Public Secrets

shudders had stopped, he was driving her up again. She wanted to scream out his name, but could only whisper it as her hands slid over his damp skin.
“Please.” Her breath was sobbing out now. Sensation after sensation poured into her body until it was a mass of fevered pleasure. Yet it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. “I want …” She cried out again, flinging out a hand and sending something crashing.
“Tell me.” He was crazed to hear it. The pressure had built to a pitch he’d never experienced. Yet he held back. “Look at me, and tell me.”
She opened her eyes. His face was all she could see, and in his eyes, she saw herself. “I want you.” Reaching up, she dragged his mouth to hers. She cried out again when he filled her.

S HE SLEPT FOR an hour, exhausted, across his bed. He’d sat beside her for a long time, stroking her hair and wondering how to keep her in his life. Even being in love with her all that time hadn’t prepared him for what it would be like to be her lover. He’d imagined it. Countless times. But whenever he had, he’d had only women as comparisons.
There was no one like Emma.
If he had to beg, he’d beg. If he had to fight, he’d fight. But he wasn’t going to lose her again.
When she woke, he was gone. She lay, stomach down, across the bed, trying to adjust her mind to what had happened to her body. It seemed impossible that she had felt all those things, done all those things, without a moment of regret or hesitation. Even hours before, she had been certain she would never want to be touched again. And yet, perhaps today was the first time she truly had been touched. Smiling, she rolled over and thought idly about getting dressed and finding him.
Then she saw his gun. It was still holstered, the strap slung across the back of a chair a few feet from the bed. She had used a gun, Emma remembered. Though much of that last horror with Drew came only in vague patches, she could clearly see those final moments. She could remember how it had felt to wrap her hands around the gun, to pull the trigger. To kill.
To know she was capable of that made her stomach coil into knots. She had loved and married and killed in a little less than two years. Now, she had the rest of her life to wonder how she could have done any one of the three.
When the bedroom door swung open, she groped automatically for the sheet.
“Good. You’re up.” Michael strolled in carrying a bucket of chicken and a six-pack of Cokes. “I thought you might get hungry”
He’d pulled an LAPD T-shirt on with his jeans. But he was still barefoot. To Emma he looked more like a beachcomber than a man who would fire a gun. Before she could answer, he leaned down and kissed her in a way that had her mind clouding again.
“Figured we could have a picnic.”
“A picnic,” she echoed. “Where?”

“Right here.” He dropped the bucket of chicken on the bed. “That way the neighbors won’t be shocked because you’re naked.”
She laughed. “I could get dressed.”
He sat on the bed across from her and took a long look. “I really wish you wouldn’t.” Grinning, he twisted the top off a Coke. “Want some music?” He leaned over and punched a button on his clock radio. Linda Ronstadt soared over “Blue Bayou.” Getting down to business, he peeled the top off the bucket and dug in. “Aren’t you hungry?”
The scent of the chicken was glorious. Emma watched him take a bite and dragged a hand through her tousled hair. “I can’t eat naked.”
“Sure you can.” He held out the drumstick. She shifted, took a bite, then laughed again.
“Really, I can’t.”
Michael dropped the chicken back in the bucket, then dragged his shirt off. He pulled it over her head. “Better?”
Emma worked her arms through. “Lots.” The shirt smelled of him. It amazed her that it made her every bit as hungry as the chicken did. “I’ve never had a picnic in bed before.”
“Same principle as a blanket on the beach. We eat, listen to music, and then I make love with you. This way we avoid the sand.”
She took the bottle he offered and drank to ease a dry throat. “I don’t know how all this happened.”
“That’s okay. I’ll be glad to run through it all again for you.”
“Was it—” She broke off, annoyed with herself.
“You weren’t going to ask if it was good for me, were you?”
“No.” He was grinning at her. “Sort of.” She took another bite of chicken. “Never mind.”
Delighted with