Page 137 of Fearless

He chuckled, darkly.

“Wet with water. Not that kind of wet.”

“Hmph. Do you hear me complaining about that?”

She whirled around, the anger firing in her like rockets, boiling in her bloodstream. “I’mcomplaining about it, Mercy.I am. Because for some crazy reason, I don’t want you to be able to see my tits.”

Still propped against the window, his gaze dropped to her chest on impulse.

She lifted her arms higher, shielding her breasts. “Stop it!” She sounded like a child pitching a fit, but she didn’t care. Panic was clawing at her insides and she couldn’t stand to be around him anymore. These moments couldn’t keep happening, or she’d have a nervous breakdown. If a tantrum was what it took to get rid of him, then she’d throw one. “Stop looking at me, you fucking pervert!”

His jaw clenched, a muscle in his cheek twitched, a ripple went up through his face, flash of darkness in his eyes that turned them black. Not the reaction she’d wanted.

He pushed away from the window, and for some reason, her eyes caught at the warm imprint of his hand, the little demarcation of steam, against the cold glass. What great big hands he had. Then she was forced to look at him, because her backside was up against the desk and he was closing in on her in just two strides.

“Pervert?” he asked, his voice a dangerous low rumble. “After everything that happened” – those times she’d professed her love, thatfirsttime, the second, the third, the moonglow on the grass in the James’ yard, the baby, the night at Hamilton House, and before: the poetry, the Louisiana stories, the late nights in front of the TV, the afternoons under the portico, all that blood on her bedroom carpet – “and I’m a pervert?”

Everything that had happened…and he’d thrown it away.

She began to tremble, awful shudders running through her that had nothing to do with the cold. “You did your very best to destroy me,” she said in a cracking whisper, “and now you want to flirt and feel me up and act like I’m some bitch you met in a bar somewhere. What do you call that besides ‘pervert’?”

He leaned down low, in her face, the aggression lifting off him like steam. “I didn’t–”

She couldn’t listen to one more denial from him. “I miscarriedour child.” Her voice was a strangled, awful sound. “Mason Stephens kicked me in the stomach, and I lostour baby, and youleft. You left the goddamnstate. Nothing you say can even begin to justify that.”

“You were seventeen,” he growled. “What the fuck were you going to do with a baby?”

“What do you care? You obviously wouldn’t have wanted it.”

He moved before she had time to startle, and then his hand had hold of her face, his fingers framing both sides of her jaw. He caught her, but it wasn’t hard. He didn’t squeeze, didn’t hurt her. His touch was feather-soft.

He came in so close she could see the gold striations in his eyes. And then she saw the pain, etched deep in the hard planes of his face.

“Don’t say that to me.” His voice was nearly lost in the sounds of the rain and the far-off wail of the sirens. “I wanted it more than anything in this entire damn world, and you know it.”

Tears filled her eyes, the pulse in her ears pounding. “No, I don’t. The Mercy I knew growing up is long gone.”

His thumb lifted, swept across her lower lip, pressing lightly at the center, his expression one of deep loss. His voice was a little hoarse when he spoke. “No, he’s not.” And he kissed her.

It was gentle at first, just the touch of his lips against hers as he held her chin. Even that much contact reminded her, as Friday night had, that her body would always crave him, always respond to him. No amount of common sense or threat of heartbreak could touch that heat that lingered in her bones, waiting for his touch and his touch alone to draw it out to the surface, until it shimmered on her skin. It wouldn’t matter if there turned out to be a hundred Ronnies in her life; it was Mercy she’d always want.

Then he angled her head and went in deeper, urging her lips apart, asking her, sweetly, to soften for him. And she was lost.

His tongue flicked into her mouth, a sly flexing, and her knees gave out. She let her legs go until the edge of the desk caught her, and she was sitting on it, head tipped all the way back as he cradled her face in his hands and launched an all-out assault against her mouth.

She grabbed at his cut to steady herself, and then her hands slipped inside it, flattening over the hard stretch of his stomach.

It wasn’t enough.

She had no idea how long this stolen moment could last, or how she’d even have the strength to stand afterward, the way he kept kissing her, but she had to have more, had to have skin. She slipped her hands beneath his shirt, rewarded with the hot, damp, soft skin of his belly, the hard steel of muscle, the coarse line of dark hair that was his treasure trail. She clawed upward, over the ridges of his abs, toward his ribs; she wanted his chest. Wanted him shirtless.

He nipped at her lip, pulled it hard between his teeth, and then his hands dropped down to her chest, the V of skin at the neck of her shirt, the pearl buttons. The fabric was wet and difficult to manage, the buttons tugging.

“Don’t rip it,” she gasped as he broke away from her mouth. She tried to withdraw her hands, but she wasn’t fast enough.

He thumbed open the top three buttons and spread the halves, down to the waistband of her skirt where it was still tucked in. There was her skin, pale and clammy from the rainwater, her drenched black bra with the little light blue flowers.

Her head spun, the longing and the want in her making her dizzy, turning her pulse into an awful, percussive force in her ears. She was breathless.

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