Touch Of The White Tiger. Julie Beard

through my spiked, blond hair, using the brass buzzer as a mirror. Normally, I didn’t care what anybody thought about my looks, but this was different. I was here to further pursue my relationship with Detective Marco. That is if he wanted to.

      “He-he-he,” came a whiskey-rotted voice from a weaving figure to my right. I made the mistake of inhaling just as the toxic cloud reached my nose.

      I turned and found a methop junkie, drooling on his ragged shirt, grinning at my chest. He obviously hadn’t been to a dentist since the last millennium celebration, and he reeked of Eau de Middle Ages. That’s what happened when you cared more about your next hit of methamphetamines and opium than you cared about taking your next breath.

      “What are you looking at?” I pressed the buzzer more forcefully.

      “You, baby. Are those tits for real?”

      I glanced down at my tight, leather V-necked vest. This was as close to cleavage as I ever got, and it wasn’t much. If this creep thought my breasts were surgically endowed, he needed more than a long bath. “They’re real and they’re off-limits, so get lost.”

      “Let me give those melons a squeeze,” he said without sparing my face a glance. When he reached out with both hands, I felt like a fruit stand at a green grocers. “Nice an’ ripe, I’ll bet. How much do you charge, baby?”

      “You don’t want to do this,” I said calmly. “Trust me.”

      But he was too doped up or dumb to listen. Hunched over, arms extended, he zeroed in on his targets with surprising precision, but before he could make contact, I snapped my arm out in a quick backhand punch to his jaw. He went down just as the door opened.

      “Hey!” the junkie protested, rubbing his chin. “That hurt like hell.”

      Marco looked at me in surprise, then frowned at the junkie sprawled on the sidewalk. “What happened?”

      “Sticker shock,” I replied. “Don’t worry. He’ll survive. I went out of my way to avoid his windpipe.”

      “Very thoughtful,” Marco said sarcastically. Our eyes locked and sparks flew. He grinned slowly. “He had no clue what he was up against, did he?”

      I smiled back. “They never do.”

      “Come on in. I was just about to take a break.”

      “From what?” I stepped inside a long, restored loft with shiny blond wood floors and an intriguing maze of pipes looming from the ceiling high above. I breathed in the foreign, pungent odor of turpentine and paint, and quickly surveyed brick wall after wall adorned with large canvasses covered in brilliant hues, some arrayed in geometric impressions and some realistically drawn.

      My God, I thought, is Marco also a painter?

      I whirled around to gaze at him in frank wonder and realized he wore no shirt. How I had missed that was beyond me. Paint-spattered, threadbare jeans slouched at his jutting hip bones. A line of dark, silky hair intersected his naval and spread up his flat belly, fanning upward and outward over the mounds of olive skin and muscle that defined his breast bone. Red paint smeared over an inch of his collarbone. My gaze wandered up to his ruggedly handsome face.

      With a square, shadowed jaw, a seductive, lush mouth and brown eyes that could undress you in seconds flat, he made my mouth water. It was amazing. I was right to come here. You can’t fight fate.

      Wait a minute! Be cool, Angel, I told myself. Be cool. Then I shrugged and said, “So. You wanna make love?”

      Oh, God, what did I say? Could I turn and run? No, not cool. Could I take it back? Impossible. Nothing left to do but pretend I had planned it. So I crossed my arms, shifted weight, jutting my right hip in a cocky pose. I raised one brow challengingly and waited for what seemed like the most agonizing and longest minute of my life to pass.

      Marco simply stared at me as if he, too, couldn’t believe I’d been so bold, so blunt. So stupid. Then he moved toward me, his bare feet padding on the floor amid the frayed hems of his jeans, and before I knew it, he’d scooped me up off my feet, both of his deceptively strong arms wrapped around my waist.

      I steadied myself, putting my hands on his bare shoulders. His muscles seemed to melt beneath my fingers. I found myself kneading them. Just touching this man made me feel like I was running a fever.

      Except for the one time we’d made love, I’d only seen him in suits and long sleeves. I’d thought of him as a studly but aging cop. Now he seemed like a not-so-middle-aged wild thing, more the unpredictable assassin I imagined him to be after his confession about his Mob ties. That’s who I saw, anyway, when I caught my breath and looked down into his gorgeous upturned face. Pheromones shot out from him like the grand finale of a Fourth of July celebration. He smelled musky and masculine with a hint of sweat from hard work—my favorite cologne.

      “Did you just ask me if I want to make love?” His husky voice vibrated in his chest. His gaze skewered me with a “You’d better not be joking” look.

      I spread my hands over his day-old beard and up through his thick, natural dark curls of hair. “Yes.”

      “Are you sure?”

      A touch of gray distinguished his temples, and his long-lashed, bedroom eyes ended with a trace of crow’s-feet, the legacy of too many deep smiles in the sun. He was all man, and he was mine. And he was just mature enough to make a relationship dangerous. I craved opening up to him, and dreaded it at the same time. If he really knew me—and he was smart enough to do that in time—would he still want me?

      “Yes.” A simple reply. The last nail in the coffin.

      He roughly grabbed my nape and pulled my lips to his. They were briefly tender, like silk, but soon parted and we melded in a mind-blowing French kiss. I wrapped my legs around his waist, feeling like I’d fallen into the eye of a hurricane. Everything around me was chaos. But something in me knew this was where I was supposed to be, and I grew calm, intent on consuming him.

      I hadn’t realized he was walking, but we dropped together onto a mattress laying on a low platform in the back of the loft. We scrambled together, still kissing, as we tugged off our clothes. Jeans and leather gave way to the rub of taut muscles and slick skin. I was like a champagne cork ready to pop and nearly did when he stretched out on top of me, his long, strong legs entwining with mine.

      I was ready. He was ready. Then I made the mistake of talking. Pulling from his lips, I said, “I guess your answer is yes.”

      It was a joke. He smiled. But the ironic gleam in his eyes turned cloudy. He didn’t move, but I could almost see his emotional retreat, like one of those fancy camera moves in old-time horror flicks, when the dolly holding the camera retreats fast while the lens zooms in.

      His interest slackened in the most obvious place. I gripped his shoulders, pulling him closer. No, I wanted to say, don’t stop now. But I wouldn’t beg.

      He drew up and sank on his knees, straddling me. He put his hands on his bare hips and tugged his lips into a rueful smile. “Now that you mention it, Baker, the answer is no. I don’t want to make love.”

      I was speechless. “I don’t…understand.”

      He rose from his knees to a stand in one graceful swoop, then started pulling on his jeans. “I told myself that when the time came I would say no. But I let my desire get the better of me.”

      I sat up, crossing my arms over my bare breasts. “Why? Am I so appalling to you?”

      “Obviously not,” he said wryly as he zipped his pants. He raked both hands through his hair, looking older than he had a few minutes ago. “Get dressed. I’ll make some coffee.”

      Reluctantly, I dressed, my humiliation slowly turning to anger. By the time I found his galley kitchen, which was ultrahigh-tech and gleaming with silver, I was ready for a fight.

      “You’ve got a lot of nerve,” I declared. He tried to hand me a cup of java. I crossed my