Blood and Fire

by McKenna, Shannon

  Lily grabbed his hands. Her eyes blazed. “I’d do it,” she said. “If I were her, and you were my son? Hell, yes. I’d do it for you.”

  “Don’t even say it. She shouldn’t have had to do that. No one should ever have to. Someone should have helped her. Saved her.”

  Lily lifted his trembling, knotted fists and dropped a gentle kiss onto each of them in turn. “And you think it should have been you?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

  “You were a child!” she raged. “Up against an organized crime syndicate! Get real! Give yourself a break!”

  Laughter shook him again. “I’m eighteen years older now, and guess what, babe? I’m not doing a whole lot better than when I was twelve! It’s fucking déjà vu. In the past thirty-six hours, you’ve been clubbed, shot at, and thrown off a cliff. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.”

  “You saved me, you moron!” she yelled. “You’re being deliberately stupid and dense about this! My God, you ask a lot of yourself!”

  He touched his forehead to hers. “I can’t help it,” he blurted. “I love you.”

  She went very still. He realized, with a stab of pure, white-hot panic, that he meant it. He really did. Body, soul, blood, bones, teeth, and guts, he meant it. He loved Lily Parr. Period.

  Oh, shit. And he had to run off his mouth about it.

  He tightened his fingers around her cold ones. Fear gripped him, deep and hard. What a loser. His timing. It sucked. “Don’t say anything,” he begged. “I know it’s too soon. Things are too crazy.”

  She tilted her head up, kissed him. Little, flowerlike kisses, blooming against the corner of his mouth. But she evaded his returning kiss, drawing back, swaying away. Not ready for it.

  “I won’t hold you to it,” she whispered.

  That didn’t sound promising, but what the hell, he’d taken the plunge. “You don’t have to hold me to it. It is what it is.”

  She slid her arms around his neck. He kissed the corners of her eyes. Sure enough. Wet. Hot. Salt. He kissed the tears away, making it a ritual. Each tear he licked away was a magic spell, holding her to him.

  “Can I say something . . . ? Without making you mad?” she asked.

  He went right on guard. “I don’t make dumb promises like that.”

  “Then I’ll have to risk it.” She kissed his jaw. “The way you felt scared, because you couldn’t protect your mother? And me?”

  “It sucks. Literally. Like a vortex underneath my guts. So?”

  “That was the way she felt about you,” Lily said.

  Bruno shut that out. He just had no place to put it. He shook his head, not sure what he was negating. Subject closed.

  Lily waited but wisely concluded that she wasn’t going to get a coherent response from him. She padded into the bathroom, leaving him alone with his thoughts and the moon. He leaned his forehead against the cold glass, watching his breath fog it up. The white patch of steam, swelling and retreating. The bathroom door clicked open. Light spilled out into the dark room. Lily came up behind him, stroking his back. Perfumed steam wafted aong with her.

  He turned to look at her, realized that she was naked.

  It bowled him over, how beautiful her perfect curving silhouette was backlit by the glow from the bathroom. So graceful. His throat tightened. His cock sprang to attention. His balls were heavy, throbbing.

  “Lily,” he warned. “You’re covered with bruises.”

  She tilted her head. The light caught the sly gleam in her eyes. “Shhh,” she murmured, getting to work on the buttons of the fleece shirt he’d borrowed from some McCloud or other. “I’m fine. But I won’t pressure you. I know how tired you are, particularly after that meeting. Let’s just, you know. Cuddle. Skin to skin. It feels so good.”

  A sound burst out, hurting his throat. “Fat fucking chance.”

  “We could,” she said stubbornly. “We really could. Men are so weird about that.” She shoved the shirt off his shoulders and started in on his belt. “Nothing’s stopping us.” She shoved his pants down.

  “Ya think?” His cock leaped out, sproing, like it was springloaded.

  She gazed at it. “Ah,” she murmured. “Just out of curiosity, are you in this condition in spite of all your stress? Or because of it?”

  “Does it matter?” He tried and failed not to sound belligerent as he kicked off his shoes, wrenched his jeans the rest of the way down.

  She shrugged. “Just wondering.”

  “One, I’m jacked up and totally out of my mind. Two, you’re gorgeous, and you drive me wild. That still doesn’t make it a good idea.”

  She took his hand, led him toward the stairs. “Well, gee. Maybe you’re right. Let’s just take this upstairs and have this argument while we’re warming up the sheets.” She glanced down at his turgid dick. “We can discuss all the, um, ramifications under a cuddly comforter.”

  He held back. “It’s not just that,” he said, miserably. “The dreams. You shouldn’t sleep with me, Lily. It’s not safe. I’ll sleep on that couch.”

  “Fuck if you will.” Her voice was as sharp as glass. “Come up those stairs with me, right here, right now. Or. Else.”

  Well, damn. She had him by the dumb handle. He followed along up that winding staircase like a docile hound, helpless to resist the spectacular view of her ass. It was so round, accented with velvety shadows deepening the cleft and pooling in the twin dimples at the top, collecting under the lush, pearlike under-curve of her butt cheeks. He wanted to cup and stroke and pet and kiss. Hours of worship.

  He didn’t have the strength to do the right thing. Even to protect her. And he loved her. What a dickhead. Weak and selfish.

  “If I dream, you know to get the hell away from me, right?” he persisted. “Don’t try to wake me, don’t try to touch me. Clear? Got it?”

  “Sure.” She smiled mysteriously over her shoulder. “I promise. No physical contact of any kind. Scout’s honor.”

  He squinted at her. “You’re messing with me.”

  She started to laugh. “This isn’t fair. What good is it to have a man tell me he loves me if he won’t touch me, and won’t sleep with me, and won’t put out? Screw that!”

  “You haven’t told me if you love me back,” he said.

  Fuck. He chickened out as soon as the words were out of his mouth and lunged to put his over her mouth. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that to you. It just popped out.”

  She yanked his hand down. “But I—”

  “Sometimes I talk too much.” He kissed her as he pushed her down onto the cold iron steps of the spiral staircase, caged by the curving bars of the railing. He pushed her legs open. “It’s an impulse-control thing. I’m working on it. And I’ll put out, big-time. Believe me.”

  He sank down, put his mouth to her. She protested, giggling and squirming, but he was fiercely intent upon knocking her off whatever train of thought she might have been traveling.

  He cupped her mound with the V of his index finger and forefinger and lifted it, parting her pussy lips and making the taut, rosy bud of her clit pop pertly out of its hood. Ready for worship and giddy distraction from thinking. Thinking was a bad idea for stressed-out girls. Better to be whimpering, thrashing, coming. Getting a clue of the advantages of being loved by him, one of those being lots of prolonged, enthusiastic tongue action. He just could not get enough of her. Her taste and texture and scent. The softness of her inner thigh against his cheek. Plump, tender pussy folds, drenched with salt-sweet girl juice. He suckled her clit, finger fucking her, delving for secret hot spots.

  It took a few minutes, but he felt when the tension in her body changed from resistance to urgency. Her quivering thighs were clamped around his head; her snug channel squeezed hungrily around his fingers. He put on the brakes a couple times, made her wait, fingernails raking his shoulders. It made him smile against her juicy muff.

  And then, the strong, eager pulse of her pussy around his fingers a
s pleasure jolted through her. Sweet satisfaction.

  He wiped his face. “So. We were going to discuss ramifications?”

  She could not move. He scooped her up, tossing her over his shoulder. Her body vibrated with silent laughter.

  The bed at the top of the stairs was recessed into a space with three big windows on each side, so that one would feel like they were in a bed that was floating on air. He tossed the comforter back and set her down on the snowy white expanse of the sheet.

  He sat down beside her. Slid his hand into hers. Waited.

  She sat there, catching her breath and hiding her face against his shoulders. After a few minutes, she looked up. “It occurs to me that this crazy situation might just have a silver lining,” she announced.

  He gripped her thigh, high up, where he could circle his fingertip delicately around the top of her sensitive slit. “No! Really?”

  “I didn’t mean just sex,” she said tartly. “Believe it or not.”

  “Guess I’m not trying hard enough,” he remarked.

  She batted his hand away. “Shhh. What I mean is, you finally have a chance to put it right. To straighten out the great painful dilemmas of your existence. When do people ever get to do that? Never, Bruno. Most of us just have to suck it up. Whatever our baggage is.”

  Suck it up. Yeah, that’s what he’d done, for eighteen years. “Aside from the question of whether we survive this great opportunity, what the hell’s with you? You working on that glass-half-full attitude again?”

  She slid off the bed and to her knees, facing him. “You bet I am,” she said throatily. “And I am going to help you do the same thing.”

  His blood thundered, looking into those lovely eyes, at those hot, soft lips. “Oh, yeah? And how ae you going to do that?”

  “Like this.” She leaned forward and sucked his cock into her mouth.

  She’d meant for it to be playful, to lighten the mood, make him laugh. But her sensual assault had the opposite effect.

  He dragged in a ragged gulp of air and arched over her, clenching handfuls of the sheet. He shook, his body as taut as a mass of high-tension cables. She caressed him, voluptuous twisting strokes and swirls with her hands and tongue, but his quivering tension worried her.

  She looked up. “Hey, Bruno,” she urged. “Relax. Breathe.”

  He cupped her face and kissed her. Sweet, desperate kisses, so tender and pleading, they undid her utterly. Any plan she might have had of cajoling him into a better head space fell apart. He was seething with raw feeling. No games, no tricks. Just two naked souls, trying to knot themselves together for all eternity.

  It made her heart flower, hot and helplessly yearning. Expanding into something bigger, wider, someone who could maybe take in the world and accept it. Love it, even. Good and bad.

  He spread her out, and she stretched and arched for him in total trust. His weight pinned her down against the cool linen, the boundaries of her universe exquisitely defined by his body. His mouth moving over hers, drinking her in.

  He poised himself over her, tongue thrusting and twining with hers while he stroked the bulb of his penis between her pussy lips. Up and down, dipping tenderly into the well of lube, and then up, over. More moist, sliding, licking strokes, teasing and swirling himself juicily around her clit. She shuddered and jerked, raising her hips. Silently begging for him to thrust inside and be done with it.

  He lifted his head, letting her gasp in some badly needed air. His face was shrouded in shadows, but she felt the raw hunger, barely controlled. It made her heart swell until it hurt. She arched, pushed, forcing his cock inside, crying out with delight at the slow invasion.

  They gasped, sighed, with each slow drag out and plunge back in.

  She rocked and heaved to get him deeper. She felt flushed and throbbing inside, clenching and moaning as he stirred her around with his thick, hot club. Every squeeze pumped pleasure through her body.

  It didn’t matter who was on top, who beneath, who gave, who took. They each gave and took everything, with frantic tenderness. The storm took them, tossed them, like leaves and twigs in wild water.

  It washed them up finally, limp and helpless on the other side.

  Lily was lying on top of him when she floated back. Sweat cooled on her back, but she was warmed by the scorching heat of his body, the thick presence of his cock, still wedged deep inside her. His heartbeat throbbed, slow and heavy against her womb. Against her heart, too. She rose and fell with the rhythm of his breath.

  Only when the chilled sweat made her start to shiver did she lift herself carefully off, sliding his half-hard penis out of her body.

  And found herself awash with come.

  Hello. She sucked in air. Reality slammed back. She flopped onto her side next to him, trying to breathe. The bedside table had been stocked with condoms. Tam had told them, pointedly.

  And they’d just jumped off that cliff without a thought. Again.

  Her brain was fried with sex hormones. By now, they were spoiled rotten for skin on skin, hot and wet and intimate. And once a barrier was breached, it was so hard to go back and reestablish it.

  God knows, if she ever wanted to conceive a baby, he was the man she wanted to father it. They belonged together. If Fate would just stop smashing at them with a sledgehammer, they’d be fine. They could make it work. That scenario had never been even remotely imaginable to her before. But with Bruno, it was. It really was.

  She’d do anything to make that a reality. She would try so hard.

  But that didn’t make the timing any less horrific, considering recent events. Or she herself any less irresponsible and stupid.

  She snagged the duvet with her toe, yanked it up to cover them both. Entertained a vague notion of going downstairs to wash, but her legs were so limp. She’d probably tumble down that staircase and break her neck. Her body pulsed, glowed. The sore parts that she’d hurt in the last couple of days were tender, but the glow was stronger.

  She leaned close to him, just staring. He was so beautiful, it just blew her mind. The sweeping design of dark eyebrows, those smile crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the noble shape of his nose. His chiseled cheekbones and jaw, that sexy beard shadow. Those sensual lips. Her eyes were famished for him, no matter how long she gazed.

  He was fast asleep, but what the hell. She said it, right out loud. “I love you, too.”

  He didn’t move. The words didn’t technically count if they didn’t reach their target, so she’d say it to his face in the morning. She’d say it, and say it, and say it. She’d shout it and sing it. It made her feel stronger. Like, maybe she could beat this crazy thing and come out the other side. Into something more real and beautiful and special than she’d ever dreamed of. It was possible. Anything felt possible.

  She started to giggle, and then silently sob, huddled under the duvet, tears soaking into the sheets. Wow. Look at her, morphing into a weeping optimist. The power of sex hormones was miraculous.

  And love, of course. And love.

  21

  The little kid was making him nervous.

  Bruno fidgeted a

  t the breakfast table, hiding behind his coffee mug. Six-year-old Rachel, Tam and Val’s little girl, eyed him intently. She was a pretty thing, thin and wiry, her pointy face dominated by huge, heavily lashed eyes, a rosebud mouth, and a tangle of gleaming dark ringlets. She wore pink-framed glasses and slurped pink-tinted milk out of her cereal bowl. She studied Bruno as if he were some fascinating swamp creature that she wanted to catalog and dissect.

  The kitchen was a crowded, noisy place, packed with hungry people. Davy sat beside him, chowing down on steak, eggs, and bagels. Getting Davy to talk was like prying rusted nails out of a board, which made him the perfect breakfast companion for Bruno that morning. Zia Rosa was in hog heaven, gleefully presiding over sizzling frying pans as she tossed out short orders right and left.

  Bruno sat sullenly in the midst of that loud, banging, clinking, laughing swirl
of activity. All he could think about was what a cowardly thing it was to sneak out of bed while Lily was still asleep, but he didn’t know if he’d dreamed what he’d heard her say the night before.

  I love you, too.

  It might have been real. It really might, and in that case, he could justo ahead and let his head explode. But if it were not, he’d have to open a wormhole and tunnel into a parallel universe in which he had never been born. He was also jazzed by the strange fact that he hadn’t had one of his fight dreams last night. First time in months.

  “. . . me that cereal?”

  He wrenched his attention to Rachel, who was yelling in a way that suggested it was not the first time she’d spoken. “Huh?”

  “The cereal,” Rachel said impatiently. “Pass me the cereal box!”

  Bruno looked where she was pointing on the shelf. Looked back, at the open cereal box in front of Rachel’s bowl, some of which was still floating in the pink milk. It was the same exact type of cereal.

  He leaned across the table, hefted the box, rattling its contents. It was almost completely full. “Use the open box. There’s plenty in there.”

  The little girl gave him a calculating look and glanced furtively to the right and left. “I want the prize,” she confided. She pointed to the undersea scene pictured on the box, which sported cartoon fish and a treasure chest dripping with jewels, festooned with ropes of pearls. “I already have the ring and two of the bracelets. But I don’t have the necklace yet. Maybe there’s one in that box.” She paused, made an impatient but still furtive gesture. “Well? Get it!”

  Bruno glanced around the kitchen for her parents. Not there. He was probably committing a huge faux pas, but hell. One look at the kid, and a guy knew he didn’t want to get on her bad side.

  He snagged the cereal box and passed it to Rachel, who tore into it with feral eagerness. The inner bag got torn, cereal flew right and left, scattering over the table and floor as she dug for her prize. Yikes.