~ Love At Your Own Risk ~

by

Blair Bancroft

Vicki stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. Surely she couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t, look that bad. She rolled out a long swath of toilet tissue, blew her nose with vigor. Wiped at her cheeks. Puffy eyes, a nose that rivaled Rudolph. Hair that would have made Medusa recoil in horror. Even if she wanted to--which of course she didn’t--she couldn’t go upstairs to supper.

She’d just stay right here and starve.

There was movement in the mirror. Horrified, Vicki stared at the image of John Paolillo standing in the middle of the small room behind her.

He’d come for her.

Oh, dear God, she couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t let him see her like this.

Vicki hung her head and stood still. He was directly behind her, filling the tiny bathroom. Overwhelming her senses. She stopped breathing.

“Vic, I’m sorry,” John rumbled. “I was running scared. So damned afraid of getting hurt I turned my back on the best thing to come into my life in years. I was wrong. I’d like... I was hoping you’d be willing to explore what’s going on between us. Vic...?”

He didn’t touch her. Just stood there, inches away, blotting out the world. Vicki swayed, gasped for breath. John’s arms shot out to steady her. Stayed to enfold her from behind, his chin coming to rest on the top of her head. They stood that way for a long time, bodies not quite meshed, each making one last effort to find an excuse to break away. Each failing.

“Is it okay?”

John’s baritone was so husky Vicki barely recognized it. Or was that because the world had gone hazy around her?

“Am I forgiven?”

Vicki straightened her shoulders, opened her eyes. There they were in the bathroom mirror; she, bedraggled with red-rimmed eyes, John towering above her. The intimidating detective turned supplicant. She didn’t think his mood would last for long. Now was definitely the time for her to play cool, calm, and collected, no matter what was going on inside. Truth to tell, she was numb. Gratified, but numb. She’d taken one too many blows lately. If John cared, great. If he didn’t, so what?

“How can I blame you,” Vicki managed without a quiver, “when I’m so confused myself?”

They stared at each other in the mirror. Vicki thought John looked as if he might switch to interrogator mode at any moment. Loverly was not a word that fit his agenda. Admittedly, his hair looked like he’d tried to pull it out by the roots, but, otherwise, he was immaculate. Ruggedly gorgeous. Cold as an ice storm. What would it take to make him look haggard, Vicki wondered with an inward sigh.

“What about the guy in Boston?” he inquired through thin lips, the movement of his chin barely rippling her hair.

Low blow. Vicki was not thrilled to discover she’d been right about John’s fall into interrogator mode.

“It’s not going to happen,” Vicki told him. “We’re over.” And it probably meant her job as well. Which wasn’t as horrifying as it had seemed four days ago when she’d run to the Cape as if the devil were on her heels.

“Have you told him?”

“I tried.” Or had she put him off? Evaded the issue? As clever attorneys did when they weren’t quite ready to burn their bridges.

“Okay, so what about you?” John persisted. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Just not about losing her job. But Lowell? Oh, yes, she was nearly sure when she left Boston. And then she’d been overcome by a deep wave of astonished conviction, stemming from the moment John Paolillo, gun in hand, had excited considerably more than her sense of fear.

“And what about you?” Vicki challenged. “I... I don’t want to be a substitute... for a ghost.” She shouldn’t have said that. She really shouldn’t. No matter how much it needed to be said.

Somehow she found herself turned around, her face pressed into John’s chest, her cheek being caressed by the faded blue-gray of his much-washed chambray shirt. “Some ghosts don’t go away,” he told her, “but the sensible ones back off and let people get on with their lives. I’ve known that for quite a while now but was just too wrapped up in the job to admit it. Believe me, Vic, I know where I am and what I’m doing. And I know damn well who I’m doing it with.” The low husky growl of his last words was muffled as he placed a soft kiss on the side of her forehead.

She was holding her breath again. Vicki let it out in a whoosh. “But we’re not doing anything,” she pointed out, deliberately provocative.

This time they melted together, like butter and chocolate in a simmering pan. Leaning into each other, they clung together as if to a last anchor in a tempestuous sea. “Oh, God, Vic, I need you,” John groaned. “Are you sure? Absolutely sure?”

“Look, detective, if you don’t kiss me, I think I’m going to scream.”

“I think I’d like that,” John murmured, inching his hands down toward the firm mounds of her derrière. “I’d love to hear Miss Icy Bostonian lose it,” he breathed in her ear.

Sensation flared in Vicki’s innermost parts. Pure passion she had kept ruthlessly tamped down her entire adult life. “You, too!” she shot back while she could still think.

“Definitely me, too.” He’d reached that conclusion while frying potatoes and onions.

The bathroom was too damn small for him to sweep her up in his arms, but John had a lot of experience propelling people where he wanted them to go. They were out the door and standing beside Vicki’s bed before either of them had time to form the thought. He wanted her so bad he thought he’d die of it. He could see the headlines: Detective John Paolillo dead on Cape Cod. Would she weep for him? Or figure him for the idiot he was? Too celibate, too horny. Too fast on the trigger.

John bit his lip and commanded his heart rate to slow down, his most eager body part to stop acting like a pointer at a pheasant hunt. Slow and tender, that’s what Vicki deserved. He wasn’t going to attack her like some sex-starved crazy. Even if he was.

Vicki wished she could understand the Time Out. No matter what John said, was he still struggling with ghosts? She could make the first move, of course... but she wanted him to be absolutely certain he was ready for another woman in his life. Because they both knew this was more than a casual affair.

Didn’t they?

“Look at me, Vicki.”

The face that looked down at her was serious, almost grim, fires--if there were any--banked behind shards of ice. She was wrong about what was troubling him.

“I want you to see me, Vic. Me. The aging cop who got his degree from UConn and will be damn lucky to make Chief of Police. Not the hotshot Ivy League lawyer from Boston who’ll probably make it all the way to governor or Senator or President. This is me, John Paolillo. What you see is what you get.”

Men. Vicki wound both arms around his neck, tried to force the granite statue to bend forward. “Shut up and kiss me, John.”

No reaction but a slight stiffening of his rock hard resistance.

Vicki dropped her arms, started to pull back. Until John’s hands tightened and she found herself fixed in place, immovable, six inches from his chest. The sudden rush of air between them was dank and cold. And lonely. She could still feel the indentation where his erection had dug into her stomach. “Excuses, John,” she hissed. “It’s you who’s not sure. You’re just trying to blame it on me. Take a good look. Be sure you know what you’re getting into. We lawyers are a tricky bunch. I’m probably Ellie’s opposite in every way there is. Are you ready for that? Can you take it, detective?”

Hot tears of frustration pricked her eyelids. He was too big to throw out, planted there by her bed as if he’d never move. Resisting commitment as if he were required to sell his soul. The only thing Vicki wanted now was for him to go away. Leave her to cry her eyes out. To wallow in this fiasco which was undoubtedly her punishment for running away from Lowell.

Rejected. She hung her head.

“Yeah, I know who you are. And, yeah, I can take it.” The voice was a harsh rasp. The room had gone dim. Vicki wasn’t sure if it was dusk or just the failing of her senses. There was a rushing in her ears, and then she was flat on her back on the bed with John beside her, nibbling at her ear. “All day and all night,” he added, hot breath melting what little remained of her common sense.

She’d known passion, desire, even a healthy dose of lust. Or so she thought. But nothing had prepared her for the overwhelming surge of need that gripped every inch of her. Her skin, hypersensitive, cried out for the feel of him while her insides went up in flames. She needed to be loved. Needed to give love. Needed to touch and be touched. Her body was screaming now, now, now!