Page 21 of Irish Rebel
The laugh got away from her, and eased the odd tension that had been building inside her. “Here’s a surprise. With a great deal of time and some effort, I might begin to like you.”
“I’ve plenty of time.” He released her hand to toy with the ends of her hair. She jerked back. “You’re a skittish one,” he murmured.
“No, not particularly.” Usually, she thought. With most people.
“The thing is, I like to touch,” he told her and deliberately skimmed his fingers over her hair again. “It’s that... connection. You learn by touching.”
“I don’t...” She trailed off when those fingers ran firmly down the back of her neck.
“I’ve learned you carry your worries right there, right at the base there. More worries than show on your face. It’s a staggering face you have, Keeley. Throws a man off.”
The tension was slipping away from under his fingers as he touched her, and building everywhere else. A kind of gathering inside her, a concentration of heat. The pressure in her chest was so sudden and strong it made her breath short. The muscles in her stomach began to twist, tighten. Ache.
“My face doesn’t have anything to do with what I am.”
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t take away the pure pleasure of looking at it.”
If she hadn’t trembled, he might have resisted. It was a mistake. But he’d made them before, would make them again. There was moonlight, and the scent of the last of summer’s roses in the air. Was a man supposed to walk away from a beautiful woman who trembled under his hand?
Not this man, he thought.
“Too pretty a night to waste it,” he said again, and bent toward her.
She jerked back when his mouth was a whisper from hers, but his fingers continued to play over her neck, keeping her close. His gaze dropped to her lips, lingered, then came back to hers.
And he smiled. “Cushla machree,” he murmured, and as if it were an incantation, she slid under the spell.
His lips brushed hers, wing-soft. Everything inside her fluttered in response. He drew her closer, gradually luring her body to fit against his, curves to angles, as his hand played rhythmically up and down her spine.
A light scrape of teeth and her lips parted for him.
Her head went light, her blood hot, and her body seemed balanced on the brink of something high and thin. It was lovely, lovely to feel this soft, this female, this open. She brought her hands to his shoulders, clung there while she let herself teeter on that delicious edge.
He knew how to be gentle, there had always been gentleness inside him for the fragile. But her sudden and utter surrender to him, to herself, had him forcing back the need to grab and plunder. Resistance was what he’d expected. Anything from cool disdain to impulsive passion he would have understood. But this... giving destroyed him.
“More,” he murmured against her mouth. “Just a little more.” And deepened the kiss.
She made a sound in her throat, a low purr that slipped into his system like silk. His heart shook, then it stumbled, then God help him, it fell.
The shock of it had him yanking her back, staring at her with the edgy caution of a man suddenly finding himself holding a tiger instead of a kitten.
Had he actually thought it a mistake? Nothing more than a simple mistake? He’d just put the power to crush him into her hands.
“Damn it.”
She blinked at him, struggling to catch up with the abrupt change. His face was fierce, and the hands that had shifted to her arms no longer gentle. She wanted to shiver, but wouldn’t permit another show of weakness.
“Let me go.”
“I didn’t force you.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
Her lips still throbbed from the pressure of his, and her stomach quaked. Rumor was she was cold, she thought dimly. And she’d believed it herself. Finding out differently wasn’t cause for celebration. But for panic.
“I don’t want this.” This vulnerability, this need.
“Neither do I.” He released her to jam his hands into his pockets. “That makes this quite the situation.”
