Chapter 28
Three months later…
Sean’s fingers scrabbled for the spur of black granite. His numb hands were ragged and torn from days of climbing. Pain thudded in his head. Partly altitude, partly the lingering hematomas in his skull. There was a strange, constant hissing in his ears.
He’d ditched his pain meds. Anticonvulsants, too. He wondered, distantly, what it would be like to have a seizure while clinging to a cliff face.
His chest jerked, mirthlessly. At least it would be quick.
It was just past dawn, but the clouds didn’t let much light down. Shreds of mist floated beneath his dangling feet. He clung like a spider to the bottom of a small overhang, hyperextended, muscles burning. Wind roared in his ears. Pellets of hail pinged at his face.
It was the closest thing to peace of mind that he’d found lately.
He heaved and struggled, supporting his weight on one set of trembling fingertips, then the other. Clawing upwards, hand over hand.
He felt no triumph when he flung his leg over the ledge. He flopped onto his back, stared into the sky, panting. Just blank stasis, and that constant hiss. No more desperate effort to expend. He needed another cliff. Quick, before he started thinking. Or worse, feeling.
He’d been up here for a week, with a bare minimum of survival gear. He hadn’t bothered to bring much food, figuring he could hunt if he got hungry. He had, the first couple days, but the longer he stayed out there in the wilderness, the less interested he was in food.
He’d left behind the cell phone, doctors’ advice, frantic fussing from family. Lectures, pep talks, stern talkings-to. Offhand comments about what Liv was doing, what Liv said, how Liv felt.
How devastated she was that he refused to see her.
He let out his breath in a harsh sigh, trying to exhale the pain that gripped him when he thought of her. Launched into his rationalization for the millionth time. It had dug a groove in his mind.
Nah. More like a fucking trough, at this point.
He’d done what he had to do. He couldn’t bear to look at her, in the condition he was in. He hadn’t been that much of a prize even before Osterman had mind-raped him. Add on the nightmares, the stress flashbacks of torturing her, killing her, and oh, Jesus.
It was a stain on his soul that he couldn’t scrub clean. It scared him out of his wits. His mind shied away in horror from the thought of hurting her.
He couldn’t risk it. Liv was alive and well. Miraculously. That was how she was going to stay. Without him, if necessary. Whatever it took.
Hey, princess, take a chance on me? C’mon. Live dangerously.
Hah. Right. He lifted his hand to the cord around his throat, the tiny leather bag that hung on it, like a totem. The diamond earring.
She’d stuck it in a padded envelope, and mailed it back to him after he refused to see her. No accompanying note. He didn’t blame her.
It was like that scene in the jail, all over again. But far worse.
He put his hand to the buzzed-off hair, the indentations on his skull where they’d opened him up, fucked around in there. He was sure they’d done their best, but he felt like a jerry-rigged pile of shit.
He dragged himself onto his knees. His head spun. Every breath was a knife stab. He staggered up to the crest, and stepped up onto the highest point to look down over the long, curving sweep of gray shale—
The rock tipped, dumped him off. He did a crazy dance trying to scramble onto something solid, but everything was moving, he was—
falling down the rocks, thudding and bouncing, and no way would he make it back up in time to save Liv from T-Rex, he just kept falling, falling, with a terrible unstoppable momentum, past all hope…
He drifted back, some time later, to a vague awareness of cold. He put his hand to his face. Sticky. He wondered if he’d snapped his spine.
The hiss in the back of his head had gotten louder.
He pried his eyes open. Liv stood before him in the shifting mist.
Joy surged in his chest. T-Rex hadn’t killed her. Her hair looked like a dark cloud. His hands ached to touch it.
“Get up, you idiot.” She smiled at him, held out her slender hand.
He scrambled to her feet and seized her, starving to taste those soft lips, drink in her fragrant breath, fill his hands with her warm—
Her eyes froze wide. She made a choked sound, and the color in her cheeks drained away. She sagged, and he caught her. Liv slipped to one side, because he’d only caught her with one hand.
The other hand held the knife he’d just driven into her chest.
Stark horror spread through him like blood from a severed artery.
He lowered her down, but there was no place to put her on the steep slopes, the jagged, sliding rocks. Osterman’s mocking laughter echoed through his head. The hiss became a deafening roar.
He finally recognized it. It was the blowtorch.
He staggered away, his howls swallowed by muffling fog, stumbling over stones, head dangling, sobbing for breath—
Stop it. You dumb ass.
He was so startled, he slipped, and clutched a spur of rock to keep from sliding further. He looked up. It was Kev. The older, scarred, grim-looking Kev with haunted eyes that he’d seen in that freaky vision. Kev’s dimple was forever hidden in the grooves of his unsmiling face.
“Leave me alone,” Sean said dully. “I can’t take any more.”
I see that. You can’t take much of anything.
Sean was stung at the flinty judgment in Kev’s voice. “What would you know about it?” he snapped. “You’re dead. Stop criticizing.”
Kev’s cool expression did not change. So put a gun in your mouth, already, if dead’s what you want. Don’t stage some pussy accident.
“I shouldn’t even talk to you. I’m just encouraging you.” Sean shut his eyes, counted ten firebursts of pain, willing the apparition to be gone when he opened them. Still there. Stubborn pain in the ass.
If you go over the edge, Osterman’s won. Kev’s voice was harsh. He’ll be laughing in hell. You want to be the butt of his joke?
“So what the hell am I supposed to do?” Sean roared.
Kev’s tight mouth barely quirked. The hard thing.
That pissed him off, in a big way. “I am, butthead,” Sean snarled. “What do you think I’m doing up here? Playing with my dick?”
Kev looked unimpressed. Dying is easy. It’s living that’s hard.
That logic struck Sean as dubious, coming from a dead guy, but he didn’t have it in him to argue. He was too fucking miserable.
He buried his head in his arms. Might even have slept for a while.
The sound of his own teeth chattering woke him. The wind had picked up, whipping the thick fog away into fine, transparent shreds.
He blinked, focused…and gasped. His gut yawned with terror.
He was perched on a cliff. One foot dangled over it. One arm. An entire shoulder. He stared, gaping, a thousand feet straight down.
He froze, scared shitless. He’d been flirting with death for a week, but this was the first time that death had made a move.
He didn’t want to die. The realization startled him. It would be all wrong. Broken off, unfinished. So stupid, to die now, after all this effort, all this drama. To never see her again. Never touch her, hear her sweet voice. The fear of that pierced him like a needle of ice.
It took forever to break the spell and creep back from the edge. He rolled onto his face on the jagged rocks, his limbs as weak as water. He fell apart, for the first time since he’d woken out of the coma.
He cried, for all of it. Dad, Kev, Mom. For Liv. For all the pain and fear that Osterman had inflicted on all those poor kids. The loss, the grief, the waste. It thundered through him, on and on until he started to wonder if it would ever stop.
It finally did, leaving him exhausted. Limp as a rag, clinging to the mountaintop under the threatening gray sky.
But when he rolled over, the hissing sound was gone. All he heard was the wind, whistling through the jagged rocks and crags.
He felt light. Clean.
He tried to get up. His legs buckled, dumping him on his ass.
It made him laugh. Ironic, if he died now like a bozo asshole, just because his worthless legs shook too much to bear his weight.
Liv. He braced himself for the pain, but the pain had changed. It was hotter, softer. It was the pain of longing.
It was the sweet ache of dawning hope.
Liv stepped back from the scene she was painting. The last time she’d painted murals for the kid’s section, she’d considered Bluebeard too scary. She was tougher now. Or maybe she was just warped.
Bluebeard’s curious young wife crouched by the iron door of the secret chamber, clutching the key. Liv hadn’t painted the room’s contents, just a crack of utter darkness. Yeah. It was creepy. It worked.
“It looks real nice, honey.”
She jumped into the air at her father’s voice. Her nerves were still shot, after months. She glanced at the painting. Of all words she might have used to describe it, “nice” was not one of them. But hey. Whatever.
“Thanks, Daddy,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
Her father looked around at the dusty chaos of renovation in her bookstore, and turned a manila envelope in his hands.
“Place looks great,” he said, with forced heartiness. “Good job.”
Liv shrugged. “I should be ready for business in a few months.”
A tense silence fell. Her father blinked, shuffled. Cleared his throat. “Have you, ah…have you heard from Sean McCloud?”
Every part of her shrank from the pain that name invoked. She pressed her hand to her aching throat. “No. We’re not together anymore, Dad. Please don’t ever mention his name to me again.”
“Ah. Well. Seems strange, after everything that happened—”
“Yes, but that’s the way things are, so let’s leave it,” she said sharply. “What’s in the envelope?”
He glanced down. “Oh. It’s for you. A courier brought it. I saw him at the door when I was coming in, so I signed for it.”
She held out her hand for it. Waited. “Dad?” she prompted.
He frowned. “I thought I should open it for you. Considering.”
“Oh, stop.” She twitched it out of his hands. “The people who were trying to hurt me are dead. I can open my own damn mail now.”
He shrugged. “Open it, then.”
“In private,” she snapped. “Come on, Daddy. Spit it out. Say whatever she told you to say, but I warn you, I have no intention of—”
“I’m not carrying messages from your mother,” he said abruptly. “I’ve been living in the apartment on Court Street for three weeks now.”
Liv stared at him, dumbfounded. “Oh. Is it—”
“Permanent? Yes.” He could not meet her eyes. “It’s something I guess I should have done long ago. I just didn’t want to wreck anybody’s life. But after what happened, I got to thinking.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I can see how that might have helped.”
Her father’s face was seamed with lines of regret. “I’m real sorry I didn’t back you up more, honey,” he said gruffly. “All along.”
All along? Now he was sorry? After her life had been gutted? She pushed the bitterness aside with some effort. Gave him a brusque nod.
“I was wondering if you might have dinner with me sometime,” he said tentatively. “If you ever come to the city, that is.”
She stood there, hand over her mouth. Throat still locked.
Her father cleared his throat. “Well, then. I’ll be on my way.”
“Of course we can have dinner,” she burst out. “I’ll call you.”
He gave her a sickly smile, patted her shoulder, and fled. Her father never had been able to handle tears. She didn’t blame him.
She was sick to death of them herself, at this point.
She wiped the tears away with the sleeve of her baggy sweater, and examined the envelope. Just her name, on a computer-generated white label. Her insides clutched. She pushed the feeling away, fiercely.
T-Rex was gone, damn it. Food for worms.
She pried open the flap, and pulled out a handful of drawings.
They were pen and ink, ripped out of a spiral sketchbook. A series of female nudes. Simple, minimalistic, and yet charged with eroticism. They had the offhand grace of an ancient Chinese calligraphy master.
She leafed through them with trembling hands, bewildered. The drawings were unsigned. It was only when she saw the woman’s back that she recognized the subject. That pattern of moles…that was her own back. Those freckles were on her own arm. Her foot, with the mole above the toe that he’d said he wanted to fall to his knees and kiss.
It was like a punch, right to her heart.
She flung the sketches to the ground and burst into furious tears. How dare he come waltzing back, after months, to play incomprehensible games with her head, her heart. How dare he.
That twisted, sadistic bastard.
She dropped to her knees, rifled through the sketches to see if he’d dashed off an explanatory note. Of course not. Nothing so polite or normal. He was, after all, a cryptic, pain-in-the-ass wacko McCloud.
She stomped past the curious glances of the craftsmen, onto the street. She clutched the sweater against the biting wind. No way would Sean make his grand gesture and not hang around to see how she took it. She’d wait ’til he slunk out of the woodwork to take his punishment.
And then. Oh, then. God help the man.
Sean dug his shaking hands deeper into his jeans pockets as he stared past the lemon custard, huckleberry conserve and fudge that crowded the shelves of the Endicott Falls Gift Boutique. He was staring out of the shop window and across the street, at Books & Brew. Liv’s store.
The salesgirls had to wonder how candy and jam could mesmerize him for over an hour. He was so scary, none of them dared ask. He had that Frankenstein look going on, the hospital pallor, the red, nasty scars. All he needed were bolts coming out of his forehead.
He was so scared, his hands were ice cold. His belly churned.
He’d almost given up when he saw Liv’s father sign for the drawings. Old Bart marched out a few minutes later, got into his car and left. All clear.
He’d staked the place out for hours, but he still wasn’t prepared when she came out. His stomach clenched, his heart went nuts, a grassfire spread under the surface of his skin. He stared, hungrily.
Her dark hair whipped in the wind. She was so pale. Way too thin. And she wasn’t wearing a coat, for the love of God. It was blustery and raw out there, but her slender throat was exposed. Most of a shoulder, too. She had only a loose, knee-length sweater around herself.
Maybe the drawings hadn’t worked. He’d hoped to go non-verbal at first, take a detour around arguments. No such luck.
He stumbled out the door to meet his doom. Crossed the street like a sleepwalker. Cars screeched to a halt, beeping indignantly, but he just came blindly on, until he stood before her. As close as he dared.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here, Sean?” Her voice wobbled. “What sick game are you playing with me now?”
He inhaled. The exhale came out in a series of hiccupping, nervous jerks. “No games,” he said. “I’m throwing myself at your feet.”
She gasped. “Oh, really. Well. You can just pick yourself up and go throw yourself someplace else. Like the Dumpster. Go away, Sean. I don’t want to see you. Ever. Again. Got it?”
It was what he expected. Less than he deserved. Still, he couldn’t do as she asked. It was not one of the options open to him. He sank down onto his knees. She gasped, and skittered back a few steps.
“What the hell?” She waved her hands at him. “Stop it! Get up!”
Mud seeped through the knees of his jeans. He shook his head.
“I don’t believe it!” Her voice was thin, breathless. “You think I’m so stupid that you can charm me with your clown act? You think I’ll let you stomp on me for the third time? Fuck you, Sean McCloud!”
His jaw clenched, painfully. He shook his head again. “I never meant to do that to you,” he said tightly. “Never. I swear to God.”
Liv put her hand over her mouth. Two tears flashed down over her cheeks. He wanted to catch them. Feel their heat. Taste their salt.
She groped for her pocket, but the sweater thing didn’t have one. “Oh, shit,” she mumbled snappishly. “It never fails.”
He reached into the pocket of his shearling coat and pulled out a packet of tissues. He presented them to her with a solemn flourish.
She snatched them out of his hand, pried one out and blew into it. “Get up, you melodramatic jerk. I’m not playing your games.”
“I’m not leaving until you let me talk to you,” he said quietly.
“You’ll be kneeling in the mud for a very long time,” she warned.
“You’ll have fun explaining that one to the Chamber of Commerce,” he pointed out.
Her eyes blazed with fury. “You smart-assed son of a bitch.”
“Sorry,” he said meekly. Shit. He had to muzzle the flip remarks.
The boutique door tinkled. “Um, Liv?” a nervous girl’s voice inquired. “Is everything OK? Should I, like, call somebody?”
“Thanks, Polly. I’m fine,” Liv said coolly.
Sean swiveled his head. Polly was regarding him as if he were a slavering wild beast. “Um…you’re absolutely sure?” she squeaked.
“I’m sure.” Liv honked angrily into her tissue. “Get up,” she hissed at him. “You might as well come inside. The sooner you say your piece, the sooner it’ll be over and done. I have things to do.”
He was relieved to get inside, where the wind wasn’t whipping at those tender pink ears, that exposed throat. He wanted to wrap his warm coat around her, but she’d never go for that in her current mood.
The odor of sawdust, plasterboard, polyurethane and paint tickled his nose. People gawked as they went by, but he was laser-beam focused on that elegant, upright back. Only Liv could wear a paint-spattered gray flannel frock and waffle stomper boots and still look somehow regal.
She led him through the refurbished and refitted café, and into a small back office. It was just a plasterboarded, taped-up cube, not yet spackled or painted. Liv went to the window and stared out, as if she could somehow see out of the thick plastic that was taped over the hole.
He looked around. A space heater blasted stale warm air over his ankles. A hot plate sat on a desk crowded with invoices. A mug, tea bag dangling out of it. A sleeping bag and pillow lay on a cheap couch.
“What the hell is this?” He looked at her, appalled. “Are you sleeping in here? Don’t you have a place of your own?”
“Sure, I have a place,” she said. “Sometimes I lose track of the time. I crash here if it’s late. Some nights I don’t have the nerve to…”
“To go out in the dark?” he finished.
She frowned. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
He swallowed hard. “You shouldn’t be here alone, Liv. Not ever.”
Her snort was eloquently derisive. “Well. Isn’t that just too bad.”
He reached to stroke that gleaming mass of hair. She sensed him moving in on her, and jerked away. “So?” she asked. “How are things?”
He was nonplussed. “Huh? What things?”
“You know. With your family. How is Erin? Margot?”
“Oh. Them. Fine,” he said, relieved to have a starting place. “Erin’s almost there. Few more weeks, and I’ll be an uncle. Connor’s out of his mind. Won’t leave her alone for a second. Drives her nuts.”
“Ah,” Liv murmured sourly. “Good for her.”
He pressed on. “And Margot, she’s good too. Starting to show. She felt the baby move last week. She called everybody, she was so excited.”
“That’s wonderful,” Liv whispered. “Are Miles and Cindy OK?”
“Fine. Miles’s hand and arm are all healed up. Cindy’s good, too. Teaching music in Seattle. Gigging a lot, cutting a new album with her band. She and Miles are a big item these days. Inseparable.”
“Oh. That’s lovely.” Her voice was bitter. “How very nice for them.”
Shit. Every damn thing he said underscored how furious she was.
“The last time I talked to your brothers, they mentioned that there was an investigation in progress,” she said. “To verify if Kevin was…”
“Buried up on the hill?” He said it for her. “No. It was Craig Alden’s body in that grave, not Kev’s. Dental records have confirmed it.”
That startled her so much, she actually turned, wide-eyed. “Oh, my goodness,” she whispered. “So you don’t know where Kev is buried?”
He shook his head. “Nobody left alive to ask. Craig was reinterred, in Tacoma, with his folks. But we left Kev’s headstone up on the hill.”
Her throat worked. “Do you think he could still be alive?”
“Fucked if I know.” His voice was raw. “I’ve done everything I can for him. All I can do is try to learn how to live my life…not knowing.”
“I see.” She turned her back. “Well. Good luck with that, Sean.”
He took a step closer, reached to touch her shoulder. “Liv—”
“No!” She wrenched away, huddling into the corner. “Don’t you dare touch me! Not after three goddamn months of shutting me out! Like I didn’t matter!”
“Not true,” he said. “I thought of nothing but you!”
“Then why?” she almost shrieked. “Why did you do that to me?”
He shook his head, groping for words to describe the hell of shrinking fear, the bottomless, airless pit of self-loathing. The words wouldn’t come. “I was…afraid. For you,” he started, lamely.
She gave him a narrow look. “Excuse me?”
“Stress flashbacks,” he blurted. “I guess that’s what they were. Hallucinations. Real horrific fuckers. They were so real. You would walk into the room, and I would grab you and kiss you, and all of a sudden you were dead, and I was the one that had stabbed you, or shot you, or whatever. I was scared even to see you. Scared that I could still hurt you. I thought maybe Osterman had…that he could still…oh, shit.”
Her hands moved up to cover her mouth. “Oh, God. Sean.”
“I tried medicating it,” he plodded on. “It just seemed to get worse. I thought maybe I’d snapped, gone nuts, like Dad.”
“So you decided to do the hard thing?”
The cool tone in her voice made him wince. He was still in a world of hurt, with no end in sight. He clenched his teeth, and nodded.
“Of course. Expect me to understand,” Liv raged. “You had to be alone. You had to leave me alone. Wrong move, Sean!”
“Was it? What did you want me to say?” he broke in savagely. “Hey, babe, I’ve got this little bitty problem. I keep murdering you whenever I see you. Sounds like a real confidence builder, huh?”
“It’s better than being abandoned!” She lashed out at him, flailing.
He blocked her slap, and the flurry of frenzied blows that followed it, then pinned her hands to the wall. “I never stopped loving you,” he said roughly. “It’s been tearing me to pieces.”
She shook her head. “Let go of my damn hands. I need a tissue.”
He gave her one. She blew her nose, hid her face. “Just go, Sean.”
“No,” he said. “I just can’t do that.”
She dropped her hand, and glared at him. Her curling lashes glittered with tears. He could practically hear her spine stacking up. The look of fury in her beautiful eyes rang all his bells.
“Forget it. You can’t bully me into trusting you again,” she announced. “Let go of me!”
“No.” He scooped her up before she could wiggle away and lifted her, pressing her body against the wall so that she straddled his hips. He dug his fingers into the wind whipped hair, and kissed her, hard.
It was like lightning through a wire, the need that roared through him. The emotion, the sensations. Her soft female heat pressed against his crotch, her shabby skirt twined around his legs. She shivered, fighting him even as her thighs tightened and pulsed around his.
She kissed him back, angrily, hungrily. His heart revved up.
He tilted her face up. “You love me,” he said roughly. “I can make you want me. That’s enough for now. We’ll work on trust later.”
“No way, you arrogant jerk,” she hissed. “You got it backwards.”
“No, I don’t. I understand you perfectly.” He scooped her up, hands under her ass, and carried her to the couch. He sank down, depositing her on the cushions. “But if it’s the only card I have to play, I’m goddamn well going to play it.”
She pushed his face away with shaking hands when he tried to kiss her again. “OK,” she said. “Granted, you can muscle me around. You’re very strong. And yes, you’re good at making me come. But that’s all. It ends there. When you’re done, I’ll still tell you to leave. So leave now. Spare us. It’ll just hurt that much more.”
“No.” He put his hand over hers, rubbing his cheek against it. Kissing her palm, her fingers, that delicate knob of bone on her wrist. “If I make you come once, why not again? And again, and again, and damn, before you know it, sixty-five years have gone by.” He slid his hands beneath the skirt, over the thick wool socks until they gave way to bare, smooth female skin halfway up her thighs.
She swatted at him. “Stop it, you lust-crazed pig. So that’s your plan? Just enslave me sexually for all eternity?”
“Ah, man,” he said thickly. “Sounds like heaven.”
She wiggled furiously. “Smart-ass dog,” she muttered.
“Yeah.” The dress was so loose, there was no impediment to sliding his hand still farther, feeling her cotton panties, the humid female warmth between her thighs, the deep, sexy dip of her waist.
Her murmurs sounded like protest, but her breath was jerky, her cheeks hot pink. His hand insinuated itself under a thermal weave undershirt, and found the tender, jiggling heft of her tits, propped in the scaffolding of a cotton bra. Her nipples were tight.
Her heart thudded, quick and fast, against his hand.
Tears flooded his eyes. He hid his face against her chest, let her paint-spattered sweater absorb them. It moved him to tears. How fucking beautiful she was. How fragile. Her body was a treasure box that held the priceless jewel of Liv Endicott’s soul.
His princess, his queen, empress. His goddess.
A sharp tug, and the cotton of her panties gave way, leaving her hot nest of curls naked to his caressing fingers. He tossed her skirt up over her waist. Oh, man. That soft skin, torn panties clinging to one white thigh, that lovely, hot pink slit in her dark curls. Beckoning him.
Her eyes were closed, tangled hair spread out across the couch cushions, the smudgy, sooty shadows of her lashes dark against her tear-streaked face. That stain of sunrise pink in her pale cheek, the soft lower lip caught between her white teeth, every detail devastated him.
The contrast between her delicate female body and the thick wool socks, the shabby skirt, the battered boots, was unspeakably erotic.
She moved against him, gripping his shirt, shoving his heavy jacket off his shoulders as if it pissed her off that he was still wearing it.
He let go of her just long enough to wrestle the sleeves off his arms. His hands were starving for contact with her hot skin. His dick felt like a ravening beast lunging at the chain, but he had to redeem himself first, as best he could. Making her come was his favorite way, cheap, short-term solution though it might be.
He didn’t care.
He slid his finger reverently into the tight, suckling heat of her pussy, mouth watering. He’d been aching for a taste of her sweet girl juice for months. He sagged down to pay passionate homage to her tender female flesh with his tongue.
Ah, God. Like always. Silken salty sweet. Delicious. Every sobbing breath, every lapping sliding stroke. He loved the way she struggled and writhed, bucking and heaving against his face, though he could feel her anger in the sharp, nervous bite of her nails through his shirt.
She was wound so tight, vibrating with furious excitement, but he was instinctively wary of making her come too soon.
Better to drag it out, make her wait. Keep her in this drawn up state of shivering need, for as long as he possibly could.
God knows, he was content to wallow with his face between her thighs for hours. Forever, even. Seeking heaven with his tongue.
That manipulative bastard took his own sweet time about it.
He brought her up to an agonized point of shivering desperate need, and kept her there, for an endless, struggling eternity.
When he finally had mercy and shoved her over the crest, the climax was so violent, it wiped her out completely.
She was a sobbing mess. Destroyed. All dignity dissolved.
He didn’t gloat, though. He had that much sense. He just pressed his face against her belly, nuzzling her, his breath tickling her mound.
Liv twisted to the side, insofar as she could with her legs wrapped around a huge, gorgeous man’s broad shoulders, and hid her face in her hands. She expected him to follow up his advantage, and make love to her. Pleasure shimmered through every nerve. Her heart felt hot, glowing. Squishy soft inside her chest. She was melting down. She ached to be filled up, to feel his heat, his weight. His wonderful steely strength. She was poised for him to mount her, enter her, give her a long, hard, furious ride. She was braced for it, breathless for it.
But all he did was nuzzle her muff. It was driving her nuts.
“Stop that,” she muttered. “You’re tickling me.”
He nipped lazily at her thigh, stroked his faintly scratchy jaw against her. Petting her damp curls, her slick, sensitive folds, as tenderly as if he were caressing a purring kitten. “Never,” he whispered.
Sean looked thin, his features cut sharper. He seemed so different with such short hair. Hard and intense.
She turned away and stared, hot-eyed, at the plasterboard. Three months of pent up hurt and confusion was bottlenecked inside her. The grief, the abandonment, the piercing loneliness. She couldn’t bear it.
“Why?” she burst out. “Why are you here, after all this time? What changed your mind? Did you have a goddamn vision? Or what?”
He lifted his head, but she didn’t dare meet his eyes. She couldn’t let him hypnotize her. She had to stay sharp.
“I guess I did,” he said quietly. “I went up to the mountains. I realized a couple of things up there. One, if I can’t trust my own self, I might as well be dead. Two, I don’t want to die. Three, if I’m going to live, I have to have you. Because my life isn’t worth a handful of shit without you.”
“Oh. Really.” A teary giggle shook her. “Such poetic eloquence.”
“You inspire me, babe.”
She wiped her eyes on her sleeves. He shoved a tissue into her hand. He turned her face ’til she was looking into his somber eyes.
“I haven’t had one of those episodes since then,” he said quietly. “Which isn’t to say that it won’t happen again. I got messed up pretty bad. But I think—I hope, anyway—that the worst is behind me. So you decide, Liv. If you want to risk it, that is. I can’t wait around until I feel like I’m good enough for you. Because I never will.”
“Oh, shut up.” She tried to wiggle free, but he was having none of that. His embrace just tightened. She sniffled angrily into the tissue. “That’s insulting and ridiculous. I never expected you to be perfect. But I can’t be with a man who shuts me out whenever the going gets rough.”
His face tightened. “I’m sorry. I promise you I won’t do it to you, ever again. Before God, my parents’ graves, my sacred honor.” He hesitated. “Such as it is.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your sacred honor,” she snapped. “It’s your lack of plain common sense that bugs me.”
He muffled his laughter against her chest, and peeked up at her, sidewise. “Uh, well. Like I said,” he ventured. “I’m not perfect. Not even close. But I do have my strong points. And I promise to do my best.”
He waited for her to answer. She couldn’t. She shook with conflicting emotions. Anger, doubt…and a wild, crazy hope.
Her voice was locked in her throat. She could hardly breathe.
Sean groped behind himself for the thick, fleece lined leather coat, and pulled something from the pocket. He held out a tiny velvet box.
She stared at it stupidly. Sean made an impatient sound, grabbed her hand, closed her fingers around it. “Open it,” he urged. “Please.”
She flipped it open, and stared at the ring inside. Mouth agape.
The white gold ring seemed to flash and pulse against the black velvet backdrop. A diamond glittered, slightly off center, and around it, a ruby, an emerald and a sapphire were mounted in a sensual, geometrical setting that looked somehow both modern and ancient.
It was a stunning piece.
“I thought I should use the same diamond,” he said hesitantly. “But I thought I’d jazz it up, give it some color. Make something fresh and new out of it. I hope that you…” His voice trailed off.
She struggled to speak, tried again. “Did Tam make this?”
He nodded. “She said to tell you that if you were foolish enough to give in to my bullshit, that she wanted to be your maid of honor,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “It’s becoming a sort of a family tradition.”
She covered her trembling mouth, still staring at the ring. “She’s a little ahead of the game, isn’t she?”
He shook his head slowly. “More like about fifteen years behind.”
She gulped. He took the hand that held the ring box, and gave it a slow, reverent kiss. “I want to make love to you,” he said softly.
“I know,” she whispered.
“But I don’t want to be kicked out on my ass afterwards,” he said. “Can I tell you how I want it to be? My wildest, craziest fantasy?”
She shrugged. “Nobody’s stopping you,” she muttered.
His eyes gleamed. “I want to slip that ring on your finger,” he began. “I want to crawl up on that couch on top of you, and very slowly, push my cock into that tight, red hot pussy. I want to stare deep into your eyes and kiss you while I make sweet, slow love to you. For hours. Make you come til you’re just glowing. Beaming. Shining.”
She looked away, pink. “That much, I could have guessed.”
“Oh, am I too predictable for you? I’m not done yet. When we’re exhausted, we’ll go home. Your place, since it’s closer. I want to take a bath with you. Uncork some wine. Cook some dinner. Snoop around, check out the books on your shelves, your DVDs, your photographs. Get in bed with you. Make love again, if we have the strength.”
She couldn’t meet his eyes. “You would, I bet. Knowing you.”
“Probably,” he admitted. “I want to wake up in the morning, and feel how right it is, to have your sweet, warm, naked, silky, womanly body wrapped up in my arms. We’ll make love again. Take a long, sexy shower together. I’ll lick the drops of water off you with my tongue. Comb your hair. Make you coffee. Cook you some bacon and eggs.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You mean, you’re not going to make love to me again between coffee and the bacon and eggs?”
His grin turned brilliant. “That part’s implied. Then I’ll take you to work, and spend the rest of the day bouncing off the walls because I’m so fucking happy, I just don’t even know what to do with myself.”
She dissolved again. She clapped both hands over her face.
Sean tugged them gently away. “I want to spend all my days and all my nights with you.” His voice vibrated with emotion. “I want to protect you, stand by you, honor and comfort you. Have children with you. Grow old with you. As many years we get.” He kissed both her hands. “I want your company, Liv. Forever.”
His voice broke, but she couldn’t tell if he was crying too, because her eyes swam with tears. She reached for him, blindly, grabbing him with arms, legs, everything she had, in a tight, shaking embrace.
She couldn’t fight it anymore. She wanted to wrap her hair around him, tie him to herself with it. She never wanted to let him go.
But he pried her arm from his shoulder, and pulled her hand between them. The fire flashing in the diamond, the rich colors of the stones, swirled into a pool of shimmering rainbows in her tear drenched eyes. “May I?” he asked softly.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Nodded. He slid the ring on.
It was a perfect, exquisite fit. It felt so comfortable, so incredibly right on her hand, she could feel it all the way up her arm. He cupped her face and kissed her tears away with passionate gentleness, as if she were a flower. Or some delicate little thing made out of fine china.
She couldn’t open her eyes. She pressed trembling lips together. Her body vibrated with feelings. Oh, God. She was going to burst.
She couldn’t bear it any longer. She made a sharp little growling noise and shoved his face away. “Enough of this!”
He stiffened with alarm. “Huh? What?”
“I am not some goddamn fragile china doll!” she snarled.
His eyes widened. “Uh, never said you were, babe.”
“So?” She held up her ringed hand, brandished it at him. It sparkled and flashed gorgeously in the harsh fluorescent overhead light. “I kept my part of the bargain. Now you keep yours, damn it.”
“My part of, uh, which bargain?” he ventured, his face wary. “Not that I’m not willing, I just want to be dead sure I’ve got the right—”
“All that stuff you said? All that gooey, super-romantic hooey about making love to me for hours? The wine, the shower, the bacon and eggs, the forever? Remember that? Is that just more of your jive talking clown act, or are you actually planning to follow through?”
Sean let out a big, shuddering sigh as his worried look relaxed into a big, goofy smile. “God, yes. You bet, baby. I just thought that the restrained, gentlemanly, refined, sensitive act would be more—”
“The drawings were great. I’m going to have them framed. But don’t get too sensitive. And don’t think.” She wrenched at his belt buckle, pulled it loose, fumbled for the buttons of his jeans. “You’ve got a job of work to do. So get to it.”
He let out a sharp, gasping moan when she shoved his jeans down and seized his hot, thick shaft, stroking it greedily. She slid down sideways, onto the couch, and pulled him down on top of herself.
“Oh, yeah.” He rose up between her spread thighs with a groan of need. “I have condoms in the pocket of my coat. I could—”
“Don’t you dare make me wait one more goddamn instant!”
The whipcrack of her voice made his muscles jerk. His cock twitched and throbbed in her hand. “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered.
She wiggled with frantic eagerness until she felt the blunt tip of him nudge inside. Finally entering her. They let out the same keening moan of agonized pleasure at the slow, delicious push of his thick shaft into her body. They stared into each others’ eyes. Fused into one taut, throbbing whole. Poised in breathless stillness.
“Do not hold yourself back from me,” she said to him.
“Never.” His low, shaking voice had the solemn ceremony of a sacred rite. “I swear it.”
She jerked his head down, kissed him. “I want all of you,” she told him. “Everything you’ve been, everything you’ll be. Everything you are.”
“Done,” he said.
He gathered her tightly into his arms, and gave it to her.