"You don't think I know when I'm being humored? Do you really think I have some kind of a problem?"

"It's not that big a deal to me," Joan said. "I mean, in this day and age, with a little v.i.a.g.r.a..."

Sam nearly choked on his beer. Oh, this was just too good.

Muldoon stood up.

"Where are you going?" Joan asked, but he wasn't going anywhere. He took her hand and pulled her out of her seat, too.

And then, right there, at the bar in the Ladybug Lounge, Muldoon put his arms around Joan DaCosta and kissed the living s.h.i.t out of her.

It was like something out of a movie. Sweeping music with lots of violins should have swelled. Instead Travis Tritt wailed on the jukebox. h.e.l.lo, T-R-O-U-B-L-E...

On the other hand, maybe old Travis was the perfect sound track to this moment.

That was no "I'm kissing you because it seems like a nice way to pa.s.s the time" kind of kiss. Instead it was a "If I don't kiss you right f.u.c.king now, I just might die" kind of kiss.

And Jesus, if that wasn't trouble ... Sam could remember kissing Alyssa like that, and look where it got him.

He scanned the room for any senior officers, watching Muldoon's six. An officer in dress uniform wasn't supposed to suck face like this in public, and Jesus Lord, Mikey still had the woman in a lip lock.

And as for Joan, well, she was very definitely kissing him back.

Unless Sam was very much mistaken, someone in this room was going to get some tonight.

Finally Muldoon lifted his head. But the way he was looking down at the woman in his arms, he might as well still have been kissing her. It was a look that sizzled, a look that was more palpable and possibly even more intimate than a touch.

Joan was definitely hypnotized, staring back up at him.

Muldoon tugged her even closer, his hands on her backside, her hips tight against his, and she laughed breathlessly.

"Okay," she said. "Point taken. I think we're both in agreement that you don't have any kind of a problem."

"d.a.m.n right I don't."

"I knew you didn't," she said. "I was really just jerking your chain. It was too good an opportunity to pa.s.s up."

"The big irony is that I've been walking around like this all week," he told her. "I think you're s.e.xy as h.e.l.l, Joan. I don't need v.i.a.g.r.a. I just need to think about you."

This time, she kissed him.

And oh, yeah. Muldoon was definitely on his way to GetltOnVille.

Kiss number two lasted even longer than kiss number one.

And when they finally came up for air, Joan managed to ask, "Do youa""

"Yes," Muldoon said.

He threw a twenty on the bar, took her by the hand and they were gone.

Sam, on the other hand, didn't have such a good reason to leave.

He watched Cosmo line up another perfect shot, hoping to h.e.l.l that Muldoon and Joan had better luck with their birth control than he and Mary Lou had had.

"Okay," Joan said to Muldoon via their cell phones, as she peered out from her hotel room doorway. "There's no one in the hall. Get your b.u.t.t down here, fast."

And then there he was, coming out of the stairwell and moving swiftly down the corridor. She opened the door a little bit farther, and he was inside without anyone seeing him.

"That fast enough for you?" he said, still talking to her on his phone.

"Good-bye," she said into her phone, loving the way he was looking at her, remembering those incredible kisses back in the bar. "I can't talk right now."

Muldoon hung up his phone, too, his eyes never leaving hers.

But he didn't move. He just stood there, watching her. What was he waiting for?

"Kiss me," she finally had to say.

But he shook his head. "Nah," he said.

She laughed. What?

"I'm going to," he said. "But I want to look at you first and... think about you some more. I do want to talk. Do you mind?" he added.

"No," Joan said. "Of course I don't." He'd told her how he'd always watched for cues when he was with a woman, how he'd learned to pick up subtle hints as to what that woman wanted him to do to fulfill her fantasies.

But tonight was different, she realized with something of a jolt. She was his fantasy.

It was a rather large turn-on knowing that. But, G.o.d, the pressure was suddenly a bit intense.

"Come on in," she said, leading the way into the hotel room. "Can I get you something to drink? Are you hungry? We could order room service if you want. This hotel has a really terrific fish chowder that I for one would love to lick off your body."

Muldoon laughed as he sat down on the sofa.

"I'm not entirely kidding," she told him.

"Yeah, I know," he countered, smiling at her. "That's what makes it so nice to hear."

"I'm not sure what you want," she admitted. "I want to do this right, but you're going to have to give me a little direction."

"Just talk to me," he said. "I just... I love to talk to you, Joan, and I just want to do it knowing that in a little while I'm going to get a chance to kiss you again."

Oh, honey, that's not all you're going to do...

He was adorable. He honestly didn't realize that saying / love to talk to you made her heart pound even harder.

"It sounds kind of dumb, doesn't it?" he added sheepishly.

"No," she said quite firmly. "It doesn't."

"I've never been very good at talking to women, and ... you make it so easy." His earnestness wasn't an act. It was amazing. Somehow she'd found the last truly earnest and sincere man on earth. "You make me feel comfortable, and... I don't know. Eloquent almost. In control. And out of control at the same time." He laughed at himself, rolling his eyes. "Jeez, I'm not making any sense, am I?"

He was making significantly more sense than all of the other men whom Joan had ever invited back to her room with the intention of beginning a hot romantic fling.

Not that there had been that many of them.

"You are making sense." Her voice sounded breathless. "That's what worries me."

He laughed, and oh, G.o.d, he was good-looking, sitting there on the sofa in his gleaming white uniform. He'd changed his pants sometime between Brooke's suite and the Ladybug Lounge. He'd once told her that he carried a spare pair in his truck.

"What do you want to talk about?" she asked. This was one of the few times in her life that she wasn't sure what to say.

"Whatever you want. Whatever you're thinking."

Joan sat down on the other end of the sofa. "Well. I'm thinking pretty much nonstop about making love to you."

He nodded.

"You want that drink?" she asked.

"No."

"Yeah, me neither," she said.

"Will you say that again?"

"You want that drink?"

He just looked at her.

"I'm thinking about you, inside of me," she whispered. "I'm thinking that simply kissing you was better than the best s.e.x I've ever had. I want you, Michael. If you want, I'll talk the entire time, but please, please, please kiss me now."

He moved toward her before the last words had left her lips, taking her mouth in a hungry kiss.

It was enough to knock her over, but she went willingly, pulling him back with her onto the couch, her fingers in the softness of his hair.

Joan had thought those kisses back in the bar were powerful, but this was unbelievable. He didn't hold back this time, because, hey, this time there was no one watching them.

He was a man who knew what women liked, and that was more than evidenta"he kissed like a pro. He kissed her with the same self-confidence that had impressed her so completely when he took command of a team of men. Long, slow, s.e.xy, soul-deep kisses designed to light her on firea"as if she weren't already in flames.

She'd always known Muldoon was a big man, but it never quite occurred to her just how big he wasa"until he was on top of her like this. He almost made her feel tiny.

He stopped kissing her, pulling back to look down at her, amus.e.m.e.nt in his pretty blue eyes. "You're not talking."

"Yes, I am. I'm having a long internal dialogue chastising myself about how utterly stupid I was not to jump your bones that first day we met."

Muldoon laughed.

"Kiss me again," Joan demanded. "That's enough talking for the rest of this decade."

He kissed her, and thena"G.o.d, she didn't know how he did ita"somehow he got to his feet and scooped her off the sofa.

He actually picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. It was incredibly romantica"particularly since he didn't gasp or wheeze or stagger or even break a sweat.

If she hadn't already decided that she was going to sleep with him, his macho act would have clinched the deal.

And if it hadn't, the way he pulled back to look at her with such heat in his eyes after he gently placed her on the bed would have done the trick. Particularly when he said, "You don't know how many times I've dreamed about this."

She had managed to unb.u.t.ton more than half of the b.u.t.tons on his jacket during those nuclear kisses on the sofa, desperate to feel his skin beneath her palms. She sat up now, eager to finish the job.

He helpeda"so to speaka"by unzipping the back of her dress and peeling her top down from her shoulders and lazilya"worshipfullya"kissing her neck, her throat, her collarbone.

She had his tailored jacket almost off one of his muscular armsa"no easy tricka"when he pulled her dress down even farther, exposing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s clad only in the barely there lace of her bra.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Oh, yeah," and nothing he did was lazy anymore.

He managed to shake his jacket off his arms even as he unfastened the back clasp of her bra and pulled her on top of him, so that he was on his back and her unrestrained b.r.e.a.s.t.s were right in his face.

She was straddling him, her dress pushed down to her waist, and she heard herself moan aloud as he touched and kissed and licked her. Or maybe that moan was because she finally pushed his shirt up and got her hands onto his smooth, bare, beautiful skin.

His belt buckle was digging into her, and he pushed her back a few inches. And then his erection was pressing up against the silk crotch of her panties instead.

She had to laugh. Yeah, this man needed v.i.a.g.r.a about as much as he needed someone to hold his hand when he crossed the street.

"What?" He stopped his onslaught of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s long enough to ask, pushing her back so that he could look at her sitting up above him. "G.o.d, you're amazingly beautiful."

It was then that Joan realized all the lights in the room were blazing. It was just slightly less well lit in there than noon on the surface of the sun.

Thank the Lord that her dress covered her hips. Her hips may have been amazing, but they very definitely were not beautiful.

However, her b.r.e.a.s.t.sa"although unfashionably largea" weren't too hideous. In fact, from the way Muldoon was looking at her, she didn't feel hideous at all. Except, "My right breast is bigger than my left," she felt compelled to point out.

"That's incredibly s.e.xy," he said. "You're the s.e.xiest woman I've ever been with. Ever."

"Well, that's nice," she said, "but I really kind of doubta"

"Don't," he said. "Don't doubt it. I want you naked, right now. I want to see your tattoo."

He pulled her back down to kiss her, his hands busy again with the zipper at the back of her dress, checking to see if he could push it even farther down.

As far as naked went, her panties could go, along with his clothes. But Joan wanted to keep her dress right where it was, covering her thighsa"and the tiny rose she'd had tattooed on her left hip in a moment of drunken madness. Of course he'd remembered that from her so-called file. Didn't it figure?

As she kissed him, she slipped her fingers inside the waistband of his pants in an attempt to distract him.

It worked, particularly when she slid her hand all the way down, inside his boxers, and wrapped her fingers around him.

He made a noise, deep in his throat, and he stopped fooling with her zipper long enough to hastily unfasten his pants. She helped, and his p.e.n.i.s sprang free. It burst onto the scene in such a happy, joyful way that she had to laugh.