Читать книгу You Only Love Once - Tori Carrington - Страница 7

“YOU’RE LATE.”

David McCoy slid onto a stool next to his brother Connor and shrugged out of his sheepskin coat. He glanced at his bulky black sports watch as he rubbed his hands together to warm them. It was cold even for December in D.C., the kind of cold that inspired the saying, “it’s too cold to snow.” But the bar was pleasantly warm and decked out festively for the holiday season. Green garland laced with red lights hung behind the counter, and hurricane candle centerpieces were placed on tables around the room. He motioned for Joe, the bartender at The Pour House, to bring him a brew when he finished serving a guy down the long length of the oak bar. “Yeah. Lieutenant Kowalsky wanted to have a few words after I knocked off tonight.” He greeted a couple of fellow officers taking their seats a few stools down. “Looks like I get a new partner tomorrow.”

Connor knocked back what remained in his own glass. “Should be interesting.”

“Yeah.” David paid Joe and made a comment on the busyness of the place this early on a Thursday night. Joe shrugged and told him whatever paid the bills.

“What will this be? The third?” Connor asked as Joe took an order down the bar.

David grimaced at his older brother. Connor knew how many partners he’d gone through. He could probably recite their names, and exactly how long it had taken David to scare them off. Connor was good that way. Always the one to remember when one of them had gotten the measles, when their homework had been due and which forms he had to forge so they could participate in school-sponsored road trips. Mostly, his diligence was welcome. There were times, however, when he wished Connor would get a life—preferably, his own.

He had the sinking sensation this was going to be one of those times.

He drank more of his beer than he intended and gritted his teeth at the onset of a cold headache. Of course, in the case of his last partner, Lupe Ramirez, he hadn’t exactly scared her off. In fact, she’d very nearly been killed off. A perp at a twenty-four hour convenience store had taken a potshot at her while he’d been making his way around the back. Lupe was still in rehab, learning how to walk on her reconstructed knee.

“At least the odds are against me getting another female,” he said.

Connor grinned. “You sure about that? If Ramirez filled some sort of gender quota, odds are probably in favor of you getting just that.”

David shook his head adamantly. “No…Kowalsky might not like me very much, but he wouldn’t do that to me again. Uh-uh.”

His brother shrugged. “No skin off my nose who you work with or don’t. I’m just pointing out the possibilities.”

“And I’m telling you the possibility isn’t even remote, not even slim. In fact, the possibility is so remote, it’s an impossibility.”

Connor’s grin grew wider.

“What?”

His brother shook his head. “Did I say anything?”

“No. You didn’t have to. That stupid grin of yours says it all.” David sat up and straightened his denim shirt. “Anyway, at least I do know my partner isn’t fresh from the academy. He’s a transfer from outside. And no matter what you say, he will be a he. I’ve done my duty as far as equality between the sexes goes. Is it too much to ask to be assigned a guy this time around?”

Connor seemed exceedingly interested in the bottles lining the wall behind the bar and took a slow sip of his beer, his grin apparently making it difficult.

David couldn’t resist. He slapped his hand against his older brother’s back, nearly causing him to spew the contents of his mouth all over Joe, who now stood before them putting together a purple concoction on the other side of the counter.

“So tell me, Con, what’s the deal with you? Why did you want to meet here?” He held his hand up. “Wait, don’t tell me, you’re getting married, too, aren’t you?”

Connor’s expression grew darker with each question until he looked a word away from knocking David from his stool.

David held up his hands. “Hey, don’t look at me that way. You’re the one who called me, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember, all right. Though I’m having a hard time recalling why.” He visibly winced. “Married? What on God’s green earth would make you ask that?”

For some reason David had never tried to decipher, he’d always loved getting under Connor’s skin. Maybe because it was so easy. Or perhaps because it was so much fun to watch Connor go from self-righteous know-it-all to a put-up-your-dukes teen in a blink of an eye. Pops had warned him that one day he’d take his banter a little too far and find himself knocked into the middle of next week. But somehow David had always known Connor would never lay a fist on him.

And, for other reasons he preferred not to pursue, he suspected it was why he’d always felt slightly separate and apart from his brothers. Too young to participate in all the older McCoy guys’ reindeer games. The one to be sent to his room when discussions grew serious. Hell, he didn’t even look like them, what with having blond hair and being a tad bit shorter than them all at five foot ten. And he didn’t even have the benefit of a red, glowing nose so he could prove to them that he was up to the task of leading them through a foggy night—or any task, for that matter.

He shrugged. “Why not marriage? Seems like everyone else is getting hitched these days. Why should you be any different?” He knew the quickest route to pissing Connor off was mentioning him and marriage in the same breath, and he’d done it not once, but twice. His brother had been miserable during Thanksgiving dinner at the McCoy house three weeks ago. Grumbled comments ranging from “all these damn women running around the place” to “you’ve all turned into a bunch of wusses” encompassed the whole of Connor’s contributions to any ongoing conversation.

David braced himself for another Connorism as his brother scowled. “What was it you said to Mel when she asked when you were going to settle down? When Satan takes up snow skiing?”

Connor’s grin made a comeback. “Yeah. Well, that’s about the time I get anywhere near an altar, too.”

David leisurely watched a woman in tight jeans walk by, then turned back toward his beer and his brother. “So why did you call then?”

“Does there have to be a reason?”

He watched the way Connor shifted on his stool. Yeah, he’d say his brother had something on his mind, something heavy. “With you, uh-huh. There definitely has to be a reason.” He took a long pull from his own bottle. “Come on, Con, just spill it, will you? You’ve never been the kind of guy for a boys’ night out drinking. Actually, you were always telling the rest of us when it was time to lay off the stuff. So what gives?”

Connor grimaced. “I don’t know. It’s just this thing with Pops….”

David waited for him to continue…and waited…and waited.

“Man, you’re about as talkative as Jake tonight. You know, if you really want this to begin resembling a conversation, you’re going to have to start with finishing your sentences. I’m no mind reader.”

Connor leaned back and released a long-suffering sigh. “Look, this isn’t easy for me, you know? You guys are usually the ones coming to me for advice.”

“Yeah, it must really eat you that you’re stuck with me.”

Connor looked at him, a question in his blue-green eyes. “Is that what you think?”

David was the one who shifted in his seat this time. “Come on, Con, quit pussyfooting around and get to the point already, will you?”

“It’s just…aw, hell, David, do you think I did the right thing with Pops? You know, telling him I didn’t approve of his going out with Melanie’s mother?”

David remembered the incident at the cemetery. His brows shot up. “Didn’t approve? You practically told the old man you’d disown him if he didn’t stop seeing Wilhemenia.” He motioned for Joe to bring Connor a fresh bottle. “Have you two even spoken a civil word to each other since then?”

His brother looked away.

“You haven’t, have you?” He rubbed his chin, thinking of the times the family had gathered together over the past couple months. He couldn’t come up with a single time when he’d seen Connor and Pops talk to each other. Oh, yeah, Connor may have mumbled a jab or two under his breath, but he’d never directly spoken to their father. “Out of all of us, you were always the closest to Pops. I don’t know if it’s an age thing…” Connor gave him a glowering look. “Sorry. What I’m trying to say is that if two men ever understood each other, it was you and Pops.”

“Yeah, well, I guess this Wilhemenia stuff really got to me, you know? Thanks.” He grabbed the bottle Joe put in front of him. “Of all the women Pops could have chosen, why did it have to be that sourpuss excuse for a human being?”

David’s burst of laughter died down. He thoughtfully rolled his beer bottle between his palms. “I don’t know what you’re looking for here, Connor, but if it’s reinforcements, you’re looking in the wrong place. I, for one, don’t happen to see anything wrong with Pops getting a little—”

Connor whipped up his hand to stop him. “Don’t. What I’m interested in finding out is how you would feel about him…well, actually bringing her into the family.”

David thought that if his eyes had widened any farther, his eyeballs would have splashed into the bottle he was just about to press to his lips. “You mean, like marry her?”

A shadow of a smile played around Connor’s mouth. “See, it bothers you, too.”

David put his bottle down on the bar. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”

“So what would you say…exactly?”

“I…I don’t know.” He looked at his brother. “Do you think it’s that serious?”

Connor sighed. “I don’t know. Right now, no. I think after…our little talk, Pops did stop seeing her. But it’s only natural to think that he was serious about her. I mean, it’s not like Pops has ever dated before.”

David frowned. “Wait a minute here. If he’s not seeing her anymore, then what in the hell are you worried about?”

Connor fell silent, staring at his bottle as if a genie would appear any moment and supply him with the answer. “It’s just that…I don’t know. Pops looks so…”

“Miserable?” David grinned at Connor’s quick glare. “Hey, I’m capable of noticing some things, too. And Pops is definitely miserable.”

“Yeah, well, he’ll get over it.”

“If that’s how you really feel, then why are we talking about it?”

Connor looked at him as if he was surprised by the realization. “I don’t know.”

A wink of neon pink distracted David. He turned to watch the tantalizing back of a woman walking toward the pool tables. The pink of her top clung to slender shoulders and a narrow waist before giving way to form-fitting black slacks designed to drive a man wild. She met another woman, then picked up a pool stick, flicking her silky blonde, shoulder-length hair over a sculpted shoulder. David got a good look at her face. Heart-shaped. Large green eyes. A bow-shaped pink, pink mouth. Everything about her seemed delicate in some way. Utterly, totally feminine. Innocent. So unlike most of the women he typically dated.

His gaze drifted lower. Whoa. There was nothing innocent about the way that top fit. The curve-hugging material outlined her breasts perfectly, and hid very little—like the fact that she was either cold or tuned in and turned on by his slow visual examination.

He groaned deep in his throat. He managed to croak out a response to Connor. “Yeah, well, you might want to try figuring out the answer to that question before you go on to the next.” His gaze again strayed to the pool table.

Damn, but she’s more woman than any two men could handle, David thought as she returned his measuring gaze. A smile turned up the sides of her mouth and he came close to letting loose a long, appreciative whistle. Despite the fact that they were in a cop bar, there was no way this woman was one. Nor was she a cop groupie like the table of women nearby who consistently went to cop bars pretending to be out for nothing more than a good time, but were really angling for a wedding ring.

No. This woman was neither. She probably did something…womanly. Sold wedding dresses, worked in an antique shop, sold perfume at an upscale department store. She probably wouldn’t know how to hold a gun, much less fire one. The thought was altogether appealing. Especially since he didn’t plan to repeat the mistake of sleeping with someone on the force again.

He cleared his throat, then slanted a loaded gaze his brother’s way. “Speaking of the weather, I think I just heard that Hell’s forecast calls for a blizzard.” He pushed from his stool as if compelled by a force greater than himself. “I just spotted me the woman I’m gonna marry.”

“Who was talking about the…” Connor’s spine snapped military straight as he apparently realized what was going on. “Aw, hell, David, I didn’t come over here to watch you play Casanova.”

“You can have the friend,” he said, straightening his shoulders.

“Gee thanks, but no thanks.”

“We’re done, here, right? All we’re doing is talking in circles anyway. Come on. Let’s see if we can go get in on some of this action.”

Connor hiked a skeptical brow.

“I’m talking about pool, doofus. What did you think I meant?”

“I don’t play pool.”

David barely heard him, his gaze fastened on the woman even now bending over to set up her next shot. Her toffee-colored hair swept down over her face and, with cleanly manicured nails, she pushed it so the strands mingled with the hair on the other side of her perfect head. Her gaze shifting back to him, she pulled the pool stick back then scratched, completely missing the ball. She might not know much about the game of pool, but she’d look damn hot stretched across the green felt…naked as the day she was born.

“Look out, here he goes again,” he overheard a fellow officer say to another as he walked by them, the comment punctuated by laughter.

David’s grin merely widened.

“IF THE DEVIL wore jeans, this is what he’d look like.”

Kelli Hatfield laughed at her friend’s whispered comment, then self-consciously tugged the snug, unfamiliar pink material of her new top away from her skin. She didn’t have to ask who Bronte was talking about. The blond guy from the end of the bar, who could easily have posed for Michelangelo’s David, was sauntering their way. And saunter was about the word for it. With his sexy gaze openly fastened on her, he gave the impression that she might be his destination. She swallowed hard, straightened, then resisted the urge to pluck at her top again. She caught her friend’s cautionary gaze but purposefully ignored it. The same way she had ignored Bronte’s groan earlier when she saw what she was wearing. And her arguments when Kelli had suggested they go to the renowned D.C. cop bar for “just one drink and a game of pool.” And her warnings that she was just looking for trouble by shimmying like that when she bent over to take a shot. Until that moment, Kelli hadn’t known she could shimmy.

A delicious, reckless shiver glided down her spine.

Bronte leaned closer. “Don’t even think about it, Kell. The guy’s Grade-A trouble. In capital letters. Bolded. Underlined. A lady-killer and a half.”

Kelli’s smile widened as she brushed off her friend’s warning. When was the last time she had felt this way? Keyed up? Sexy? Ready to take on the world? Well, okay, maybe not the world, but certainly the prime male specimen heading her way. She frowned slightly, not knowing what was worse—the fact that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this way, or the suspicion that she never had. The unclear answer made her all the more determined to pay attention to the fiery emotions.

Sure, she admitted it probably wasn’t very wise to openly encourage a guy in a cop bar, considering her circumstances. But it was her first night living in D.C. after three long years. And, by God, it felt good to be home, in the city where she’d been raised and where she planned to live out the rest of her life. It felt good thinking about her new job and knowing she had a choice apartment in Columbia Heights, the equivalent of which she would never have been able to afford in New York City. Overall, she felt good. And the instant she’d exchanged glances with the man now close enough for her to see the color of his eyes—a warm, vivid blue that sent another shiver sliding behind the other—she’d felt the overwhelming need to cut loose in a way she never had.

“Tonight, maybe Grade-A trouble is what I’m in the market for,” Kelli said, enjoying her friend’s shocked expression.

There wasn’t much capable of shocking Bronte O’Brien. If she were to be honest, Bronte had always been the shocker out of the two of them. Ever since forming an odd union of sorts while taking pre-law at George Washington University, Bronte had been the racy one, reckless, the girl on scholarship who hid her brains behind her good looks. Kelli had lived vicariously through her best friend for years, though she had to admit Bronte’s life had become boring as of late. Still, it was long past time Kelli started doing her own living.

Bronte rubbed the smooth skin between her brows and sighed. “You know, Kelli, I take back everything I’ve ever encouraged you to do. For years, I’ve been telling you that you need to loosen up. Get out and experience life. Get a life.” She slowly shook her head, the dim light burnishing her short red hair. “But this is definitely not what I had in mind. If you won’t take the advice from me, personally, take it from your trusted attorney—you don’t want to do this. I know the guy he’s with—I’ve run across him on the job. He’s a marshal. Anyway, a guy like this one making a beeline for you…well, he has catastrophe written all over him. He should come with a warning label—Commitment Phobic—Use For One-Night Stand Only.”

“You’re not my attorney, Bronte. You’re a U.S. attorney. And I’m not interested in his friend. I’m interested in him.” Kelli looked her full in the face. “Besides, maybe a one-night stand is all I’m looking for.”

“That’s what you say now. Let’s see how fast that story changes afterward.”

Kelli leaned against her stick. “Come on, Bron, lighten up. You’re acting like my sleeping with this guy is a forgone conclusion.” She held up a rigid finger. “One. That’s the whole of my experience with the opposite sex.” An experience she didn’t want to repeat much less remember. “Only then I was so green you could have planted me.”

“So you say. Mark my words, Jed was an amateur. This one’s a pro.” Bronte hooked a thumb to where the guy in question stopped to talk to a couple of men at the bar, though his gaze never strayed from their direction. “A regular heartache waiting to happen.”

Kelli rolled her eyes to stare at the ceiling, then laughed. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?” She drew her thumb along the smooth wood of the pool stick then bit softly on her bottom lip. “Come on, Bronte, I’m tired of being a good girl. Fed up with always doing the right thing, both in my job and my personal life. The perfect worker who passes up a vacation day because a coworker needs to go to his kid’s school play. The friend who’s always home because she never goes anywhere, never does anything. The boring neighbor who doesn’t mind feeding your pets while you’re away sipping Bahama Mamas on some tropical island. I want to step outside my safe little box, live a little, even if just for this one night.”

Kelli swallowed, not understanding the scope of her restlessness until that very moment. There had been hints over the past few months. The Egyptian silk sheets she’d dropped a fortune on because she thought they were sexy. Her new interest in cooking exotic foods; she’d even bought a wok, for God’s sake. Her sudden, insatiable hunger for romance novels, addictive books she had only picked up on occasion before, but now her collection had grown so large it had taken five huge boxes to cart it from New York. The simple truth was that she no longer wanted to rub her legs against the sheets…alone. She didn’t want to spend hours concocting the perfect meal only to be disappointed when she discovered she and her dog Kojak were the only ones around to eat it. She wanted to live the lives of those romance heroines rather than just read about them.

“And as for your worrying about me getting my heart broken,” she continued, “give me a little credit, will you? I think I deserve at least that after all the heartaches I watched you experience. I never said word one to you all those times you got yourself in trouble over some walking stud muffin.”

“What, are you actually inventorying each of my doomed romances so you can be sure to get in all your I told you so’s?” Bronte grimaced and held up her hand. “And don’t try to give me that innocent look either.” Her blue eyes twinkled as she sipped her purple drink. “Just how do you think I learned how to give you a hard time now?”

Kelli squinted at her.

“Every little jab I’ve just hit you with, you’ve poked at me over the years.”

Touché. She leaned over the table and lined up her next shot. Right before she would take it, she glanced past the cue ball and directly into the suggestive eyes of the man in question. She scratched so badly she nearly tore a hole in the green felt.

The guy grinned and began swaggering their way again.

Bronte dropped her voice. “Just don’t say I didn’t tell you so, you hear?”

Kelli didn’t absorb her friend’s words, concentrating instead on the heat spilling through her bloodstream, the tingly tightening of her breasts. Tonight she wanted to be the ravisher and the ravishee. She wanted to throw her hands up in the air and say “I am woman, hear me roar.” And she wanted to swallow the gorgeous guy moving toward them whole.

Shamelessly she openly eyed the man’s physique. Oh, he was a cop all right. There was no denying that. Everything about him spoke of cockiness and authority, a rough-around-the-edges attitude that stemmed as much from knowing himself capable of saving someone’s life as from the certainty that he could take a suspect’s. And he was still young enough to think himself immortal.

She briefly caught her bottom lip between her teeth again. Maybe he was just the thing this good girl needed to turn very, very bad.

He reached the pool table just as someone finished feeding the jukebox a slew of coins. Bronte rolled her eyes as Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” attempted to drown out the hum of conversation and clink of glasses from behind the bar.

The devil in blue jeans slapped a fiver on the edge of the pool table near the coin slot. “I play the loser.” His grin made her heart race. “David McCoy.”

Kelli repositioned her pool stick and slowly shook his hand, the heat the simple touch generated exhilaratingly cathartic. “Kelli Hatfield.” She released his hand then tapped the stick lightly against her side. This was one game she was going to enjoy losing. “You’re on.”

TWO HOURS LATER, David launched a renewed assault on Kelli Hatfield’s luscious mouth and backed her toward her stripped bed in the corner. Her hungry but obviously inexperienced response made him harder than steel. As drop-dead sexy as the woman was, an innocence clung to her silky skin like an irresistible perfume, making him want to breathe her in, eat her alive, thrust into her like nobody’s business.

And that’s exactly what he intended to do. That is, if he could pull his thoughts together long enough to take things further than kissing.

The strength of his reaction was like a sucker punch to the gut. Even he had to admit surprise at how quickly they’d ended up back at her place, clawing at each other’s clothes, devouring each other’s mouths. He’d lay ten-to-one odds that the woman even now clumsily unzipping his fly had never uttered the words “one-night stand” before, much less indulged in one. Still, he hadn’t had to resort to any of his old come-on lines at the bar. It had always been a bit tricky trying to get a woman between the sheets while keeping her well away from serious commitment territory. After their sexually charged game of pool, he’d simply suggested they get out of there, and she’d agreed. Even Connor and her friend, Bronte, had held up their hands as if their leaving were inevitable and said little more than “Bye” when they grabbed their coats and practically ran from the bar.

Just thinking about the remarkable, lightning-fast string of events sent David’s pulse rate skyrocketing off the charts. Hell, he felt he might lose it if he couldn’t bury himself in her hot flesh right then and there.

He supposed she might be drunk, but he knew what signs to look for and she displayed none of them. In fact, he didn’t detect a hint of liquor. Rather, he tasted something hot and undeniably sweet on her tongue. Then there was her skin….

Peaches. She tasted like peaches, for crying out loud.

Off went that stretchy pink top and her lacy bra. He palmed her breasts and groaned at their nicely rounded weight. Not too big. Not too small. Pure heaven.

“Wait…I…” she whispered huskily.

He pulled an engorged, pale nipple into the depths of his mouth. She gasped and ceased trying to speak.

With more strength than he would have thought possible, she reversed their positions then pushed him toward the mattress. Off went her slacks, his jeans. Before he knew it, his fingers were entangled in her hair, his mouth greedily pulling at hers, and she was poised, ready, above him.

He tugged his mouth from hers and met her eyes. In the fleeting beams of passing headlights, he saw on her face a gravity, a need, a beauty that made him groan. He’d experienced one or two one-night stands in the past, but this was different somehow. Rather, Kelli Hatfield was different. He’d never felt so in tune with a woman, so completely wrapped up in her. And though they didn’t know each other well, he felt that he knew her on a level that transcended the trivial details normally exchanged during the traditional first few dates. He didn’t know what college she had attended in New York, where she’d said she just moved from, but he knew that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. And that was saying a whole lot.

Her gaze remaining locked with his, Kelli lowered herself. His hips bucked and suddenly her tight, slick flesh surrounded him.

He recaptured her mouth and closed his eyes, feeling an odd sensation of inner calm even as their movements grew restless, their breathing ragged. When they climaxed together minutes later, he felt an odd sense of completion that stemmed from more than just the physical. The sensation was foreign, frightening, electrifying, and completely blew his mind.

“Wow,” Kelli whispered, her damp flesh resting against his.

“Yeah…wow,” he repeated.

Slowly, his breathing evened, his heartbeat went back to normal, and the world came back into focus. He glanced around the room. Boxes everywhere. There weren’t even sheets on the bed, though the old radiator in the corner emanated so much heat, it didn’t matter. He vaguely wondered if she’d just moved in, but didn’t have the energy to ask. For the first time since he could remember, David McCoy was completely devoid of words.

She rolled off of him and reached for a robe pooled on the bare wood floor. He fought the urge to pull her back.

“I could do with a glass of something cold. How about you?” she asked, tucking her tousled hair behind her ear.

David noticed the way she didn’t look directly at him, rather concentrated on a spot just over his right shoulder. His brows shot up. He recognized her actions all too well, because, simply, he was usually the one who made them after sex. He pushed himself up onto his elbows. God, this was a first. “I…yeah, sure. I could go for some water or something.”

A whole holding tank full of ice-cold water, he thought.

Tying the robe around her trim waist, she scooped up the empty condom packet from the nightstand, then padded barefoot from the room.

David lay still for a long moment staring after her. So that was it, huh? The most explosive sex he’d had…well, that he’d ever had, and it was over. It was time for him to leave.

He closed his eyes and groaned. Mitch had always warned him that one day he’d pay for his errant ways. He absently scratched his head, the thought of one brother leading to thoughts of another. Was Connor somewhere getting better acquainted with Kelli’s friend, Bronte, right now? Or had he taken off right after he and Kelli had?

For the life of him, he didn’t want to move. He wasn’t sure what exactly had happened just now. The sex between him and Kelli was…well, whatever it was, he had to get himself some more of that.

Something cold and wet nudged against his foot. David went from complete relaxation to nearly catapulting from the bed at Olympic record-setting speed. He thoroughly searched the area but found nothing on the quilted blue-flowered mattress. If that was a bug, it had to be one of the slimiest…

There was a click-click against the wood floor. David looked anxiously around the room for something to defend himself with. He settled on one of his hiking boots. He slowly moved toward the end of the bed aided only by the boot and the dim light filtering in through the window. Not only did it have to be the slimiest, it must be the biggest damn bug—

A hulking, jowl-drooping blond boxer stuck his head out from around the corner of the bed and eyed him, his tongue seeming to curve upward toward his nose. David sagged with relief. A dog. It was a dog. Sensing that the crisis had passed, the ugly pooch came loping around the corner, his wagging short tail making his entire overly plump body shimmy.

David reached down to let the canine sniff the back of his free hand. “Hey…” he craned to see, “boy. How are you doing, huh?” He heartily rubbed him behind the ears.

A switch clicked, then an overhead light filled the room with its harsh glare. David blinked rapidly to adjust his eyesight, then looked at where Kelli stood in the doorway, a brow raised in question. David grimaced at his undressed state and the hiking boot he still held. Way to go, McCoy. It began to sink in that he wasn’t going to be getting anymore of anything anytime soon.

WOW.

The word ran through Kelli’s mind like a hit compact disc on permanent replay, despite the strange scene she encountered when she returned to her bedroom.

Her brain had effectively stopped working, oh, about an hour and a half ago at the bar, when she’d basically decided she was going to take one delectable David McCoy home with her. And it hadn’t switched on again until she found herself lying on top of David, gloriously sweaty, wondering what in the world had just happened.

Despite her arguments to Bronte to the contrary, the limited scope of her experience had left her criminally unprepared for this man and her phenomenal reaction to him. She pulled her white, threadbare robe more tightly around herself with one hand. If this was what made Bronte jump into every bed she came across, then she herself had definitely been missing out on a whole lot of something for much too long.

The only problem was that remembering how very bad she’d just been made the good girl come out to do some mental finger-shaking.

The boot David held clunked to the floor and he grinned boyishly. “Uh…your dog and I were just getting acquainted.”

Dog… Oh, God, her dog! “Kojak! Come here, boy.” She’d purposely closed the bedroom door when they’d come in, but the pooch must have snuck in while she was in the other room. “There you are.”

“I thought he was a bug.”

“What?”

David was tugging up his jeans, his back to her, his firm, rounded behind tempting her touch. She averted her gaze and felt her cheeks color—which was ridiculous, because mere moments before she’d shamelessly run her fingers all over the flesh in question. “Never mind.”

“I have your water,” she blurted needlessly, the plastic glass in her hand.

Clad only in jeans, he sauntered over to her and accepted the cold drink. While he drank, Kelli covertly skimmed the well-toned body she had hungrily molested in the dark and was shocked by the rush of desire to consume him all over again. She mimicked his movements by swallowing hard. The guy was perfect in every sense of the word. His abs stood out in wondrous relief, making her itch to run her fingers over the sculpted muscles, down to where a thin line of blond hair disappeared into the waistband of his jeans.

“So that’s it then, huh?” he asked, holding out the glass to her.

Kelli took it. “Did you want more?”

The odd way he looked at her made her rethink her question. “Depends on what you’re referring to.”

Kelli’s cheeks burned hotly all over again. He wasn’t talking about water. He was likely referring to the fact that she hadn’t given them the chance for more. After they’d…had sex, she couldn’t have run from the room quicker had it been on fire.

The dog butted his head against her shin, then ran around her legs in an attempt to gain her attention. “Not now…Jack.”

David’s grin nearly knocked her over. “Good thing you clarified who you were talking to, ’cause I was just about to grab my shirt.”

Bronte would be happy to know that every last thing she’d uttered about David McCoy was absolutely, positively, one hundred percent true. He was a pro. And now that Kelli’s head was working again, she was beginning to fear she was greener now than she’d ever been. Beginning to fear that it was impossible for her to have casual sex, because tomorrow kept intruding, making her wonder about stupid things like whether or not he would call her, or if he liked Chinese food.

Her gaze drifted down the sculpted planes of his chest and her own breathing grew curiously ragged. Green or not, she still wanted this man with every fiber of her being. She looked at his flat, beaded nipples and her own tightened and ached to be touched. She saw the thick ridge pressing against the zipper of his jeans, and felt a rush of hot desire between her bare legs.

She flicked her eyes up to stare into his, recognizing and instantly responding to the need reflected in the midnight blue depths. The hungry, sex-deprived wanton may have abandoned her, but she was finding that the good girl wanted everything she had…and more.

A tiny whimper gathered in her throat. Oh, to hell with tomorrow and consequences and hearing Bronte say “I told you so.” The simple truth was that it was still night, and she wanted to spend every single last moment of it with David McCoy cradled between her thighs.

Forgetting the dog, she practically leapt on David, circling her arms around his neck, pasting her mouth against his and hungrily letting him know exactly what she was feeling. He slid his hands inside her robe and the ineffective belt slid to the floor…right along with the empty plastic glass. David grinned then scooped her up and practically tossed her back on top of the bed.