License to Thrill

He picked up his pace.

Well, that hadn’t exactly gone as planned, had it? He shifted Mel’s weight more evenly over his shoulder, ignoring her attempts to get him to let her down. Ignoring, too, the warmth of having her body against his again, even given present circumstances. He strode toward his Jeep, parked in the far corner of the lot. The smell of new fabric mingled with Mel’s soft, subtle perfume. Linden flowers. That’s what he had always likened the scent to. She had always insisted it was jasmine. One of these days he’d take her to his family home in Manchester, Virginia, to show her the linden tree in the back yard. The tree’s brief but fragrant blossoms were the closest he’d ever gotten to any type of flower in the all-male household in which he’d been raised. Of course, while Mel shared his small town background, the only flowers likely to be found in her yard were of the rose variety.

“Where are you taking me?” Mel asked, wiggling to free herself from his hold.

“Cut it out, Mel. You’re just making this harder.” He tried not to focus on the way her breasts jiggled against his back and gave her bottom another squeeze. He grinned at her gasp.

“Is that what this is all about?” Her voice was raspy. Her movements stopped. “Are you doing this to cop one last feel?”

“Feel?” He opened the back door of the Jeep, thinking that touching her again would indeed be reason enough for him to kidnap her. “No, Mel.” He laid her across the back seat, causing the tight, short skirt to shimmy up her thighs, baring her legs and other more secret areas for his scrutiny. He tossed her shoes into the back, his gaze glued to the tiny scrap of material that masqueraded as underwear. It didn’t come close to disguising the soft, down-covered swell of sweet flesh it covered.

He concentrated on the tightening of his throat instead of the swelling in another area of his anatomy. Oh, how he longed to claim that mouth of hers with his, to skim his hands down her lush body, to trail a finger along the border of those panties, slowly, teasingly, watching as the silky material dampened with her reaction….

He reined in his thoughts. Speaking of groins, he’d be better off protecting his whenever he was on this side of her feet. The thought hit him just as she thrust her foot toward him.

He caught her ankle. Despite her actions, in her face he read the same longing he felt. He hadn’t realized how much he missed small moments like these. When everything but Mel vanished into the background. When just knowing how quickly he could make her come apart sent his blood pounding through his veins and opened a peculiar sort of weightlessness in his stomach.

He shifted his hand up her calf, the languid move hiding the way he shook inside.

“Marrying Craig will make me happy.”

Melanie’s words to her mother just moments earlier echoed through his mind. His hand froze as he slowly tore his gaze from her face. The feel of her warm, satiny skin beneath his palm made him fear it would take a crowbar to lift his hand.

A glance around the parking area reminded him where he was and what he was doing. Gradually, the sound of his heartbeat lessened, and the drone of cars passing on the nearby street increased. He finally moved his hand and swallowed…hard.

“Nice view,” he said, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

When he dared look at her again, her cheeks were flushed with color and she was avoiding his gaze. But it was the rough sound of her voice that betrayed her most of all. “Yeah, well, you might want to get a good look while you can.” Mel battled with the skirt, pulling on the hem until it somewhat covered her.

I don’t need to look. Everything about you is already burned into my memory.

Marc forced himself to reach for the handcuffs he’d left on the floor. He leaned toward her, careful not to let things spiral out of control again. Afraid it wouldn’t take much.

“I’m really sorry about doing this, Mel.” He grasped her wrist. He expected a struggle, but surprisingly he encountered little. He grimaced as he tugged her arm over her head. The metal teeth of the cuffs caught as he attached one side to her wrist, threaded the other through the handgrip above the window, then dragged her other arm up. He tried not to notice the way her chest heaved with every breath as he caught her legs under his weight. He took his sunglasses off and tossed them to the front seat. He was about to pull away when his gaze snagged on hers again.

God, it had been a long time. Too long.

Marc stretched his neck, thinking an ordinary man would be a goner with one look into Mel’s face right now. She looked altogether too kissable, too damned sexy. Luckily he’d never considered himself an ordinary man. He came from four generations of McCoys who had served in the military or law enforcement or both. He had once been a Marine. Nope, none of the five current McCoy brothers, if asked, would ever admit to knowing the meaning of the word ordinary.

Only problem was, the pep talk wasn’t doing diddly to douse his need to taste her lips….

Before he knew it, he was leaning closer to her, his breath mingling with her wine-scented breath. He eyed her mouth, groaning at the way she moistened her lips with a quick dart of her pink tongue.

“Marc, you better, um, not do what I think you’re about to.”

“Do what?” Get it under control, McCoy. “Kiss you?”

She made a sound that was somewhere between a whimper and a warning. It took Herculean strength to leave her mouth untouched, her lips slightly parted, no matter how much he wanted to claim both. Because of how much he wanted to. Instead he brushed his lips against the sensitive shell of her ear. “Remember when we used the handcuffs for reasons that were…not professionally correct?”

“That…that was a long time ago.” She fairly croaked.

“Not so long ago that you can’t remember.” Not so long ago that he couldn’t remember, either. Even now he hardened painfully at the images that slipped through his mind. Sex with Mel had always been intense. But, somehow, looking at her now, he found it hard to believe this prissily dressed example of upper-middle-class bliss could still be an inventive spitfire between the sheets.

He heard the click of her swallow as she moved restlessly beneath him.

Oh, she remembered, all right. He could tell by the way she arched against him even as she sought to put more distance between them. Impossible, given their current position.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for either of us to remember,” she said quietly, turning her head away when he would have pressed his mouth against her jawline.

He forced himself to pull back. “I think it’s the best idea I’ve heard in a long time.”

She turned her head toward him. “Just one of the many examples of how differently we think, isn’t it?”

He recognized the shadow of pain in her eyes. He’d seen it once before. The night before she was shot. The night they’d had their first and, as luck would have it, last argument. The night she had asked if he loved her.

Remembering the moment, Marc found swallowing almost impossible. But upon closer examination, he discovered there was something else in the depths of her eyes that was somehow unlike the pain she had so clearly felt then.

Before he could pinpoint exactly what, she moved one of her legs up, catching him off guard, though her stockings guaranteed her attempts were ineffective. He grimaced, thinking it was a good thing he’d tossed her shoes into the back or he’d have been in trouble.

“You’re getting rusty, Mel.” He patted her legs then reluctantly drew back. “I guess a dress and a couple months under Mother Wilhemenia’s roof will do that to a person.”

He watched the color return to her cheeks, though she still refused to meet his gaze. “And you’re still as reckless as you always were, aren’t you, Marc?”

“You used to tell me my…how did you put it? My adventurous nature was what you loved about me.” He cringed at the loose use of the L-word.

“What?” The cuffs clanked as she shifted to look at him. “I never said I loved that about you. That trait is exactly what made me—what made us so different.”

Marc eased himself out of the car and closed the door. He drew in a deep breath and worked his shoulders to loosen the muscles there. Yes, Mel had always appealed to him in a way he’d never wanted to examine too closely, but this… He thrust his hand through his hair, frustrated by his inability to define what he was feeling. One thing he did know was that he’d have to control it if he was going to protect Mel in the way she needed to be protected. And if he was going to get her back into his life.

He glanced toward the inn. Why didn’t it surprise him to find Mrs. Weber marching through the door? He grimaced, watching as she motioned to a man about his own age. Marc clutched the driver’s door handle. Mel’s groom, he guessed.

No, this wasn’t going as planned at all.

Then again, nothing with Mel had ever really gone as planned. If it had, she would still be with him and the division and she wouldn’t be getting ready to marry some other fool on Saturday morning, putting herself at more risk than she knew. And making him feel lonelier than he’d ever thought possible.

He climbed in and slammed the door so hard the Jeep rocked. He started the engine.

“Where are you taking me?” Mel asked again. The persistent clank of the cuffs told him she was examining them. He didn’t have to look. She knew as well as he did there was no way she could free herself. Not unless she carried a key in her bra. Something he doubted, but he had prepared for the possibility anyway by making sure she couldn’t reach it if she did have one.

“Just sit back and enjoy the ride, Mel. You’re not exactly in a position to do much else.”

She pushed at the back of his seat with her feet. Marc leaned forward. She might have gotten a little rusty, but she still packed a hell of a punch. And he wouldn’t put it past her to have enough strength in those long legs to send him flying through the windshield.

He should have brought some shackles.

Stick to the plan.

Just because the plan was off course didn’t mean he couldn’t proceed with the rest of it.

He thought back to a magazine article he’d recently read. When having problems, focus on the good things.

“Mel?” he said quietly.

A long silence, then a tentative, “What?” drifted from the back seat. He looked to find her still examining the cuffs. Marc faced the road again.

“Remember the time we were on the vice-presidential detail in Seattle?”

Silence.

“You remember. He was in Washington for the preprimary debate, and we were placed on extra alert—”

“I remember,” Mel interrupted, apparently giving up her study of the cuffs.

He glanced to find her staring at him. “Then you remember what you did when you saw that perp in the hotel kitchen? You wrestled the guy to the floor before he had a chance to identify himself.” She turned her face away. “Good thing the vice president’s ticker was strong, or you would have given him a heart attack.”

No response. Marc tightened his hands on the steering wheel. Maybe that hadn’t been the best memory to use.

“Of course you couldn’t have known he liked to walk the streets incognito, picking up a paper or two. Hell, none of us knew.”

Silence.

Marc cleared his throat. The art of conversation was obviously not an inherited skill. His father was a pro at it—at least with others—as was his brother Mitch. Given Mel’s response, he guessed he was still an amateur. “Not in the mood for reminiscing, Mel?”

“Don’t call me Mel,” she said finally. He exhaled in surprised relief. An angry Mel was much easier to deal with than a silent one. “My name’s Melanie. And no, I don’t feel like revisiting the past, Marc. I’d just as soon forget it.”

He turned onto the on-ramp for I-270 South. “It wasn’t that long ago.”

“Ninety-two days. Two-thousand, two hundred and eight hours. One hundred, thirty-two thousand—”

“All right, I get the picture already,” he grumbled.

“—four hundred and eighty minutes,” she finished, her voice little more than a whisper. “That’s a lot of time. Enough time for a person to completely reinvent herself.” She paused. “I’m not rusty, Marc. I’m not the person you knew.”

Maybe she had a point there. Marc rubbed his fingers across his chin. Then again, his reaction to her hadn’t changed. While Mel still carried her .25—strapped to her milky thigh, no less—she didn’t call herself his partner anymore, in either sense of the word, no matter how much he wanted to lose himself in her. Now more than ever. Three months without Melanie had done that to him.

He resisted the urge to rearrange a certain painfully erect body part into a more comfortable position. He reminded himself that his plan had as much to do with physical urges as it did with the threat that loomed over Mel’s head. And the changes in her merely amplified her need for protection.

What would she do when he told her Hooker had escaped from custody en route to his hearing? That it was strongly suspected he was coming after her to finish the job?

He looked at her in the rearview mirror, flinching when the rock she wore on her left ring finger reflected the sunlight. He thought about the velvet pouch in his pocket. His ring was nothing compared to the one she had on. Little more than costume jewelry. Why had he decided an emerald was prettier than a diamond?

He grimaced, wondering why he carried the stupid thing around, anyway.

Marc mulled the situation over for the half-hour ride into the city, finding no easy answers to his questions or the ones Mel kept asking. Honesty to a degree. That’s what a piece in last month’s issue of It’s a Woman’s World had said. But what was that degree? He absently thrust his fingers through his hair. Sure, he knew enough not to tell a woman her hips looked big in a certain pair of jeans or that a shade of lipstick looked awful when it did…well, most of the time anyway. But how much did he tell Mel about what was going on? Was it best to keep the truth from her altogether? Was it better to let her believe he’d kidnapped her to keep her from marrying someone else? Which wasn’t exactly a lie…

He slid the velvet pouch to the side of his pocket. Who in the hell had colored in so many shades of the truth, anyway? He really couldn’t guess how Mel would react. All he knew was that her injury must have scared her but good, or she would have never quit the division.

“God, you’re not taking me to your town house, are you?” Mel’s voice broke into his thoughts.

He cleared his throat. “So you still recognize the way. Given the number of times you’ve visited lately, I’m surprised.”

She whispered something he couldn’t hear. He turned to look at her. He’d noticed before that she’d let her hair grow. He watched the setting sun bounce rays off the golden strands, making it appear as if she wore a halo. Only he knew how much of the devil resided within her, even if she chose to forget.

“What was that?” he asked.

Metal clanked against metal, but she said nothing.

“Let’s see, what could it have been? Hmm. Could you have been commenting on how many times I visited you in that colonial mansion wannabe on Cherry Blossom Road in Bedford you now call home?”

Her continued silence told him what he wanted to know.

He grew more agitated. “I was afraid your mother wouldn’t tell you how many times she turned me away—”

“She did not.” Another nudge to the back of his seat nearly threw him against the steering wheel. But it was the loud tearing of material that caught his attention.

Marc pulled into the garage of the two-family town house he had lived in for the past ten months. With a flick of the remote, the garage door started to close, clipping off the sunlight. He turned to see Mel’s frown as she took stock of the rip in her dress.

“Tsk, tsk,” he said softly.

“Go to hell, McCoy.”

He climbed out of the Jeep. “Oh, me and hell are coming to know each other very well lately,” he said to himself, then opened the back door. “Are you going to cooperate? Or should I leave you out here until you cool down?”

He watched her school her features into a mask of calm. Only the bright spots of red on her cheeks gave away her true feelings. “I’ll cooperate.”

He grinned, not buying her act for a second. “Good.”

He took the key to the cuffs out of his front jeans pocket and released her. She rubbed at the red rings around her wrists, then stared at the tear in her dress.

“I can’t believe you did this,” she said as she scooted to the door. Marc stepped out of the way. “Where’s the phone?”

She glanced around the garage to where a telephone extension had once hung next to the door to the kitchen. “Phone?” he asked.

Her gaze warily shifted to him. “Yes, you know, that little banana-shaped instrument you use to contact others. Where is it?”

He glanced at her, taking in her shoeless feet. “Let’s go inside, why don’t we?”

He placed his hand at the small of her back, silently groaning at the way the silk of her dress complimented the warm hollow. She didn’t budge. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Oh? You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Not by choice.” She moved away from his touch, and he saw the ten-inch tear in the side seam of her dress.

He dropped his voice an octave, doubt briefly tainting his intentions. “What makes you think you have a choice now?”

Wrong thing to say. He knew without any magazine telling him that. No one liked to be boxed in. Especially a woman like Mel.

He watched as her eyes widened slightly. For the first time in the years he’d known her, he spotted fear lurking in her face, in her stiff posture. Never had Melanie Weber been afraid of him. And he didn’t like the thought that she was now, even if it was for her own good. He molded his fingers gently around her upper arm and urged her toward the door.

“Come on. If you’re still hungry, you can raid the fridge while I see to some things.”

She tried to tug her arm from his grip. “I don’t want to raid your fridge, Marc. I’m supposed to be in the middle of a perfectly wonderful dinner with—”

“I know. Your groom-to-be, his parents, your mother and all of Bedford. I hate to tell you this, Mel, but I think your guests have figured out you won’t be back.”

Her gaze fastened on his face, but she kept walking. He steered her through the door, then closed it and turned the key in the dead bolt. He pocketed the key, then let her go, oddly disappointed he no longer had a reason to touch her.

She ran her hand absently over the marble-tiled countertop that had been the deciding factor in his taking the town house, though he had yet to understand her fascination with the piece of rock. She turned toward him, her eyes soft and watchful.

Marc barely heard the loud, curious meow and the clicking of nails against the kitchen floor until Brando wound himself around Mel’s ankles.

“Oh, God, you still have him.” She bent to lift the cat into her arms and cuddled him close. For a moment, a crazy moment, Marc allowed himself to believe Mel was here on her own steam.

“Of course, I kept him,” Marc said quietly, turning away. He tensed, half expecting her to mention all the times he swore he’d toss the scruffy scrap of gray fur from the place after she’d dumped the stray in his lap. But after Mel disappeared from his life… Well, the arguments on how the new town house and the cat wouldn’t get along meant little. And having something of Mel meant a hell of a lot more.

He felt her probing gaze on him. Well, that bothersome habit hadn’t changed, had it? She still looked at him as if she could see to the core of his soul. And, stupidly, he still felt the need to hide it from her. Especially now.

He opened the refrigerator, using the door to block her gaze. “Why don’t you go wait in the living room. This shouldn’t take long.” Peripherally, he saw her finger the empty phone perch on the far kitchen wall. Then the pat of her shoeless feet against the tile told him she had left the room.

MELANIE MADE HER WAY through the all too familiar town house, trying not to notice the changes. Or, more importantly, trying not to register all that hadn’t changed.

She didn’t want to see the paperback she had readily abandoned on the side table when Marc had tackled her on the leather sofa.

She didn’t want to remember how they had a wallpaper glue fight while decorating.

She rested her hand on the dining room table, trying to erase from her mind what had happened the one and only time they had attempted to have a civil meal, only to end up with her right elbow resting in a plate full of mashed potatoes. It had taken three washes to get all the gravy out of her hair.

She closed her eyes. No phones. Not a single one of the three extensions was in sight. She swallowed the panic that had been accumulating in the back of her throat all day. During the drive, she had come to the conclusion that she couldn’t return to the dinner and pretend nothing had happened; that much was obvious. But at least she could tell someone she was okay and that they shouldn’t worry.

“Who would you like to explain this to, Melanie?” she whispered, absently stroking the purring cat in her arms. “I’ve got it. You’d call Craig. He’d be upset, but surely he’d understand. No, no, you’d call Mother and make her worry even more that you’re going to run out on your groom.”

She leaned against the living room wall and closed her eyes, not wanting to be reminded of the past. But everything in this place brought the memories rushing back. Marc hadn’t changed a single thing since their breakup. She came awfully close to indulging in a smile, thinking she could check back in fifty years and everything would probably be the same, only a lot older. His battered leather recliner was still a mile away from the television set, though he’d argued with her for weeks after she had convinced him to move it there. Her short-lived plan had been to arrange his things so that when she moved in, he wouldn’t have to move anything to accommodate her stuff.

It was a stupid plan.

She swallowed, trying to forget all about that time in her life. Staring at spilt milk wasn’t going to get it cleaned up, as her mother was fond of saying.

She thought about Craig and all he offered, comparing him to Marc and the thrilling impermanence of a life spent on the edge. Craig was practical, thoughtful and predictable. Marc was exhilaratingly irresponsible, selfish and boyishly irresistible.

But, ultimately, the absence of a father in her life made Melanie desperately long for her child to know one. And Craig would give her child everything he needed. Her baby deserved that.

Marc… Well, Marc wasn’t interested in being a father.

No matter what happened, she knew she had to marry Craig.

Still, the sadness that filled her was overwhelming in its intensity.

As her gaze slowly focused, it settled on the coffee table. A pile of well-thumbed magazines littered the top. Melanie bent down and let Brando go. The cat scampered toward the kitchen, as she moved toward the table.

Cosmopolitan? Redbook? Working Woman? She slowly leafed through the magazines strewn across the surface between empty beer bottles and a doughnut box.

“Mel, I was thinking—” Marc’s words abruptly stopped.

Before she had a chance to blink, he was across the room, gathering the books. “Never mind those. They, um, were delivered here by mistake.”

Melanie turned over the one she held and found his name on the label. She blinked at him, a curious warmth spreading through her chest.

He jerked the magazine from her grasp.

She decided he had gone mad. He might look like the same hunk who had swept her off her feet two years ago with his charm and devil-may-care take on life. But his actions now… She was afraid they marked him a few croutons short of a full salad. So what if he looked even more in control than he ever had? He had kidnapped her, for God’s sake. Swiped her from her wedding rehearsal dinner not ten yards away from a roomful of guests. Threw her over his shoulder and handcuffed her in the back of his Jeep. And he was reading women’s magazines. That more than anything proved he wasn’t in full charge of his faculties.