Karen Rose - Count to Ten

She tried to roll over, but he held her firmly in place.

"No." He pulled her leg back over his hip. "Let me. Let me." She yielded completely, moaning when he pushed into her. "Let me, Mia."

She grabbed him around his neck as she worked her hips like pistons. "I am."

She was. She'd let him do everything, responding with an intensity that made him feel like he'd conquered a continent. This time was no different and she came hard around him, pulling him into his own climax with enough force that it was a wonder his heart didn't stop. They lay panting and her laugh filled the room. "You woke me up."

He pressed a lazy kiss to the side of her neck "Should I apologize?"

"Would you mean it?"

"No."

She laughed again, softer this time. "Then don't." He held her to him, stroking the length of her thigh when he noticed the bruise on her arm in the dim glow from the streetlamp outside. Appalled, he switched on the light. "Did I do that?"

"What? Oh, that. No. I bumped into something on my way out of the office tonight."

"Good. I didn't mean to be rough with you."

"You weren't. It was just right." She sighed, content. "I think we've both got a lot of need stored up. It hasn't been six years, but it's been a while for me, too."

She'd been engaged. Suddenly he needed to know why she hadn't gone through with it. "Mia, why didn't you get married?"

She was quiet for so long he thought she wouldn't answer. He was kicking himself for asking when she sighed, this time pensive. "You want to know about my ex."

"What I really want to know is why you said you didn't want to want this." He pressed a kiss to her shoulder, made his tone light. "You're so good at it, after all."

But his teasing tone did nothing to lighten hers. "Sex has never been my problem, Reed. Guy never complained about that."

His name was Guy then. A French name. He couldn't see Mia with a French guy named Guy. She wasn't the roses and romance type. Still, jealousy speared at him and Reed pushed it away. Guy was gone after all. "What did he complain about, then?"

"My job. The hours." She paused. "His mother complained, too. She didn't think I was good enough for her baby."

"Mothers often don't."

"Did your mother think Christine was good enough for you?"

He remembered their relationship fondly. "Yes. Yes, she did. Christine and Mom were friends. They went shopping and did lunch and all those things."

"Bernadette and 1 never had that kind of relationship." She sighed. "I met Guy at a party. He was fascinated with my job. The whole CSI thing. And I was interested in his."

"What did he do?"

She flipped to her back and looked up at him. "He was Guy LeCroix."

Reed had to admit he was impressed. "The hockey player?" LeCroix had retired the season before, but he'd been magic on the ice. "Wow."

Her lips curved. "Yeah. Wow. I got great seats, right behind the penalty box." The smile faded. "He liked introducing me as his girlfriend, the homicide cop."

"So why did you get engaged to him?"

"I truly liked him. Guy's a nice guy and while he was playing, things were good. He wasn't home enough to make demands. Then he retired and things changed. He wanted to get married and I got sucked into the flow. Then Bernadette got involved. She had very specific ideas about how weddings, and wives, should be."

"I take it you didn't fit her requirements."

"No," she said wryly. "Anyway, I'd canceled one too many fittings for my dress and Bernadette threw a fit. I found out about it the next night when Guy took me to this fancy place downtown with linen and crystal and waiters who hovered " She grimaced.

She'd hate a place like that. He stroked her chin with his thumb. "And?"

"And Guy informed me that I'd canceled seventy-three percent of the appointments his mother had set for the wedding and then he got stern and added that I'd broken sixty-seven percent of our dates. That our dates came second was telling. Anyway, he insisted I 'improve my performance.' Yeah, I think that's how he phrased it."

"And did he have any coaching tips on how you should do this?"

Her lips quirked up in amusement. "Of course." Again the smile faded. "But the biggest gist of it was that I was to transfer to another department. Or better yet, quit altogether. I wouldn't be able to work once I was pregnant anyway." She stared straight up at Reed, defiant challenge in her eyes. "I'd been honest about that all along. I didn't want kids. He'd conveniently forgotten that fact or thought he could maneuver me into changing my mind. I reminded him and we had one major argument. And when it was done, I'd given him back his ring. He didn't think I'd do it in a public place like that with the china and linen."

He felt a stir of pride at her stand. "He was wrong."

"Yeah, but I hurt him. I didn't want to and I didn't mean to, but I did. He wanted a home and a wife and in the end he got a homicide cop."

It was too much of who she was to change, but he could feel some sympathy for LeCroix. "I should say I'm sorry."

One corner of her mouth lifted. "Would you be?"

He ran his fingertip under the fullest part of her breast, watched her aureoles pucker and her nipples stand erect. She had incredible breasts. "No," he said huskily.

Her eyes darkened in response. "Then don't. Anyway, I think Guy was less impacted by the whole breakup than Bobby was."

Ah . Now they were getting somewhere. "Bobby. Your father."

Her smile was brittle. "My father. He liked the thought of having Guy LeCroix as a son-in-law. I think in his mind it was the best thing I'd ever done."

He frowned at the bitter hostility in her voice. "Better than being a cop?"

"I was never a cop to him. I was just a… girl ." She spat it, like the worst of epithets. "Good for marriage. If he got good hockey seats out of the deal, all the better."

Reed reached over her, pulled the old chain with its dogtags from the nightstand where he'd dropped them earlier. He'd thought it odd that she'd worn them as she'd never been in the military. He held them up to the light. Mitchell, Robert b . 'They're his. Why do you wear them if you hate him?"

Her brows crunched. "Your mother, did everyone know she was abusive, or did she have a nice face she let everyone on the outside see?" The need to know that had spurred him on suddenly froze. "Mia, did your father…?"

Her eyes shifted, then came back to him, shadowed and full of guilt. "No." But he didn't believe her and his stomach rolled at the images his mind stirred up. "No," she repeated, a little more forcefully. "He mostly just hit. When he got drunk."

His first impulse was to draw away, afraid of breaking her, but he didn't. Knew he couldn't. He swallowed back the queasy bile that burned his throat. Because he thought she needed it, he pressed his lips to her temple and held them there. "You don't have to tell me any more, Mia. It's all right."

But she kept going, her eyes now glued to the dogtags he still held in his hand. "When I was a kid, I used to think that if I was fast enough, smart enough… good enough that he'd stop drinking. Be the father to us that he pretended to the rest of the world that he was. I was the star athlete in high school. I thought it would make him care. When I realized that he wasn't going to change, the sports became my ticket out."

"You went to college on a soccer scholarship," he remembered. "You got out."

"Yes. But Kelsey was still home, getting wilder and wilder." Her lips pursed and he wondered what it was that she wasn't letting out. "It was her way of punishing Bobby. She couldn't make him stop, but she could embarrass the hell out of him, and once Kelsey got something in her mind, she wouldn't let it go."

A family trait , he thought. "She got in trouble."