Nobody's Baby but Mine (27 page)

She moaned as he guided her down upon him, but her body accepted him without question. She gave a sob and pressed her breast to his mouth. He caressed her with lips, teeth, and tongue until she had to draw back and move on him before she went crazy.

Even as he grasped her hips, he didn’t try to force her into his rhythm but let her find her own. She raised and lowered herself upon him, rubbing the tips of her breasts against the soft hair of his chest and returning his deep, devouring kisses. She felt strong and sure as she met his passion. Sensation built upon sensation until reality slipped away and she felt as if she were being hurled through a supercollider, flying past the speed of light through a narrow underground passage toward the place where everything came apart.

And then she cried out as all the molecules that made up who she was fragmented: atoms dissociated, nuclei detached, everything broke open, shattered, and, at the end, left her more complete than she had ever been.

He went rigid with her cry. His teeth sank into the side of her neck, not hurting her, but holding her as he spilled himself within her depths. For a fraction of time she felt his utter defenselessness, and she sagged forward, protecting him as he found his ease.

Their hearts thundered together, one pressed against the other. She turned her lips to his hair.

Finally he stirred beneath her, a shift of his hand, a movement in his leg. Only gradually did she grow aware of the strain in her splayed thighs and the cramp in her calf. The air inside the car was so thick with heat it was hard to draw breath, but she didn’t want to move. This intimacy was too precious to her.

“What am I going to do with you?” he muttered against her breast.

You could try loving me.

The unspoken thought jarred her, then filled her with dismay. Was this the destructive path her subconscious was taking? She wanted him to fall in love with her? When had she lost touch with reality? What made her entertain, even in her fantasies, the notion that this man who wanted no attachments could love her, especially when no one else had ever been able to?

“You’re going to take me home,” she said briskly. “That was quite pleasant, but I have a great deal of work to do tomorrow, and I need my rest.”

“Quite
pleasant
?”

It had been earth-shattering, but she could no more confess that to him than she could explain how their coming together had given her an entirely new understanding of high-speed subatomic particle collisions.

God. Why was she thinking of that now? Everything people believed about her was true! She was a complete geek.

She reached for her clothes. Her panties were lost somewhere in the dark, so she drew her jeans on without them, pulling them up over her wetness.

He threw open the door, and as the dome light flashed on, she drew her blouse across her breasts. He glanced down at her as he zipped his jeans. “You’re not bad, Professor, for someone who isn’t a big-time player.”

His casual dismissal of what had been so important to her made her want to weep. Fool! But what did she expect? Did she think he was going to declare his undying love for her simply because she’d finally given him what he must have known he’d get all along?

They rode home in silence. He went into the house with her, and she felt his gaze as she climbed the stairs to her room.

She hesitated, then looked down at him watching her from the foyer below. “Thank you for a lovely evening.”

She’d meant to sound brisk, but her words had a wistful quality. She didn’t want the evening to end this way. What if she held out her hand and invited him into her bed? The idea chilled her. Was that the only way she could keep him at her side?

He slouched against the front door and looked bored. “Yeah, it was great.”

He couldn’t have found a clearer way to tell her he was finished with her. With a man like Cal Bonner, she realized, the game was everything, and once it was over, he lost interest. Heartsick and angry, she turned and headed for her room.

Moments later, she heard him drive away.

No matter how easily she’d dismissed what had happened between them, he knew Professor Rosebud had never had a better lover than she’d had tonight. There’d been none of that nonsense they’d gone through before, with her pushing his hands away. No, sir. He’d had his hands all over her, and she hadn’t uttered a single protest.

But what stuck in his craw—what really stuck like a big old chunk of hard-boiled egg—was the fact that he’d just had some of the best sex of his life, and he’d never felt more unsatisfied.

Maybe it was his fault for getting cute. Why hadn’t he just grabbed her right there in the house, carried her upstairs, and romanced her in his bed with all the lights on and that big mirror overhead? He could have done his best work there, not that he hadn’t been pretty damn good tonight, but if they’d been in his bed, he would have seen everything he wanted to see. In duplicate.

He reminded himself this was the third time the two of them had gone at it, but he wasn’t any closer to seeing her naked now than he’d been that first night. It was getting to be an obsession. If only he hadn’t turned off the dome light, he could have looked his fill, but despite that sassy mouth of hers, he’d known she was skittish, and he’d wanted her so much he hadn’t been thinking straight. Now he had to face the consequences.

He understood his nature well enough to know that the only reason he found himself thinking about her a few thousand times a day was because he still didn’t feel as if he’d really made love to her. How could he when he didn’t know what she looked like? Once he found out, it’d be over. Instead of growing stronger every day, this attraction he felt toward her would disappear, and he’d be his old self again, ready to roam the fertile fields of dewy young females with flawless faces and sweet temperaments, although he was giving serious consideration to raising his minimum age requirement to twenty-four, since he was getting tired of everybody baiting him.

His thoughts strayed back to the Professor. Damn, but she was one funny lady. Sharp as a tack, too. Over the years, he’d developed a certain smugness about the fact that he was smarter than most everybody else, but that razor-sharp brain of hers made it hard to sneak much past her. Instead, she marched right alongside him, her brain cells clicking away, matching him step for step and move for move. He could almost feel her peering into every dusty corner of his mind and making a generally accurate assessment of whatever it was she found there.

“Reliving those three interceptions you threw against the Chiefs last year?”

His head shot up, and he found himself looking into the face of his nightmares.
Son of a bitch.

Kevin Tucker’s lips curled in a cocky grin that reminded Cal the kid didn’t have to spend thirty minutes standing under a hot shower every morning just to work the kinks out.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Heard this is a beautiful part of the country, and I decided to take a look. I rented one of those vacation villas north of town. Nice place.”

“You just happened to choose Salvation?”

“Strangest thing. I’d already crossed the city limits before it even occurred to me that this was where you lived. Can’t imagine how I forgot that.”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine.”

“Maybe you could show me some of the local sights.” Kevin turned toward the bartender. “Sam Adams for me. Get the Bomber here another of whatever he’s having.”

Cal was drinking club soda, but he hoped Shelby kept her mouth shut about that.

Kevin sat down without an invitation and leaned back in the chair. “I didn’t get a chance to congratulate you on your marriage. It sure surprised everybody. You and your new wife must have had a good laugh over the way I took her for a groupie that night she came to your hotel room.”

“Oh, yeah, we laughed real hard about that.”

“A physicist. I can’t get over it. She didn’t exactly look like your standard groupie that night, but she sure as hell didn’t look like a scientist, either.”

“Just goes to show.”

Shelby brought the drinks over herself and gave Kevin the eye. “I saw you play fourth quarter against the 49ers last year, Mr. Tucker. You looked real good.”

“I’m Kevin to you, dollface. And thanks. The old man here taught me everything I know.”

Cal bristled, but he could hardly punch Kevin out with Shelby watching. It took her forever to finish flirting with Pretty Boy, but she finally left them alone.

“How ’bout cutting the bullshit, Tucker, and tell me why you’re really here.”

“I already told you. Just a little vacation. Nothing more.”

Cal swallowed his fury, knowing the more he pressed, the more satisfaction Tucker’d get out of it. Besides, he had a pretty good idea why Kevin had shown up in Salvation, and he didn’t like it one bit. The kid was playing a psych-out game.
You can’t get away from me, Bonner. Not even during the off-season. I’m here, I’m young, and I’m in your face.

Cal made his way to the kitchen at eight the next morning. He was in no mood for the nine o’clock meeting Ethan had scheduled with their local state representative so the three of them could discuss the teen drug program, and he wasn’t looking forward to the lunch he’d set up with his mother to try and talk some sense into her, but neither could be postponed. Maybe if he’d had more sleep he wouldn’t be so out of sorts.

But he knew he couldn’t blame his foul mood on either lack of sleep or the stiffness in his joints. It was that sex viper he’d married who was responsible. If she didn’t have this compulsion for keeping her clothes on, he’d have slept like a baby last night.

As he walked into the kitchen, he saw Jane sitting at the counter munching some kind of nutritious-looking bagel with honey squeezed on top. For a moment the homeyness of the scene made it hard for him to breathe. This wasn’t what he wanted! He didn’t want a house and a wife and a kid on the way, especially not with Kevin Tucker holed up five miles away. He wasn’t ready for this.

He noticed that the Professor looked as neat as always. Her gold turtleneck was tucked into a pair of khaki slacks that were neither too tight nor too loose, and she’d pulled her hair back with a narrow, tortoise-colored clip-on headband. As usual, she hadn’t bothered with much more makeup than a swipe of lipstick. There wasn’t one thing sexy about her appearance, so why did she look so delectable to him?

He grabbed a fresh box of Lucky Charms from the pantry, then collected a bowl and spoon. He slapped the milk carton down on the counter with more force than necessary and waited for her to rip into him about the way he’d run off last night. He knew it hadn’t exactly been gentlemanly, but she’d hurt his pride. Now he was going to have to pay the price, and the last thing he wanted to hear at eight in the morning was a screaming banshee.

She raised both of her eyebrows over the tops of her glasses. “Are you still drinking 2 percent milk?”

“Something wrong with that?” He ripped open the cereal box.

“Two percent isn’t low-fat milk despite what millions of Americans think. For the sake of your arteries, you should really switch to skimmed, or at least 1 percent.”

“And you should really mind your own damned business.” The Lucky Charms clattered into his bowl. “When I want your—” He broke off in mid-sentence, unable to believe what he was seeing.

“What’s wrong?”

“Will you look at this?”

“My goodness.”

He stared incredulously into a mound of dry cereal. All the marshmallows were missing! He saw lots of beige-colored frosted oat cereal, but not a single marshmallow. No multicolored rainbows or green shamrocks, no blue moons or purple horseshoes, not a single yellow whatchamacallit. Not one solitary marshmallow.

“Maybe someone tampered with the box,” she offered in that cool scientist’s voice.

“Nobody could have tampered with it! It was sealed up tighter than a drum when I opened it. Something must have gone wrong at the factory.”

He sprang up from his stool and headed back into the pantry for another box. This was all he needed to make a lousy morning worse. He emptied his old cereal in the trash, ripped open the new box, and poured it in the bowl, but all he saw was frosted oat cereal. No marshmallows.

“I don’t believe this! I’m going to write the president of General Mills! Don’t they have any quality control?”

“I’m sure it’s just a fluke.”

“Doesn’t make any difference whether it’s a fluke or not. It shouldn’t have happened. When a person buys a box of Lucky Charms, he’s got expectations.”

“Would you like me to fix you a nice wheat bran bagel with a little honey on it? And maybe a glass of skimmed milk to go along.”