He came, too, then, plunging deep inside her body and shuddering at the force of his own release.
She was still floating in a dreamy, sex-infused fog when he rolled off her.
That made her open her eyes. Feeling all blissful and tender and ready to curl up with him and whisper chapter and verse about how wonderful she thought he was in his ear, she smiled and slid a look his way.
He lay flat on his back beside her. A comprehensive glance down his body objectively admired his sculpted muscles and long powerful frame, and that part of him which, even at half-mast as it currently was, was still impressively sized. But it was his face that drew her attention. One hand covered his eyes, and he was grimacing.
Not exactly the kind of après-sex reaction she was hoping for.
She wished, vainly, for the quilt, which had been lost along with the pillows and everything else in his bed-dragging rampage across the shanty. Then she spotted the top sheet, one corner of which clung to the foot of the mattress while the rest of it trailed onto the floor. Sitting up, she snagged it and pulled it up and over herself. She was still settling it in place when she glanced at him again and found that he was looking at her.
“Caroline,” he said. He smiled at her, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. And there was something about his voice . . . He picked up her hand, carried it to his mouth and kissed the back of it. “You’re beautiful.”
There was still something about his voice. Something about his eyes. Something about his manner.
Something that didn’t jibe with him just having had his world rocked in bed. Which she knew perfectly well was what had just happened.
She got the impression that he was mentally distancing himself from her as fast as he could. And she remembered that he had been adamantly opposed to having sex with her right up until the minute he’d been for it.
But when push came to shove, he was a gentleman. They’d had sex. So of course he would give her the obligatory smile, the obligatory kiss, the obligatory compliment.
Didn’t mean a thing.
Under more usual conditions, his next step would be to get up, get dressed, and run for the hills, promising to call soon on his way out the door.
His reaction hurt. It made her mad. It also, she realized, should have been just exactly what she was expecting. He had warned her not to get involved with him, with the clear implication being that he didn’t want to get involved with her, either. She had neglected to say to him,
As far as I’m concerned, too late
. But it was the truth. And now she was in it to win it. To win
him
.
Her only possible response? To behave as if it didn’t bother her at all.
Curling her legs up beside her on the mattress, winding the sheet more firmly into place so it swathed her from her armpits to her ankles, she regarded him thoughtfully.
“Want to tell me why you’re looking at me like the cat that captured the canary?” he asked. Sitting up, swinging his long legs over the side of the bed, he didn’t seem one bit bothered by the fact that he was naked. She, on the other hand, having gotten an eyeful of his long, hard-muscled, bronzed-skinned body stretched out casually against the white sheet, was undeniably affected, but determined to ignore his au naturel state. Even if just looking at him sitting there like that did still have the power to make her blood heat.
Her lips compressed. “Just for the record, I think the cat ate the canary.”
“Whatever.” He stood up, reached for his boxers, pulled them on. Then he turned to face her. “What’s on your mind, Caroline?”
She looked up at him. “What’s on
my
mind? You just kissed my hand and told me I’m beautiful.”
“So?”
“After we had sex.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“
Not
what I would have expected from you.”
He looked genuinely curious. “Want to tell me why you have a problem with that?”
“I don’t know. I guess I expected better from you. You know, more finesse on the dismount. Not such an obvious brush-off.”
“You looking for hearts and flowers again, cher?” His voice was wry. “I’m sorry about that. I told you from the beginning that us having sex was a mistake.”
She shrugged. “I had a good time.”
“So did I. Doesn’t matter. It was still a mistake.”
“I don’t see why you think so.”
“Because I know how your mind works. You went into it thinking hearts and flowers, like I said. But you need to understand: this is not a relationship. It was just sex.”
“If that’s your usual line during pillow talk, I have to tell you that it seriously sucks.”
“I’m being straight up with you.” He folded his arms over his chest. “This was a one-time deal.”
She made a derisive sound. “You think I have a problem with that? I’ve wanted to have sex with you since I was seventeen years old. Now I can cross it off my list.”
His brows contracted. “You have a list?”
“Yep. Places to see, things to do, men to fuck.” She clambered off the bed.
He was frowning at her. “Caroline—”
“What?” She picked up the T-shirt from the floor, pulled it on, and let the sheet drop out from beneath it. “Now that I’ve got you out of my system, we can get down to business. I want to know about the murders.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY
W
ATCHING HER KICK
the sheet aside, toss her hair back, and fix that level stare on him, Reed found himself getting turned on all over again even as he digested her charming
more finesse on the dismount
and
places to see, things to do, men to fuck
comments with a combination of annoyance and appreciation. Annoyance because, generally, women left his bed with stars in their eyes, and her nonchalance bugged him; and appreciation because he had to admit that the attitude she was showing him was absolutely deserved. In fact, right at the moment he was kinda feeling like the biggest prick alive. The sex had been beyond hot, the woman was beyond beautiful, and he should be feeling pretty damned good right about now and going out of his way to make her feel pretty damned good, too. If things were different, he would in fact still be in bed with her, cuddling her, kissing her, telling her how gorgeous and sexy she was before easing her on into round two.
But he wasn’t. He couldn’t. There was too much standing in the way. Most important, this wasn’t just some woman. He had feelings for her, liked her, cared about her, and going any farther down that road was a disaster in the making. Which was why he’d been far more abrupt with her than he ever was with any woman after sex, especially after truly phenomenal sex, and for all her cool dismissive front, he knew that she was bothered by it. He was sorry for that, but he wasn’t about to change a thing.
He already had way too much skin in the game.
He wasn’t about to set himself up to lose Caroline, too. And just about the only way he could see not to lose her was to not let himself have her in the first place. Which was why sex had been a mistake, and why he had been backtracking just as fast as he could ever since he’d made that mistake.
It didn’t help that she was looking smokin’ hot in the T-shirt that she still wasn’t wearing any panties beneath. It didn’t help that she was clearly prepared to give him major attitude.
It didn’t help that he knew she was crazy about him.
It didn’t help that he was already dying to take her to bed again.
Fuck
.
His eyes tracked her. She was on the move. Her (round, strawberry-tipped, luscious) breasts jiggled enticingly underneath his loose shirt, and the flash of her long, slim legs made him remember how good they had so recently felt wrapped around his waist. That made him hot, which he definitely did not want to be, so he gritted his teeth and forced himself to look away from her. The rain had stopped at last, and the sun was apparently trying to come out, brightening the place up a little. Given the shambles he’d made of the shanty—the table was now several feet closer to the kitchen counter, the bed was smack up against the table, and the rest of the furnishings were in a jumble against the wall—it was hard to be sure, but he thought that she was heading for the counter where he had tossed Elizabeth Townes’ phone. Heading
for
Elizabeth Townes’ phone, at a guess.
He felt momentarily cooled down enough to glance her way again. Yep, he was right. Heading straight for the phone. Of course she wasn’t going to just let it go: it wasn’t in her nature.
“What, are you going all strong and silent on me again?” she asked tartly.
It took him a second, but then he remembered: she wanted to know about the murders. He still wasn’t sure how much he wanted to tell her.
“Caroline.”
She shot him a look. Blistering, but not in a hot and sexy kind of way. Not anything like the look she had been giving him before he’d fucked her. That look had been sexually charged enough to melt his bones. Sexually charged enough to—
Whoa. Stop. Not going there. What are you, Ware, a slow learner? Reed chided himself.
“Would you quit saying my name like that?” She was being snippy. Well, he was willing to admit she had reason.
“Like what?” he said.
“Like I’m trying your patience.”
“You are,” he replied promptly. He knew it wasn’t a smart thing to say, but the truth was he simply couldn’t resist.
Reaching the counter, she raked him with a glance. “You know what you can do with that, right?”
She picked up the phone. He’d known that was what she was after. Then, phone in hand, she headed back across the shanty, bouncy breasts, sexy legs, bad attitude, and all. Watching, he felt his mouth go dry.
Jesus, he wanted her.
So focus on something else. Like the damned phone.
The thing was, he was perfectly capable of wresting the phone from her if there had been a reason to do it, but since she’d already seen the pictures he really couldn’t see how she could get herself in more trouble with it, so he let bad enough alone.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
The glance she shot him was scathing. “You’re a detective. Figure it out.”
Shit
. Okay, a beautiful woman with attitude turned him on. Under the circumstances, he should not be enjoying it.
A moment later she disappeared into the bathroom.
Ah.
He took advantage of her absence to step outside on the covered porch and reacquaint himself with the way life at the shanty had been before he had made the bathroom functional. He washed off with fresh rainwater from the barrel that always sat just off the edge of the porch for the purpose of gathering it, and the bucket and cloth and soap stored nearby. Now that the rain had stopped, the day was starting to get unseasonably hot and humid. The front of the shanty was right on the water, which was mud brown and moving faster than usual. An alligator lay sunning itself on the opposite bank. It turned its head to watch him as he baited a crayfish trap by puncturing a can of cat food from the cooler he kept on hand and dropped the trap into the water off the porch. The bugs were out in force, their high-pitched whirring as much a part of the bayou as the blue heron winging its way above the water or the big pines and oaks and cypress that crowded out most of the sky. It hit him that after today he probably wasn’t going to get the chance to visit the shanty—which was one of his favorite places on earth and frequently had been his lifeline—for a long time, if ever. He felt the way-too-familiar bite of loss, which did no good whatsoever, and so he tried to dismiss it. He spared a thought for Holly, who he hoped was safe in Mexico by now, and a grimmer one for Ant, along with a promise:
Hang tight, kid, I’m coming for you
.
After placing one more unanswered call to DeBlassis—
where the hell are you, buddy?
—he then tried calling the Justice Department. He knew a couple of guys there, from a drug investigation he’d been a part of when he was working Vice. He wasn’t exactly their favorite guy—clashing lines of command and jurisdiction didn’t make for BFF status, same reason he was persona non grata with Dixon and some of the other JPPD guys—but time was growing increasingly short and he was growing more and more desperate.
Didn’t matter. Government was closed. Fucking Christmas.
When he went back inside, Caroline was just emerging from the bathroom. As she crossed the room he was interested to note that her breasts didn’t jiggle quite as freely as before, which made him think that she’d put on a bra beneath the T-shirt. And, probably, he concluded with way more disappointment than he knew he should feel, panties, too. At least, she was wearing her skirt, so he presumed she’d donned panties beneath it.
Thinking about what she was wearing under her clothes was the last thing he needed to be doing, so he tried redirecting his thoughts to something else instead. Like, for example, what his odds were of staying alive long term.
Verdict: dismal.
Even that didn’t do the trick: he was still far too aware of Caroline. Who was, he saw, still engrossed in peering at the screen of Elizabeth Townes’ phone.
Now there was something to send his thoughts in a different direction.
Grabbing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from the armoire, he pulled them on, dragged the bed back into place, and, still barefoot, followed Caroline to the kitchen area, where she was opening cabinets. Her skirt wasn’t a whole lot longer than the T-shirt, and he caught himself eyeing her legs as she went up on tiptoe to check the top shelf of the cabinet.
She had great legs. A great ass, too. And—
Damn it.
“Can I get you something?” he asked.
“Water. Please.” Her tone was abrupt. As she came down off her toes, he caught the faintest whiff of soap, and toothpaste, which before he never would have considered any kind of aphrodisiac, although judging from his body’s reaction, now that they were associated with Caroline they definitely were. Taking a self-defensive step away, he opened the correct cabinet and pulled out a few bottles of water, one of which he offered to her while trying not to let the very ordinary scents still assaulting his nose turn him on even more. She accepted the water with a nod of thanks, unscrewed the lid, and drank, while looking down at the phone in her hand again. Opening a bottle for himself, he took a swig, too, then pulled out a big pot and plugged in the electric hot plate that served as a stove. He filled the pot with bottled water while watching her swipe her thumb multiple times across the screen.