He was already inside me, so it was a little too late to be asking. I managed to say, “No. I’m on the pill.”

“Good,” he said, and got started on me all over again.

That was the good part about letting passion override common sense. The bad part was when common sense returned. No matter how many orgasms you have, if you have any common sense to begin with, it always comes back.

Daylight was almost gone when I woke from an exhausted, satiated nap to stare in disconcertion at the naked man beside me. Not that he wasn’t great to look at, with that strongly muscled body, but I had not only gone against my own rules, I had also lost a huge amount of tactical ground. Yes, the battle of the sexes is like fighting a war. If everything works out, you both win. If it doesn’t work out, you want to be the one who loses the least.

Now what? I’d just made love with a man I wasn’t even dating! Used to date, yes-very briefly. Absolutely nothing between us had been settled, and I had given in like a total surrender-monkey. He hadn’t even had to ask.

How humiliating that he was right: all he had to do was touch me, and I started shedding clothes. It didn’t help that actually making love with him had been just as good-better-as that damn chemistry reaction between us had promised. That shouldn’t happen. It should be illegal or something, because how was I supposed to ignore him the way I wanted to when actually knowing how good we were together was so much worse than imagining how it might be? If I’d been tempted before, the feeling would be ten times worse now.

I realized I’d been staring at his penis for a good ten minutes, and in that length of time it had changed from soft and relaxed to not so soft. I looked up to find him watching me, his green eyes both sleepy and hungry.

“We can’t do this again,” I said firmly, before he could reach for me and undermine my resistance. “Once was enough.”

“Must not have been,” he said lazily, trailing a finger over my nipple.

He had me there. Damn it. Never go back for seconds.

I brushed his finger away. “I mean it. This was a mistake.”

“I don’t agree. I think it was a great idea.” He raised up on his elbow and leaned over me. A little panicked, I turned my head away before he could kiss me, but he wasn’t going for my mouth.

Instead he pressed his lips just under my ear and trailed sucking little kisses down the side of my neck, following the ligaments that led straight to the soft little hollow where my neck joined my shoulder. Heat flooded through me, and though I opened my mouth to say “no,” or something like it, nothing came out except a moan.

He licked and bit and sucked and kissed, and I shuddered and squirmed and generally went crazy. When he slid on top of me again, I was too far gone to do anything except grab him and hold on for the ride.

“That isn’t fair!” I stormed at him as I stomped into the bathroom half an hour later. “How did you know that? Don’t do it again!”

Laughing, he followed me into the shower. I couldn’t throw him out unless he let me, so I turned my back on him and concentrated on showering off the heady combination of sunscreen, saltwater, and man.

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice, or remember?” He put one big warm hand on the back of my neck, and his thumb stroked up and down. I shuddered.

“You were naked in my lap-”

“I had on a skirt. I was not naked.”

“Close enough. At any rate, honey, I paid attention. If I touched your breasts, you barely noticed, but when I kissed your neck, you’d almost come. What was so tough about figuring that out?”

I didn’t like him knowing so much about me. Most men assume that if they touch or kiss your breasts, they’re turning you on and can maybe talk you into doing something you don’t really want to do. My breasts are pretty much nothing to me, pleasure-wise. Sometimes I envy women who get pleasure from their breasts, but I’m not one of them, and anyway, I figure keeping a cool head more than offsets the lack.

Kiss my neck, however, and I melt. It’s a weakness, because a man can kiss your neck without taking your clothes off, so I don’t go around blabbing about it. How had Wyatt noticed so fast?

He was a cop. Noticing details was part of who and what he was. That’s fine when he’s after a criminal, but he shouldn’t be allowed to use that skill in a sexual situation.

“Keep your hands and your mouth off my neck,” I said, turning around to glare at him. “We are so not doing this.”

“You have a remarkable talent for ignoring the obvious,” he said, grinning down at me.

“I’m not ignoring it; I’m making an executive decision. I don’t want to have sex with you again. It’s not a good thing for me-”

“Liar.”

“-in any way other than sexually,” I finished, glaring harder. “Just go back to your life and I’ll go back to mine, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

“That’s not going to happen. Why are you so dead set against us getting together again?”

“We were never together. The term implies a relationship, and we never got that far.”

“Stop splitting hairs. I couldn’t forget about you and you couldn’t forget about me. Okay, I give up: not seeing you didn’t work.”

I turned my back and began shampooing my hair, so angry I couldn’t think of anything to say. He wanted to forget about me? I’d be glad to help him. Maybe if I hit him in the head with something hard-

“Don’t you want to know why?” he asked, sliding his fingers into my hair and massaging my scalp.

“No,” I said stonily.

He moved closer, so close his naked body was pressed against me as he worked the suds through my hair. “Then I won’t tell you. One day you’ll want to know, and we’ll talk about it then.”

He was the most exasperating man I’d ever seen. I clamped my teeth together to keep from asking him to tell me.

Frustration and resentment built, and finally I relieved it by saying, “You’re such an asshole jerk.”

He laughed and pushed my head under the shower.

I don’t know how I ended up going to dinner with him. Actually, I do. He wouldn’t leave.

I had to eat, and I was starving. So after I got out of the shower, I totally ignored him while I dried my hair and got ready, which actually doesn’t take all that long because I didn’t bother with anything more than the basic makeup-mascara and lipstick. The summer heat meant I’d just sweat off anything more, so why go to the trouble?

He irritated me no end by actually bumping me away from the bathroom sink with his hip so he could shave. I stared at him openmouthed, because that just isn’t the way things work. He looked at me in the mirror and winked. In a snit, I marched into the bedroom and threw on some clothes, which again didn’t take long because I didn’t bring much in the first place, and what I did bring was color coordinated. Now that I wasn’t in a fog of lust, I saw a small black duffel sitting open on the floor at the foot of the bed; that was evidently where the razor and shaving cream came from.

Come to think of it, the closet was fuller…

I whirled and opened the closet again. Yes, pushed to the side were a pair of jeans and a polo shirt.

I grabbed them off the hangers and turned to stuff them back into that duffel where they belonged. He came out of the bathroom in time to say, “Thanks for getting these out for me,” as he took them from my hands and put them on.