Forbidden Temptation

Chapter Fourteen

Daniel didn’t recognize the woman dancing around the living room. This Rose Browning glowed with life as she stepped and swayed to the driving beat of a Dierks Bentley song. Dierks hit the chorus with gusto, and Rose’s hair slid out of the tidy twist at the base of her head, spilling across her shoulders.

She’d shed her suit jacket as soon as she’d reached the living room, revealing a lacy, blue, sleeveless camisole beneath. Her shoes had been the next bit of apparel to go, ending up on opposite ends of the living room with two quick kicks in rhythm with the music.

She turned to look at him, her eyes alive with frantic energy. “Come on, Daniel. Don’t be a wallflower.”

He shook his head, smiling at her energy. “That adrenaline rush is going to wear off in a few minutes, and I’ll need all my energy to carry you upstairs to bed.”

She pouted, a sexy little thrust of her bottom lip that sent shockwaves straight to his groin. She danced her way across the room to the CD player and punched the advance button a couple of times. The husky baritone of Dierks Bentley disappeared, replaced by a slow, sexy Trisha Yearwood ballad.

Rose held out her hand, her eyes warm with invitation. He couldn’t have resisted if he wanted to.

He pulled her into the circle of his arms, sliding his hand down her back until it settled just above the curve of her buttocks. He pressed her close, releasing a long sigh of pleasure as she melted into him, her arms sliding around his neck. She rested her forehead against his jaw, her breath hot against his throat.

“There. That’s not so bad, is it?” she murmured.

He tangled his fingers in her hair, breathing in the tangy sea scent lingering in the dark waves. It reminded him of the sight of her sleeping on top of the covers of her bed, too exhausted to bother sliding between the sheets.

Had it been only that morning? It seemed a lifetime had passed since he’d pulled a chair up next to her bed that morning to watch her sleep.

Rose’s lips brushed the side of his neck, soft and moist, eliciting a groan from somewhere deep in his chest. His hand slid lower down her back to pull her hips flush with his, pressing his growing hardness against her soft heat.

A guttural sound escaped her lips in a rush of hot breath against his flesh. She lost the slow beat of the ballad, rocking her hips against his in primal rhythm that his body recognized instantly.

Curling his fingers in her hair, he tugged her head back and claimed her mouth in a hungry kiss. She tasted of sweet tea and spicy shrimp, her tongue dancing against his, demanding more. His body responded with a surge of longing that made his head spin. He needed to be inside her, swallowed by her slick heat.

“You sure about this?” He hardly recognized the words from his lips. Since when did he try to talk a woman out of sex?

She leaned her head back, her gaze searching his face. Was she trying to gauge his intentions?

Or was she looking for a true-love veil?

“What are you looking for, Rose?” The question spilled from his lips before he could stop it.

She looked down at his chest. “Assurances, I guess.”

He expected to feel irritated by her admission. What he didn’t expect was a rush of sympathy that drove out any thought of anger. He might not believe she could see death veils or true-love veils or whatever the hell she wanted to call them, but he knew they were real to her. Losing the true-love veils, however it had happened, had obviously been a crushing blow to her, and he couldn’t feel anything but sorry for her pain.

He cradled her face between his hands, making her look at him. “I know, you don’t want to hear this, but everybody else in the world has to roll the dice and hope for the best when it comes to relationships. Now you know how the rest of us feel.”

“That may be the least romantic thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” she murmured, but her lips curved with amusement.

He stroked her hair. “Would’ve fed you a smooth line, but you’d have just seen through it.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I hate feeling like a blind man groping in the dark.”

He smoothed his hand over the curve of her hip. “Trust me, you feel nothing like a man.”

She chuckled, the sound vibrating through his chest.

He wrapped his arm around her and stepped back into the rhythm of the ballad, swaying to the slow beat. “Don’t overthink this, Rose. Doesn’t have to be anything but a dance.”

She swayed with him. “And if we don’t stop at dancing?”

“We’re just two people enjoying each other.” He wasn’t sure that was the right thing to say, but he was too honest to make promises he couldn’t keep.

He’d spent the last eight years putting everything else in his life second to his need to find out who had killed Tina Carter, to make up for his unforgivable lapse in judgment that night and the days after. Maybe the arrest of Jesse Phillips was the end of the road, but he didn’t know that for sure.

Until he did, he couldn’t make promises to anyone. Not even himself.

Rose stepped out of his embrace, her expression thoughtful. After a moment, she gave a nod. “Okay. I can deal with that.”

She held out her hand.

Heart pounding, he put his hand in hers. Her warm fingers closed around his, her grip firm and sure. His skin tingled where she touched him, pleasure radiating through him from that single point of contact. Their gazes tangled, questions asked and answered in that one breathless moment.

Then she led him out of the living room and up the stairs to her bedroom.

ROSE HAD THOUGHT it would be easy. Sex was one of the most primal of needs, as old as history and powerful enough to keep the human race alive despite the millions of ways nature and human frailty had conspired to destroy it over the centuries.

But when Daniel’s hand rose up her thigh to tangle in the fabric of her panties, her heart felt as if it would burst with sheer unadulterated terror.

She took a deep breath, willing herself not to panic. Birds and bees did it. Dogs and cats, and rabbits and-And analyzing things was only making things worse.

Daniel’s hand stilled, his fingers resting lightly against the soft skin of her inner thigh. “Are you hyperventilating?”

She looked down at him in horror. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you’re hyperventilating.”

She closed her eyes, mortified.

“Rose, are you a virgin?”

Her eyes flew open. “What?”

His gaze was gentle but inquisitive. “It’s not an insult.”

“I know that.” She closed her eyes, reddening with humiliation. She knew how sex worked. She was a wedding planner. Sex was part of her business. Sort of. Plus, she was college educated, and more than one boyfriend had rounded second on his way to third over the years, thank you very much.

But the truth was, she’d waited for the true-love veil to tell her when she’d found The One.

She took another deep breath, letting anger push away the fear. No point in waiting anymore. The truelove veils were gone. They weren’t coming back. As Daniel had said, real-world relationships didn’t come with any guarantees.

She wanted him. That was the only truth that mattered. Even now, in the grip of sheer panic, her flesh hummed where he touched her. His dark gaze, thoughtful and intense, sent liquid heat flooding straight to her center. The only thing she feared more than making love with Daniel was not making love with him.

If he stopped now and walked away, she’d chase him down and make him put out the fire he’d slowly stoked inside her from the first time he’d met her gaze across a crowded bar.

She took his hand and slid it up her thigh until his fingers pressed against her center. A jolt of white-hot pleasure shot through her, eliciting a soft gasp.

Pressing a kiss against her hip, Daniel slipped his fingers inside her panties and touched her. Her breath caught.

“I’m not in any hurry here,” he murmured against her belly, dropping a light kiss beside her navel.

Evidence to the contrary pressed heavy and hard against her leg, but she couldn’t have found her voice to argue even if she wanted to. What his hands were doing to her body was sheer genius, leaving her no hope of having a coherent thought.

He was relentless, driving her toward madness with each touch, each kiss, each murmured word of endearment against her skin. He tugged her panties down her legs and tossed them aside, kissing his way back up her legs. Sensation melted into sensation, each more intense than the last, until something inside her splintered into a thousand shards of pleasure, leaving her shaking and breathless.

Daniel wrapped his arms around her, holding her until the shudders eased. “You okay?” he whispered.

She managed a nod, still too shaken to speak.

Daniel stroked her hair and rolled away, sitting on the side of the bed. He reached for his jacket, which he’d draped over the back of a nearby chair. “I bought these today, before I went to get dinner.” He showed her a small box of condoms. “Just in case.”

She couldn’t help smiling. Confident devil.

“It’s still not too late to stop,” he murmured, although she could tell by the look of consternation on his face that he couldn’t believe he was actually saying those words.

She took the box from him and pulled out a foil wrapper. This she could handle. In her line of business, she’d been to enough bachelorette parties to know what to do with a condom.

“Lose the pants.” Her voice sounded raw.

Arching an eyebrow, Daniel stepped out of his trousers. His underwear quickly followed. Slowly, he turned to face her.

Her hands began to shake, her bravado leaching away.

“Small steps, sugar.” Daniel took the condom from her trembling fingers and sheathed himself. He sat beside her on the bed, smoothing her hair away from her damp face.

“I know what to expect,” she said.

He smiled. “No, you don’t.” He bent and kissed her, the touch light and sweet enough to bring tears to her eyes.

He dropped kisses across her jawline and down the side of her neck. He dipped his tongue into the hollow of her throat and moved lower, each touch of his mouth to her flesh painting streaks of fire across her skin.

She shifted restlessly, her back arching as his erection pressed against her belly. A hot ache settled in her center and radiated outward, driving out her fear. She dropped her hands to his hips, guiding him between her thighs. When he entered her, the breath rushed from her lungs in a low, growling moan.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Pain, certainly, but that was mild and ephemeral, quickly eclipsed by a kaleidoscope of sensations, constantly splintering and reforming new, more vibrant colors and shapes and sounds. Pressure built inside her, a gathering firestorm. Heat licked at her belly, crackled and sizzled through her blood until the flash fire consumed her.

Daniel moved over her, into her, through her, carrying her with him as he soared toward release. She dug her fingers into his back, holding on as he lost himself inside her.

She didn’t want to let him go. Couldn’t let him go.

Silence descended between them, as slow and sure as the daylight dying outside her window. As their ragged respirations eased, she once again could hear the normal sounds of her life seep into her bedroom. The hum of electricity moving through the walls. The rumble of traffic from the expressway a few blocks away. The slow plink-plink of the dripping faucet in the bathroom sink across the hall.

Daniel tucked her against him, cupping one breast in his hand. He stroked her nipple with the pad of his thumb, the caress somehow more tender than sexual. “Still with me?”

“Still here,” she answered, her voice raspy.

He didn’t say anything else, just rested his chin on her shoulder, his breath warm on her cheek. His beard stubble pricked her skin, the sensation more pleasant than painful.

Rose curled up closer to him, drowsiness descending. She felt as if her body were an alien landscape of shifting sands trembling with aftershocks, spinning out of control into a deep, endless darkness, wondrous and frightening at the same time.

She closed her eyes and shut out the night, shut out the doubts and hopes that clamored for her attention.

Something had happened tonight. Something big and important. But she was too wrung out to think about it yet.

There was plenty of time.

DANIEL LISTENED to Rose’s slow, deep respirations, his own body begging for sleep. But he had too much to think about to give in to post-sex lethargy.

He eased himself away, careful not to wake her, and gathered up his clothes, carrying them with him into the bathroom across the hall. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, his heart thudding against his rib cage.

It was supposed to have been just sex. Two healthy, consenting adults enjoying nature’s oldest full-contact sport. No promises, no expectations.

No virgins.

He flicked on the light switch and gazed at his reflection in the mirror. His jaw was dark with the day’s growth of beard, his eyes sunken and a little bloodshot from lack of sleep and a heavy dose of second thoughts.

He hadn’t forced her to do anything. He’d offered to stop more than once. She’d seemed pretty happy with the outcome, he thought, his lips curving with a wry half smile.

So if it wasn’t her state of mind he was worried about, whose was it? His own?

You’re scared because she matters.

God help him, she mattered in a way nobody had mattered to him in a long, long time. He’d spent the last hour doing everything he knew to please her, hardly even caring whether or not he got what he needed out of their intimacy. That wasn’t normal. Hell, it wasn’t natural. His neatly ordered world was spinning out of control in the wrong direction.

It scared the hell out of him.

He pushed away from the door and turned on the shower, cranking up the hot water until steam filled the small bathroom. He grabbed a cloth from the shelf over the toilet and picked up a bar of soap from the sink. The last thing he needed was to use the sea-scented bath gel sitting in the shower caddy; the tangy-sweet smell of her already covered him from head to toe.

He stepped into the tub, wincing as the fiery needles of water peppered his skin. He soaped up, scrubbing his skin as if he could somehow remove the feel of her softness against his flesh. But the mere thought of her lying beneath him, open and willing to take what he offered and give back in return made him hard all over again.

With an angry gesture, he turned off the hot water and cranked up the cold. The icy spray made him gasp, but it eased the ache between his legs enough for him to regain control. He turned off the water and stepped out into the steamy bathroom.

He toweled off and dressed, the humidity plastering his shirt to his damp skin. He escaped into the cooler air of the hallway, stopping to look into Rose’s bedroom.

She lay on her side, the curve of her hips and thighs as smooth and pale as porcelain in the moonlight pouring through the window. He wanted to touch her, to let his fingers follow the curves and planes of her body once more to see if he could discover a part of her he hadn’t yet explored.

He curled his treacherous hands into fists at his sides and forced himself down the hall, out of sight and temptation’s reach. Moving soundlessly, he made his way through the darkened house until he reached the kitchen, where he’d left his laptop. Flicking on the light over the table, he powered up and checked his e-mail. Nothing since the message from Steve.

He shut the laptop and stared at the darkness outside the kitchen window. The clock over the table read 6:45 a.m. but it felt later. A lot had happened in the last day.

Too much.

The trill of his cell phone ripped through the silence in the kitchen, jarring his nerves. He dug in his jacket pocket and thumbed it on. “Hartman.”

“Hartman, this is Sheila Green. Phillips is making noise about lawyering up, but he hasn’t said the magic words yet. We think he might break with the right questions. It’s time to put your voodoo to work. Can you be here in the next ten minutes?”

“Can you make it twenty?” He needed time to get Rose up and in the shower, first.

“I’m not sure we have twenty.”

Daniel ran his hand over his face. He didn’t like the thought of leaving Rose here alone, but if he didn’t head out in the next couple of minutes, he might not get a chance to question Phillips. “Okay, I’ll be there in ten.”

He hurried upstairs to the bedroom. Rose was still asleep, her face soft and peaceful. He hated to wake her, but he needed to make sure she locked up behind him. “Rose?”

She blinked awake, squinting as he turned on the bedside lamp. “What’s wrong?”

“I have to get to police headquarters in ten minutes. I need to try to break Phillips before he asks for his lawyer.”

She rubbed her eyes. “He hasn’t called his lawyer?”

“Some perps like to play head games with the cops awhile before bringing in a mouthpiece. I’d rather take you, but I don’t have time for you to shower and dress.” He grabbed the robe hanging behind her door and handed it to her. “I need you to lock up behind me.”

She shrugged on the robe. “Any idea when you’ll be back?”

Part of him wanted to play it safe and go back to the motel, instead. He pushed the fear aside. Whatever he chose to do about Rose, she still needed his protection. “I’ll call.”

She followed him to the back door, her expression hard to read. He thought he saw confusion and a hint of disappointment, but he didn’t have time to ferret out the rest of the chaos of emotions flickering in her mossy-brown eyes. “Lock up behind me,” he repeated, opening the door.

She gazed up at him. “Drive carefully.”

He kissed her forehead, knowing it was all he could allow himself if he wanted to get to the police station in the next few minutes. And even that simple gesture of affection was enough to reawaken a slow-simmering ache of longing that tormented him with each step he took away from her.

Damn, he was in serious trouble.

ROSE CLOSED HER EYES and raised her face to the shower spray, letting the water wash away the hot tears sliding down her cheeks. She didn’t even have the luxury of anger; after all, Daniel had been pretty clear about things, hadn’t he? We’re just two people enjoying each other.

And she’d definitely enjoyed it. The things his hands and mouth had done to her body would stay with her for a long time. Hot water and bath gel did nothing to erase the smell of him, the musky heat of his skin on hers, over her, inside her, driving her insane with need. No complaints there.

But did he really have to run out chasing the case before she’d even stopped trembling from her climax? That was veering dangerously into “slam, bam, thank you, ma’am” territory.

It was her own damned fault. Pretending she was sophisticated enough to handle casual sex with a man obsessed with a dead woman and her killer.

There were a lot of women who were fine with that, and more power to them. She just wasn’t one of them. She wanted sex to be more than a couple of bodies doing what nature intended. She wanted to mean more to Daniel than that.

Obviously, she didn’t.

She finished rinsing shampoo from her hair and shut off the water. The tears were back, leaving hot tracks down her cheeks as she stepped onto the bath mat. She wrapped a towel around herself and stood in front of the sink. In the foggy mirror, her reflection was a blob of light on dark, unrecognizable. She grabbed a hand towel and wiped the condensation from the mirror.

A second later, the towel slipped from her nerveless fingers and puddled in the sink.

The death veil was back.