Mixed Messages

She put one eye to the peephole and sighed when she saw Mark standing in the hallway.

She opened the door to the length of the chain and looked out at him uncharitably. “Aren’t you supposed to be participating in a crack-house raid or something?”

He flashed one of his lethal grins. “That’s tomorrow night. May I come in?”

The living room was still filled with unopened boxes, and Carly was wearing her pink bathrobe. Her hair was probably a mess, too. And this man had tried to get her fired just that morning.

Despite all these things, Carly unfastened the chain and opened the door.

Mark was wearing jeans and a navy-blue football jersey with the number “39” printed on it in white, and he carried a bouquet of pink daisies.

Carly eyed them with a certain disdain, even though she secretly loved daisies. “If you think a few flowers are going to make up for the way you sandbagged me this morning—”

Mark sighed. “I was trying to get Clark to move you to another assignment.”

“I’ll be lucky if you didn’t get me booted out instead,” Carly replied. Grudgingly she took the daisies, carried them to the kitchenette and filled a glass with water.

When she turned around, she collided with Mark, and, for several excruciatingly sweet moments, her body seemed to be fused to his. She was possessed by a frightening and completely unexpected urge to bare herself to him, to feel his flesh against hers.

She shook her head as if to awaken herself from a dream and started to step around him.

He pinned her against the counter, using just his hips, and Carly felt heat rise from her stomach to her face as he took the daisies and set them aside. His voice was a low, rhythmic rumble.

“I’m not through apologizing,” he said, and then he bent his head and touched Carly’s lips tentatively with his own.

She gave a little whimper, because she wanted so much to spurn him and could not, and the kiss deepened. He shaped her mouth with his, and explored its depths with his tongue.

Even with Reggie, the man she’d planned to marry, Carly had been able to withstand temptation easily. With Mark, things were startlingly different. He had overridden her resistance, stirring a sudden and brutal need within her with a simple kiss.

Carly found herself melting against her kitchen counter like a candle set close to a fire. She had a dizzy, disoriented feeling, as though she’d just stepped off some wild ride at a carnival.

With a little chuckle, Mark withdrew from her mouth only to nibble lightly at the length of her neck. He cupped her breast with his hand, and beneath the terry cloth her nipple pulsed to attention.

She moaned helplessly, and Mark lifted her onto the counter. Then he uncovered the breast he had aroused and began to suck gently on its peak.

Carly drew in a swift breath. She knew she should push him away, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do that. What he was doing felt entirely too good.

He traced her collarbone with kisses and then bared her other breast and took its pink tip boldly into his mouth.

Carly gave a strangled groan and let her head fall back against the cupboard door. With one of her hands, she clutched Mark’s shoulder, and with the other she pressed the back of his head, holding him close to her.

She clasped his waist between her knees, as though to keep from flying away, and when she felt his hand move down over her belly, she could only tremble. When he found her secret, and began to caress it with his fingers, she started and cried out softly.

“Shh,” he said against her moist, well-suckled nipple. “It’s all right.”

Carly, who had never given herself to a man before, sought his lips with her own, desperate for his kiss. He mastered her mouth thoroughly, then went back to her breasts. He continued his gentle plundering, and Carly’s heels rose to the counter’s edge in a motion of abject surrender.

Mark kissed his way down her belly and wrung a raw gasp from her throat when he took her boldly into his mouth. He gripped Carly’s ankles firmly, parting her legs until she was totally vulnerable to him.

A fine sheen of perspiration covered her body as he attended her, and her hair clung, moist, to her forehead and her cheeks. She writhed and twisted, murmuring nonsense words, while Mark drove her toward sweet damnation.

She cried out at the fiery tumult shuddering through her body, surrendered shamelessly to the searing pleasure. And when it was over, tears of confusion and relief trickled down her cheek.

Gently Mark released her ankles so that she could lower her legs. He closed her robe and kissed her damp brow softly.

“Oh, God,” Carly whispered, as shame flowed into her, like water rushing into a tide pool.

Mark traced her lips with the tip of one finger, and considered her with kind eyes. “Chemistry,” he said, and then, to Carly’s utter amazement, he turned away.

She scooted off the counter and stood for several moments, waiting for her knees to stabilize. Mark had already reached the door, and his hand was resting on the knob.

Carly cinched the belt of her bathrobe tightly. She couldn’t believe it. This man had aroused her thoroughly, had subjected her to a scorching climax—and now he was leaving. “Where are you going?”

The insolent brown eyes caressed her as he opened the door. “Home.”

“But…”

There was a touch of sadness to his smile. “Yes,” he said, answering her unspoken question, “I want you. But we’re going to wait.”

Carly was finally able to move. She stumbled a few steps toward him, filled with resentment because he’d made her need him so desperately and then dismissed her. “You would have been the first,” she taunted him, her voice barely above a whisper.

His eyes slid over her slender body, which was still quivering with outrage and violent appeasement. “I’ll be the first,” he assured her, “and the last.”

And then he was gone.

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