from TV Writing 101," he growled. "Fletcher wants to file charges."
"Is that why you're here, Sheriff?" Frost tinged her eyes, where only an instant earlier a flame had burned. "To arrest me?"
"Don't tempt me." Was she deliberately challenging him? Trace was not used to feeling this frustrated. He was a cop. A sheriff, dammit. Ordinary citizens ignored his orders at their peril.
"I came here to let you explain what the hell you thought you were doing, interfering in a homicide investigation."
Her temper flared. "I was only trying to find proof that Alan was guilty. Which someone sure as hell needs to do, since…" Realizing what she was about to say, she clamped her jaw shut. Hard.
"Since I won't?" he asked in that dangerously silky tone Mariah had learned to respect.
She pulled loose, turned away and walked over to the window to stare unseeingly out at the summer day. What she'd been about to imply had been as wrong as it was hateful.
"That wasn't what I was about to say."
"Wasn't it?" The words she'd left unstated twisted painfully inside him. Trace wasn't about to let her get off that easily. "Do you remember, that first day, how I told you that solving your sister's murder was my department?"
He was standing right behind her, having crossed the room in that spooky, quiet way he had. His voice was soft, but an aura of barely restrained anger still surrounded him.
"I seem to recall something about that."
He took hold of her shoulders, not gently, and turned her toward him. "Do you also recall me warning you that if you interfered in any way in my investigation, if you second-guessed my motives, or dared question my integrity, that I would toss you in jail for obstructing justice so fast your head will swim?" His fingers crept into her hair. Tangling, but not painfully. His silky, dangerous tone made her throat dry.
"It rings a bell," Mariah responded on a falsely flippant tone. "Along with threatening to personally throw the cell door key into Whiskey River."
"That idea is sounding better and better." He tugged on her hair, tilting her head back so she had no choice but to meet his blistering glare. "Let's just suppose Fletcher is guilty—"
"He is," she insisted defiantly.
His fingers tightened in her hair. "Shut up." With his free hand he captured her defiant chin. "So, in the event that the senator is a killer," he rasped through gritted teeth, "what would you have done if he'd returned and found you pawing through his underwear?"
"That wouldn't have happened. Maggie was going to call me if he left too soon."
"What if she didn't? Your mother," he said pointedly, "doesn't have a history of reliability."
"I could have handled the situation." At his disbelieving snort, Mariah insisted, "I could have. For your information, Callahan, I've taken self-defense training. He couldn't have hurt me."
He ran his hand slowly, deliberately, over her bare shoulders, over the crest of her breasts, then down the front of the white eyelet bustier. "I don't feel a bulletproof vest." The intimate caress, meant to insult, aroused. "What if he'd pulled a gun?"
As his palm brushed over the taut point of her breast, Mariah felt an involuntary need rise. "I could have handled things," she insisted in a voice she wanted to be strong, but wasn't.
"Show me." His wicked hand moved between them to press against her quivering stomach. "Show me how you would have prevented him from attacking you." Between her thighs. "Show me all the ways that instructor in your Beverly Hills lady-in-distress class taught you to keep a man from taking what he wants from you."
When he pressed his palm against her, creating an enervating heat to pool in her loins, Mariah struggled to remember the various tactics she'd learned.
She could do this, she assured herself. After all, she'd paid 350 dollars and spent an hour every Wednesday evening for six straight weeks learning to hone her self-defense skills.
Since she was wearing sandals, grinding her high heel into his foot was out So was jabbing her car keys into his eyes. Her pepper spray was in her purse, out of reach.
There was one thing that had worked pretty well when she'd tried it on her partner—a petite star of a popular prime-time situation comedy.
Her instructor had warned her that such a response to a threat of danger could be risky. But he'd also told the class that desperate situations sometimes called for desperate means.
Taking a deep breath, Mariah shifted her weight, let out an enormous yell, and moved to throw him.
Seconds later, when she landed flat on her back on the Navaho rug, with a very large and glowering Trace on top of her, Mariah considered asking for her money back.
Chapter Twenty-Three
"So much for your self-defense skills."
At any other time, his mocking tone would have ignited Mariah's temper, but right now, as she lay beneath Trace, a different, far more dangerous flame had been kindled.
Their bodies were pressed together, so close that the heat from Trace flowed into her. His face was inches from hers, his breath hot against her lips, his eyes molten pewter in which flames burned.
"Not everyone has your professional training." She'd wanted to sound defiant, but heaven help her, instead every word shimmered with her escalating need.
Lord, she was driving him crazy! An utterly irresistible blend of passion and insolence blazed in her eyes. Her breasts heaved, warm and unbearably pliant against the wall of his chest. Beneath him, her body seemed to be melting into his.
"True enough." Trace slipped his hand between them and tugged on the white ribbon lacing the front of the bustier together.
"But the senator is still a man." As was he. And never had Trace been more aware of a woman. "Which, like it or not, makes the guy a helluva lot stronger than you." As he continued to unlace the eyelet bustier, his knuckles grazed her awakened flesh. "If he'd wanted to touch you like this—" he flicked a careless thumb against her nipple, drawing a quick, intake of breath "—what would you have done? Or if he'd
put his mouth on you like this—"
When he took her breast in his mouth, Mariah heard her own ragged moan. "I wouldn't ever let him do that."
"Dammit, you still don't get it, do you?" He lifted his head; his eyes seared into hers. "You wouldn't have had a choice." He pressed himself against her again, chest-to-chest, thigh-to-thigh, causing her pulse to thud in secret, intimate places. "Just like you don't have any choice now."
"I do." Desperate to hang on to some vestige of control, no matter how slight, she lay limp beneath Trace, vowing not to give him the satisfaction of knowing how she was finding the feel of his strong male body pressing against her secretly thrilling.
Trace was frustrated. By the case he'd yet to solve, and by the feelings that this woman had unearthed in him from the beginning. He was angry. Angry at the situation, angry at her for continually putting herself at risk, angry for reasons he no longer knew but was fed up with trying to control.
Their faces were locked, their eyes close.
"Prove it," he said roughly.
There was no hesitation. No fears. No doubts. Mariah dragged her hands through his hair, straining closer as she pulled his mouth to hers.
Thunder rumbled deafeningly in his head. Lightning sizzled down his spine. Diving into the hot kiss, Trace demanded passion and with a moan, Mariah willingly answered. She was clinging to him, giving back even as she demanded more. Her body sprang to frantic life wherever he touched her, she murmured his name as she buried her lips in the hollow of his throat and sent the blood racing to his loins.
As thrilling as their previous lovemaking had been, Mariah never imagined that she could feel like this. Never had she been so aware of her body—every nerve ending.
In a frenzy, she jerked his shirt from his belt. Her eager hands raced across his damp back, reveling in the powerful roping of male muscle. She was moving beneath him, inviting him to take anything—everything—he wanted. All that he needed.
His breathing was ragged as he tore the bustier away, giving his hungry mouth full access to her aching breasts. Mariah heard the sound of rendered material and welcomed it. Need burst through her like a torrid spirit; her fingers fumbled as she struggled with his shirt, finally following his example, ripping it open.
At the first touch of burning flesh against flesh, Mariah cried out. Wrapping her arms around him, she held him tight, their skin fused, her avid, open mouth on his, devouring as she was being devoured.
His .38 was digging into her hip. Cursing, he managed to unclip the holster and shove it out of the way.
Sweat sheened on her skin. And his. Bruises went unfelt as his strong greedy hands streaked over her, kneading, possessing, tormenting. The air grew steamy hot and heavy. Mariah struggled to drag it into her lungs, only to lose it again on a low, shuddering moan as his ravenous mouth followed the path his fingers blazed, at her throat, over her shoulders, her breasts.
Trace couldn't get enough of her. Every taste intoxicated, her scent inflamed. He could feel the sharp sting of her nails in his back and drew a throaty moan when his teeth, in passionate retaliation, scraped against her stomach.
The rest of her clothes were stripped from her, as if torn away by a screaming sirocco. The pulsating pressure spiraling outward from her most intimate core became unbearable. Little caring that she was begging, Mariah pleaded with him to stop. To never stop.
As she writhed helplessly beneath Trace, with only his mouth and his clever, wicked, wonderful hands, he brought her to a mind-blinding, shattering release. She was still gasping as she began struggling to unfasten his jeans, desperate to touch him, as he'd touched her, but he caught both her wrists in one hand and held them above her head.
"Not yet." He gazed down at her, all flushed and warm and naked and vowed that he would be the only man who ever saw her like this. "Not nearly."
He lowered his head again and drove her back into the darkness, the heat.
After the second climax had shuddered through her, Mariah went limp. She wouldn't have thought it possible to experience such passion and survive.
"That was…" She couldn't think. Couldn't move. Yet unbelievably, even as sensation after sensation shuddered through her, Mariah was aching for more.
"Only the beginning." His own body dangerously close to exploding, Trace half dragged, half carried her to the couch. "I'm going to take you up again, Mariah. Until you understand that I'm the only one who can take you there."
He kissed her with a masculine possessiveness that both thrilled and terrified.
"You're the only one," she breathed against his mouth as her fingers fumbled at the snap at his waist. "The only one I'll ever want."
He left her only long enough to pull off his boots and socks. Then together they struggled with his jeans, dragging them and his cotton briefs over his hips and down his legs. His tongue plunged into the moist dark recesses of her welcoming mouth, his hands grasped her hips and lifted them off the cushions.
His heart pounding so hard he thought it was going to explode from his chest, Trace plunged into her.
Mariah clutched at his shoulders; her legs wrapped around his waist. They began to move together, harder, faster, higher. He was beyond the capacity for thought. A bloodred haze shimmered in front of Trace's eyes. Heat spiraled outward from the base of his spine.
Mariah's breathless cry, as he poured into her, reverberated through Trace like an echo.
When his breathing had finally returned to normal and his body had cooled, Trace felt something twist inside him when he viewed the dark bruises marring her skin.
"I hurt you."
"Don't be silly." Her lips curved in an unconscious smile at the thought. "You could never hurt me."
At the sight of one particularly dark mark on her hip, Trace cursed.
Finding his grim tone a distinct contrast to her own satiated feelings, Mariah finally opened her eyes. When she saw him studying the bruise with obvious self-disgust, she sighed.
"You didn't hurt me, Trace." Framing his face between her palms she gave him a warm, reassuring smile. "As for any bruises, if you want to know the truth, I found that part rather exciting." She pressed her smiling lips against his harshly set ones in an attempt to coax an answering smile in return. "Thrilling."
Her efforts failed. Miserably. "That's not the point." His voice was rough and raw as he pulled her hands from his face and ran a roughened fingertip over the bluish marks braceleting her wrists.
There was something else going on here, Mariah realized. Something she couldn't quite get a handle on.
Almost, but not quite pushing her away, he stood up. When he viewed the ruined piece of white eyelet, he felt as if someone had shoved a knife into his gut. "I ripped your top."
"So? I ripped your shirt. And I'm not about to apologize."
She just didn't get it. "I hurt you. I left bruises."
"When you get a chance, take a look at your back. You won't be able to go without a shirt for a week."
"That's different, dammit!" His jaw was set, his eyes so dark they appeared almost black. "The purpose of the exercise, at least when it started, was to demonstrate that there's no way you could have held your own against a man who intended to harm you. I've seen what happens to women who get involved with men who hurt them."
"In your work."
Something painful moved across his shadowed eyes. It was here and gone so quickly that if Mariah hadn't been watching Trace so carefully she would have missed it.
"Yeah." His tone was flat. Remote. "In my work."
Once again she sensed there was more to this than what she was seeing on the surface. Reminding herself that Trace was an intensely private man, Mariah decided not to push. For now.
But she couldn't allow his brutal self-accusations to go unchallenged. "Whatever you've seen, Trace, no matter how terrible, has nothing to do with you and me. Because you're not that type of man."
He arched a dark, challenging brow. "You think not?"
Th
e old, controlled cop was back. In spades. Loving him as she did, as deeply as she did, Mariah accepted this admittedly difficult part of him as easily as she accepted his gray eyes and magnificent body.
"I know you, Trace."
"Do you?"
"I know you're a good man. A kind man. And," she insisted, when she felt the argument coming, "a gentle man. As for what happened here, I wanted you as much as you wanted me. It was consensual, Callahan. And it was good. Better than good."
Her own gaze softened and she held out a hand that only trembled slightly. "Now will you please stop beating yourself up and come over here? It's been much too long since I've been kissed."
Until this moment, Trace had believed himself to be in full possession of his heart. Looking down into her exquisite face, reading the uncensored emotion in her remarkably soft eyes, he realized that somehow, when he hadn't been paying attention, he'd given it away to this woman.
He returned to the couch, sat down beside her and lowered his forehead to hers. "I really am sorry."
"Would you stop saying that?" She linked her fingers together behind his neck. "And just kiss me?" She tilted her head back and smiled at him. A seductive, feminine smile that slammed into his gut. "Or do I have to beg?"
"Never." Deciding that his feelings were too strong, too complex to consider now, while he was already wanting to make love to her again, Trace bent his head and brushed his lips lightly against hers. When her lips parted invitingly, the kiss that had begun as a snowflake soft touching of lips lingered.
"Do you think there's room for two in that antique copper tub upstairs?" he asked against her mouth.
He felt her smile. "Absolutely."
Afterward, Mariah sat at the kitchen table, clad in the gauze skirt he'd come to love and a stretchy spandex top the color of lilacs. Professing that she couldn't send him back to town bare-chested, she was sewing buttons back onto his shirt while Trace cooked them both a western omelet.
A buttery late-morning sun was streaming into the homey kitchen. The song of meadowlarks singing outside the open window added a counterpoint to the country radio station playing softly in the background.
