InformedConsent (4 page)

“I’m going to miss you.” The look in her cool brown eyes was
absolutely straight. Not flirtatious or teasing. Stating fact.

Okay, time to stop playing dumb. He stepped back and folded
his arms across his chest.

“Hold it right there, young Calloway. This isn’t going any
further. “

“Really? Give me a one good reason.”

“I’ll give you plenty. For one thing, I’m a hardened case
and whether you like it or not, you’re a sheltered innocent, just off to
university—”

“Who’s worked for a year, remember.”

He could see the “sheltered innocent” hadn’t gone down well,
as he’d intended.
Just keep your distance…

“Right. At your dad’s company. And suddenly you’re looking
at me and your hormones are saying, hey, he’s way cute, and manly and all—”

“And so modest too,” she quipped, not appearing the least
dismayed at his candor.

“And I’m forbidden fruit. We both are. Okay, you may not be
a kid, but you
are
the boss’s daughter. And I’m your father’s
apprentice. I’m on probation in more ways than one. I screw this up, I’m throwing
away my last chance.”

Something in her aura sizzled, and not in a good way. “And
messing with me would mess you up?”

“Big time. And you know it.”

“You think I just want to fool around? That I’m seeing a
chance for a quick-and-dirty good time, and I don’t give a shit about your
future?”

He gave her a good hard stare and she returned it in spades.

“How am I supposed to answer a question like that?” he
snapped. “No, I think you’re truly in love and want to make beautiful babies
with me.”

Her hard look dropped the temperature a good few degrees.

“There is a middle ground, Mr. Wonderful. I just want to
tell you I, um, like you. A lot. But in about two hours I’m leaving on a jet
plane and, well, you know how it goes.”

Yeah. Who knew when she’d be back? If ever.

“Travel safe, then.” He half turned back to the workbench.
“And have a nice life.” He picked up his beer and drained it.

“Aw, damn it, Corbett. You’re not fooling me. You’ve known
for weeks I was leaving tonight, and I’m pretty sure you like me just a little
bit. More than a bit. And believe me when I say I’d die before I’d mess you up.
But Daddy’s driving me to the airport in half an hour and I just couldn’t bear
to fly off and leave without telling you that. So I’m just asking, write to me,
will you? Email me. Phone me. ”

“Tara…” Shit. If he said yes, well, why not? Aching for this
fascinating girl—woman—would be a hell of a lot easier with all that distance
between them. Safer, for sure, if it would get her out of his danger zone right
now. “Yeah, okay, I’ll write you.”

“Really?” Her face relaxed into a smile and her face took on
a glow of— joy?

His heart leaped. She really did like him—in a good way. A
warm and promising way. Everything that was male in him stirred and quickened.
Hell, he needed her out of here fast, or all his resolution—

“Just one kiss?” she asked, and her eyes and lips added
their pleas. “A kiss for the road? A kiss to build a dream on?”

“You beguiling little tempter…” He could no more resist her
adorable little mouth, on offer in bewitching innocence, than he could have
resisted that ice-cold beer to ease his parched, sawdust-coated throat.

Just one kiss. What harm could it do?

They gravitated together. He placed his hands on her hips in
awe and wonder and she put hers on his shoulders. The sweetness of her lips on
his and her eagerness for his touch and the hesitant prodding of her tongue
into his mouth all conspired to undo him, as his blood caught fire and his
erection grew and stiffened. He gave up any pretense at noble celibacy and
yanked her hard against him.

She didn’t fight it, melding against him in a nanosecond.
Her tongue hesitated no longer as she explored his mouth, and he couldn’t keep
his hand off her breast, over her top, under it…oh god, the sweet illicit flesh
of her breast, her nipple hard beneath his fingers, the enticing, dangerous
heat of her crotch as she pressed herself against his erection. In seconds he
could be deep inside all her beautiful willing heat—

If he didn’t have some faint remnant of integrity.

Or had a goddamn condom.

He shoved her away, as easily as tearing off his arm.

Her open mouth quivered, her eyes flashed with pain and
rejection.

“Just one kiss,” he reminded her, his voice raw with
desperation. He placed his hands on her shoulders, holding her at arm’s length
and forced himself to lean forward and drop a chaste kiss on her forehead.

“Corbett—” God, the pain in her voice tore right through
him.

“I’ll write.” He shifted her roughly about and shoved her
toward the door. “Now go catch your damn plane.”

She stood in the doorway, all heat and anger and looking so
enticingly disheveled, both physically and emotionally, desire and sexuality
and resentment oozing from every pore.

“Tara, honey? You here?”

Leo
.

Corbett’s erection evaporated and Tara gasped and with a few
deft movements had her hair in place and her anguish tucked safely away.

“In here, Daddy,” she called out, cheerful and innocent. She
swung the door open. “I was saying goodbye to Corbett.”

Leo joined them, genial and unsuspicious. “You better run on
home and get ready to go, sweetie. Your mother’ll have my hide if you miss that
plane.”

Tara nodded and sent Corbett a last look of longing before
running off.

Leo shook his head. “Though I have to say, I wish to god she
would miss it. Won’t be the same without her around.”

“I know what you mean, sir.” He willed the man not to notice
the two beers.

The two of them stood listening as the motorcycle started up
and the sound diminished into the night.

“Knock off for the night, would you, Joe? It’s late, and I
don’t pay you overtime.”

“I just want to get it done.”

“Aw, you’re too much like me.” Leo gave a resigned shake of
his head and left.

Corbett resisted the urge to empty the rest of Tara’s beer
down his pants. Hell, when he was done he’d drive up to Island View Beach and
take a midnight swim.

Once Leo’s car was out of earshot and all was silent in the
workshop, Corbett tried to focus on attaching the cabinet doors. He found his
screwdriver and positioned the first hinge, then paused to listen through the
sound of crickets outside.

Footsteps crunching across the gravel. Christ! It was like
rush hour here tonight.

Tim Jarmin stepped into the workshop. Damn the man.
Everything that Corbett wasn’t. Master carpenter. Self-assured. Leo’s
right-hand man.

And no prison record.

Jarmin’s blond good looks didn’t help to endear him to
Corbett either. Or his easy charm. The charm that disappeared when the two of
them were alone.

“Wasn’t that young Tara in here earlier?”

Oh shit, shit, shit. The fucking open windows.

“Yeah.” He turned resolutely to his work.

“Nice kid.”

“She’s not a kid. She’s off to university.”

“Saying goodbye, was she?”

“Jarmin, do you have some point to make?”

“Oh, just thought I’d offer you a little warning. Man to
man.”

This wasn’t going to be pretty.

“Not interested.”

“I guess she was kind of friendly with you. All sweet and
innocent and asking for a kiss goodbye.”

“Jarmin, fuck off.” He gave up any pretense of work, but
gripped the screwdriver he held, trying to get an equal grip on his temper.

“Just trying to save you some grief, is all, since you
haven’t been here all that long. That Tara, she’s pretty sociable all round.
Likes to flirt—”

“Shut your face right now, Jarmin.” Corbett took what he
hoped was a menacing stance, but Jarmin seemed unmoved.

“Regular little tease, that one. And she’ll open those
willing legs for anything in pants—”

Corbett stood at the side of the Indian Motorcycle and
caressed his right fist, feeling again the sheer pleasure, six years ago, of
connecting first with Jarmin’s gut, then his jaw.

Chapter Three

Tara let long minutes pass, deliberately blanking her mind
to all that had flared between her and Corbett, letting some semblance of
energy re-establish itself in her battered body.

Finally, she raised her head and took stock. Her arms were
all pain from the considerable strain, and her wrists were still bound.

As soon as she twisted out of her bra straps, she flexed her
long-suffering arms and looked about for her clothes.

Her briefs were in shreds. Her shirt was a wreck. But she
forced herself to her feet and yanked on her jeans and shrugged painfully into
her jacket.

Now, where had Corbett got to?

To hell, for all she cared.

From the end of the veranda she caught sight of the lake.
Cool and dark and soothing. She headed down toward the dock, picking her way
carefully over the grass and stones in her bare feet. Commando. The rasping of
her jeans against her genitals wasn’t exactly helping, and riding home again on
the machine might be, well, stimulating.

But hell, she’d two orgasms to his none, so who could
complain?

She stood for a moment on the dock, put Corbett out of her
head and drank in the peacefulness of the clear, darkening sky and still water,
the nearly full moon rising above the mountains beyond the lake.

The water called to her. Invited her to ease her stress—both
physical and emotional.

She dropped her clothes on the dock and plunged into the
moon’s ripples, then surfaced and found the bottom. Immersed up to her nipples,
she gasped to drag air into her shocked lungs.

Oh god! Cold didn’t even begin to describe it.

The mountain water of the lake seized all her skin cells,
particularly between her legs, hardening into a futile defense against the
million-year-old water recently released from its glacial home.

But, oh, oh,
heavenly
to have relief from the searing
heat of Corbett’s desire and determination and anger and plunder. Wonderful to
accept the numbing of her body parts, bruised from her bindings or scraped raw
and painful from his invasions.

The moon was well risen now, glittering across the water,
glowing cold and hard and beautiful in the clear night sky.

Plan—find the rest of her clothes and get on her Scout and
get the hell out of Lavinia Creek Valley.

Sure, and what would she say to Leo?

Sorry, Dad. He wasn’t interested.

Oh yeah. He’d been too damned interested. Interested in
impaling her with his cock and anything else that came to hand. And she’d been
overly interested in being impaled, which meant she could never countenance his
working with her father.

She’d ruined everything.

“Hey, Calloway!”

She spun around to look back at the shore, where, ghostly
white in the moonlight, Corbett stood with a casually amused look on his face.
Not a hint of arrogance.

“Cold?”

“Refreshing,” she called back.

“Can we start again? Talk this over, act like adults?”

The welcome words flew across the water to wrap themselves
around her and warm her.

“Maybe…”

Their words echoed in the hollows of the mountains.

“You must be freezing. Come on out.”

“I can’t. I’m naked.” Even as the words left her lips, she
realized how ludicrous this was.

“Okay, if you insist.” He unbuttoned his shirt and dropped
it from him, then kicked off his shoes.

“I thought we were going to behave like adults.”

He undid his belt. “By my calcs, you’re twenty-five now. I’m
thirty-one. We can be adults. Do grown-up things together. No bondage. No
foreign objects. No more sexual ravaging of a helpless woman, even if it was
consensual.”

Clearly he didn’t care how sound traveled over still water,
nor who was around to hear.

Her broken breathing was now due to more than the bitterly
cold water enveloping her as he dropped his jeans and briefs down to his feet
and kicked them off.

There he was again. Joe Corbett. Big. Hard.

And when she could drag her eyes to his face, that carefree
grin said worlds—universes—to her.

The old Corbett.

He stood on the shore, naked, hands open in appeal. His body
language asking, seeking…what?

“Well?” he called. “May I join you?”

Consent
. He was asking her consent.

“Yes!”

He waded in.

At waist depth he dove under and with a few strong strokes,
surfaced at her side. He hauled her into his arms, up against him, full-frontal
contact. She joined him eagerly, seeking reprieve from the icy water around
her, and finding it in the searing heat of his skin on hers, his chest against
her breasts, the force of his penis crushing against her vulva.

Oh god yes, take me and hold me if only to save me from
death by hypothermia.

Without a word he brought his lips—hard and soft and cold
and hot and wet—against hers, devouring her mouth as she engaged her own lips
and tongue and teeth to give as good as she got.

Now he let go of her mouth and twisted her around to pull
her up against him, one arm protectively across her breasts, the other on her abdomen,
sliding inexorably downwards and between her legs, his fingers gently spreading
her labia apart and she gasped in further shock as the icy water hit her
deeper.

“I don’t know if I can bear this…”

“Sure you can,” he whispered in her ear, his breath hot on
her cheek. His endearingly warm fingertip dragged itself along the center of
her groove, back and forth, pressing harder and deeper with each pass.

“God, woman, you’re hot down there.” Even as he spoke, he
thrust a large, warm finger into her, hot and deep and achingly welcome, and
her whole abdomen seemed to heat up and electrify and warm the water around
her.