InformedConsent by Susanna Stone Page A

there? Just let
Corbett know I’m knocking off for the day. I’ll see him tomorrow.”
    Tara rode slowly over the old gravel road until she reached
a cluster of vintage cabins in a clearing where the river widened into a lake,
and parked the Scout beside the first cabin. If Corbett were anywhere nearby
he’d have heard her, and if—
    “I’d know the sound of that old bucket of bolts anywhere.”
    He stood in the open doorway of the second cabin, leaning
against the doorframe, leather tool belt hanging low from his waist, every
morsel of him illuminated by the long, low afternoon light. His hard-worn jeans
and hard-worn muscles and hard-worn eyes.
    Oh hell.
    She’d made a big, big mistake coming here.
    Tara focused hard to remain upright on legs made of water,
at her first sight of the man she had once wanted with every nerve in her body.
    “You don’t get to say anything nasty about my Indian Maiden,
Joe Corbett.”
    “As you command.” He straightened himself away from the
doorframe but remained standing on the low, open veranda.
    His look was unreadable. Happy to see her? Mad? Or worse,
did he even give a shit? But just maybe he’d forgotten all about that damned
letter.
    She approached the cabin and ascended the wooden steps, the
better to speak with him face to face.
    “I told you to keep out of my life.” His voice was quiet,
rimmed with steel.
    No, he hadn’t forgotten.
    “Not quite. You said if I—” Her throat shut down as the
force of his bottomless look bore into her soul.
    “Yes? If you ever came into my presence again I would…well?
What did I say?”
    God, he wasn’t going to let up. She forced her voice to obey
and looked straight into those cool and dangerous gray eyes.
    “That you would—to put it bluntly—have your way with me.”
    The faintest flicker of interest twitched at the corner of
his mouth. That clever, agile mouth that should have done so many blissful
things to her that night.
    The night—and the mouth—she’d dreamed about for six years.
But in her dreams, he hadn’t backed off. Vanished. In her dreams, he’d done
everything there and then. And more.
    But— snap out of it, Calloway —this was reality. She
wasn’t a smitten nineteen-year-old anymore. She was here on a mission, and just
needed to keep calm and slap her libido down and deal with the matter at hand.
    “Seems to me, Calloway, I put it way more blunt than that.”
    “Maybe a little.”
    …I will possess you, consume you, invade you and violate
you any and every way I choose…
    Hell, did the flush—of desire?—show on her face? She sure
felt it under her clothes.
    “Go on,” he prompted. “What else did I say?”
    She permitted a ladylike snort to preface her response. “You
think I keep a perfect memory of your every word?”
    “Oh, I certainly do, Ms. Calloway, ma’am. No mistake there.”
    Damn his folksy put-on.
    “You wish.”
    He stood gazing at her for a moment, as though deciding
where to start, then covered the remaining space between them and gently,
firmly positioned his forefinger on her chin and raised it, to look straight
into her eyes.
    “I kind of think the word ‘consent’ was involved.” His voice
was all slow and calm. She could hear herself swallow; no doubt he could too.
    …I’ll take that as your clear, unequivocal consent for me
to take you. To fuck you in ways you never imagined, so deep and hard you’ll
never forget me…
    “I don’t remember.”
    “Okay,” he said, “since you insist on playing the amnesia
card, I’ll refresh your memory.”
    The tip of his finger slid south to trace the skin of her
throat as his scent invaded her lungs and her brain, all wood shavings and pine
and male desire.
    “I said, if you ever came near me again…”
    He undid her top shirt button.
    “I would take it as your consent for me to fuck you…”
    She exhaled slowly, controlled, so he couldn’t hear, as
every cell in her body hummed with excitement at his touch.
    I