Born in Fire (23 page)

Rarely did Maggie refuse her own urges.

She slipped inside. Even as her shadow fell over his papers, she was straddling his lap and fastening her mouth to his.

Shock, pleasure and lust speared into him like a three-tipped arrow, all sharp, all true to aim. The pen had clattered from his fingers and his hands had dived into her hair before he took the next breath. Through a haze he felt the tug on his tie.

“What?” he managed in something like a croak. The need for dignity had him clearing his throat and pressing her back. “What’s all this?”

“You know….” She punctuated her words by feathering light kisses over his face. He smelled expensive, she realized, all fine soap and starched linen. “I’ve always thought a tie a foolish thing, a sort of punishment for a man for simply being a man. Doesn’t it choke you?”

It didn’t, unless his heart was in his throat. “No.” He shoved her hands away, but the damage was already done. Under her quick fingers, his tie was loose and his collar undone. “What are you about, Maggie?”

“That should be obvious enough, even to a Dubliner.” She laughed at him, her eyes wickedly green. “I brought you flowers.”

The latter were, at that moment, crushed between them. Rogan glanced down at the bruised petals. “Very nice. They could use some water, I imagine.”

She tossed back her head and laughed. “It’s always first things first with you, isn’t it? But Rogan, from where I’m sitting, I’m aware there’s something on your mind other than fetching a vase.”

He couldn’t deny his obvious, and very human reaction. “You’d harden a dead man,” he muttered, and put his hands firmly on her hips to lift her away. She only wriggled closer, torturing him.

“Now, that’s a pretty compliment, to be sure. But you’re not dead, are you?” She kissed him again, using her teeth to prove her point. “Are you thinking you’ve work to finish up, and no time to waste?”

“No.” His hands were still on her hips, but the fingers had dug in and had begun to knead. She smelled of wildflowers and smoke. All he could see was her face, the white skin with its blush of rose, dusting of gold freckles, the depthless green of her eyes. He made an heroic effort to level his voice. “But I’m thinking this is a mistake.” A groan sounded in his throat when she moved her lips to his ear. “That there’s a time and a place.”

“And that you should choose it,” she murmured as her nimble fingers flipped open the rest of the buttons on his shirt.

“Yes—no.” Good God, how was a man supposed to think? “That we should both choose it, after we’ve set some priorities.”

“I’ve only one priority at the moment.” Her hands cruised up his chest, crushing wildflowers petals against his skin. “I’m going to have you now, Rogan.” Her laugh came again, low and challenging, before her lips sank into his. “Go ahead, fight me off.”

He hadn’t meant to touch her. That was his last coherent thought before his hands streaked up and filled themselves with her breasts. Her throaty moan spilled into his mouth like wine, rich and drugging.

Then he was tugging away her shirt and shoving back from the table all at once. “To hell with it,” he muttered against her greedy mouth, and was lifting her.

Her arms and legs wrapped around him like silken rope, her shirt dangling from one wrist where the buttons held. Beneath, she wore a plain cotton camisole as erotic to him as ivory lace.

She was small and light, but with the blood trumpeting in his brain, he thought he could have carried a mountain. Her busy mouth never paused, racing from cheek to jaw to ear and back, while sexy little whimpers purred in her throat.

He started out of the kitchen, stumbled over a loose throw rug and knocked her back against the doorjamb. She only laughed, breathlessly now, and tightened the vise of her legs around his waist.

Their lips fused again in a rough, desperate kiss. With the doorway and her own limbs bracing her, he tore his mouth free to fasten it on her breast, suckling greedily through cotton.

The pleasure of it, dark and damning, lanced like a spear through her system. This was more, she realized as the blood sizzling through her veins began to hum like an engine. More than she’d expected. More than she might have been ready for. But there was no turning back.

He whirled away from the wall.

“Hurry,” was all she could say as he strode toward the stairs. “Hurry.”

Her words pumped like a pulse of his blood.
Hurry. Hurry.
Against his thundering heart, hers beat in furious response. With Maggie clinging like a bur, he all but leaped up the stairs, leaving a trail of broken flowers in their wake.

He turned unerringly to the left, into the bedroom where the sun poured gold and the fragrant breeze lifted the open curtains. He fell with her onto already tumbled sheets.

If it was madness that overcame him, it ruled her as well. There was no thought, or need, in either of them for gentle caresses, for soft words or slow hands. They tore at each other, mindless as beasts, dragging at clothes, pulling, tugging, kicking off shoes, all the while feeding greedily with violent kisses.

Her body was like an engine, fueled to race. She bucked and rolled and reared while her breath seared out in burning gasps. Seams ripped, needs exploded.

His hands were smooth. Another time they might have glided over her body like water. But now they grasped and bruised and plundered, bringing her unspeakable pleasure that tore through her over-charged system like lightning tears a darkened sky. He filled his palms with her breast again, and now, without barriers, drew the rigid tips into his mouth.

She cried out, not in pain at the rough scrape of his teeth and tongue, but in glory as the first harsh, vicious orgasm struck like a blow.

She hadn’t expected it to slap her so quick and hard, nor had she ever experienced the utter helplessness that followed so fast on the heels of the storm. Before she could do more than wonder, fresh needs coiled whiplike inside her.

She spoke in Gaelic, half-remembered words she hadn’t known she’d held in her heart. She’d never believed, never, that hunger could swallow her up and leave her trembling. But she shook under his hands, under the wild demand of his mouth. For another dazed interlude she was totally vulnerable, her bones molten and her mind reeling, stunned into surrender by the punch of her own climax.

He never felt the change. He knew only that she vibrated beneath him like a plucked bow. She was wet and hot and unbearably arousing. Her body was smooth, soft, supple, all the lovely dips and curves his to explore. He knew only the desperate desire to conquer, to possess, and so gorged himself on the flavor of her flesh until it seemed the essence of her raced through his veins like his own blood.

He clasped her limp hand in his and ravaged until she cried out once again, and his name was like a sob in the air.

With the room spinning like a carousel around her, she dragged her hands from his, tangled her fingers in his hair. Need spurted through her again, voraciously. She thrust her hips up.

“Now!” The demand broke from her throat. “Rogan, for God’s sake—”

But he had already plunged inside her, deep and hard. She arched back, arched up, in glorious welcome as fresh pleasure geysered through her in one lancing, molten flash. Her body mated with his, matching rhythms, stroke for desperate stroke. The bite of her nails on his back was unfelt.

With vision blurred and dimmed, he watched her, saw each stunning sensation flicker over her face. It won’t be enough, he thought dizzily. Even as the sorrow nicked through the burnished shield of passion, she opened her eyes and said his name again.

So he drowned in that sea of green, and burying his face in the fire of her hair, surrendered. With one last flash of glorious greed, he emptied himself into her.

In a war of any kind, there are casualties. No one, Maggie thought, knew the glory, the sorrow or the price of battle better than the Irish. And if, as she was very much afraid at the moment, her body was paralyzed for life as the result of this wonderful little war, she wouldn’t count the cost.

The sun was still shining. Now that her heart had ceased to crash like thunder in her head, she heard the twitter of birds, the roar of her furnace, and the hum of a bee buzzing by the window.

She lay across the bed, her head clear off the mattress and dragged down by gravity. Her arms were aching. Perhaps because they were still wrapped like vises around Rogan, who was splayed over her, still as death.

She felt, when she held her own breath, the quicksilver race of his heart. It was, she decided, a wonder they hadn’t killed each other. Content with his weight, and the drouzy feel of cobwebs in her brain, she watched the sun dance on the ceiling.

His own mind cleared slowly, the red haze mellowing, then fading completely until he became aware again of the quiet light and the small, warm body beneath his. He shut his eyes again and lay still.

What were the words he should say? he wondered. If he told her that he’d discovered, to his own shock and confusion, that he loved her, why should she believe it? To say those words now, when they were both still sated and dazed from sex, would hardly please a woman like Maggie, or make her see the bare truth of them.

What words were there, after a man had tossed a woman down and plundered like an animal? Oh, he’d no doubt she’d enjoyed it, but that hardly changed the fact that he’d completely lost control, of his mind, of his body, of whatever it was that separated the civilized from the wild.

For the first time in his life, he’d taken a woman without finesse, without care and, he thought with a sudden start, without a thought about the consequences.

He started to shift, but she murmured in protest and tightened her already fierce grip.

“Don’t go away.”

“I’m not.” He realized her head was unsupported and, cupping a hand beneath it, rolled to reverse their positions. And nearly sent them over the other edge. “How do you sleep on a bed this size? Hardly big enough for a cat.”

“Oh, it’s done well enough for me. But I’m thinking of buying another now that I’ve money to spare. A fine big one, like the one in your house.”

He thought of a Chippendale four-poster in the tiny loft and smiled. Then his thoughts veered back and wiped the smile away. “Maggie.” Her face was glowing, her eyes half-shut. There was a smug little smile on her face.

“Rogan,” she said in the same serious tone, then laughed. “Oh, you’re not going to start telling me you’re sorry to have trampled my honor or some such thing? If anyone’s honor was trampled, after all, it was yours. And I’m not a bit sorry for it.”

“Maggie,” he said again, and brushed the tousled hair from her cheek. “What a woman you are. It’s hard to be sorry for trampling, or for being trampled when I—” He broke off. He’d lifted her hand as he spoke, started to kiss her fingers, when his gaze landed on the dark smudges on her arm. Appalled, he started. “I’ve hurt you.”

“Mmm. Now that you mention it, I’m beginning to feel it.” She rolled her shoulder. “I must have hit the doorway pretty hard. Now, you were about to say?”

He shifted off of her. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said in an odd voice. “It’s inexcusable. An apology’s hardly adequate for my behavior.”

Her head tilted, and she took a good long look at him. Breeding, she thought again. How else could a buck-naked man sitting on a rumpled bed appear so dignified. “Your behavior?” she repeated. “I’d say it was more
our
behavior, Rogan, and that it was well done on both parts.” Laughing at him, she pushed herself up and locked her arms around his neck. “Do you think a few bruises will wilt me like a rose, Rogan? They won’t, I promise you, especially when I earned them.”

“The point is—”

“The point is we tumbled each other. Now stop acting as though I’m a fragile blossom that can’t admit to having enjoyed a good, hot bout of sex. Because I enjoyed it very much, and so, my fine fellow, did you.”

He trailed a fingertip over the faint bruise above her wrist. “I’d rather I hadn’t marked you.”

“Well, it’s not a brand that’s permanent.”

No, it wasn’t. But there was something else, in his carelessness, that could be. “Maggie, I wasn’t thinking before, and I certainly didn’t leave Dublin today planning on ending up like this. It’s a little late to be thinking of being responsible now.” In frustration he dragged a hand through his hair. “Could I have gotten you pregnant?”

She blinked, sat back on her haunches. Let out a long breath. Born in fire. She remembered her father had told her she’d been born in fire. And this was what he’d meant. “No.” She said it flatly, her emotions too mixed and unsteady for her to explore. “The timing’s wrong. And I’m responsible for myself, Rogan.”

“I should have seen to it.” He reached over to rub his knuckles down her cheek. “You dazzled me, Maggie, sitting on my lap with your wildflowers. You dazzle me now.”

Her smile came back, lighting her eyes first, then curving her lips. “I was coming across the fields away from my sister’s and toward home. The sun was bright, Murphy was haying in his field, and there were flowers at my feet. I haven’t felt so happy since my father died five years ago. Then I saw you in the kitchen, working. And it may be I was dazzled as well.”

She knelt again, rested her head on his shoulder. “Must you go back to Dublin tonight, Rogan?”

All the minute and tedious details of his schedule ran like a river through his brain. Her scent, mixed with his own, settled over them like a mist. “I can rearrange some things, leave in the morning.”

She leaned back, smiled. “And I’d rather not go out to dinner.”

“I’ll cancel the reservations.” He glanced around the room. “Don’t you have a phone up here?”

“For what? So it can ring in my ear and wake me up?”

“I can’t think why I asked.” He eased away to tug on the wrinkled slacks of his suit. “I’ll go down, make some calls.” He looked back to where she knelt in the center of the narrow, rumpled bed. “Very quick calls.”

“They could wait,” she shouted after him.

“I don’t intend to be interrupted by anything until morning.” He hurried down, sentimentally scooping up a tattered meadowsweet as he went.