Run Among Thorns (22 page)

In the end, she only had to open her mouth, and speak her mind. “If men had any idea how attractive their forearms were, they’d never, ever wear long sleeves.”

Chapter
        ELEVEN

K
ier was completely shell-shocked. Stunned. It was the first time she had voiced how she felt about this … attraction that lay between them.

About the most intelligent response he could come up with was,
huh?
So he kept his mouth firmly shut, stepped back, and stoically rolled down his sleeves.

Jenny surprised him yet again, giving a gurgling little laugh as she laid her hands on his arms to stop him. She grinned up at him, flicking her hair back with a practised and purely unconscious shake of her head. She made him dizzy. “No,” she said. “I like it!”

She laughed up at him, a little self-consciously, but happy and unafraid, and he couldn’t help but contrast it with how she’d looked before, her face drawn and closed. Desperately trying to protect herself from the bastard who was doing his damnedest to take her apart.

Then the smile evaporated from her face like summer rain and her eyes widened a little. Something in the depths of that shimmering hazel changed, just a little, but it warned him. He felt her fingers move restlessly on the skin of the back of his wrists as his arms tensed involuntarily.

He was torn. Caught between the image of her wounded and made terrified, and the feel of her soft hands on him now. Between the inexplicable need to see her safe, and the desire to touch her, to reach between them now and tip her face up to him, tilting her head in the perfect angle to receive his mouth.

While he paused, held immobile by the conflict raging in him, she took the decision from him.

She lifted her hand and slid it against his cheek. He drew in his breath sharply as her sweet soft skin scraped against the whiskers he hadn’t bothered to shave off this morning. Through disbelieving eyes he watched her lift up on her toes as she gently drew his unresisting head down, those wide eyes locked to his. He felt her breath stutter against his lips as she hesitated, just a fraction.

Then she closed that last distance between them, mercifully veiling that mesmeric gaze as she brushed her lips over his. She pulled them away again in a second, and he caught her waist with his hands in mute protest. Then with a sense of almost overwhelming relief, he realised she’d only taken a breath, and now she leaned into him, taking strength and balance from his convulsive grip on her waist.

A day of firsts. She’d never instigated anything between them, either, and now he was light-headed with the thrill, need pumping through him with a rush that had him reeling.

Literally.

He fell back against the china cabinet behind them, hauling her with him, swallowing her strangled gasp as she tumbled against him. The cabinet rocked, and a plate fell and smashed on the tiled floor. She jumped, but she didn’t take her mouth from his, didn’t stop winding her arms around his neck or pressing herself against him.

He swept his tongue past her soft lips, desperate to be inside her any way he could. He wrapped one arm tightly around her and slid his free hand under the edge of her sweater at her hip, sweeping upwards, splaying his fingers against the skin of her waist.

She felt like … like … he had no idea what she felt like, only that he liked it. He loved it. She gave a little shimmy against him, coaxing his hand higher, and he slid it on, over warmth and vibrancy and supple movement until his fingertips grazed the soft curving underside of her breast.

She leaned back from him, just for a moment, running her lips along his jaw, tasting him there. “Kier,” she panted, and he recognised the plea in it.

“Upstairs,” he said, grabbing her hand and hauling her with him. Somehow she got ahead of him on the rickety stairs, so that by the time they got to the top, she was dragging him. She stopped suddenly outside her brother’s bedroom door, and darted inside. She was back in a breath, clutching a box of condoms, which gave him an absurd desire to laugh. Then she kissed him, coaxing his tongue into her mouth, and he forgot to laugh.

She backed him into her room, and he let her, enchanted by her determination. But he had no intention of yielding the reins to her for long, and when she started attacking his shirt, he gave in to the impulse that had been riding him since he first saw her that morning, and swept her jumper up and off. Jenny stilled.

She was naked beneath it, and he was shocked at how difficult it was to control the surge of almost violent need that would have had him reaching for her without restraint.

She was just perfect, a perfect handful, and as soon as he was able to kid himself that he was under some sort of control he did reach for her, brushing a seductive mink curl from the creamy slope of her breast, pressing a finger lightly to the chocolate-coloured beauty mark there.

He heard her sigh, felt her move with the breath, and with shaking hands he traced a line down the warm skin between her breasts, down her breastbone, over her waist to the snap of her jeans. He tucked his fingers into the waistband and tugged her to him, lifting her, ducking down to brush his lips across her collarbone, over the trembling curve of her breast, down to one taut nipple. He kissed her there, loving the sounds she made, laving the very tip with his tongue as gently as he could, till he couldn’t quite be gentle anymore and began to suck.

She cried out, then, squirming frantically, tried to get a little space between them to reach his shirt buttons. He forestalled her, stepping back and ripping the whole damn thing over his head, shucking off his jeans and briefs before she could react.

She went a little wide-eyed, hectic colour on her cheeks, but he reached for her without hesitation, stripping her out of her jeans and little briefs with deft, efficient movements that belied the state he was in. Purple lace. Who’d have thought it?

Then he had what he wanted. Jenny. Naked, right here, without interruptions. They even had a bed. So he lifted her onto it.

The second he came down beside her she shimmied closer, making another one of those bewitching little moans as she felt him, full against her belly. Just that touch, just that sound had him half out of his mind, hard and aching.

He kissed her, tucking a hand under her head, winding his fingers into those curls, while his other hand worried a nipple still slick from his mouth. She twined one smooth leg up over his thigh, pulling him closer and he took the invitation, sliding his hand down from her breast, across the gentle curve of her belly, stroking her inner thigh. The dark curls between her legs tickled his fingers, teasing his tenuous control. Giving in, he stroked past those curls, up into the heat of her.

He caught his breath. She was hot and wet, more than ready for him, and he wanted to taste her, but he couldn’t wait, he couldn’t. Trying to take calming breaths, he grabbed a condom from the box and rolled it on. Pushing her onto her back, he wedged her thighs apart and settled between them, raised up on his elbows. Jenny moved restlessly, hips tilting, head moving on the covers, eyes closed.

She said something he couldn’t catch. He caught her face in his hands and stilled her beneath him, somehow resisted the temptation to drive his hips forward.

“What?” he gasped. “What did you say?”

Her eyes opened. “
I
want this
.”

The shadow of desperation in her eyes caused a knot of apprehension in his gut, but he couldn’t deny her. Not now.

Still holding her head steady between his palms, he pushed forward and down, easing himself inside her inch by greedy inch. Her lips trembled and her mouth fell open. Her eyes flickered and opened wide.

That sight, he knew, was going to stay indelibly printed on his mind. It would haunt him to the end of his days if he didn’t figure out a way of hanging on to it. Of making sure he kept it, kept her.

He began to move, hesitantly at first, watching the flicker of expression on her face that flared and went with the movement of his hips. It spurred him on, and he coaxed her to lift her legs, wrap them around him, meet his thrusts with a surge of her own.

Then it was just … mindless, incredible, more than just pleasure, more than her body gripping him, driving him out of his mind. More, more …

Sex had never been for him a meeting of souls; it had just been … a way to satisfy a need, a recreation perhaps. Here and now it was something very different. But then, she was something very different.

Now … now the whole thing scared the hell out of him, to tell the truth. Even here, even now, while he could feel her moving with him, while the pleasure was rising to make him insensible, he felt scared by it, even when his body was driving his mind out of control, it frightened him. The way, every day, every minute, in her company, he felt like someone new.

He shifted, changing the angle a little. He saw it in her face first when the pleasure caught her. She gasped, and gave him her gaze like a gift, holding his eyes as she came, mewling and shuddering.

Then restraint was just a memory, and he was lost to a racking, shouting climax that blinded him.

Awareness came back to him by degrees. The prickle of sweat on his back. The flutter of her hands on his shoulders. Her scent and his, intermingled, seductive and strong. The air thundering in his lungs, heart hammering in his ears. Her heartbeat against his chest.

She was nearly asleep, already. Her mouth was slack, her lips parted and her face glowed with colour and with a faint sheen of sweat. He turned to his side, trying not to disturb her too much, and gently drew away, wincing at the sensitivity of his still half-hard flesh. He disposed of the condom and slipped back onto the bed, gathering her close, and working the covers out from under her and back over them. She muttered something, nuzzling her face into his shoulder, and there was suddenly a lump in his throat.

Conscience pricked at him. He wouldn’t, couldn’t regret taking her to bed, but she was still vulnerable, still tired and emotionally battered. He’d even done the battering himself.

He shifted uncomfortably, but she was boneless and warm against him, and pleasure was still heavy in his muscles. Despite his qualms, his eyes grew heavy, and sleep claimed him.

Jenny found Kier sitting in the living room, in the dark. The lights were off, and the curtains drawn. At first, he was so still she thought he had dozed off in the armchair. There was some light coming from the low flame of the gas fire, but he’d turned the chair away from it, and his face was in darkness. Then, as she stepped softly into the room, his head moved.

Jenny stopped where she was, suddenly uncertain. He’d loved her with passion and focus, but then he’d left her alone in her bed, surrounded in his scent, his warmth. There were places on her body still remembering his touch. As she moved she could feel where he had gripped her, where he had bit her. Where he had been inside her.

She thought they had forged a connection that would never be broken, that the overwhelming sense of rightness was mutual. That Kier felt the same way.

Now, as Kier sat there looking at her across a sudden vast gulf, she wasn’t so sure.

So she paused, trying hard to connect those touches of passion, the yielding of her heart, with the silent, brooding man in front of her, who suddenly seemed so distant.

Then he lifted a hand towards her, beckoning her over, reaching for her. She crossed the distance between them, and it was only a few steps after all. She put her hand in his, the strong fingers closed over it, and he tugged her down into his lap.

He’d dragged on a pair of jeans, but his torso was naked, and she pressed herself against him greedily. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close, burying his face in her hair and breathing deep.

She wriggled away almost immediately and scooted back on his lap, fending off his attempts to drag her back to him. She stopped him with a smile and a look and he sat back, waiting in animal anticipation while she shrugged off her robe and let it fall.

His eyes flashed, grey-blue and stormy, and she saw his nostrils flare, his lips thin. His chest was visibly rising and falling with deep, desperate breaths as his eyes ran over her, taking in the sight of her naked, and perched on his knee.

He reached out his hand slowly and brushed the pad of one thumb across one nipple, watching it pucker with an absorption that made her stomach turn over. Her whole body jerked at the contact and she had to bite back a whimper.

Slowly, with calculation, he set both hands at her hips and slid them upward, taking the weight of her breasts into his warm, rough palms, playing his thumbs across their tips again. He lifted one hand to her face, brushing the thumb past her lower lip, taking moisture from her mouth, and then dropping it back to the flesh he had been tormenting. He did the same with the other hand, and at first she felt them slick against her nipple, then the drying moisture tugged at her skin, heightening the sharp pleasure, building the ache between her thighs.

“Kier!” she cried out softly, closing her eyes and letting her head fall back, leaning towards him, begging him. He didn’t make her wait, but leaned swiftly forward to take one tingling tip into his mouth, sliding his tongue across it and then suckling with a strong pulsing tug that brought tears to her eyes and stole her breath.