Whispers at Midnight (17 page)

She nodded. He couldn’t see the nod, but he felt it.

“I feel like an idiot,” she said, her voice unsteady, her face still buried out of sight. “I never cry. Well, not very often.”

“I know.” His fingers played with her curls.

“You should have just left me alone. I would have been fine.”

“I know.”

“It’s
you.
You’re the only person I ever cry around. You bring it out in me.”

“Glad to be of service.”

She took a deep, ragged breath, sat up and looked at him.

“I don’t believe this.” She dashed tears from her cheeks with both hands.

“What?” He watched her idly. She was sitting upright on his lap now with her feet dangling a few inches above the floor and his arms looped loosely around her waist. She felt soft and warm and very female, and for some time now he had been acutely conscious of the firm curve of her butt sitting on top of his thighs. Every time she shifted positions his awareness increased. Which was not necessarily a bad thing, but it was probably something she didn’t need to know.

“You. Me. This.”

She made a gesture that encompassed the two of them and the chair. Then she sniffed again, and swiped the back of her hand across her nose. Matt smiled at the homely gesture, which reminded him irresistibly of the dauntless little girl she had been. Watching him, she stiffened. The look she gave him was suddenly stark with dislike.

“Asshole,” she said.

Smiling had clearly been an error.

He was so tired that he felt boneless, at one with the chair, as if the
slightest movement would require a major effort. His head rested back against the padded vinyl seat. His linked hands were brushing the bare part of her back, and he would have been a liar if he’d claimed not to be enjoying that slight contact with her skin. He was warm and comfortable and growing ever so slightly horny, and the woman on his lap was one that he would have been more than happy to take to bed except for the fact that she was
Carly,
and this was a mistake that he had made before.

Still, he could enjoy the view: pretty face, barely marred at all by swollen eyes, reddened nose, or even the scowl she was directing at him; narrow shoulders left almost completely naked by a pair of tiny straps that seemed to be composed, ridiculously, of a chain of crocheted daisies; soft round breasts that had improved out of all recognition since he’d last had occasion to ogle them swelling lushly against the thin, pale knit of her abbreviated top; slender, shapely midsection, lightly tanned. The rest of her he couldn’t really assess, since she was covered from just below the waist by the baggy pajama pants, but then he didn’t need to look to conclude that what was concealed under there was all one hundred percent prime female flesh. He remembered with more clarity than was probably good for him the smooth flatness of her belly, the slender curves of her legs, her bush with its thicket of tiny curls even tighter than the ones on her head. And her butt—he definitely remembered her butt. Cute and round and sexy as hell, even before he’d peeled away the prim white cotton grandma panties she’d been wearing under her prom dress.

His body stirred in unmistakable response. Under the circumstances, revisiting that particular memory had probably been a mistake.

“Did you hear what I said?” She was sounding good and ticked off at him now. He forced his mind off of the interesting way she was wriggling around in his lap and did his best to focus on what she was saying. “I called you an asshole.”

“I heard you,” he said mildly. He was really too tired to fight, and anyway she had a point. “I’m not arguing.”

“What?”

Ah. That was more of a bounce than a wriggle, but it was damned effective.

“You’re right,” he clarified. “I’m an asshole.”

The look she gave him should have singed his eyeballs. Wasn’t that just like a woman? Agree with them, and they get madder than ever.

He remembered then that he’d always thought Carly looked really cute when she got mad.

“Do you even know what I’m talking about?” she demanded, incensed.

She was sitting still now, but in a really good spot. His hands opened and flattened across her back. Beneath them, her skin felt like warm satin. They started to slide south…

No. Been there, done that. Pull up; bail out; error.
Danger, Will Robinson.

His hands clenched behind her back.

“Sure I know what you’re talking about. You’re still mad at me twelve years later because I busted your cherry, then didn’t call you.”

He said it on purpose to make her mad, partly because he wanted see if her eyes still shot sparks and her cheeks still got all rosy like he remembered, and partly aiming to rile her up enough so that she would jump off his lap and end the torture before he lost the strength to resist. Pushing her away physically would have been simpler, maybe, but he didn’t think he had enough willpower left for that. No, he decided, as her muscles went so rigid he feared her now-hard little butt might be going to break something—like his most vital personal part—he definitely didn’t have enough willpower left for that.

Just as he’d expected, her eyes widened and shot sparks. Her cheeks darkened as color rushed into her face. Her lips parted as she sucked air in through them. Then, without any more warning than that, she swung at him.

Tired as he was, he was just quick enough to catch her fist before it connected with his jaw. Hanging on to it, he responded reflexively to the unexpected attack. His body twisted, throwing her over his hip. Their combined momentum caused them both to slam sideways into the back of the chair. For a moment after they landed she lay
still, panting, pressed right up against him, chest to chest, with her legs still draped over his but at a different angle than before and his left arm around her, pinning her so that she couldn’t move, while he kept careful hold of her fist.

Their eyes met.

“Son of a bitch,” she said, quivering with anger. Their faces were just inches apart. He had no trouble discerning the fury blazing in her eyes or the grim set to her lips. She wasn’t struggling but she was breathing hard, from rage more than exertion, he thought. He could feel her breasts heaving against his chest, feel her softness, feel her heat. He inhaled the scent of fruit and Irish Spring, and was suddenly assaulted by a vivid mental picture of her in his shower, naked except for suds.

“Dirty rotten son of a bitch. No good dirty…”

Hell, she was right again. He was a son of a bitch. More of one than she had any way of knowing. Right now, despite everything, despite the deep affection he still felt for her and his clear and present memory of the debacle that had resulted the last time he’d given into his baser impulses where she was concerned and her righteous fury and his well-deserved shame, he wanted her so much that his desire was, literally, a physical ache.

“… rotten son of a bitch,” she concluded, breathing fire.

“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it. The apology was long overdue, and he no longer felt like trying to provoke her. Anyway, he was experiencing a kind of sinking feeling that told him that anything he could manage in the way of making her mad enough to stomp away from him before he got too turned on to resist his baser impulses would now be pretty much a case of too little, too late. “I shouldn’t have let things get out of hand like they did the night of your prom. Afterward, I shouldn’t have disappeared on you. The thing was, I never expected things between us to get hot like that. We were buddies, pals. Friends. When I woke up the next morning and realized what I had done, I felt like I had betrayed your trust, and I was ashamed. So I stayed away.”

As apologies went, that one was handsome, comprehensive, and
had the additional virtue of being absolutely sincere. He released his grip on her fist and waited fatalistically. If she still felt like punching him out, he was prepared to take it like a man. She said nothing, just looked at him and breathed as her freed fingers flexed against his chest. But he thought some of the rigidity had left her body. He could feel the sudden pliability of her spine, the lessening of tension in her arms. And her heat. Slow rolling waves of heat.

“I was a kid,” he continued, his eyes locking with hers, determined to get it all out and over with so he could get up and get the hell out of Dodge before he did anything he was pretty sure he would later regret. “A stupid kid. And that’s what I acted like—a stupid kid. Forgive me. Please.”

Her lashes fluttered down. Her hands slid up his chest to rest on his shoulders. Her body shifted so that she was lying full against him, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, all soft curves and dizzying heat. He could feel her heart slamming against her breastbone. He could feel her breasts pressing against his chest. He could smell Irish Spring.

This is a mistake. Get up. Get out,
he told himself.

But he didn’t. Instead, he tightened his hold on her waist, all too conscious that his hands were pressing into bare skin as they once again fought the urge to head south.

Her lids lifted and their gazes met.

“I—” she began. But whatever she’d meant to say was lost as she broke off abruptly to wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. Watching with fascination, he figured that the feel of his fingers slipping inside the waistband of her pants just above her butt had something to do with her loss of concentration. He had lost all control of his hands now; they were doing precisely what they wanted. He couldn’t seem to find within himself the resolve necessary to even try to pull them back.

“Matt,” she said, then broke off again to breathe. He knew just exactly how deep and shaky the breath she took was because he felt her breasts flattening against his chest as her rib cage expanded—and because he watched her lips open and tremble. Suddenly he was remembering just how soft those lips were, and how sweet and hot…

Her eyes closed; for whatever reason, her face lifted toward his.
And then, God help him, he suffered another one of those brain-dead episodes of his, totally forgetting all the reasons why this was a really bad idea. Intoxicated by the improbable but potent combination of the scent of Irish Spring soap and the feel of her soft warm curves, he bent his head and kissed her.

12

T
WELVE YEARS
, one husband and several boyfriends later, and she was still a sucker for Matt’s kisses, Carly reflected ruefully. No, face it, she was still a sucker for Matt, period. She’d been yearning and burning for him tonight as much as she ever had as a lovesick teenager with an oversized crush. More, probably. Because now she was old enough to know just exactly what she was yearning and burning for.

And he was old enough to give it to her.

Carly realized that from the moment their lips touched. His mouth did no more than sample hers at first, kissing her softly, barely there. His lips were firm, and dry, and tantalizingly gentle. He was so much bigger than she was, so much taller and broader and stronger, muscular where she was soft, firm where she was yielding. She liked the difference in their sizes, liked his easy strength, liked his muscularity. She always had.

And she liked his kisses, too.

His hands, which had been stroking her bare back just inside the waistband of her baggy pants, slid even lower, then flattened against her lower back and pulled her closer. The evidence of his desire was suddenly right there between them, unmistakably hard, impossible to miss. Her mind, which had been busy shouting out all the reasons
why being like this with Matt was so wrong, went a little fuzzy. Deep inside her body, something tightened and began to throb.

It had been a long, long time since she’d felt like this.

“Say you forgive me,” he whispered, his mouth scant millimeters above hers so that she could feel the warmth of his breath feathering her lips. Concentrating fiercely, she opened her eyes; she opened her mouth too, determined to say something on the order of, not in this life.

He kissed her again, soft and coaxing.

What he had learned in twelve years, she decided, willing herself not to respond and failing miserably, was the fine art of finesse. Digging her nails into his shoulders, determined not to make the final concession of sliding her arms around his neck, she surrendered to temptation and kissed him back.

Just a kiss. Only a kiss. God, he was good at this.

“Carly—” He broke contact first, lifting his mouth away. His voice was rougher, lower, thicker than before.

She forced her eyes open. His black hair was tousled, unruly, cut short like it hadn’t been when they’d been kids but still long enough to succumb to its own slight tendency to wave. The Band-Aid was still there on his forehead, reminding her that things had changed, that there were burglars in Benton now and Matt, however crazy it seemed, was the sheriff and he and she were all grown up and, to all intents and purposes, strangers. But then her gaze drifted down and she discovered that he was looking at her, too. His eyes hadn’t changed. They were still dark, sleepy-lidded pools promising her untold carnal delights. His mouth, long and masculine, hadn’t changed either, and it had such a sensuous curve to it that it was hard for her to drag her eyes away.