up the stairs behind her, and she remembered all the times he’d followed her up flights of stairs in Colorado and cupped a hand on her butt or wrapped his arms around her and stopped them both in their tracks.
Turned her around.
Kissed her.
More.
It was good to see him. It made her feel like crying, and she didn’t want that, not at all. She’d steeled herself to never see him again, to cut off clean from the very nice fling thing they’d had, because wasn’t it better that way? She didn’t want something that turned messy or ugly or complicated. She didn’t want something that dragged itself out for all the wrong reasons.
Better the clean break.
But now he was here, and her body said she was happy about it, despite everything.
They weren’t talking. Upstairs, he followed her into the kitchen and she did a wobbly job of getting out coffee and milk and operating the state-of-the-art espresso machine she’d brought with her from Colorado, all of it in a silence he didn’t attempt to break. She was aware of his presence with every fiber of her being. The machine began to bubble and hiss, the only thing in the room making any noise.
She turned away from it and there he was, and if the office had seemed too small for his powerful form, the kitchen was even worse. He leaned his hard, jeans-clad butt against the edge of the sink and folded his muscled arms like a nightclub bouncer, and in Colorado she would have gone right up to him and hung off him until he kissed her.
Which would have taken about half a second, and would have been great.
And then one thing would have led to another, because that was what their entire relationship had been about.
Don’t you remember that, Mac?
If he didn’t, she could remind him.
She should remind him.
Because the fact that their relationship had mainly been based on sex was important.
She’d closed the space between them before the plan was even a plan. It really wasn’t conscious or deliberate, it just happened, habit more than anything—the habit of wanting him, and of glorying in the delicious confidence that he wanted her and that they fit together in all the best ways. She slid her fingers past those folded arms, slid and sneaked and burrowed until the arms loosened and dropped, letting her reach all the way around his back.
She didn’t go for his mouth, just stood there with her hips pressed against his hardening groin, and looked up at him, looked into the gorgeous, familiar pools of dark that were his eyes. It was quite simple, the way it had always been. They wanted each other and enjoyed each other, and there was nothing wrong with that. There was this electric thing...feeling, need, recognition...between their two bodies.
They just connected.
They just liked it.
He swore, or groaned, or something. He was still angry, despite the stirring she could feel in his body. She could see it in his eyes and the set of his mouth. He pulled her closer, so that her breasts grazed against him, then pressed hard. She was wearing only the robe, and it was working loose, the tie at the waist slipping its granny knot and the gap between the fluffy blue lapels widening more and more.
He looked down and saw her cleavage, apparently as if it was something new. The sight seemed to make him pause, and she looked down, too. Yes, okay, they were bigger, and they’d been a pretty decent size to begin with. He liked them. He’d lavished them with endless attention in the past.
She looked up into his face and reached to cup his jaw lightly with her hand. This was one of the things she liked, knowing how much he wanted her, and playing to it, making him wait or jumping right in, varying their mood together, teasing him terribly, sometimes, and loving it when he teased her back just as much.
She stretched up and planted a soft, questing kiss on that angry mouth. It didn’t soften. She kept going, pressing against his stubborn lips, darting out her tongue, deliberately softening and opening, tilting her head, touching his jaw with feathery fingertips.
Still that mouth didn’t soften, but at least it kissed back. Oh, boy, did it kiss back! A rough, angry sort of kiss that came with hard arms around her and muscles tense with frustration and need. She guessed a kiss like this was trying to tell her something, but she didn’t buy it...even though she liked it, a lot.
You want a kiss, Lee, you’ll get a kiss, he seemed to be saying. You’ll get my hands on your butt and my tongue in your mouth and the taste and smell of me, and, yes, it’s damned good and we both know it.
He hadn’t shaved since he left Colorado, it felt like. The three-day growth of beard rasped at her skin as his mouth moved against hers, and of course it felt good. It felt fantastic. He smelled good, too—a mix of car freshener and salted nuts and snow. She put her whole heart into kissing him, threading her fingers through his hair, tilted her face to one side, letting her tongue sweep his mouth deeper and deeper, tangling with his. Any minute now, she’d start undressing him, and he’d get rid of her robe in about four seconds—it was already wide-open, and the belt was on the floor—and this would end the way it always did.
But no.
He kept on punishing her with his body, and she couldn’t get her hands down to start unfastening his shirt. Still, that didn’t matter for now. He pulled her naked hips against the soft rasp of his jeans and tightened his arm muscles until their strength almost hurt, and as far as she was concerned, all he was doing was proving her point, not his.
Admit it, Mac....
Admit what?
“No, Lee, hell!” he growled suddenly. “I won’t do this.” He removed the rough mouth with a last rasp of unshaved jaw across her cheek, grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from its sneaky caress of his face, then bracketed her hips and pushed.
He took the two front sections of her robe and lapped them across each other, his knuckles bumping her breasts. For a fraction of a second she thought he was going to let those knuckles soften and slow, brush them over her darkened nipples, push the robe open again and cup her, but no. Maybe that was just her hungry imagination, or maybe he’d simply taken hold of his willpower and changed his mind.
He bent and picked up the belt of the robe, passed it behind her, then knotted it in front, tight. “We’ve never had angry sex before, and now’s not the time to start.”
She stepped back. “Doesn’t have to be angry.” He looked so good, her heart was pounding, confusing her.
How happy am I that he’s here? Too happy. Scary happy. Don’t like it.
“Does when I am,” he said.
“So what’s going to get you to stop being angry?” She took a breath. “And what’s going to get you to leave?”
So I feel safe again. Safe from my heart.
The breath went out of him at this, a big whoosh of it, as if she’d punched him in the gut. He pivoted away from her and leaned on the bench. He looked very, very tired, suddenly, and she wondered how long the two thousand miles of driving had taken him. Nonstop it would have to be at least thirty hours. More. Two days, or three? Had he driven
