Page 67 of Bad Seed

“You’re going to bed?” Brendan asked.

Harley paused, hit with doubt.

“Phase Two, remember? You took me up on that mountain, wove some magic spell around me that made me never want to leave, and I want more. I want you, Brendan Pope.”

“I’ll take whatever you have to give, but it will never be enough. I won’t give you up easy.”

“And I never quit what I start,” she said.

Brendan wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “So, what are we starting here?”

“A fire,” she whispered, as he picked her up.

“Which way?” he asked.

“Down the hall, past the half bath to the last door on the left.”

Long legs made short work of the distance as he carried her into the room. “You first,” he said, pointing at the en suite.

Harley walked into the bathroom as Brendan went back up to the hall to the half bath. When he returned, the bed was turned back, and Harley was gloriously naked and waiting for him at the foot of the bed.

He stopped, staggered by the sight of her. Skin like ivory. Those sea-blue eyes, and the look on her face, as if waiting for judgment.

Harley was afraid to move. Afraid to talk. Was it an illusion, or did he seem even larger without clothes than he did fully dressed?Ah, so this is finally happening, and it feels like I’ve waited all my life for him. He is more than a beautiful face. So much more, she thought, as he came toward her.

Now his hands were on her shoulders, then brushing across the surface of her breasts, and her knees went weak. Making love to him was going to change the path of where she thought she was going, and she was going to die from the want of him if he didn’t hurry.

But she soon learned after he laid her on the bed that he was on a quest of his own, mapping the contours of her body, testing, tasting, learning the secrets that made her gasp, and the ones that elicited a groan, and the ones that had her reaching for him until she was begging and he was a solid ache to be with her.

Without a word, he moved over her, then in her, and the moment he took the first stroke, he was theone who groaned. She was hot and tight and wet. And then she locked her legs around his waist, and he was lost.

One stroke, and then another, and another until they were both caught up in the rhythm, chasing a blood rush that couldn’t come fast enough. Time lost all meaning. There was nothing that mattered but the moment of climax.

Brendan was watching her face when it hit her. The sight of her face in ecstasy was a trigger. One moment he was with her, and then he was caught up in the wave of his own climax.

Harley was marked. Ruined for ever wanting another. Heart-bound.

Brendan was used up. Satiated. Branded for life. In complete and utter love as he raised himself up on both elbows and brushed a kiss across her lips.

“Beautiful in my eyes. Forever in my heart. How am I going to live when you leave me?”

Harley’s hands were on his back, feeling scars, and then she remembered.When he fell into the cellar and the jagged wood ripped his back on the way down.Scars he would take to his grave, all suffered in the name of family. She wrapped her arms around his neck.

“No, love. Don’t borrow sadness. I don’t want to lose you, either. Just keep me alive long enough for us to figure it out.”

“Giving it my best,” he said, then glanced at the time. “You need to eat. It’s been hours, and someonewill start to worry if you don’t order food. They’ll think something happened to you.”

“You happened, but you’re right. God, I don’t want to let go of you. I want to forget the mess I’m in and wake up beside you tomorrow.”

He kissed the hollow at the base of her throat, then ran a finger along the curve of her face.

“I can make that happen, too,” he said. “You order food. I’ll go home and get a change of clothes. I have to be at work at 5:00 a.m. It’s a quick hop from the eighth floor to the twelfth floor. No harm, no foul.”

“Really? You would do that for me?”

He grinned. “Driving across town to get a change of clothes just so I can come back and make love to you again isn’t a punishment. It’s a gift.” Then he threw back the covers and went back down the hall to the half bath to get his clothes.

As soon as he was dressed, he went looking for her.

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