They were in his bedroom. He made a dash for his duffel. Fumbled around inside it. She could have sworn his hands were shaking, but she was pulling her Bears T-shirt over her head, and that blocked her view. She stood, bare-breasted, in only her pajama bottoms, as he peeled out of his clothes, and, oh, but he was a glorious sight to behold. Fierce muscle and supple tendons, tanned skin and pale scars. She wanted to bite every one of them, but she needed to feel anonymous, and she flipped off the overhead light, sealing them in the darkness.

She heard the last of his clothes disappear, and the next thing she knew she was flat on the bed, still in her pajama bottoms, pressed underneath his body. His legs trapped her own as he turned his single-minded focus on her breasts.

She thrashed beneath the pull of his fingers, the lash of his tongue. She shoved him in the chest hard enough to push him off balance and wedge out from under him so she could climb on top. His washboard abs gave him more than enough muscle to angle up his torso, bring his mouth to her breasts, and continue his black magic. She threw back her head and rode him. He groaned, and she was on her back again, with those big hands yanking off her pajama bottoms.

Once again, his mouth crushed hers, and she arched to meet him. In the thick darkness, he couldn’t see, but he could feel, and he did.

It hurt a little as he opened her with his fingers, but only for a moment, and then it didn’t hurt at all… and she was moving against his hand, mind shut down, crazed, only a body-swimming, surging, no breath-falling apart.

He gave her a moment. Reached for her again. Tortured her. She still hadn’t touched him. Not the way she wanted to.

She hated the dark. Needed to see. He twisted. Reached for something. The condom.

She had to touch him. Muscle and skin. She closed her hand around him.

He gave a hoarse cry. And it was over.

Before it had even begun.

11

Coop sprang from the bed. He couldn’t believe what had happened. It was a nightmare. Worse than a nightmare. Total humiliation. A sexual apocalypse.

He stalked out of the bedroom and across the hallway. The last time he’d gone off like that, he’d been sixteen. And of all the women he had to relapse with… Piper Dove!

He closed himself in the bathroom. The shared bathroom. Thank God it wasn’t shared now, because he had to be alone.

The foghorn sounded its mournful wail. He flipped on the light, but he couldn’t look at himself. Staying at this place had been a terrible idea.

The bathroom was as old-fashioned as everything else, with a radiator under the window and a claw-foot tub surrounded by a white shower curtain. He turned on the water in the tub and somehow maneuvered himself inside. The shower nozzle barely came to his chest, and the curtain kept sticking to him until he felt like he was being attacked by a monster squid.

“You’re getting water everywhere,” said a grouchy voice from the other side of the curtain.

“Get out of here!”

“I have to pee. Don’t look.”

“Like I’d want to.”

The toilet flushed, and scalding water cascaded down his chest. He jumped back and bumped into the end of the tub. The wet curtain wrapped its tentacles tighter around him. He heard a snort from the other side.

This was what happened when you abandoned your game plan. You got beat. And that’s what she’d done. She’d beat him at his own game.

The shower had just returned to its normal temperature when she turned on the sink, and another blast of scalding water assaulted him. Once again, he jumped back.

Premature ejaculation. Just thinking the words made him wince. He was an endurance athlete. The marathon man. The distance swimmer. Stamina was a point of pride with him. She’d messed up his whole life, disrupted everything. But he’d never expected her to disrupt this.

He flipped the shower water to cold. Let the icy blast force his brain to work again. If he started thinking like a loser, he’d turn into one, and nobody bested Cooper Graham. He had to come up with a logical reason for what had happened, something to save face. Maybe he’d tell her he had a medical problem. An encroaching case of the flu. An old injury acting up. Or he could be a dickwad and blame her. Say she’d been-what?-too damn sexy? This was no time for honesty.

He grabbed a towel. One thing was certain. He had to face her. Maybe he could use grief as an excuse. That might work. He’d tell her he’d just gotten the news that his grandfather had died. She had no way of knowing that mean son of a bitch had died twenty years ago. The perfect excuse.

She wasn’t in his bedroom, and her own door was shut. He pulled on his jeans and knocked. When she didn’t respond, he tried the knob, but it was locked.

He was overcome with grief. Definitely the way to go. The loss of his beloved grandfather. “Open up!”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said from the other side. “It can happen to anybody.”

She was gracious in victory. Oh, so fucking gracious. If women like her were let loose to rule the world, men would become obsolete. “I’m not worried,” he heard himself say. “It happens all the time.”

Where the hell had that come from?

“Seriously?” she said. “To you?”

He plunged on. “Hell, yes.” So much for his dead grandfather.

She threw open the door, eyes blazing. “And you’re proud of it?”

“I don’t think much about it one way or the other.”

Her legs were bare, but she’d pulled her detestable Bears T-shirt back on. “You’re a total asshat. You know that, right?”

He propped himself against the doorjamb and fulfilled her low expectations. “The thing you’ve got to remember, Sherlock, is-when you’re me, life is basically a female smorgasbord. I can do what I want, when I want.”

Her lips were still puffy from his kisses, and her blueberry Pop-Tart eyes smoldered with outrage. “Are you for real, or are you a comic book character I made up in my nightmares?”

He’d unwittingly stumbled onto the perfect defense, and he went with it. “Most women don’t mind, and if they do…” He shrugged.

She slammed a hand on her hip. “There are more damselfish in the sea? Is that the way it is?”

He yawned and stretched. “Yeah, I should probably be ashamed of myself.”

“But you’re not?”

“All they have to do is say no.”

“Which they never do.”

“Who understands women?”

She was too smart for his own good, and her outrage had begun to shift into something that was beginning to look like amusement. He didn’t like that at all, so he called an audible. “Refresh my memory, Sherlock. Did I miss hearing you say no?”

She set her jaw. “You did not hear me say no. I already told you I’ve been known to use men.”

“You also told me you were off them.”

“But I didn’t say for how long.” Just before she shut the door in his face, she fired her final salvo. “Good night, Rocket Man.”


***

Piper woke to the sound of a halyard slapping the metal flagpole outside her window. During the night, a deep sense of disappointment had burrowed inside her, and she did her best to shake it off. His failure to execute might have been humiliating for him, but it was a gift to her. Things had gone far enough-much too far-without that final intimacy.

What had she been thinking? She hadn’t been thinking. That was the problem. Something about Cooper Graham made her disengage her brain. One thing was blindingly clear: despite their banter, despite the attraction he undeniably held for her, she wasn’t going down that path with him again, no matter how good it had been. Almost fantastic. The hard tension of his body under her palms. Those skillful hands that knew just where to go. She shivered.

They barely spoke over a breakfast of strawberry muffins and a delicious ham and cheese frittata she could only pick at. Piper dreaded the hours she’d be locked in the car alone with him, and as they set off from Two Harbors, she was as tightly wound as an ignition coil.

Instead of berating herself about what had happened, she should be happy that she’d made the great Cooper Graham lose control. But she didn’t feel happy. She could only hope he wouldn’t bring up last night because if he did, she’d have to play all her smart-ass cards, and she wasn’t sure how many she had left.

They’d barely cleared the iron ore docks before he released a diabolical chuckle. “Face it, Sherlock. You’re easy pickin’s. All I have to do is take off my shirt, and you’re pretty much a lost cause.”

And here they went again. Off to the wisecrack races.

“That’s true,” she said. “Male chests have always been my weakness. Seriously, Coop, if you get any more muscular, you’ll be scratching your armpits and wolfing down bananas.”

“You let me worry about that while you figure out how you’re going to help me with my little problem.”

“Excellent idea. Shut up for the next four hundred miles so I can ponder it.”

Another chuckle, which was fine with her, as long as they didn’t talk.


***

He should have tossed her right back on the bed and screwed her brains out until she begged him to get to the finish line. Instead, he’d been too mortified to think straight, and he’d dueled with her. Winning was in his blood, and he hated feeling like a loser. Hated even more knowing she had to be seeing him that way. He couldn’t pull off to the side of the road and throw her in the backseat like he wanted, but the silence in the car was getting to him. Somehow he had to show her he was still the quarterback of their team.

“I’ve been thinking about our conversation last night,” he said, “and you might have a point.”

“I usually do.”

She’d loosened her seat belt enough to tuck a leg under her. If she’d been wearing shorts instead of jeans, he’d have had a clear view of the inside of her thigh. A thigh, he now knew, that was firm, smooth, and fine. He hurried on. “What if I’m missing out by not taking a little more time in the sack with my lady friends?”

She pulled a face. “It’s so sad. All those traumatized women believing your problem is their fault. I should open a counseling office.”

He would not laugh. “Yep. The more I think about it, the more I think you’re right. I might have a sex problem.”

“Fortunately, there are a lot of books on the subject.”

“Hell, I’m not much of a reader. Too many words to sound out.”

“Interesting. I’ve found all kinds of books in the apartment.”

“Cleaning people musta left ’em.” He kept dishing out the bull, exactly the way it had to be between them. “Since you’re the one who pointed out my problem, it’s only fair that you help me work through it. Only as a sex partner, you understand. This has nothing to do with our professional relationship.”

She glanced over at him, all full of fake regret. “Don’t take this wrong, but I’ve kind of lost interest.”

No way a woman who’d responded the way she had last night wasn’t still interested, but he only nodded. “I understand.”


***

They were quiet for a while. To relieve the tension, Piper called Jada to find out how her killing spree was progressing. Very well, as it turned out. She’d offed five more of her classmates. Eventually, they made a stop for fast food, and Piper took over the driving. By the time they reached the Illinois border, the effort to appear relaxed had left her shoulders screaming. She struggled to find a topic of conversation that would take them through the last leg of this unending trip. “I happen to know you’re a real softy. And I mean that in a nonsexual way. Although…”

He choked on his Coke.

She smiled to herself. “These hospital visits you make to Lurie…”

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

He knew, all right. Even though he managed to sneak in and out of Lurie Children’s Hospital without attracting the attention of the press, she’d uncovered the interesting fact that he spent a lot of time visiting sick children. “I can’t picture you around kids.” Another lie. From what she’d seen, he was as relaxed with children as he was around beautiful women. “You can tell me. It’s the hot nurses, right?”

“Now you’re embarrassin’ me.”

“But there’s one mystery I can’t figure out. Not even with my amazing detecting skills.”

“Shocker.”

“When I was following you, you’d sometimes hang out on the mean streets with various scurvy-looking characters. What’s that about?”

He polished off his Coke. “Shootin’ the bull, that’s all.”

“I don’t believe you. Tell me. I’m like a priest.”

“You’re not anything like a priest. You’re-”