THE COMEBACK OF CON MACNEILL

by Virginia Kantra

  "Dinner," he reminded her. His voice was hoarse.

  Val drew back and studied his face a moment, his glacial eyes half-hidden beneath heavy lids, his stubborn jaw, his compressed mouth. A band of intransigence loosened around her heart. You decide, he'd told her last night, and this afternoon she hadn't made up her mind. But his determination now to restrain his own needs, to consider hers, gave her the courage to take the next step.

  "Dinner," she agreed. "Do you want it before or after?"

  He went very still. The room was perfectly quiet. Over the whoosh of a passing car on the street outside and the hum of the refrigerator, she could hear the rasp of his breathing and the thunder of her own heart.

  "Are you asking me to go to bed with you?"

  She gave up fussing with the belt of her robe and stuffed her hands in its pockets. "Why is it I'm so good at communicating what I don't want and so lousy at saying what I do?" She sighed. "And I never asked what you wanted at all."

  He stroked her cheek with his thumb, pressed it gently against her bottom lip. She felt the unfamiliar thump of desire deep in her stomach. "No mystery there. I told you, up front and early. I want you."

  She wanted him, too. She wanted to ignite those cool blue eyes and soften the laughter of that clever mouth. She wanted to burrow beneath his formidable defenses and find the passionate Irishman she was pretty sure lived inside. She wanted to wrap his strength around her like a blanket to ward off the chilly residue of fear.

  She wanted Con MacNeill. For a brief while, she'd even imagined she could enjoy him without penalty, without forever altering the landscape of her heart. She hadn't known that she could need him, that need could pulse in her bloodstream and melt the marrow of her bones. The feeling exhilarated her. Terrified her.

  "Yes," she said baldly.

  If possible, he grew even more rigid. "No games, Dixie. Yes, what?"

  He was going to make her spell it out. There would be no pretending for either one of them that this wasn't her decision. "Yes, I'm asking you to go to bed with me."

  "Thank God."

  His fervent response startled a laugh from her that his descending mouth sweetly, firmly silenced. He wasn't cold. His lips were warm, his hands were warm, his back under the wilted cotton shirt was warm. She held on tight. His chest felt solid and hot against her breasts. His hips radiated enough heat to toast her down to her toes.

  She lost herself in the textures of his kiss as his tongue drew the outline of her mouth. She welcomed it with her own, coaxed to trace the slick inner surface of his lower lip, to explore the recesses beyond. She tasted his hunger and his challenge, and her own hunger spread in response. A slow, melting heat uncurled inside her, diffusing through her veins.

  He lifted his head, inhaling through his teeth. "Dixie, let me put down the bag. You don't know what you do to me."

  Actually, Val was getting a very good idea. She could feel his response, hot and snug against her belly. She trembled, but not with fear. How could she fear anything this man could do when the evidence of her own power was so unmistakable?

  She pulled away. The white bag from Arlene's Café was crushed in Con's right hand. Twisting it from his grip, she paced to the kitchen and ditched it in the refrigerator.

  She crossed her arms over her chest to contain her skipping heart, to hold close her slippery robe, and turned to him with a smile. "Satisfied?"

  "Not by a long shot."

  Her breath escaped in a soft whoosh of surprise as Con swept her up into his arms. "What are you doing?"

  "I've been waiting for this. I want to do it right. Where's your bed?"

  Off balance, she put an arm around his shoulders, amused by his immediate response to her challenge and secretly delighted by his care. "I usually keep it in the bedroom."

  He carried her through the apartment. She was very conscious of his size, his easy strength, but her awareness came without anxiety. She was grateful for that. Grateful for him.

  "Show off." Her fingers combed the silky hair that curled against the back of his neck.

  He grinned. "Yeah. Through here?"

  At her nod, he turned, elbowed open the door and carried her over the threshold. Twilight seeped through the slatted blinds, spilling across the tumbled laundry and bright toss pillows. It glowed from the big square mirror, glinted off the cheap glass bottles and silver-backed brushes that littered her dresser.

  From her perch in Con arm's, Val surveyed the usual comfortable disorder, and the ghost of her mother rose to chide her.

  "I did pull up the quilt," she offered self-consciously.

  Tenderness curved his mouth. "Very nice." He was looking at her, not at the room.

  "You don't mind?"

  "Dixie, you could have an elephant in here right now and I wouldn't mind as long as it stayed off the bed." He bent his head to kiss her again.

  His mouth was sure and sweet. Val sipped and sucked from it. A Baptist-born girl could get giddy on such sweetness, dizzying as stolen sherry on a Sunday afternoon. Her head fell back, and his lips took shameless advantage, moving, sliding to explore her face and throat, pressing tiny, teasing pecks along the tender line of her jaw to her ear, inciting fires in their wake.

  She trembled, or maybe it was his arms that shook. Her robe gaped as she turned into his chest, her hands stretching, reaching for taut muscle and solid bone. How could such pleasurable contact create such an ache inside her?

  Val was a sensual creature, comfortable and accustomed to satisfying her taste and touch with the flavors and textures of her kitchen. But she was overwhelmed by the hungers Con stirred, by the banquet he promised. She wanted to pull him to her, wanted full, close contact with his weight and his strength. Frustrated by the way he cradled her, she slipped her hand into the neckline of his shirt to feel warm flesh and coarse hair.

  "The bed?" she reminded him.

  He rumbled an affirmative, but his lips had reached her ear now. The wonderful things his lips knew how to do there distracted her. She gasped and clung. He shifted her in his arms, testing her desire and his restraint. She heated like a pastry in the oven, melting, swelling, bursting with sweetness. And impatience.

  "MacNeill," she warned.

  He lifted his head from her throat. "What?"

  "Put me down."

  He turned her so that she had the contact she craved. His eyes were dark, the black nearly swallowing the blue. He slid her slowly down his long, muscled, fully aroused body until her robe rode up around her hips and her naked feet skimmed his shoes and touched the floor. With his gaze intent on her face, he cupped her buttocks over the slippery silk and pulled her close, closer, into intimate friction with every inviting inch of him. She sucked in her breath.

  "Like that?"

  "I was thinking—" she cleared her throat; it was hard, so hard, to insert that little note of amusement when everything inside her wept for his attention "—of the bed."

  "Good thinking. So was I."

  And then he lunged with her across the room and she had the mattress at her back and the full, welcome weight of him along her front Sighing with satisfaction, she opened to his kiss. Warm and urgent, his tongue sought hers. His hand spanned her rib cage, gliding up to part the silk, to capture one breast. Excitement tightened the peak between his long fingers. She moaned as he deftly worked the tender nipple. He swallowed the sound.

  Sensation bombarded her overworked senses like an explosion of spices. Feet flat against the rumpled quilt, she slid her bare legs up along the outside of his powerful thighs, the khaki fabric at once abrasively exciting and horribly in the way. She gasped an inarticulate demand, her hips rising off the mattress. He rocked her with his body. She wrapped her arms around his strong back and clung. An answering rhythm woke deep inside her, and suddenly she could not bear to have anything between them.

  She tugged at his shirt, frustrated by buttons and then by the long tails tucked into his narrow-waisted pants. He lifted away enough to help her, pit
ching his balled-up shift into a corner of the room before he lowered to her again. The heat of his skin scalded hers to tenderness. His body hair licked like flame against her breasts. She was melting, her heart and her womb melting within her.

  Her hand groped blindly between them. Again, he helped her, yanking at his belt, stripping the pants from his body. He stroked the silk back from her breasts, worked the tie. He told her something as he uncovered her nakedness for the first time. Lost in lust and wonder, she heard the awe and exultation but not the words. She reached for him. He rose against her, hot and potent, and a purely feminine doubt tensed her stomach. He was so large. He would have her, and she would never possess herself again.

  But his kiss on her mouth was tender, and his hand, smoothing her abdomen, trembled slightly. And she knew that as surely as she gave herself to him, he was giving up himself to her. She opened herself to receive his gift.

  He reached over the side of the bed for his discarded khakis. She waited while he ripped open a foil packet, her legs apart, her palm pressed to the powerful planes of his chest. She could feel his heart beat under her hand. There was something solemn and significant in this moment of preparation, an intimacy more deliberate than sex itself. Unease lapped at her. She had made herself into who and what she was. Would this act of loving somehow remake her?

  Her choice, she reminded herself. She would not regret this. She would only regret it if, through fear, she denied herself loving Con MacNeill.

  And yet she tensed as she felt him rigid above her. He came into her a little way, bracing himself on his elbows, giving her time to adjust to his invasion. Her body resisted and then tightened in need. He groaned, and rested his forehead for a moment against hers. She felt his exertion and his heat, wet against her face and against her palms on his back. Her nails curved into him.

  "You're making this—" he inhaled sharply "—hard."

  She loved him for his control, for his consideration. It was wickedly tempting to test how far it extended. She stroked him. "I thought that was the point."

  Laughter ruptured his restraint. He pressed into her, his body surging at the break in his command. She drew him down, drew him in. He thrust. Her breath caught.

  Each thrust, each slow withdrawal and urgent reentry, built the heat between them like the inexorable climb of temperature inside an oven. His breathing grew ragged. Her arousal grew sharp and raw, a silver knife twisting inside her. Faster, harder, he moved in her and on her, his intent face too beautiful to bear. She closed her eyes. Brilliant colors melted in the velvet darkness behind her shut lids. She was molten, too, and changed. Needy, she clung to him, murmuring. He plunged into her. Until the last, white hot explosion transformed and fused them together.

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  «^»

  He was drowned. When he could breathe again, when control crept back to his muscles and blood pumped sluggishly to his brain, Con found himself someplace he'd never been. Cautiously, he levered himself slightly away from the soft, receptive body under his and tried to get his bearings.

  A streetlamp outside Val's window glinted off her mismatched possessions like the moon shining off the river at night. Easing over onto his back, he picked out a Lenox vase and a Plexiglas earring tree, the outlines of an elegant dresser and a pillow shaped like a giant tomato. He grinned into the darkness. Who'd have figured he'd find himself cast ashore in a room that looked like a cross between an antiques show-room and a garage sale?

  His hairy calf rubbed Val's sleek one. The satisfaction that sapped his muscles was more than the physical release of good sex. Great sex, he corrected himself. Okay, the best sex of his life. But sex alone didn't explain this floating sense of well-being. He felt connected, committed, tied to a woman and a place that were all wrong for him.

  He was in major trouble here. So why didn't he feel more alarmed?

  Con turned his head. Val's hair rioted across her face, his arm and the pillow. She was so beautiful his heart ached. He didn't know what to do with the feelings that crowded his chest, impossible to define or solve. They were too new, too big, too disturbing for a Boston boy on the corporate comeback. No way in hell could he squeeze what he felt into words small enough to make it past his throat.

  Instead, he propped himself on one elbow and threaded his fingers possessively through her hair, combing it back from her face.

  "About the bed?" he said.

  Her eyes slitted open, gleaming in the twilight room.

  "Good idea," he told her.

  Her sultry mouth curved in a private Mona Lisa smile. "I do get them occasionally."

  He glided his hand along her shoulder, liking the way she lifted involuntarily to his touch. He let his gaze drift to her breasts and lower. Incredibly, his body stirred. He wanted… Hell, for the first time since seventh grade, he wasn't sure what he wanted. But short-term, at least, he wanted her.

  She was probably sore, he cautioned himself. So beautifully tight, and he'd held nothing back at the last.

  He forced himself to speak casually, trying to ease the acute need twisting his gut into knots. "Yeah? Well, let me know when you get another one."

  Her lashes dropped, shutting him out. "I'll do that."

  He touched her cheek with his fingertips. "Of course, if we don't eat pretty soon, I could pass out on you."

  Not tender words, Val thought. The lack of them hurt.

  She told herself she was being inconsistent … and unreasonable to boot. No regrets, she reminded herself. What did she want, a proposal? A declaration of undying love? Now, wouldn't that be inconvenient?

  She pushed away the memory of Con's deep voice. Sex is inconvenient, Dixie girl.

  Surely she wasn't so old-fashioned, so needy, as to believe that the pleasure Con brought her was more than a mutually satisfying interlude. Liberated Aunt Naomi could have lectured for a week on a woman's judgment being compromised just because she'd fallen into bed. Tumbled into love.

  Val's eyes opened wide. Oh, Lord. Oh, no. Was that what she'd done?

  She needed to get out of bed. She needed to buy space to herself and time to think. She wanted to be in her kitchen. "Let me get dinner."

  "I'll help you."

  He rolled from the bed, unselfconsciously naked, and reached for his pants. Val switched on the bedside lamp. The Tiffany shade cast a multicolored glow around the room. A bar of gold light slid across Con's back and buttocks. Struggling to push her arms through the tangled sleeves of the creased silk robe, Val stopped, transfixed by the shift of light and shadow over the hard planes of his back, the glide of muscles under his skin, the dark tuft under his arm. By the body of her lover.

  Con tugged on the buckle of his belt and glanced over his shoulder to catch her staring.

  Her cheeks scalded. She lifted her chin.

  "Ah, Dixie girl."

  The mattress depressed as he knelt beside her. He drew her up beside him, so that the sensitive crests of her breasts pressed the hard planes of his chest. His breath was warm against her hair.

  "I really am starving," he said.

  His mouth brushed the top of her head, his kiss as soft as his words were harsh. Desire pulled in the pit of Val's stomach. She resisted it, resisted the slight tug of his arms as he brought her more firmly against him. She didn't need to be soothed with kisses or placated with promises. Just because his expert lovemaking was beyond all her experience and expectations didn't mean she'd let herself be reduced to a quivering lump. She'd gone into this relationship deliberately, understanding its risks and restrictions. She wasn't going to complicate her life by changing the rules of the game now.

  If Con could be casual, she could be cool. Mustering her self-possession, she climbed off the bed.

  "Then I guess we'd better eat," she said brightly.

  * * *

  Forty minutes later, Val pushed away her plate and sighed. A sweating cup, a wrinkled bag and crumpled paper napkins littered the table. Nothing was left on
the chunky blue china but hush-puppy crumbs and a smear of cheese.

  "I didn't realize I was so hungry. That coleslaw was good."

  Con tipped his long-necked bottle to his lips. "Bet it was better on my barbecue than on your macaroni and cheese. You ever consider adding pork to your menu?"

  She narrowed her eyes in warning. Taking her to bed didn't give him license to meddle in her kitchen. "Not since I read Charlotte's Web."

  He flashed his wolf grin, and she realized he'd been joking.

  Resolutely, she ignored his teasing. "It was nice eating someone else's cooking for a change."

  He shrugged. "It was okay. Nothing to come home to. Not like, say, summer squash bisque and vegetable stir-fry."

  Laughter fermented inside her. But even as a smile rose to her lips, a hard, indigestible lump remained. Maybe Con MacNeill wasn't out to change her vegetarian ways. But how long before he started to change her?

  She shook the thought away, piling napkins and silverware. "I do appreciate your bringing dinner."

  "No big deal. I needed to eat. You needed to eat. I wanted to eat with you."

  She pushed away from the table to carry their plates to the sink. "Oh, and you always get what you want."

  He strolled over, tossing her empty cup in the trash. "Usually."

  Blocking the drain, Val squirted soap into the metal basin and turned on the tap.

  "This Boston job…" She wasn't sure how to proceed or why she was asking. She plunged in anyway, immersing her hands in hot soapy water. "Do you think you're going to get it?"

  He parked against the counter next to her, warm and close, his hips by her elbows, his gaze on her face. "I think I've got a shot at it, yeah."

  And then he'd be gone.

  She picked at the subject like a hangnail, knowing it could hurt but unable to resist.

  "How important is my father's recommendation to you?"

  "It would help."