Page 40 of If Not for My Baby
“You don’t sleep around, you don’t party. You drink less than I’ve been led to believe is common for the Irish. You have no tattoos as far as I can see…Have you always been this bad at being a rock star?”
Halloran winces at my phrasing, as ifrock staris a dirty word. “I used to be better.”
“Really?” I ask, unable to help the wisp of mischief that slips into my voice. “What has become of you?” But his charmed expression fades quickly into something somber. It sets the hairs on my arms upright. “What is it?” I ask, a near whisper.
“I had a friend who died a few years back,” he says, in thought. “Drunk driver. I can’t really stand the shite now if I’m honest.”
“I’m sorry.” I almost reach for his arm, withdrawing my hand right before I can do something inappropriate.
His soft green eyes in this light are ages old. “One day someone’s here, the next they’re not. Getting a call like that’ll alter the depths of you.” He’s stoic and yet filled with some kind of multifaceted emotion I can’t even begin to untangle. Heartache and humor and acceptance and fossilized rage. My eyes begin to burn and I blink rapidly. I try to say how sorry I am again but my voice breaks.
“Hey, shh,” he soothes. He steps even closer to place his hands softly on my upper arms. They’re warm and huge and calming. “It was a long time ago.”
I almost just cried in front of this notoriously private person I hardly know. Over something that happened tohim, years ago. I can’t help the embarrassment that creeps into my voice, nor the way I pull from him. “You’re not supposed to be comfortingme.”
When I meet his eyes—all the way up there—they’resparkling in the lavender light. They look like galaxies. “Is it very foreign to let someone look after you?”
I’m surprised by my own slow nod.
Even more surprised when, out of an instinct I cannot possibly explain, I tip my head into his chest to hide my face. It feels easy, like we’ve done this a thousand times. He’s solid like a brick wall, but goes stiff when I make contact, heat radiating under my forehead. His cozy cable-knit sweater smells exactly as I thought it might. Rain drying on fallen leaves. Morning fog and bar soap.
Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I know it’s far too intimate a gesture. That we hardly know each other. But I’m already fighting the overwhelming urge to inhale into his chest, and I’m only a human woman. I cannot fight so many mental battles and emerge victorious.
Halloran hums a little—barely a sound—and that low, masculine rumble reverberates through my jaw and nose and the tips of my ears. He rubs one hand down my back and my cotton baby tee might as well be cling wrap. His touch is like fire across my skin.
Halloran pulls me back and I wait for him to excuse himself. To politely—because he is so accepting, and so gracious, and would never want to embarrass me—end this strange half hug and put me to bed.
Instead he peers down at me and murmurs, “Clementine, can I try something?”
I am rendered nonverbal by his smoldering intensity. I nod, eyes trained on his.
It’s an effort for him, to crane himself down to my height. He’s almost a foot and a half taller than me. When his forehead nears my own and his nose slides against mine, I can hear the unsteady rhythm of his breaths. His heartbeat, pulsing beneath the column of his throat. His mouth stalls before my own, soft and full, and I am hypnotized by the nearness.
Those big hands—the ones I’ve watched work a guitar into submission each and every night—move softly over my hips. He pulls me toward him, though not close enough to press every inch of my skin against his own. He’s keeping me at a polite distance, and I could drown in the disappointment. I want to feel the heat beneath his clothes.
But when his lips barely brush across my own, that disappointment eddies from my mind. I glow like a star in the sky. I’m enraptured. I could stay here for eternity and we haven’t even kissed yet.
I know I’ve made some kind of noise. Whatever control he was employing leaves with the sigh that slips out of him. He touches his fingers beneath my chin, angles my face to his, and allows me to close the distance.
The kiss is chaste, as he warned me it would be, and it’s still the most profoundly sensual experience of my life. His hand skates over my jaw and down my neck as his lips move softly with mine. He finally presses himself against me and I can feel the evidence of his need thick and heavy against my stomach. I’m throbbing between my legs. I was before his lips even touched mine.
There is no tongue. No open-mouthed gasps. He pullsback and it’s over before it’s even begun. If I could make a single sound, I’d whine—I’d beg him for more. But my heart is beating too fast to do anything but breathe through it, still cradled in his arms.
He’s no better. His ragged breaths whisper against my lips. One shaky inhalation of mine has his hand grasping my hip even tighter. I need his bare fingers on my skin. I raise my hands from their place on his chest up to his neck in hopes my T-shirt will rise and offer him an exposed inch to caress.
My shirt lifts as planned, but he doesn’t take the bait. Too cunning. His eyes harden into something darker, richer. I wonder if he’s fighting the urge.
Without thinking, I bring my hand up to his cheek and feel the coarse scruff under my palm. He’s more of a man than any I’ve met. If he told me he ate tree bark and slept in caves, I’d believe him.
“Does it bother you?” he asks, voice rough. “I’ll shave it.”
I shake my head. “Don’t you dare.”
Gently he strokes his thumb down my palm and along my wrist. His eyes seem almost pained with want. “I’m nearly a decade older than you.”
“Eight years,” I counter. “Or, seven and a half, maybe. When’s your birthday?”
His lips twitch. “That’s a cheatin’ man’s way of counting.”
