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his shaft, resting on his thigh. “When? Soon?
I hope, I hope.”
    He chuckled. “Let me taste this pussy again and I’ll give
you an ETA.”
    She shifted in the bed so quickly, they both laughed.
“Predictability is part of great customer service.”
    “Let me prepare the way.” He leaned over, broke the seal on
a foil wrapper from the bedside table and plunked it on top. Agile as an
athlete, he rolled back over and pulled her close. Flush to his supple flesh,
she felt his strength impart a sense of peace she hadn’t felt since this
nightmare of being stalked by the gang began two months ago.
    “I really liked what you just did,” he told her, his fingers
combing her hair.
    She knew what he was really asking, and she supposed that
the time was right to discuss her past affairs. “What I just did was nothing
I’ve ever done before for any man. I’ve gone to bed with men, sure. But never
done that. Never even close.” She looked up at him. “I loved doing that for you
and I want to do it again.”
    One side of his mouth hitched up, his fingers never stopping
their caress of her hair. “Christ, I’m so glad about that, I could crow.”
    “Care to take my customer survey?”
    “I’ll give you a ten, baby. All stars. All the time.”
    She snuggled into him and kissed his chest, a small quick
blessing for the sweetness of his loving. “I’ve had a couple of steadies. Only
one guy came close to being a candidate for husband.”
    “What happened?”
    “I learned he had a nasty streak.”
    Rex froze. “Look at me. He hurt you?”
    She shook her head. “He was rough. Pulled me around. Gave me
a couple of bruises. If I didn’t move fast enough through a door, or keep up
with him on the sidewalk. There was something underneath there that frightened
me off him.”
    “I’ll say.”
    “When I broke up with him, he wasn’t happy. Threatened me
with his fist.”
    “Bastard.”
    “I told him if he ever came near me again, I’d call the
police.”
    “Serves him right. And?”
    “He hasn’t. I think he even moved to another city. I haven’t
seen him in months.”
    “He lived near you.”
    “No. He had an office in the same building that I rent in.
We met in the coffee shop one morning.” She sighed and cuddled into Rex,
enjoying the contrast between this man and the one she shooed away. “Working an
Emergency Room, I saw too many battered women to ever think a macho guy was one
who beat up on the woman he loved.”
    Rex dropped a kiss into her hair. “I hear you.”
    “No one is worse than someone who abuses you.”
    “True.” There was a long brooding silence that led her to
believe he was mulling that over.
    “No,” she told him, getting the jump on the next obvious
question she thought he’d ask. “No one else ever did abuse me. In fact, my life
has been very free of problem people. My parents were great people. Gone now. I
have a brother stationed in Afghanistan. He’s a paramedic. I’m very ordinary.”
    “Except that you write books about criminals.”
    “And how they’re caught and put away.” She grinned at him.
“And you? Where did you get your passion for putting the bad guys in the
slammer?”
    “My dad was the sheriff in Kendall Country for more than
thirty years. I’d visit the jail after school and see the ones he’d put away.
Compared to today’s crop of bad guys, those old cusses were tame. Boring.”
    “Is he retired now? Your father?”
    “No. Gone, like yours. My mother, too. They were swell
people. You would have liked them and vice versa.” He hugged her. “I’ve had a
good life. I figure it’s my duty to help others have a good one, too, free of
worry.”
    “You do a fine job of it, too,” she praised him, then went
for more info. “So who taught you how to make love to a woman so well?”
    He drew away, one hand under her chin as he murmured, “You
did.”
    She gave a little cry at his tenderness and put her lips to
his cheek. “How did you get to be so