License to Thrill Read online

  The herbal smell of her hair reached his nose, and he battled a groan. Ravishing Mel was no way to protect her. Or to convince her not to marry the other guy. Yes, he’d missed touching her. But more than that, he’d missed her and everything that was her. Her laugh. Her quiet strength. Her sharp mind and even sharper wit. His thoughts shifted to Tom Hooker and the bullet that had taken all that away from him. The man who even now posed a threat to Mel’s life. He chose to ignore that things had gone awry before then.

  Suppressing the desire to rip off the ruined dress, Marc tried to make quick work of the buttons, but the closer he got to the small of her back, the quicker his pulse pounded. It usually took a whole lot more than undoing somebody’s buttons to arouse him. Then again, Mel had always been able to turn him on with little or no effort. His painfully aroused condition proved that hadn’t changed.

  That’s not why we’re here, he reminded himself. Yes, he wanted to take Mel right here and now. On the carpet, on the couch, against the wall. Just like old times. Lose himself in her and forget the past three months. Forget that damn hospital and the battle he’d fought and lost to go in there to see her. Forget that even now, out there somewhere, Hooker was looking for revenge against Mel because she was the one responsible not only for foiling his assassination attempt, but for his arrest.

  He suspected, from the trembling of Mel’s fingers where she stubbornly held the rip in her dress together, that she wouldn’t put up much of a struggle if he pulled her into his arms. He had guessed that the instant he’d met her eyes at that stupid rehearsal dinner. But sex had never been their problem. It wasn’t the reason she had left him. And it wasn’t the way to bring her back.

  Neither is kidnapping her, his conscience taunted.

  As each button gave, the material of the dress gaped open, baring her creamy flesh. Marc’s jeans tightened uncomfortably. The closer he moved to the arch of her back, the louder the blood roaring in his ears got. Finally all the buttons were undone. He touched her back with his rough fingertips, then drew them down until they rested at the top of her panties.

  He absorbed her shiver.

  “Please don’t,” she whispered, breathless.

  While she said one thing with her mouth, her body was speaking a whole different language. A language even he could understand. She leaned into his touch and tilted her head to the side, baring her neck to his gaze. One thing he was coming to learn was that no meant no, and that included don’t. But when her lush rear end pressed against his erection, everything he’d read in the past three months vanished, and he knew nothing more than an urgency to touch Mel in a way he hadn’t for a long, long time.

  He lowered his mouth to her neck, laving the silky skin there. He circled her rib cage and filled his palms with her breasts. The need that surged through him was almost frightening in its intensity. She whimpered and pressed her bottom against him more insistently. He nearly lost it right then and there.

  “Please don’t,” she whispered again, her face flushed. But this time she moved away, her hands tugging her hem down and uselessly trying to hold the dress together at the back.

  Marc’s gaze dropped to her mouth. Her lips were slightly parted, her elegant throat trying to swallow. Funny, he had never noticed how long and graceful her neck was. He’d always thought of her as mouthwateringly attractive, but he had never stopped to define by degrees how each part equaled the delicious whole. Outside the bedroom, he’d always thought of her as his equal. Part of that might stem from the fact that they had been partners before lovers, but Marc suspected most of the reason was his own witlessness.

  “What are you afraid of, Mel?” he asked, trying to crush the desire threatening to burn right through his veins. “Do you think I can’t even unbutton your dress without wanting to jump your bones?”

  A shadow of a smile flitted around her eyes, making him want to coax it out. She realized as well as he did how close he’d come to doing just that. “Three months ago you wouldn’t have gotten past the third button.”

  “Three months ago I was a different man,” he said, using her words against her. She backed up toward the couch, uncertainty on her face.

  He cleared his throat. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  She stared at him blankly, color still high on her cheeks.

  “The dress.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Something flashed in her eyes, reminding him of the Mel he had always admired. The one who never passed up a challenge, a person who could play the I-dare-you game just as well, and often better, than the guys. Her gaze never leaving his, she tugged at the material, pulling first one, then the other, sleeve free. Then with an expression that seemed to ask him, “What do you think of that?” she released her grip, and the dress glided to the floor in a shallow puddle of pink silk.

  She stood in front of him, arms stiffly at her sides, nothing but a strapless strip of material covering her breasts and a tiny scrap of triangular silk barely concealing the hair between her legs. Marc’s throat closed as his gaze followed the toned line of her inner thigh down to her sexy feet. It took everything he had not to drag her into his arms. All she needed was that pair of stiletto heels he’d tossed in the back of the Jeep, and she would be every man’s idea of a dream come true. Problem was, she already was his dream. Even with the scar he couldn’t bring himself to look at somewhere above her bra line.

  “Impressive,” he said, vaguely registering that his voice still worked. “Tell me, Mel, will The Fool appreciate your effort to make sure the wedding night is something to remember? Or has he already tasted the sweets in the candy store?”

  The redness in her cheeks told him he’d said the wrong thing…again. Marc bit back a curse, watching as she quickly bent to pull the dress on.

  “Trust you to make everything sound dirty. And his name is not The Fool. It’s Craig.”

  He roughly caught her hands. “Has he, Mel?”

  He’d told himself countless times it didn’t matter if Mel had slept with another man. In fact, he had already accepted that she probably had. But seeing her nearly naked, the slightly rounded muscles of her stomach drawn taut, her womanhood so proudly accentuated by the naughty panties, shot his efforts all to hell. He was back to square one, back to when he had wallowed in a jealous funk at the thought of another man touching her.

  She glanced away. “What does it matter?”

  He forced her to look at him, aware he was being rougher than necessary but unable to help himself. “Answer me, Mel. Have you slept with him?”

  She met his gaze, the moisture in her eyes despite the courageous way she held her head nearly knocking him over. She said nothing for a long moment, merely stared at him in that unblinking way that always drove him crazy. Then she lowered her lashes and looked at the dress pooled around her feet. “Not that it’s any of your business, but…no. I haven’t slept with him.”

  She said the words so quietly, Marc wasn’t certain he had heard her. But the relief that eased through his tense muscles told him all he needed to know. What he had suspected. What he had hoped.

  She hadn’t been able to be with anyone else, either. Good.

  Of course it did little to solve that other little problem. The fact that she was still getting married.

  He couldn’t help grinning. “Do you remember the first time we went to that hot dog place down on Mission? The one with those old-fashioned mustard bottles?”

  She tugged herself free of his grasp. “This is stupid.”

  She reached for the dress again. He established his hold. “Oh, no, you don’t.” She fought him, this time with the strength that had made her one of the best in the business. “I told you the dress comes off, and it stays off until we leave.”

  “What kind of game are you playing, Marc?” she asked hoarsely, the ragged emotion in her voice like a punch to the gut.

  He nearly let her go.

  “It’s no ga
me, Mel. It’s punishment, remember?” His gaze flicked over her flushed skin. “You tried to escape, and now you’re facing the consequences.”

  “So you just expect me to sit around here for how ever long you decide….” She hesitated. “Butt naked?”

  Marc’s grin widened. “Not butt naked, Mel. At least not if you behave yourself.”

  She moved her head in a way that flipped her hair over her shoulder. And oh, what a shoulder it was, too. At least the part he allowed himself to view. The other side and the scar that loomed in his peripheral vision remained untouched by his direct gaze. “So what do I have to do to get my…clothes back?”

  A dozen, impossible, improbable ideas sprang to mind. “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose we could work out some sort of merit system.” He thought for a moment. “Tell you what. You cooperate with what I have in mind, and I’ll award you points.”

  “Points?” The wariness was back in her eyes. “What kind of points?”

  He sighed. “Not the type you’re thinking. And here we thought I was the one with the dirty mind.” He released her wrists, then reached for the dress. She quickly stepped out of it, and he tossed it to a dining room chair behind him. “I may have sunk to kidnapping, but I’m no rapist.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  Though she tried for sarcasm, her tone fell just shy of the mark. “Is it, Mel? Could it be true that you haven’t thought about us at all?”

  She was silent. Marc found it incredible that he was standing in front of a half-naked Mel and had no urge to look past her face for the answers he might find there.

  “Is this one of the questions that will earn me points?”

  “No,” he said, his frustration building. “This is one of the questions that will help me figure out where I went wrong.”

  Mel stilled, staring at him in a way he couldn’t interpret.

  The mechanical din of “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall”—the tune that served as his doorbell—echoed through the town house. They both stood completely still until it rang again.

  “Seems we have a visitor,” she said quietly.

  Marc glanced toward the door, then crossed his arms. “I have a visitor. You’re marrying someone else in two days, remember?”

  Which, now that he could think about it with objectivity, didn’t make any sense at all. He grimaced. He hadn’t been the only one not interested in marriage. Going into any relationship, he was usually the one worried about the woman’s intentions after intimacy. But Mel had made it clear the first night they nearly tore each other’s clothes off that she wasn’t interested in picket fences.

  Why, then, was she getting married?

  Oh, hell. While she still had a lot of fight in her, Marc watched a lone tear slide down her cheek. She sighed and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, apparently not liking the display of emotion any more than he did. “Oh, I remember, all right. I think you’re the one having trouble with your memory.”

  Marc shifted uneasily, tempted to give up the whole thing right there and then.

  But he couldn’t. Not yet. He’d never failed in an assignment, and he wasn’t going to start now.

  Marc moved toward the front windows and pushed the curtain aside. He grimaced when he spotted the familiar red sports car parked at the curb. Roger.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said under his breath. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Her stare told him she didn’t appreciate his attempt at humor.

  Marc walked to the door and opened it, frowning at the partner assigned to him a week after Mel left the division…and him.

  “What’s up, Rog?”

  “Oh, not much with me. I’m wondering why you didn’t show for work detail this morning, though.”

  Roger Westfield tried to look around Marc into the town house. Marc made it difficult. Easy to do, considering Roger was at a disadvantage on the doorstep. His thirty-something face was annoyingly handsome, but it was his sharp blue eyes that betrayed exactly how capable he was. Like Marc, he’d never been married, never came close, and he’d been a good partner so far. Marc hadn’t taken any points off because Roger had been partners with Hooker when Mel had stumbled on to her would-be assassin’s moonlighting endeavors. Too bad Roger was screwing up Marc’s good impression of him.

  Roger’s gaze settled on something inside the town house, then he looked directly at Marc. “You went and did it, didn’t you?”

  Marc glanced at Mel, where she stood in the middle of the living room, stubbornly making no attempt to cover herself. He pushed Roger outside, then stepped out, leaving the door slightly open so he could keep an ear out for Mel’s movements. He wouldn’t put it past her to whack him in the back of his head with a lamp and leave him for dead.

  And he wouldn’t put it past Roger to let her walk right out of the town house and into the line of fire.

  Marc thrust his hand through his already disheveled hair. “I knew I never should have said anything to you.” Actually, he’d had little choice in the matter. The night before last, after the bulletin went out on Hooker’s escape, Roger and he had gone out for a beer. After one too many, Roger had shared the nasty details of his close calls with women…and Marc had spilled his guts about what had happened between him and Mel, including his half-baked plan to take her into what he saw as protective custody.

  This morning a report went out on Hooker’s surfacing in the area, and the whole department had been put on alert. And Marc had decided to put his plan into action.

  Roger said, “You’re right. You shouldn’t have told me. But since you did, and I know you used your training to take that woman in there against her will—” He stopped abruptly. “Have you lost your mind, McCoy? Do you know what will happen if she presses charges? I won’t say anything about your job, but the legal—”

  “She won’t press charges.”

  Roger frowned. “Excuse me for saying so, buddy, but it doesn’t look like Melanie Weber is a very happy camper right now.”

  Like he needed to be told that. “What’s up, Roger? I know you didn’t come here to offer emotional support.”

  “Emotional support? You’ve been reading those damned magazines again, haven’t you?”

  Marc stiffened, not about to respond to the question. When Mel had taken that bullet, then disappeared from his life, he’d tried everything to figure out exactly how to make things right with her. And that included reading those damned magazines, as Roger had an irritating habit of referring to them. He jammed his fingers through his hair. In all honesty, he thought a few of the articles directly addressed exactly where he’d gone wrong with Mel.

  Then he’d bought that stupid ring that even now was a leaden weight in his pocket.

  “Look, you’re right.” Roger nodded. “I didn’t come by to badger you about your personal business. It’s your life, feel free to screw it up.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Roger tried to look through the crack in the door. “Just thought you might like to know a certain somebody’s mother contacted our boss demanding an address for you.” Marc stared at him. “She was calling from a sheriff’s office somewhere in Maryland.”

  Adrenaline rushed through Marc’s body, thick and all-consuming. “Damn, I’ve got to get her out of here—”

  “Whoa, hold on to your shorts there, cowboy. I know your heart is in the right place, but don’t you think it would be a good idea to just let her go and let the division protect her?”

  What Roger left out was that the division wouldn’t give her the protection she needed until after Hooker squeezed off another potshot.

  Marc thrust his hand through his hair again. “You’ll have to cover for me.”

  Roger shook his head. “No can do. When the shit hits the fan, that little lady in there is going to tell everyone and his brother I was here. You can put your own ass on the line, but keep your hands off mine.”

  “I can’t let her go,” Marc muttered. “Hooke
r is out there right now, possibly casing Mel’s every move. I can’t allow him to target her again. I won’t.”

  Why couldn’t his plan have gone off without a hitch? Why’d he have to lock her mother in the ladies’ john and spill his guts to Roger?

  Roger broke into his thoughts. “Come on, McCoy. You don’t know that Hooker has her on his shortlist. His emergence in the area could mean he wants to take another shot at the senator.”

  “Come on, Roger, you know as well as I do that Hooker’s cell mate let spill that Hooker planned to seek Mel out. Then there are those letters he sent and all those calls Mel reported to the U.S. attorney’s office.”

  Marc stared at his new partner, feeling ill at ease but unable to describe exactly why. “Just sit on what you know for as long as you can, okay? Long enough for me to get her out of Dodge.”

  Roger shook his head. “I think you’re making a big mistake here. She left you and is about to marry someone else. She’s not your responsibility. What’s it going to take to get that through your thick head?”

  Marc resisted the urge to grab Roger by his neatly starched collar. “Excuse me if I don’t take advice from a man who calls a one-nighter a relationship.”

  “Ouch. This from a guy who thinks love is a dirty word.” Roger turned and started walking toward his car. “Good luck, buddy. You’re going to need it.”

  Marc stepped inside the town house and slammed the door, causing it to shake on its hinges. What in the hell had Roger meant about love being a dirty word?

  It was then he realized Mel’s dress was no longer draped over the dining room chair…and Mel wasn’t there, either.

  MELANIE’S SKIN felt hot, and the yearning just a couple of Marc’s innocuous touches had awakened threaded through her in an endless ribbon of need. That he had kidnapped her at all should have been motivation enough for her to want to escape. Strangely enough, it wasn’t. It was the earnest reaction of her traitorous, hormone-ridden body moments before, as he had slowly, awkwardly unbuttoned her dress, the feel of his slick mouth pressed against her skin that had rocketed her moderate desire to get home to an urgent need to get as far away from Marc McCoy as quickly as possibly.