either. With her hair breeze-blown, that nose and her cheeks showing signs of sunburn, her hand in his as she walked backward, towing him uphill to the next exhibit, he gave up listening to sense or conscience. One minute he was walking along, the next he yanked on her hand, tumbling her against his chest to kiss her silly. The meerkat sentinels watched with wide-eyed interest from their enclosure, those nosy, furry voyeurs, but he didn't care.
As winter dark descended, they left the zoo. He fed her, ushering her into a place he remembered from some long ago date, a narrow dark bistro that smelled like rosemary and apples. Once seated, she shivered a little in the air-conditioning, and beneath the table he captured her bare legs between his jeaned ones. She stilled, then her gaze flew to his and he knew she understood where she'd be spending the night.
They ate their dinner like that, his legs clasping hers, and it might as well have been double desserts or, for that matter, dirt. He didn't taste anything. They said little more.
After paying the bill, he steered them back across the bridge to Coronado. As the concrete roadway lowered them onto the island, Hannah straightened in her seat. "Those photographers..."
"Have most likely gone back to Hollywood. I don't think Dez and I are much of a draw after all this time, so I assume some other poor celebrity schmuck was sighted in the area and they were hoping to get a twofer. Believe it or not, they pay employees at the best hotels and restaurants in town to rat out the customers."
That was the extent of the conversation until he pulled into the single car garage at his place. As the automatic door lowered, he looked over at her in the dim light. Maybe she'd thought better of all this.
Maybe she'd say no.
Hannah licked her lips. Those red lips. Juicy now. Wet like her mouth, wet like he wanted to make her between her legs so it would be an easy, smooth slide inside. He'd slip right into her heat, her need, her soul.
Oh, hell. Now he hoped to God she wouldn't say no.
"Please, Tanner. Please."
Then it was he who hesitated. For more than eleven months he'd been waiting for his life to restart...For more than eleven months he'd thought abstinence from the job he'd loved and from the pleasures of his body would dissolve the guilt he felt about the death of Ayesha Spencer, the agent who had died while he was babysitting the poor little rich girl in the ballroom.
He cupped Hannah's warm cheek in his palm. "I'm not sure I deserve this," he admitted. There'd been some hope inside him all these months that there would be an electrifying moment of absolution, but if he took Hannah to bed, then there would be no forgiveness for him, would there? He'd be taking his plea sure without finding his pardon first.
Without completing his penance.
"I know I deserve this," she said. "So you let me worry about you."
And of course, it was so much easier to dismiss the larger, philosophical issues when a man had those words echoing in his head. Not to mention the whole wild underwear thing to think about. And a math problem, too: 365 times four years minus two orgasms sat right there in his very own front seat. There was a whole lotta lovin' stored up from the top of Hannah's silky dark head to the bottom of her slim, female toes.
Three hundred sixty-five times four years minus two that were all his.
Yeah, he was going to focus on that and forget all the rest.
She had her own agenda, though. While he would have been perfectly content to walk to his bedroom like a half-civilized sex hound, she barely waited for the door from the garage to the kitchen to shut behind them before she pushed his back against the wood and climbed him like one of the monkeys they'd seen at the zoo.
A model-long leg wound around his hip. Her arms twined his neck and pulled down his head so she could kiss him as if he was the treat she'd given up for Lent. He went down for the count, hitting the proverbial mat as lust punched him in the gut and fanned outward in waves of heat.
Already his balls were tightening, pulling upward, getting everything primed for the big event.
Her hips pressed closer to his, her mound pressing against his raging-hard dick,