“Really,” she said. “It’s late—”
“Claire, talk to me. Please…tell me what you’re feeling.”
What she was feeling? She got to her feet somehow and stood staring down at him. She tried to find her earlier numb indifference, but it was gone. Something had stolen it. Kieran, with his blue eyes and his sexy smile and his knotted, inextricable ties to Steve, had stolen it, as he had stolen so many things in her life.
“What do you think I’m feeling? I’m hurting. Is that what you wanted me to say? I’ve lost everyone I ever loved, and it hurts. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
He rose, too, but she shoved away from him and moved toward the radio. She flicked it off just before he reached her.
“No,” he said. “I never wanted you to hurt.”
“Oh, that’s right. What was I thinking? You’d much prefer to hear that everything is fine, that I’m okay and you’re forgiven. In fact, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? That’s why you came. So that you can be forgiven, and you can get on with your life.”
She was right. She could see it in his face. He didn’t deny it. He just stared at her, looking exhausted and guilty as hell.
Somehow that drained all the fury right out of her. She went limp. “All right, then, you’re forgiven,” she said. “And I’m fine. Now please go home. Please.”
Her voice cracked, and she felt something warm, like blood, on her cheeks. She reached up and touched the liquid, but it was clear. It was tears—the first she’d cried since Steve’s funeral. She tried to choke them back. She didn’t want to do this. Not now, not ever. She lifted her chin and swallowed hard, but still they poured down her face.
Kieran stood in front of her, his face dark. “Don’t fight it,” he said. “It’s all right. You need to cry.”
He brushed the tears with his fingers. And then, very slowly, he kissed the damp places where they had been. She didn’t resist as he pulled her into his arms and bent his head close to hers. She could feel his heart pounding.
He was so strong, she thought. And she was not. Once, she had been…but now she was being helplessly drained by this flood of tears.
So she let herself rest against his chest. Just for a little while, she thought. Just until she borrowed enough strength to stand on her own again.
When he took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up to his, when he bent his head and kissed her, she thought at first it was just another kind of comfort. His lips were tender, moving slowly, as if he hoped he might be able to stroke new life into her.
And it was comforting. His kiss was sweet and warm, and she had been right, he did taste of Heyday. He opened her lips gently and breathed the sweet air of home, the pure memory of Steve, of happiness, of innocence, of love, into her mouth.
With a soft groan, she accepted it all, grateful but passive, still helpless to resist or participate.
Somewhere, though, her body had already begun to answer him. A subtle heat in the small of her back. A warm, honeyed liquid trickling through her veins. It must have begun very deep, so deep that she wasn’t aware, because by the time it reached her conscious mind, her heart was racing, and she was on fire.
She caught her breath against the piercing pleasure.
Pulling away, she turned her face toward his neck, where she could feel his heart pounding, just as hers was. She moved her mouth against him, until he was wet with her tears, and skin slid easily on skin. His arms jerked and tightened, and the pulse throbbed harder against her lips.
He made a low noise in his throat, more vibration than sound.
“I want you, Claire,” he said, turning his face to capture her lips again. His breath was still sweet, but fiery now, an extension of the flames inside her. “I want you so much I can hardly see straight.”
“I know,” she said. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I know.”
His hands moved over her back, down to her hips. He pulled her closer. “I didn’t come for this, I swear I didn’t.” He cupped his hands around her buttocks and tilted her into him. “At least I don’t think I did. I honestly don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
And it didn’t. Little frozen bits of her body were melting, and the warm flood was carrying her away. She might have regrets tomorrow, but tonight she didn’t care.
After all she had lost, didn’t she deserve this? Didn’t Kieran owe her this? Didn’t he owe her one night when she didn’t have to feel so dreadfully alone?
And tomorrow?
But she shut the question out of her mind. No one should live for tomorrow. It might never come. It might fly away in the gray, speeding hour before dawn. And then it would be too late.
“Please,” she whispered, putting her lips against his throat. “Make love to me.”
He hesitated one last second. And then, with a low groan of surrender, he eased her down onto the tablecloth. He unbuttoned her yellow dress, and when she was naked and waiting, taking shallow breaths to hold the tension at a safe distance, he slowly removed his own clothes.
He was even more beautiful than she had imagined. His golden skin, his powerful proportions, his hot blue eyes devouring her and his silken blond hair dangling in his face…
No wonder everyone loved him. She could love him, too, if she let herself.
He skimmed his fingers down her body, from collarbone to hip. She shivered and shifted against the tablecloth hungrily.
He knelt over her, positioning himself carefully so that their bodies met at every possible point. He brought his mouth down and took the tip of her breast between his warm lips. Arching with something that was too lovely to be pain, too piercing to be joy, she threaded her fingers through his soft hair and said his name, his beautiful name that sounded a little like a cry.
He touched her then between her legs, touched her as if he already knew her, as if her body spoke to him in a secret language only he could hear. He went slowly. He listened as her muscles quivered, as her breath trembled and moaned and snagged on its own panting pace. And then, when he was sure he understood, his fingers stroked their complicated, fiery response.
She cried out and twisted, instinctively trying to escape the terrifying thrill of such a profound intimacy.
What about tomorrow? Something frightened inside kept crying out the question. What about tomorrow?
But there was no tomorrow.
“Kieran,” she cried, pulling at his hand. He understood—he moved quickly. He rose above her. He pressed himself into her, pushing softly at first, then harder….
“Claire?” His face was tense. He hadn’t expected that he would be the first. It clearly was an agony to hold back.
Tomorrow? But the word was only a shadow now.
“It’s all right,” she said. She dug her fingers into his hips and pulled him in, until the barriers broke and he filled her with a groan and a flash of searing pain.
He kissed her then, and the fiery, rhythmic sparkle began all over again. She opened, and he drove into her mouth just as he was driving into her body. And in that sweet, hot wetness, she realized she had been wrong.
Kieran McClintock’s lips didn’t taste like home.
They tasted like heaven.
And for one taste of heaven tonight, she’d gladly face hell tomorrow.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE HEYDAY HIGH