Their skin was slick with sweat, their heartbeats no longer slow and heavy but frantic. The tempo increased. Tiarnan could feel Kate’s legs wrap around him, urging him even deeper, harder. The pinnacle came in a blaze of white light and pleasure so intense they both stopped breathing for a long moment, hung suspended in time. And then came the fall, tumbling down and down all the way, their bodies releasing and pulsing for an age as Kate accepted Tiarnan’s weight onto her, wrapped legs and arms around him even tighter, binding him to her.
Tiarnan woke at some point and felt an empty space beside him. Immediately a low hum of panic gripped him that he did not like. He lifted his head. Dawn was touching the sky outside and Kate stood on the balcony, leaning on the railing looking out to sea, dressed in nothing but his white shirt. The outline of her body was silhouetted enticingly under the material. Relief surged through him—which he also did not like.
Tiarnan got out of bed. As if linked to him by an invisible thread, Kate stood and turned around, pulled the shirt together over her chest haphazardly with one hand. Her hair was tumbled around her shoulders. Tiarnan prowled towards her. She was the only thing filling his mind, his vision in that moment. Seeing her dressed in nothing but his white shirt should have been a cliché. But it wasn’t. Plenty of women had dressed like this for him, as if in an effort to do the contrived sexy thing, and all it had incited within him was mild irritation. Right now, though, irritation was the last thing he was feeling. What he was feeling was a surge of primal possessiveness rushing through him.
Kate stood straighter as he came closer, put her hands out behind her on the railing. The shirt fell open, revealing tantalising glimpses of the twin globes of her breasts and then, down further, the ever so soft swell of her belly and the apex of her thighs, where golden curls hid paradise. Tiarnan reached her and pulled her into him, his arms around her naked back under the shirt. Even though they’d barely slept all night, he was ready to take her again.
He felt her lift one leg to hook it around his hip … knew instantly that she was ready again too. It was the most powerful aphrodisiac. They didn’t even make it back to the bed. Tiarnan slid into her there and then. And with the dawn breaking somewhere in the east, tingeing the sky with pink, he and Kate entered another realm of the senses.
CHAPTER SEVEN
KATE had never felt so lethargic in her life—as if every limb was weighted down with a delicious warm stone. She couldn’t even open her eyes. Vague flashes of memory came back: her dress pooling at her feet; kissing Tiarnan until she had to break away to suck in air; his body moving into hers, taking her breath away all over again, slippery with sweat; Tiarnan drawing her on top of him and watching her face as she took him in, then flipping her onto her back, driving in and out with such exquisite and ruthless precision that she’d been begging for release, near to tears.
Kate tried without success to shut the images out. Heat was already flaring through her just thinking about what they’d shared. She remembered getting up at some point and standing on the balcony, as if to try and make sense of it all, and then she’d heard him get up and he’d joined her there. Within seconds of touching they’d been burning up all over again. She squeezed her eyes shut tight, as if that might block out the wanton image. She could vaguely remember him lifting her up into his arms … after that a bath … and then oblivion. An oblivion touched with the peace that came from a long-held desire finally fulfilled. Her somewhat pathetic concern that sleeping with Tiarnan might prove to be disappointing had been blown into the stratosphere.
Just then a sound came from somewhere near—a door opened, small feet ran in.
‘Katie, Katie—come on, get up, sleepyhead!’
Immediately she was alert. She was in her own bed, dressed in the T-shirt and boxer shorts she’d laid out on her pillow the previous evening. Rosie and her friend Zoe were standing looking at her, holding back the muslin curtain that was around the bed. Kate sat up and pushed down the clamour of questions. Tiarnan must have put her to bed here and dressed her after the bath. Had she really been so exhausted that she hadn’t even been aware?
Heat suffused her face, and she tried to hide it by throwing back the covers and climbing out of bed. She smiled at the girls, hoping they wouldn’t notice her discomfiture.
‘What time is it?’
Rosie rolled her eyes at her friend, who giggled shyly. They were both dressed in shorts and vest tops, feet bare. Kate could see a trickle of sand had followed them into the room.
‘It’s really late, Katie. Nearly midday! Come on—we’re going to the beach. Tiarnan wouldn’t let us wake you for ages. He said you were jet-lagged …’
The two girls ran out of the room again, shouting that they’d see her downstairs in ten minutes. Kate sagged back onto the bed and pushed her hand through her hair. The thought of seeing Tiarnan after last night made her tummy flip. Was it even real? Or had she dreamt it? But her body was the evidence. She was glad he’d had the foresight to put her into her own bed. She’d obviously been barely capable of moving. The fact that he’d managed to retain a cool measure of control and was clearly marking the boundaries between them made her feel vulnerable.
As she stood under the spray of her shower a few minutes later, Kate’s movements suddenly halted. She remembered that moment on the balcony; they hadn’t used protection. Tiarnan had been so careful to protect them up to that point, and she hadn’t missed the horrorstruck look on his face when he’d realised. The pain of seeing how violently he’d castigated himself had led her to reassure him quickly that it would be fine—she was at a safe stage in her cycle. And she was. But still, it shocked her how easily they’d been careless, and he’d vowed vociferously to make sure it didn’t happen again. She had no desire either, to risk bringing a child into a very temporary moment of madness. And the thought of what such a scenario would mean to Tiarnan made her go cold.
‘Morning. Or should I say afternoon?’
Kate took a deep breath to steady herself against the bone-tingling effect of the deep, sexy drawling voice before she looked up from tying her flat sandals, sitting on the bottom stair. But she couldn’t stop her heart beating wildly. Mortification twisted her insides anew as the enormity of what had happened hit her. She’d been so easy. She’d shown him with bells on how she’d hungered for him for years … She should try to hide that vulnerability from him. She had to somehow make him think he was just another in a long line of lovers. She had to protect herself from him.
Gathering all her training, that armour she’d perfected over the years, she looked up and steeled herself not to react to seeing him—but it was hard. He stood leaning nonchalantly against a doorjamb, dressed in a white T-shirt that strained across the biceps of his arms and faded loose khaki shorts. Battered sneakers on his feet.
She finished fiddling with her sandals and stood, self-conscious even though she was dressed similarly, in long shorts and a vest top. Perfectly respectable. She saw that they were alone and came close to him. Trying not to falter, she tipped her face up to his and said, sotto voce, ‘Thanks for last night, I really enjoyed it.’
She saw his smile fade ever so slightly. A hard gleam came into his eyes and she wanted to gag. Those words were so meaningless, when she really wanted to say that the previous night had been the most exquisite experience of her existence. That she’d already stored away every single moment in her memory. But she had to remember who she was dealing with—had to. Or he’d destroy her.
He took her hand before she knew what he was doing and raised it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the underside of her wrist, causing heat to flood her belly and her breath to catch.
‘I enjoyed it too. I’m already looking forward to tonight.’
Kate’s eyes were snared by his. She was terrified that he would see that she was putting on a desperate act. She smiled and it felt brittle. She could do this if she had to.
‘Me too.’