"Maggie," he said, softly, "I do want you."
He pushed away, pulling himself from my grasp and bringing me up tight against him. His lips found mine, then began moving, behind my ear, down the side of my neck, his tongue exploring and sending a spasm of delight and desire throughout my body.
"Not here," he whispered.
He straightened and looked at me, his blue eyes burning into mine. And then he smiled. He reached behind me, turned off the shower and grabbed two towels from the rack outside. He wrapped one towel around me, using the other one to dry my hair. The burning in my skin was gone, the pink spots fading. But I was only aware of the heat that coursed through my body. I wanted more. I wanted it right then. Why was he torturing me?
He took his time drying himself off, watching me, teasing me as the towel reached all the body parts I wanted to feel against my skin. He was enjoying himself. He stepped out of the tub and turned back.
"Come here."
I stepped to the edge of the tub and he took me in his arms, picking me up as easily as a child and carrying me to his quilt-covered bed. He pulled the towel away, his eyes moving across my body, just looking. Then he came toward me, moving onto the bed and lying on his side next to me. He stretched out his hand and ran his index finger in a line down the center of my body, igniting it with his touch.
He held me deep inside his arms, his lips whispering reassurances, until he felt me go limp against him and relax. A wave of pleasure and relaxation washed over me and I felt… well, I started to feel sleepy. I yawned and he laughed softly.
"I wondered when that medicine was gonna start slowing you down," he murmured. "Relax, honey, it's all right. I'm right here."
He pulled the thick quilt up around us and pulled me up onto his chest. My head rested on his shoulder, listening to the strong beat of his heart. I lay there wrapped in his arms, fighting sleep until at last I had to give in. The last thing I remember was the feel of his lips as he softly kissed my hair, and the scent of him, warm and comforting in the early evening.
Chapter Twelve
I woke up to the sound of a dresser drawer sliding out. I opened my eyes, letting them adjust to the darkness. Marshall stood across the room, pulling on a black T-shirt and tucking it into the waistband of black and gray camouflage pants. As I watched, he reached into a drawer, drew out a thick equipment belt and strapped it to his waist. Next he pulled out a piece of black leather, with Velcro straps, attached it to his thigh, then jammed an ugly black gun down into the holster.
"Marshall?"
He turned, surprised by the sound of my voice. "Hey, I was going to let you sleep."
"What are you doing? Why are you dressed like that?" In the darkened room, he seemed menacing and not at all like the man who'd taken me into his bed.
He looked down at his outfit, as if suddenly aware of how he must have appeared to me.
"I've got a call-out," he said. "I have to leave. I thought you'd probably sleep through it or I would've tried to wake you up."
I sat up in bed, pulling the quilt up over my breasts. "What's a call-out?"
Marshall sat down on the side of the bed next to me and began pulling on heavy black combat boots.
"I'm part of the Special Response Team," he said. "It's a SWAT team. We get called in if there's trouble, the kind of trouble a normal patrol couldn't handle. If I get paged, I have to go."
He stood up, reached under the bed, and pulled out a black duffel bag. He unzipped it, moved some things aside, then pulled out a rifle case and unzipped that. The gun he took from that case was a nasty-looking weapon that he seemed to be examining.
"I don't know when I'll be back," he said. His face was impassive and his tone removed. He zipped the gun back into its case, closed the bag, and stood looking down at me. "I'll call you later."
I'll call you later? That was that? Now that I was awake I wasn't trusted to wait for him in Wanda's sanctuary? Was that how things went with him?
I tossed back my head, sat straight up, and glared at him in the darkness. "That's all right," I said, my tone every bit as cool as his. "I need to get home and see about Sheila anyway."
In the darkened room the clock on his bedside table glowed a red 8:45. Sheila was working at the bagel shop. My whereabouts were probably not too high on her list. She was at the age where she never expected anything to go wrong, and everything to always turn out right.
"Okay," he said, moving away from the bed, "I've gotta go. They're waiting for me. Just close up when you leave, the door'll lock behind you."
Almost as an afterthought, he crossed the room and leaned down to brush my lips lightly. "I'll call you," he said.
Then he was gone, clunking down the steps, walking through the empty house and out the back door. As I listened I heard the sound of his car starting up, and then the crunch of gravel as he left me. That was that. Almost no sign that we'd shared anything at all.
I pushed the quilt aside, stepped out onto the cold wooden floor, and began looking for my clothes. As I gathered them up, the phone on the bedside table rang. I stopped, staring at it. The tape in his answering machine clicked on, playing his message, then preparing to record. After the beep, a familiar female voice began to speak.
"Marsh," Tracy the door buster said softly, "did you leave yet? I'll try and get you on your cell. I'm just going to meet you over there," she said. "Don't worry about coming to get the van, I've got it."
I could've cried. Marshall Weathers wasn't going to a call-out. He was keeping a date with Tracy. Dressing up like a commando was probably just his way of distracting me, giving me a good excuse for why he had to leave. After all, he couldn't have known his afternoon would turn out like it had.
Now, wait a minute, girl, maybe she's on the team and they're responding together, I thought. But just as quickly, I tossed the idea aside. A green rookie on a SWAT team? I couldn't see it. No, she was meeting him and they were taking her van somewhere. Probably to a drive-in movie, that looked like his speed. Yep, he'd be out on a date with Tracy, the girl voted most unlikely to fall asleep when he touched her.
"I don't believe this," I muttered to myself. "What is it with me? Do I have a sign over my head that says sucker?" Mama used to talk about women like me, women who attracted all the wrong men. She'd say we had "bad picker" genes. But I'd thought Marshall was different.
I sat back down on the bed and pulled on my still-damp jeans, looking around the empty room. I thought he would be the one, the final one to break through every other bad experience I'd ever had. Instead, I'd overlooked my family and put my heart out on the line with disastrous results. Just like I'd done with Vernell, and Digger Bailey before him.
My sweater was a total loss. Instead I took the white dress shirt he'd worn and left lying on the bathroom floor along with the rest of his clothes. It smelled like him, like leather and his cologne. I had no one to blame but myself. Marshall Weathers was hurt and running like hell. He'd as much as told me so, and I'd ignored it. I'd seen right past the shield, right on down into his heart, and I knew he needed someone like me. Too bad he didn't know that. Too bad he thought he needed a hotcake like Tracy.
"Nothin' for it, girl," I said aloud. "Get on with your life." No sense to throw good love after bad. That's when I remembered Vernell. Here I was moping around and Vernell could be in danger or worse. I shook myself, walked down the steps, out of Marshall's house and across the backyard to my car.