ssing fingers stilling. Primal, atavistic fear sliced through her.
“What happened?” she managed after a moment.
“Alice, are you sure you want to—”
“I want to hear. You said I could ask you questions.”
He grimaced.
“Cunningham ran down to the creek bed and followed her body, finally wading in and pulling Addie out of the creek. Her head was injured, and she was bleeding and unconscious. But she was breathing,” Dylan said grimly.
She reached and smoothed her fingertips over his clenched jaw.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. He grasped her stroking hand with his.
“No, it’s not, Alice,” he said, his deep rough voice cracking slightly.
“Yes. It is. Or it will be,” she assured. “Why do you think Cunningham did it? Saved her after he’d—” She experienced a swooping sensation that stole her breath momentarily. Was this why she was so deathly afraid of heights?
No, that little girl wasn’t me. She couldn’t have been.
Don’t think about it now!
It took her breath away, to consider that adorable little girl and herself as the same person.
“—he’d dropped Addie into the creek?” she finished.
“I think that’s obvious,” Dylan said bitterly. “She was only worth something to them alive. Of course, that’s not the reason Cunningham claimed before he died.”
“What reason did he give?” Alice asked, her hand stroking lower, over Dylan’s ribs and taut abdomen.
“He said it was her eyes.”
Her glance jumped to his face. “What about her eyes?”
“He said they were huge and dark blue. Unlike anything he’d ever seen,” Dylan said gruffly, their stares holding. “He said her eyes haunted him, until his dying day. According to him, that’s why he agreed to see me every year while he was in prison. He regularly flirted with the idea of confessing, but Cunningham was a coward at heart,” he said, his lip curling in disdain. “He couldn’t bring himself to do the right thing until death was close.” His hand tightening on her hip. “Even though I despised him, I thought of Addie when Cunningham told me that. I’ve thought to myself since then: Damn. I could almost believe that worthless son of a bitch meant it.”
The silence swelled.
Slowly, determinedly, she began to move Dylan’s T-shirt up over his torso. He caught her hand at his waist.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I want to make love,” she said.
“Now? After all this?” he asked, sounding stunned.
She pushed her hand away from his restraining one and shoved it up under his shirt. His skin felt warm and smooth, the hair on his chest springy, a sensual delight beneath her seeking fingertips. She found a nipple and rubbed the disc with her fingertip.
“Especially after all this. You’re the realest thing in the world to me right now. I need to feel more of you, not less,” she said huskily, feeling his nipple harden at her ministrations. She craned up for him, seeking his mouth. Like that first time in the stables, he didn’t kiss her back at first, but she felt the give in his firm lips. “Please,” she whispered against his mouth.
And just like that other time, he came to her, gifting her with his heat and his strength.
He rolled partially on top of her, his mouth seizing hers, his tongue piercing her lips. Like always, he owned her in those moments. He swept aside everything else. His scent and taste inundated. Intoxicated. Alice delved her fingers into his thick hair, gripping him to her. God, she needed him so much. The complexity of her feelings for him, a depth of emotion that made no logical sense to her in the past, rushed through her at that moment. Just a glimpse of what he meant to her, and how their lives had been mysteriously entwined, swelled large in her spirit and flesh, threatening to explode.
She couldn’t understand all of those things. She couldn’t assimilate them.
But Dylan, she could absorb wholeheartedly.