Page 97 of Guilty as Sin
His hands were strong, the water was warm and scented like everything wonderful in the world, and the candlelight flickered and danced on its bubbling surface. Music was coming from somewhere, and that wasn’t bad, either. She felt almost too good to talk, but she said, “One of these days, we’re going to have to try this when I’m feeling… ah…” He was digging into that good spot, and she sighed again. “Exciting and adventurous.”
His right hand was still working the muscles of her thigh, and his left hand was sliding up her body, over her breast. Slow strokes, languorous circles, and no rush. Like this could take forever, and like that would be fine by him. He was kissing her neck again, his lips moving lazily over her skin, and she tilted her head so he could do it more.
“You like that?” he murmured in her ear.
She could only gasp, because he was grazing her neck with his teeth. Right there, right under her earlobe. “Yes,” she managed to say. “You’re… mm… good at this.”
He had both his hands in some very good places now, and she was hauled back hard against him. The hand on her breast had become a little more demanding, and the other one was doing a whole lot of lazy exploring. He said, “Then I suggest…” Another kiss, this one lower at her neck, then a harder bite, “that you decide I like you exciting and adventurous, and I like you this way, too. And that, just for tonight, you let me take care of it.”
He did. He took care of her in the bathtub, nice and slow, and then he hauled her out of it, put her on the white bed under the canopy, and took care of her some more. And when he finally whispered in her ear, “Want to turn over for me again? Rest that leg?” she did it.
He was still careful. He was still tender. And he was absolutely, positively thorough. By the time he’d finished with her, her eyes were closed, her cheek was resting on her forearm, her entire body was trembling, and she believed what he’d said. That he liked her this way. And that he could take care of it.
When she was lying with him in the dark, the covers pulled up around them, her head on his shoulder and his hand stroking down her arm, and he could tell she was so contented that she wanted to hum, she said, sounding drowsy and relaxed, “Last night? It was strange.”
His hand didn’t stop moving.Keep her here, mate. Nice and easy.“Which part?”
“When Lily came back. I wanted to be with her, like always. She’s always been my other half. My mother said that when we were tiny, we sucked each other’s thumbs, like we didn’t know where our bodies began and ended. That probably sounds gross, but it’s the way twins are. You know you aren’t the same person, but you almost are anyway. We still start our periods the same day. Too much information again, I realize. Last night, though? I felt that same way, like always, but I also wanted to come downstairs and be with you. I wanted to tell you that I was sorry I’d pushed you away like that. And I wanted you to pull out the couch so I could sleep with you. I’ve never wanted that before. It may have… scared me. Sorry about that.”
“Not even with your husband?”
She pulled in an audible breath. “No.”
“Time to tell me?”
“Oh. You know. You’ve probably heard the story a hundred times. Swap the sexes, that’s all. Soldiers and cops.”
Help her out.“Hard to be married to,” he suggested. “Too much holding it in, not enough letting it show.”
“I guess. Too much shell. Not all body armor is visible. You’re a certain person or you wouldn’t do the job, and the job changes you more.”
“How did you meet him?”
“You’ll laugh.” She turned over and kissed his chest, then ran her hand over it, so that was good.
“Not me.” His hand closed over hers. “I’ve wondered all this time who you were before I was watching. I knew you weren’t Lily. I didn’t know enough else. Modesto, hey. Stockyards. I looked it up. It’s not beautiful.”
“No. It’s not. And I’m no fancy breed. Wrong side of the tracks, that’s me. Stockyards, yeah. Our dad died when we were in high school. Our mom worked in a store. Lily sent her money every month until she died. She’d have bought her a house once she got divorced if Mom had still been around. She always wanted to do that. Lily’s something special.”
“Once she got divorced?”
“Yeah. Her husband was kind of an asshole. She had an allowance. It was big, but it was itemized. So you see—that’s no way out. Marriage. A man.”
Ah. Afraid to count on it.He stored that one in the memory banks and asked, “What was your way out, then?”
His hand was tracing over her side now. He could feel it soothing her. He liked feeling it. “I wanted water,” she said. “I wanted adventure. I wanted fresh air. I told you you’d laugh. I went to work for a cruise line as a waitress. I met Neil there. He was a bartender. He’s still a bartender. You know who’s a worse marital bet than cops? Bartenders. You could look it up. He liked adventure, too.”
Cheater,he thought, and filed that one away as well. “You went from being a waitress to being a cop.”
“Nope. I went from being a waitress to being a deckhand. I liked it better.”
“Really. How many female deckhands are there? Not sure I’ve ever seen one.”
“Not many. That’s when I started dying my hair brown. Oh. You didn’t know that. Well, I did. Neil and I got off the boat in San Francisco, eventually—cruise ship work sounds glamorous, and it’s just exactly not—and we stayed there. Neil was still a bartender, and I went to work on a ferry.”
“And the police bit?”
“I got to know some cops, and I thought,I could do that. That would matter.And after my mom died… maybe I wanted a change. Maybe I wanted…”
