Criminal Intent (MIRA) (20 page)

It fell to the floor. She tugged at his T-shirt, and he helped her peel it off over his head. Annie skimmed her hands over his chest, his shoulders. God, he was perfect. Long and lean, sleek and silken smooth, his body as hard as that of a twenty-year-old. Only better. There was none of the callow youth about him. Davy Hunter was all man, solid and strong and exquisitely put together. They stood in the darkness, bodies locked together, swaying like reeds caught in a gentle breeze. Annie touched her mouth to his shoulder and tasted him. Drew in his scent, his flavor. Nipped and nibbled at skin as smooth as marble.

When he cupped her breasts, she nearly wept. Through lace as sheer as a spider’s web, his searching fingers explored, circled, teased the sensitive tips to hardness, sending a stab of pure sensation like a lightning bolt directly to her pelvis. She
gasped at the pleasure of it, clung to his shoulders as his fingers continued the gentle pressure until she was so excited she couldn’t stand still. He peeled off her bra and flung it aside, replaced his hands with his mouth, and she thought she might die. Right here, right now. She uttered a series of sharp gasps as he suckled her like an infant, alternating breasts, until she was panting like a dog on a hot August afternoon. It had been so long since a man had made love to her, too long, and she’d never before felt this frantic, almost frenzied need to couple.

His mouth found hers again. Like creatures of the night, they fed on each other, hot flesh pressed against hot flesh as they tore at each other’s clothes. There was no hesitation, no false modesty. Only raw, aching need. Naked, he pulled her to the carpet. Limbs tangled, still kissing, they rolled and tumbled, skin to skin, hardness to softness.

He broke the kiss, lay on his back on the carpet, his chest rising and falling rapidly as with quick, teasing hands she explored his smooth, flat belly, combed her fingers through the thick nest of hair below, cupped his impressive erection between her hands.

“Jesus, Annie.” His voice was barely recognizable as she stroked him, hard and fast, thrilled by his response, by the excited little noises he couldn’t seem to hold back. “Stop,” he said brokenly. “I want—” He caught her hands in his, halted them, and rolled her onto her back. Limbs splayed, she welcomed him, welcomed his heavy weight and his blistering heat, welcomed the quick fluid rush of rapture as he drove himself deep inside her.

“Oh, God.” Her words came out as a moan, and she bit down hard on her lower lip to hold back the sob that wanted to follow.
Finally. Finally.
She’d spent years waiting for this moment, locked together in ecstasy with this man she’d met just days before. He whispered a shocking suggestion in her ear, and
sweat popped out on her forehead, pooled beneath her arms and between her breasts. She arched her back, taking him in deeper, snugger, tighter. Lifting her legs, she wrapped them around him, locked herself around his waist, and rocked him mindlessly and ferociously, aware of nothing beyond the rock-hard flesh that impaled her and the harsh, disjointed words that he whispered in her ear. He was a relentless lover, driving her mercilessly, demanding that she follow him, that she keep up with him, that her pleasure reach heights she’d never before imagined.

They exploded together in a violent and noisy climax that shook the walls and threatened to bring the ceiling down in pieces on their heads. Falling into a tangled heap, they lay limp and gasping, hearts racing at an absurd velocity, bodies still twitching with aftershocks. “Holy mother of God,” he said hoarsely. “What was that?”

“I’m…not sure.” She struggled to draw in enough breath to fuel her burning lungs, but it was impossible. “I…can’t…breathe.”

He rolled onto his back beside her, and her breath slowly returned. Hunter reached down between them, found her hand, and took it in his. “You okay?” he said, threading fingers through hers.

There was something incredibly sweet about the gesture. “I’m okay,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the ceiling. “I didn’t mean to be so—it’s been a while.”

He was apologizing for the hottest sex she’d ever experienced? Was this guy for real? “Trust me when I say this,” she told him. “There’s absolutely nothing to apologize for.”

“Then it was good for you, too? I wasn’t too rough?”

“The screaming didn’t give me away? Good God, Hunter, just how long has it been for you?”

“I plead the Fifth.”

“That
long.” She closed her eyes and floated on a soft cloud of satisfaction. “Me, too,” she said dreamily. “I’m glad we didn’t forget how.”

“That makes two of us. That’d be a helluva thing, wouldn’t it?”

Still floating, she said, “Maybe…just to be sure we got it right…we should try it again.”

“You’re an insatiable little witch, aren’t you, Kendall? Give me a few minutes. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“Just…how old…are you?”

“I’m thirty-eight,” he said. “Some days it feels more like eighty-eight.”

“And is today one of those days?”

“It was, until about twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh?” she said with exaggerated innocence. “What happened twenty minutes ago to change your mind?”

“Give me five more minutes, and I’ll show you.”

She smiled into the darkness. “You’ve got yourself a deal, hot stuff.”

When he woke, it was daylight. Annie Kendall lay in the crook of his arm, her breathing slow and even, all that blond hair fanned out in a sexy tangle across his chest. Squinting, Davy raised his head to check his watch. It was past seven. He’d slept for three hours, sprawled out right here on the rock-hard floor, beneath the quilted comforter he’d pulled over them last night.
This morning,
he corrected himself.

Every muscle in his body ached. He was almost forty, too damn old to be sleeping on the floor. His back was stiff and his knees hurt. Old age was a bitch, especially when it hit you in your thirties. Twenty years ago, he could get away with pulling an all-nighter and then sacking out on the floor. He’d done it all the time when he was away at college. As young marrieds, he and Chelsea had partied until the wee hours and then
crashed as the sun was coming up. They’d looked like zombies the next day, but they’d been too full of youthful energy to notice or care. But at thirty-eight, after the night he’d just been through, he felt like an old man. His head felt grainy and heavy, like a five-pound bag of sugar, and he had the world’s worst hangover. Except that he hadn’t had a drop to drink. He could blame this hangover exclusively on a lack of sleep and an overabundance of scorching, mind-blowing sex.

He hadn’t intended to fall asleep. Hadn’t intended to stay. He wasn’t the kind of man who stayed. Except for Chelsea, he’d never stayed over with a woman. It complicated things too much, muddied the waters when it was time to move on. He’d never been a ladies’ man, but he’d had his share of women over the years. He and Chels had spent more time apart than they had together, and he was a healthy, normal man for whom long-term celibacy was never an option. He always had a good time, always made sure the woman had a good time. But he never stayed. It was one of his cardinal rules. He never slept with the women he slept with.

Until now. He’d broken that cardinal rule and slept with Annie Kendall. He could deny the truth all he wanted, he could blame it on the emotional strain that Gram’s accident had placed on him, could blame it on the fact that he hadn’t slept in nearly twenty-four hours. But the truth was that he’d let down his guard with Annie. He’d wrapped himself around her as though they were longtime lovers and fallen into a deep, comfortable sleep without ever giving it a second thought. It terrified him. He was
not
going to have a romance with this woman. It just plain wasn’t going to happen. The sex had been great—hell, better than great, it had been incredible, stunning, stupendous—but he wasn’t about to fall in love with her. He wasn’t interested in that kind of commitment, wasn’t interested in that kind of gut-wrenching, brain-eating nightmare. He’d already been down that road with Chelsea, and
it had been an emotional mine field. He wasn’t going through it again. Sex was one thing. Love was something totally different. That train had already left the station, and Davy Hunter wasn’t on it.

He hoped to Christ Annie Kendall understood that.

Davy eased away from her hot little body and, careful not to wake her, pulled the comforter up over her and tucked it around her shoulders. He gathered up his clothes, flung haphazardly around the room, and went naked to the bathroom. Behind the locked bathroom door, he took care of business, then pulled on his clothes. Looked at himself in the mirror. His hair was a mess, and whisker stubble dotted his face. His eyes were bloodshot. Christ, he’d better escape while he could. If she ever got sight of him looking like this, he wouldn’t have to worry about where to take her for their second date. There wouldn’t be a second date.

Not, he reminded himself, that this had been a date.

Like the coward that he was, he tiptoed to the kitchen, searched until he found a piece of paper and a pencil, then hesitated, not sure what to say.
Hey, the sex was great. Can we do it again tonight?
Yeah, that would go over real good. Besides, it had been more than just sex. She’d gone with him to the hospital, had sat patiently for hours without complaining, had held his hand, figuratively speaking, through one of the darker nights of his life. She’d brought him back here and given him more than just the pleasure of that sweet, slick, heated place between her thighs. She’d given him tenderness when he sorely needed it, had offered strong, steady comfort at a time when he didn’t know which way to turn.

In the end, he kept it simple.
Thanks,
he wrote.
For everything. I’ll call you. D.

He locked the door behind him, sat on the top stair to tug on his shoes, and laced them up. In the parking lot, the police cruiser stood out like a Ford pickup at a Corvette rally. That was
just ducky. He should’ve left before daylight. Jo Crowley was an early riser. She’d undoubtedly already looked across the street and seen his car parked out front. By nightfall, word would be all over town that Davy Hunter was shacked up with the hot new blonde who’d just moved to town.

Serenity on a Sunday morning wasn’t exactly partytown. The place was just as dead, just as deserted, as it had been at 3:00 a.m. A single car sat at the gas pumps in front of the Big Apple. Inside, Helen Goodwin made change for the driver. Even the churches hadn’t come to life yet. Sunday morning services didn’t start until nine o’clock, and even the holy rollers didn’t start stirring much before eight.

When he pulled into his own driveway, there was no sign of life. He let himself in, silently stepped over a sleeping Buddy—some watchdog he was—and went immediately to the refrigerator. He still needed a couple hours of sleep or he’d fall over dead. If he drank coffee, there’d be no getting back to sleep. At thirty-eight, he couldn’t slug caffeine the way he used to. One more goddamn concession to old age. Instead, he pulled out a gallon of milk and poured some in a mug. He replaced the carton of milk in the fridge and was just tipping up the mug to drink when he saw Jessie standing barefoot in the living room, dressed in a pair of flannel pajamas with rubber duckies all over them, bony arms crossed over her equally bony chest.

“How’s Gram?” she said.

He was so damn tired he was swaying on his feet, like he used to do in the days after Chelsea died, when he’d come in at five in the morning so drunk he couldn’t remember the drive home. It was a miracle he hadn’t killed himself. Or somebody else. Maybe that’s what he’d been hoping for. Suicide by automobile. A quick, conclusive end to the pain that was eating him up inside.

He
took a slug of cold milk and gave Jessie the fifty-cent version of his night. He left out the part about Ryan Gates and his suggestion about putting Gram in a nursing-care facility, left out the part where he and Annie Kendall fucked each other’s brains out. “Gram was worried about the cat,” he concluded. “And she’s already asking when she can go home.”

Jessie tilted her head, and a ray of morning sun, filtering through the living room curtains, drew glossy highlights from her dark hair. “Can I visit her?” she said.

“I think that’s a great idea. I’m going back later today. You can go with me if you want.” He drained the mug of milk and set it in the sink. “Sophie asleep?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to bed for a couple of hours. It’s been a long night.”

“Davy? I just wanted you to know that it’s okay.”

He stood there looking at her, a slender, dark-haired, earnest young girl who looked younger than her age. “What’s that, Skeets?” he said. “What’s okay?”

“You and Mrs. Kendall.”

“Me and—how the—” Flabbergasted, he realized he was spluttering and making a fool of himself, and he clamped his mouth shut.

“I’m not an idiot,” she said. “I saw the way the two of you were looking at each other. And the way she avoided you all afternoon. And last night. You were with her when Elsa called you. At midnight, Davy. Now it’s seven-thirty in the morning. You weren’t with Gram all this time. Which tells me you went back to her place after you left the hospital.”

Embarrassed, he said, “Christ, Skeets—”

“Davy, it’s okay. Really. My mom wouldn’t expect you to spend the rest of your life sitting around mourning her. If she was here, she’d tell you to get back out there and start living again or else she’d kick your butt.” Jessie’s gray eyes were solemn, but
a flicker of humor crossed her face. She took a deep breath and went on. “I know how much it hurt you when she died. I thought it might kill you. For a while there, I was afraid you might kill yourself. But I’ve seen a change in you. You’re starting to heal, and I’m so glad. You’re the most solitary person I know, and it breaks my heart to see you that way. You need to be with someone. I want you to be happy. And if Mrs. Kendall makes you happy, then that’s good enough for me.”

He wondered how to explain to a starry-eyed sixteen-year-old girl that one night of hot sex didn’t necessarily add up to happily-ever-after. He didn’t want to shatter her adolescent illusions. Didn’t want her to turn out like him, jaded by the age of eighteen. On the other hand, she needed to understand the difference between love and sex. It was a significant difference, one that could ruin the life of a young girl who failed to understand. And knowing Chelsea, he doubted that she’d adequately prepared her daughter for this crucial aspect of growing up. Chels might have lived her life bouncing from bed to bed, but when it came to talking about the birds and the bees, he suspected she’d abdicated that particular maternal responsibility.