It was provocative and she knew it. She felt the invitation of it, the illicit want of it in the hardening of this thigh muscle, in the way he sucked in his next breath. He moved his shoulder and she lifted her head, their eyes met, his so full of confused lust they shocked her, they caused a coil of sensation low in her belly to ring with greed. He didn’t need to be confused about wanting her.
She put her hand to his head, pulled it to hers and kissed him, light like that very first time, poised to see if he’d reject it. He murmured her name, but he didn’t pull away, so she took his lips again and made a seal from his trembling confidence and her carnal hesitancy. The mix ignited.
“There be dragons,” he whispered, when she licked across his top lip and sunk into the kiss again. She saw them; terrifying scales and tearing claws, fire in their eyes and destruction on their breath. She ignored the warning; how could she heed it when every touch of his lips to hers proved the scorch, and made her a connoisseur for the thrill.
He hauled her into his lap and all his restraint, denial and discipline burned away. He kissed her back, his tongue pressing hers, one hand on her face, an arm strapping her to his chest like armour against the onslaught. Her pulse went hyper-drive, her throat tightened, her stomach contracted, but all the aches were pleasure, anticipation and sweet, sweet need. His fingers were bruising, his kisses were demanding, t
hey swooped subterranean, all the way to her soul. There was nothing comfortable about this; it was incendiary and irresponsible and gloriously messy and he threw himself at it and she never wanted it to end.
He attacked her neck with a warfront of kisses, from the underside of her jaw to her collarbone, then down the centre of her sternum, an advance that left her twisting and squirming, arching into him, nonsense sounds forced from her mouth, utterly captive to his fire-branding.
He pushed the robe from her shoulder and ran his palm across her throat, around her neck to cup her head, the groan coming from him winning an answering whimper from her, before more kisses, more hands, more pushing and flexing against each other, the intensity building to rival the whip and wail of the wind outside, the weight of the downpour.
Every moment they lit against each other was another step further from the lines drawn and barriers peered over. Now it would all crash down and leave them finally heart to heart.
Drum lifted her before she thought to fear his steadiness on the stairs. She held onto his neck, her face tucked in the hollow between his jaw and shoulder and he carried her up, along the corridor and into the bedroom.
No man had ever carried her anywhere. She wasn’t one of those doll-like girls, nor did the idea of being babied turn her on, but he made it feel easy and right.
There was less light in the bedroom than on the stairs, and though he put her feet to the thick carpet, he was reluctant to let go, as if the change of location had knocked him off balance again. She would’ve happily stayed suckered against his body, attached to him at hip, at hand, at lip, but she felt him cool.
She tried to kiss that temperature change away like rubbing a soot smudge on a white shirt out and he didn’t protest, but he didn’t follow her heat either. He walked her backwards to the edge of the bed and placed her on it, making a distressed groan and going to his knees, wrapping his arms around her legs.
She dragged her hand through his hair. “Don’t go.”
His answer was a shudder.
“I want this. Us. It’s going to be all right.”
He sat back on his heels and it was too dim to read his expression but his posture was a composition of go and stop and gruesome vacillation. It put tension in his arms and the line of his shoulders.
And he wanted her as much as she did him, she had no doubt of that.
He groaned. “I can’t. We can’t.”
The problem wasn’t attraction, desire, they had unfathomable wells of that. The problem was in Drum’s head. His sense of worth held captive by distrust and guilt and he truly believed he wasn’t fit to be with her.
She pulled on his hand and scooted across the bed. “Lay with me, just lay with me.” It would be enough. All of this, far more than she’d ever expected, ever known could be, but the idea of being left alone in this strange house, in the big bed, while he did penance in the cold entrance hall downstairs, was too much.
He groaned and crawled over the edge of the bed, settling behind her, pulling the covers up over them. She wanted to kiss him again, but he avoided her lips and shifted away when she tried to back against him.
“Sleep, Foley.” His voice was damaged; dusty, low and thready. “Just sleep, it’s the best I can do for us.”
He lied. He could do so much more. He could tell her his secrets, he could give her his trust. He could deal with his demons and reclaim his life. He could take her and hold her and have her, and be secure in the relationship they had, well and strong and anything but ordinary. And she’d wait till he was ready.
She woke alone before the alarm on her phone went off, the place beside her in the bed cold. She found yesterday’s clothes, washed and dried, and her boots, still damp, on the love seat. She dressed and left the bedroom, calling for him. Found him in an ultra-modern kitchen with a panoramic view of the suburb, enormous and glossy, but like the rest of the house, barely furnished.
“Morning.” He had a pan on the heat. “How do you like your eggs?” There was a grocery bag on the countertop, a loaf of baker’s bread still inside. His hair was wet, the shoulders of his fleece spotted with water. “Your car is in the drive.”
There were no stools at the counter, no table or chairs. The coffee was instant, but there was a quart of milk. He’d spent money buying her breakfast.
“Foley, are you all right?”
She felt fine, restored, her stomach no longer queasy, no trace of the headache that’d followed the vomiting, but in other ways she was totally undone. The stability of her life altered by this man who balanced his by living on a cliff top.
Drum put bread in the toaster, moved the pan off the gas, his eyes shifting between his tasks and her face. “Foley?”
“Sorry. I’m great. I’ll take my eggs anyway you want to make them.”