“What did you mean” – she stared at the toes of his boots; they were damp from walking through the snow – “when you said it was worth something to you?”
She braced herself for any number of painful answers, telling herself it didn’t matter to her, even when it did so acutely.
She wasn’t prepared for the sudden closing of his arms around her, and the shape of his face burying against her hair. This was a different breed of silence, as he crushed her against his chest, one fraught with the same inexpressible tension of the night before, when he’d been beyond speech, when he’d taken her up against the wall.
His heart was a rich throbbing rhythm against her breasts; his breath ruffled her hair. His fingers were curled and hard like claws, and Holly felt a curling in his body, as if he tried to cover her while they stood. The scent and feel of him engulfed her. There was no kitchen, no house, no snowbound Knoxville, only Michael, and his hands in her hair.
“Do you care?” she asked in a shaking whisper against his chest. She couldn’t bring herself to ask it more deeply than that, only repeat, “Do you care?”
He forced her head back, and she had the sense he was infinitely careful in the way he released his anger in that one gesture. She had one glimpse of his face – harsh, narrow, pale and terrible – before his mouth closed over hers.
It was one ferocious, almost cruel kiss, and then his lips, damp and warm from her mouth, touched her neck. He buried his face there, in her throat, his breathing ragged, his fingers wrapped tight against her skull.
Holly blinked at the tears in her eyes and stroked the lean, tense muscles down his spine for long, careful moments.
“You care,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.
Oh, God, he cared. He cared, he cared, he cared…
Holly warmed up a stick of butter, mashed it together with dried herbs and some lemon juice, and then smeared it beneath the skin of the chicken, working it into all the joints with determined fingertips. He’d never seen anyone do that before. She cut the green beans in half – she’d insisted on fresh and not canned, and he’d had to bag and weigh the bastards at the store – and cooked them over the stove with garlic. The potatoes were roasted. She was an efficient blur of movement in his kitchen, humming to herself and chattering at him about all the cooking shows she’d watched, because it was always hard for her to sleep, and gave every impression that her depressing life was somehow meaningful for her.
They ate, and outside the snow covered everything.
Now they were sunk deep in the center of the sofa, while the fire he’d built up in the hearth warmed the room, and Die Hard played, and the whiskey lulled him down into a cocoon of ochre sensations he wasn’t going to want to crawl out of, once the night was over.
Holly had put one of the couch pillows over his thigh and laid down beside him, curled on her side, her head in his lap. She hadn’t asked, she’d just done it, like it was the most obvious, natural choice of seating arrangements. It was a quiet, brave gesture in its own way, her claiming of intimacy.
It had felt only natural that his hand rest in the curve of her waist. He could feel her breathing, small ribcage lifting up into his hand on every inhale. Steady, calm breathing. She was comfortable. In his house, with him, in this moment.
His club brothers would have laughed to see him like this. They would have been shocked.
His brothers were stupid.
“He’s not going to have a shirt left by the end, is he?” Holly asked.
He hadn’t really been paying attention to much of anything except her hand were it rested on his knee and the way the firelight played over her face. “Hmm?” He sipped his whiskey, and it added another shot of heat to this foreign veil of warmth wrapped round him so tight.
“John McClane,” Holly said. “His shirt’s just going to disintegrate, isn’t it?”
He snorted. “Is that what you want to happen?”
She shrugged and her shoulder pushed at his hip. She shifted somehow, no longer on his thigh, but fully in his lap. If she rolled her head around a little he’d have enough friction to get somewhere.
“I don’t really care,” she said. “A chest is a chest. I don’t care that much about looks.”
“So you were just playing to my ego when you said I was beautiful.”
She rolled onto her back, so she was looking up at him, her hair a dark curtain falling down his knees. Her eyes were wide, her expression soft and contemplative. “No,” she said in a quiet voice. “I meant it.”
Michael didn’t understand the sudden constriction at the base of his throat. The movie faded into the background; it could have been the most shocking porn playing on the screen, and he wouldn’t have been tempted to look at it. All he could see was Holly lying before him, like a sacrificial lamb in her trusting calmness.
“I do think you’re beautiful,” she said, without prompting.
“Just what every man wants to hear.” His voice was rough, but that tightness in his throat was getting worse.
She saw through the front, and smiled. “ ‘Beautiful’ isn’t a feminine word. I don’t even think it’s a human word. It isn’t what something looks like; it’s what something is.”
“Honey, you don’t know me very well.”
Her smile widened; there was a look in her eyes like she had a secret, and wasn’t ready to share it. “You aren’t so hard to know.”
The words ignited a clenching, wicked excitement in his gut. He wanted to punish her for that statement – no, punish wasn’t right. He wanted to show her how naïve she was…and that want was laced with sentiment and sugared with affection and he had no idea what sort of feeling it was at all. He grinned; he couldn’t have prevented his mouth from curving if he’d wanted to. He wanted to smile, and to touch her, and kiss her, and make her regret her ideals of beautiful…and prove them to her too.
There was a low dim screaming in the back of his head, as his conscience sought to categorize it all. But he shoved it down, and he moved his fingers up under her sweatshirt so he could touch the warm smooth skin of her belly and tease her navel with his fingertips.
A ripple of shock across her face. A tension in her stomach that he could feel in his fingers. She wanted to protest. She was still so new to this kind of sexual closeness.
Hell, so was he.
He moved his hand in a slow, aimless pattern, tracing the little tremors that moved through her skin, and held her eyes with his own.
“Undo your jeans.”
Her “no” was silent, and weak. She was caught between mounting anticipation and the old fear that he wasn’t sure would ever completely leave her bloodstream.
He said, quietly, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know.” Her hands went to the front of her jeans.
He didn’t watch the movement of her fingers; it was sweetly excruciating to deny himself that and just listen to the zipper. Then she was done and he let his hand go there, replacing hers, sliding under the vee of the undone zipper to find the soft cotton of her panties, and the little mound of her sex.
Her eyes widened in reaction. He felt the subtle shifting of her hips, as she tightened her legs and lifted just the slightest toward his touch.
She liked it; she wanted it.
He petted her, lazy strokes of his fingers against the cotton. And he watched every tiny twitch of her face, the way her lips pressed together and then opened. She wanted to move, but she was unsure of herself, and she didn’t like feeling exposed like this; it was harder for her to relax with him so detached, sitting above her and watching.
“Does it make you nervous?” he asked, surprised by the timbre of his voice; it wasn’t normally that deep.
She nodded, and then wet her lips. “Not you, no. But…”
He pressed at her clit with his thumb, gentle pressure, through her panties.
“…this does,” she finished, breathless. “I like–” Her hips lifted again and a wordless sound left her
before she got control again. “I like it when you’re with me.”
When he was vulnerable too.
“You don’t like to be watched.”
“No.”
He ducked his hand inside her panties, closed his hand on warm, damp skin. “What if it’s me watching you?” He stroked her, and allowed himself a glimpse of his hand down in her jeans, the muscles of her stomach quivering beneath his forearm. The wetness was building against the pads of his fingers, and he found her slick entrance, pressed just the tip of his forefinger inside. She hadn’t lied before, about being small and tight. She was both, and her skin was hot and incredibly slippery.
Patience, he told himself. He could wait a little while, until she was ready.
“It’s not as bad,” she whispered. Then she reached for him. “But, Michael–”
He caught her hand and laid it down against her chest. His finger reached deeply inside her, sinking to the knuckle in her wet heat.
She gasped.
“Look at me.” He felt short of breath himself, and forced his lungs to slow. “Watch me, and know it’s me, and let it happen.”
She groaned, her face twisted with something like despair. But her eyes stayed on his face, even as she began to turn scarlet, the blush washing across her face, her throat, the wedge of exposed stomach. Shame. Arousal. Some combination of the two.
He treated her like the most sensitive, delicate instrument, alternating deep thrusts of his finger with the gentlest touches of his thumb. Women were more complex than men, he’d learned through the years. The club groupies might howl for the slamming and the pawing, but it was this that brought them to life: the precise, careful dancing of his hand against and inside them.
“It’s not supposed to be a bad thing,” he whispered to her, leaning low so he could feel her rapid breath against his face. “It’s okay to want it. Reach for it, honey.”
He kissed her, and felt her lift against his hand, digging her heels into the sofa, struggling for release. He gave her the rhythm she wanted, working her with his hand, and his tongue plunged into her mouth.
She came with a gentle, sighing, pleading sound. He loved how breathy and feminine it was. Her sex clamped tight around his fingers, strong contractions of her inner muscles as the pleasure gripped her.
“I want you,” she said when he broke the kiss. “Michael, please.”
It had never been said to him like that. It had been, “Hey there, stud,” and, “You wanna have a little fun?” and, “I kinda have a thing for that whole strong silent type act.” It had been empty words spoken by empty girls looking to keep the numbness at bay for a little while, and never anything more. It had never been this sweet, melting, earnest pleading. It had never reached into him and twisted his stomach and sent the breath rushing out of him.
Michael caught her up in his arms and took them down to the floor, on the plush shag carpet, and covered her with his body.
Naked, he remembered, she liked him naked. He reared back, rising up on his knees to pull his shirt over his head, and he watched her hands fumbling at the zipper of the sweatshirt as she sought to undress. He had to stand to get the jeans off, the fucking things. And by then, she’d worked her own down her hips and she was watching him with undisguised admiration as she reached to unclasp her bra.
He was on her again, and she was hot and silken against his bare skin, and her mouth opened against his kiss, legs opening to cradle his hips.
Patience could only go so far. He couldn’t tease her and touch her in all the ways he wanted to. He had to have her.
One strong surge of his hips, and then they were together, and he was inside the hot, wet center of her. Only then could he pull back, take a breath, push down the frantic need.
He had an idea.
Wrapping his arms around her, Michael rolled, so he lay on his back.
Holly gasped. “What are you doing?” She lifted her head to look at him, her hair falling across her face, the shock in her eyes hilarious…and terribly sweet.
The nervousness in her told him this was the right thing to do. This would be good for her.
“Sit up,” he said. “You can do the riding this time.”
“I can’t.” The response came tumbling out of her before she could think the words. It was true: she couldn’t. There was no way.
He gave her one of his small, twitching smiles. “Yeah you can.”
“But I…” She ducked her head, the heat rising in her cheeks as shame and embarrassment engulfed her. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Sweetheart.” The low, gentle note of his voice dragged her eyes back to his face. “Yeah you do. You get started, and your body knows what it wants.”
His words stoked the hot coals in her belly, but still she was unsure.
She sat straddling him, and he was still joined with her. With her above him like this, his cock felt larger and more invasive; the angle was different, the pressure of his entry pushing at her belly; there was a vague cramping deep in her stomach, a protest against such an impalement.
He lay beneath her, skin gleaming in the firelight, and she was intimidated. How could she possibly do what he did? How could she bring them both the pleasure they needed?
“Hol.” His hands came up and closed over her breasts, the warm rough palms cupping her and squeezing gently. “Do you like that?”
She glanced down at the lean shapes of his fingers as he shaped her softness, felt her nipples straining against his palms. She nodded. Yes, she liked it, she loved it.
“Lean into it,” he instructed. “Put your hands on me and…yeah, attagirl.”
God, his voice. It was different; it was hungry and it was doing things to her. She put her palms on his strong chest and leaned into the caressing pressure of his hands.
There was a shifting of the friction where their hips kissed together. Inside her, he…Oh. Oh, that felt…
Michael lifted his hips, driving up inside her, too far, too deep. Exquisite.
“Move,” he told her breathlessly. “Move until it feels good to you.”
She flexed her hips experimentally. He squeezed her breasts and thrust up into her again. That wonderful friction again.
And then she understood.
She shifted, up and back, grinding down against him – that was the best part – mimicking in her own small way the powerful movement of his hips when he was on top of her and driving against her.
His jaw clenched. “Yeah. Shit. Yeah. Good girl.”
His hands dropped down to her waist: firm grip of his fingers, urging, guiding, holding her down against him for long moments when she would have shifted.
Beneath her, Michael was a straining, reaching creature, his tendons standing tall and taut beneath his skin, throwing shadows. His abs rippled and his biceps knotted.
Holly was struck with a sudden knowledge, one that burned like steam along her skin: He was the masculine picture of her in this moment. He was fierce and frightening, yes – always – but beneath the lifting and dropping of her hips, he struggled as she always struggled, wanting more, and more.
That was what evaporated all awareness. She braced her hands on his chest and she bore down on him. He arched beneath her, flexible steel, rooting into her deeply.
When she came, there was only the heat. And then it was Michael cursing softly, his hands clutching at her. And then it was stillness, and the relentless throbbing of her body, that might have been his heartbeat pounding through her, for all she knew.
Carefully, she pulled her leg over him, and lay down on the carpet beside him, her skin quivering and ultrasensitive.
Michael turned toward her, and his lips were against her forehead, and it was fine that there were no words between them, because she didn’t need any.
Fifteen
“I’ll be right back.” Ava slid from between the covers and tugged on brown wool socks she’d found in a drawer of her old dresser.
Behind her, she heard Mercy push
up on an elbow, the sheets rustling. “Where’re you going?”
“To get a snack.” She was whispering, in the muted lamplight of her old room. Around them, the house was alive with a crush of sleeping relatives, and now that it was over – the whole thing finally over – she didn’t want to wake any of them. But her stomach was clenching in a painful way, and reminding her that skipping meals wasn’t an option with a baby on board.
Mercy made an exasperated sound through his nose. “Why didn’t you eat dinner?”
“I felt sick.” Which might have been hormones, or the stress of sitting across from her grandmother, who knew. “I won’t be long.” She turned to kiss him, hands braced on the mattress.
He pretended not to cooperate, frowning dramatically. Ava still couldn’t get over the sight of him half-naked in her old bed, with parental permission like this, and she giggled as she pressed her lips to his.
“You’re not cute when you sulk,” she told him, and slipped out of the room silently.
She could hear the snoring from the living room all the way down the hall. Tiptoeing seemed unnecessary, given the chainsaw effect of three grown men sleeping, but she did so anyway. Aidan was asleep on the sofa; as usual, he’d commandeered the best spot straight off. Tango, ever the pleaser, was on the loveseat, his legs hooked over the arm. Carter had a sleeping bag on the floor. The white lights of the Christmas tree caught the smoothest, youngest angles of their faces as they slept, giving them the look of little boys, and not hardened outlaws.
Ava smiled to herself, and kept moving.
There were candles lit in the kitchen. The three fat decorative ones in the center of a pine bough wreath burned inside a ring of narrow white tapers in silver holders. Ava could have sworn they’d all been blown out after dinner, but then she saw Maggie sitting on the far side of the table, golden in their glow, in her silk robe, a slice of cheesecake in front of her.
She didn’t look startled to see Ava. “There’s plenty of this left,” she whispered, gesturing to her plate with her fork.
Ava nodded, went to the counter to plate herself a slice, and took a seat beside her mother, close so they could talk quietly.
Price of Angels (Dartmoor Book 2) Page 24
