He let the head of his cock press against her, sliding against the wetness, teasing her, teasing himself until he thought he’d explode. “Double or nothing?”
She was still having trouble catching her breath, and the hard intensity of her response was another bolt of pleasure shooting through him. He pushed, just a bit, feeling her body open to accommodate him, and he froze for a moment, to bring himself back under control. He couldn’t lose it now. Not until he was deep inside her, not until she came again, could he let loose and have her as hard and as fast as his body demanded. She deserved a gentle lover. Tonight she was going to have to make do with him.
She groaned, shifting, taking him inside. Her eyes were half-closed, but he didn’t chide her. She knew exactly who was between her legs, who was inside her, and he didn’t need to play games to prove it. He paused, his muscles so tight they might snap. “Are you all right?” His voice was raw, and he cursed. She couldn’t know how much it cost him to ask. If she said no he’d have to pull out, and it would kill him. But he’d do it.
“Yes.” It was the merest breath of a word.
He pushed in more, and she moved again, and he was afraid he was hurting her. She looked beautiful in the moonlight, her white silk hair, unwrapped finally and spread over the pillow. Out of the blue he remembered the old joke, that a Dublin man’s idea of foreplay was “Brace yerself, Bridget.”
He was shaking, sweating, determined not to hurt her, keeping his weight on his elbows, slow, slow, careful not to hurt her, gentle, easy now … He felt her hands on his face, gentle, cool hands, and he opened his eyes to look down at her, and she was in the grip of the same blinding need He was wrong, she didn’t need easy, she didn’t need gentle. She needed hard, and she needed now.
“Finn,” she said in a hoarse voice, a plea, but not for mercy. “Do it. For God’s sake, do it.”
He stared into her eyes, not breaking the connection, and then flexing his hips, he thrust home, deep and hard, so sweet, so tight, and she cried out.
He froze, certain he’d hurt her, and he started to pull away, but she clutched him, her fingers digging in with the same desperation he felt. “No,” she said. “Don’t stop. God, don’t stop.”
It broke the last of his self-control. He pulled her under him, tighter, and she shifted, taking him, and he was lost. There was no way he could make it slow, make it build, he needed to lose himself in her sweetness, in her mouth, in her cunt, he needed to die there, and he thrust, hard, again and again, into the clinging warmth of her, feeling her rise to meet him, her breath strangled. He wanted to make her come, fast, so he could let go and finish this thing that had held him prisoner for so long, but he didn’t want it to end, he wanted to stay inside her forever, deep, hard.
He could feel the last remnants of his control begin to shred. She was trembling, her body arching, convulsing, and finally he let go, the semen bursting from him as her body clamped tight around his cock, and she sank her teeth onto his shoulder to muffle her scream of pleasure.
She was crying. It took him a while to realize it, a while to come back from that blissful nirvana that was better than anything he’d ever felt before. If three years’ abstinence gave him that kind of orgasm he might almost consider making a practice of it.
But he didn’t lie to himself. It wasn’t the three years. He could have found relief with anyone. It was Beth. Sister Beth. No virgin, but close to it.
He was heavy on her, but he didn’t want to release her. He rolled onto his side, taking her with him, still inside her, simply because he was still hard. Impossible as it seemed, he was ready for more.
He stroked the silken hair away from her face. Holding her seemed to break the last bit of serenity she had, and she was hiccupping, shaking, crying in his arms, and all he could do was hold her, helpless. Had he hurt her? He’d felt her orgasm through the haze of his own powerful release.
He tried to lift her face to look at her, but she simply buried her head against his shoulder. He realized absently that she’d bitten him, and he almost grinned at the memory, his cock getting even harder inside her. He couldn’t do anything until she calmed down, but right now she needed to cry, though he wasn’t sure why. He knew women well enough that he accepted sometimes they needed to cry.
The sobs were lessening, falling into silence, then a hiccup, then a short burst of tears, then a longer stretch of calm. She was pulling herself together, or trying to, and she hadn’t seemed to notice that he still wanted, still needed her.
He kept stroking her, his hands gentle, soothing, as he murmured words he thought he’d forgotten, words his mother had used, in the Gaelic, calling her his darling, his sweetness, his love. When he realized what he was doing he couldn’t stop – it was calming her, soothing her. She wouldn’t know what he was saying. He could even mean it.
Her voice was so low he could barely hear it. “Three times,” she said.
“Three times?” He had no idea what she was talking about. Had he managed to make her come three times? In fact, it had felt like more than that, but who was counting? Apparently she was.
“I’ve had sex three times before,” she said in a choked voice. “And I hated it.”
“Far from a virgin,” he said, hating the tenderness in his voice. She was seducing him far more effectively than he’d seduced her. “So have I ruined you?”
God, yes, he’d ruined her, Beth thought, struggling to keep her tenuous self-control. Ruined her for any other man, she expected. How could something be so different? Was it simply because he was good in bed? The aphrodisiac of facing death and surviving? The fact that he’d kept her safe, protected her, and for all his talk, had never made demands she hadn’t wanted to meet.
If she were young and impressionable she might think she’d fallen in love with him, but she was too mature to fall into that kind of absurd fantasy. It was … the intensity of the last few days that made her confuse gratitude with something more long-lasting.
She should pull away from him, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to leave him. He was hot and hard and warm against her skin, and her entire world seemed filled with him. The world that was encompassed by the narrow berth and his body still wrapped tightly around hers as his voice murmured soft, incomprehensible things in her ear. She should try to pull herself together, but she couldn’t. She still felt shaken by the aftermath of her release, and yet, strangely enough, there was still a low thrum of desire pulsing through her. How could there be?
And then she realized he was still hard inside her. He’d pulled her into his arms, holding her against his body, and he’d pulled one of her legs around his hip, keeping the connection tight. She looked up, startled, and he must have read the knowledge in her eyes.
“Yeah, I’m hard again,” he said ruefully. “You don’t want …” He was starting to pull away from her, but she quickly tightened her hold.
“I do.”
Without another word he rolled onto his back, taking her with him, so that she was on top, straddling him, his cock lodged so deep inside her that she felt a frisson of shock. A shaft of moonlit lay across his face, and she could see him clearly, the hooded eyes, the remote expression on his face as he slid his hands down her body to hold her hips.
“Have you done this before?”
She shook her head, her hair falling down around her face, hiding the heat that suffused her. She felt vulnerable, awkward, and yet … and yet …
“I’ll show you.” With gentle pressure he rocked her, up slightly, then back down. “Like that. There’s no hurry. Just do what feels good.”
What felt good was to lie beneath him and let him take charge, she wanted to cry, but she kept her face hidden, letting him guide the slow movements, obedient, wanting to please him, feeling the hard push of him deep within her, rocking, moving. And then it changed, as if slumbering coals had finally blazed into a conflagration, and she moved, sliding on him, feeling his hard cock rub against places she wouldn’t have thought mattere
d, and she shivered, arching, throwing her head back as sensation rocked through her. She could feel her hair ripple down her back, his hands hard on her hips. She wanted more of him, more of that blissful, wicked, startling feeling, and she rocked, finding a rhythm that burned through her, made her tremble.
His hands slid up her body to cup her breasts and she moved her hips, taking him, reveling in the power of it, of using him for her pleasure. All of his strength was at the command of her body. The crazy, mad explosion of heat and strength, vulnerability and wicked control finally flared into mindless acceptance, as he caught her hips once more, his fingers digging into them, his body arching up into hers, and she was shivering, struggling, fighting.
“I can’t …” she gasped, wanting to weep. “It’s too much. I can’t.”
“You can,” he whispered, his voice dark and insistent, and she moved faster then, searching for something she knew she couldn’t find, something that eluded her.
He moved his hand and touched her between her legs, and her reaction was so abrupt it shocked her. She was catapulted into a spasm of such unrelenting power that she was barely aware of him spilling inside her, and she climaxed, open and vulnerable, no place to hide as the powerful contractions clamped around her body.
She collapsed against him, feeling his arms come around her, and she wanted to weep, but she’d already shed all her tears. She felt boneless, lost, empty now that he’d finally left her, and she wanted to hold him, to kiss him, to beg him to love her, to …
But all the things she wanted vanished, and like any selfish lover, she felt into a deep, endless sleep, sprawled on top of him like a limp doll.
MacGowan waited until he was sure she was deeply asleep. He liked her spread over him like a lazy cat – she was light enough that he could barely feel her except along his knife wound, and even that he didn’t mind, but he moved her anyway, rolling onto his side again and tucking her against him.
He saw the blood on her pale skin, and he froze, then realized it was from his hand. It was a mess – he was lucky he hadn’t broken it, but he’d still managed to bleed all over her. He touched his shoulder with tentative fingers, and felt wetness there as well. She’d bitten him hard enough to draw blood, and to his amazement he could feel his cock stir again.
Damnable piece of male equipment – it never did what he told it to. She needed sleep, and he could do with a few hours himself. Not with her, of course. He didn’t sleep with the woman he fucked, no matter what.
Of course, he’d already slept with her, in that hut in the mountains, on this very cot when she’d been sick. And at the moment he’d wanted to curl around her, keeping her against him , and stay that way.
But that would bring nothing but trouble, and pain when he left her, and if he had any sense of self-preservation he would pull away. He’d told her it was a one-night stand, an event, not a relationship. They were done. It was over, and he needed to go back to his room.
As soon as he could muster the energy. As soon as he was certain she was deeply asleep. For now just holding her seemed the wisest thing to do.
And so he did.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Vincent Barringer was not happy. His people had failed him, time and again. How was it possible that Sully could have screwed up so badly, not once, but twice? The Guiding Light was a bunch of drugged-out fools who’d lost their vision years ago, more interested in money than idealism, but they should have still have the killer instinct.
He had no authorization for this particular mission, and he had to admit it chafed him. That after all these years he suddenly had to get an okay from the higher ups. It was the liberals, he’d decided long ago. They destroyed the economy and then wanted to strip the country of its defenses. He had no choice but to go rogue.
Which troubled him. He had been a man who followed the rules scrupulously, and yet, at the very end of his career, he had to throw everything out the window to get this last, most important mission of his career accomplished. If they were ever able to put details in his epitaph he hoped they would mention that. In fact, he’d been writing his own. Not that he had any intention of using it any time soon. He came from a long-lived family, and he had every intention of reaching the century mark. But he liked to keep his life tidy and organized, and he couldn’t rely on anyone else to cover the points that needed to be covered.
One version, the official obituary, listed his impressive accomplishments, his life of service to his country, his charity work and various accolades. The second added his tenaciousness in finding Thomas Killian, though of course names could never be mentioned. Particularly in Killian’s case, since he had never existed in anyone’s data bank.
He would work on that version, tweaking it slightly. This was proving more difficult than he expected. Despite the Committee’s impressive success rate he’d always viewed them with disdain. They didn’t have to worry about congressional oversight or tightening budgets. They didn’t need to worry about a squeamish constituency.
They were always a thorn in his side, and they were proving an unacceptable one. They’d corrupted Killian in the first place, and now they were making it extremely difficult to lure him out of hiding.
He had one more ace up his sleeve, so to speak. The Gargonne brothers had been very useful in the past, and they were just the ticket. If they couldn’t handle the matter then he was ready to give up and see to it himself.
The bed was empty when Beth awoke. Of course, she thought, burying her face in the sheets. They smelled like sex. They smelled like MacGowan and they smelled like her and she should jump up and strip the bed. She lay very still, letting the odd feelings surround her.
Her body felt … glorious. Strong and beautiful and capable of anything. Was that what good sex did? Make you feel like Superwoman? No wonder women liked it. Apart, of course, from the shattering, mind-numbing pleasure of the actual event, the lingering benefits were impressive.
She should have sex more often.
Unfortunately there was at least one other side effect. She could remember precisely what she said, what she did. If she concentrated she could remember how he felt inside her, his hard body above her. She could remember her tears. She was a weak, stupid woman.
But she could remember him holding her, comforting her. As he had in the kitchen at the mission, when reality had finally hit her.
Why? He wasn’t the type to deal with weeping women, he was practical and hard-hearted. And deeply, intrinsically sexual.
She’d always known it, whether she’d wanted to admit it or not. Even after three years of abstinence he still moved like a man who knew how to use his body any way he wanted to. The way he had touched her, the way he had kissed her, the way he had come inside her. She wanted to hold onto that feeling, hug it to herself. Because she knew damned well it wasn’t going to last. She’d bet another hundred thousand dollars that he was going to be distant, polite, as if he hadn’t performed the most intimate acts on her body. As if she hadn’t lost herself to the way he touched her.
Fucked her, she reminded herself morosely. He’d told her that was what it was, and she needed to remember it. Sex, plain and simple, with no emotions, no strings, no relationship. Just sex. A one-night stand, and it was finished.
She rolled over and sat up. She needed a shower, she supposed, though at that moment she didn’t want to move. She would have to though, wash him away, physically and metaphorically. Because it was over.
She looked down and knew a moment’s shock. There was dried blood on the sheets, dried blood on her body, as well as other marks she didn’t want to think about. He’d hurt his hand, she remembered, wincing. And yet he hadn’t even seemed to notice when they were in bed together. She should look at, make sure it wasn’t broken, make sure it was properly cleaned and bandaged.
She was fooling herself. He was adept at field dressings, and his hand would be easy enough to tend to. He wouldn’t need, wouldn’t want her help.
God, how was she
going to look him in the eye and not think about him inside her?
It was already late morning, and she’d tried very hard never to be a coward. The longer she put off facing him the worse it was going to be. With a final surge she pushed out of bed and headed for the shower.
It was probably the oddest shower of her life, she thought afterward. Some parts of her were sore – her thigh muscles, for example. Other parts were still exquisitely sensitive – if she brushed the washcloth against her skin it set off a rush of heat and excitement.
She turned the water colder and finished quickly, using the towel to pat rather than rub her skin. It wasn’t until she was dressed in her baggiest jeans, now baggier from her infrequent meals, and an oversize t-shirt proclaiming “Go ahead, make my day,” that she realized the boat wasn’t moving. At all.
She ran over to the porthole and let out an involuntary shriek of joy. They’d docked.
She raced out of her cabin, taking the gangway at record speed, emerging on the deck flushed with pleasure, momentarily forgetting her embarrassment over the night before. MacGowan and Dylan were standing at one end, watching the unloading, and it took all her effort not to run towards them, bouncing up and down with joy. After the first few days she’d managed, but eating still hadn’t been a pleasure. But now they were on dry land, in a world of olives and tapas and heavenly spices. Some of the very best food in the world.
They saw her, and Dylan waved enthusiastically, signaling her to join them. MacGowan was watching her with perfect indifference, and she knew her fears had been right. He wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened.
She should want the same thing. It would be much too embarrassing to deal with such a momentous happening in public, particularly since it wasn’t going to be repeated. It was much better if it were relegated to the level of unimportant events, easily forgotten.
“We’ve landed,” she said with a cheery smile when she joined them. MacGowan didn’t look her way - he was watching the horizon with what she thought of as his hawk-gaze. Always looking for trouble, when he didn’t realize trouble had just walked up to him.