Temptation’s Edge (15 page)

“No, you’re right. I expect the same of myself. I expect that I’ll…behave better than I’ve a right to expect of myself, maybe.”

That made her pause, almost made her want to laugh. She pushed her hair from her face. “God, we’re fucked up, aren’t we?”

His tight features loosened a little. “Yeah, I’ve been trying to get over it most of my life. I guess I’d had myself talked into thinking I had.”

“Me, too. I’m sorry,” she told him, her shoulders relaxing. “I didn’t need to get so pissed off.”

He cracked a grin. “You did, though, didn’t you? I kind of liked seeing you like that. All that fire.”

She did laugh then. She couldn’t help it.

She really was losing it. Furious one minute, laughing with him the next. The man was driving her crazy. But mostly it was a good crazy.

He reached out and pulled her to him with one big hand wrapped around her waist.

“Come here and let me feel the burn, my girl. Let me see if I can work it out of you.”

He kissed her, his lips coming down hard on hers, and she found herself melting into him, her anger, her tension, dissolving. Somehow, with Connor, the world always melted away, allowing her to let go.

Maybe that was why she’d been so mad. Because the notion that anyone could make her let go, make her really lower her boundaries, her walls, was too damn scary to contemplate.

He kissed her harder, started to push her dress up her thighs.

She pulled back. “Connor. You’re making it impossible for me to think.”

“Then don’t. Don’t think.” He wrapped a hand in her hair and pulled her head back, kissed her throat. “Just hold still while I kiss you, touch you. You can think later. Right now I think I need to fuck you on this table.”

“Oh…”

And as he pulled his shirt over his head, then her dress, all she could think of was the heated press of skin against skin. The taste of him on her tongue as he started kissing her again. The way her body heated for him. And knew that right now, this was all she wanted.

Mischa yawned, stretched, pointing her toes, her arms overhead. And remembered she was in Connor’s bed.

She smiled.

“You’re happy this morning,” he said, his voice husky with sleep.

She opened her eyes to find him propped up on one elbow, looking at her. In the dim morning light coming through the rice paper shades, his eyes were more a deep gold than green. His jaw was shadowed with beard stubble, which she found incredibly sexy. Almost as sexy as the lines of his bare, muscular shoulder. She reached out to trace her fingers over the black and red Celtic knot work tattooed around his right biceps. “Are you insinuating you’re not?”

“Ah, no. Just the opposite.”

“You do seem to be happy most of the time,” she remarked.

“Do I?”

“Why do you look so surprised?” His features went dark, as though a sudden cloud had settled over him. “Connor? What did I say?”

He scrubbed at his face with one hand. “Nothing. I’m just…not always so happy. Or, I haven’t been. Christ. Sorry. Not what you want to talk about first thing in the morning.”

“No, it’s fine.” She shrugged. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have some sort of past…something they don’t like to talk about. There are certainly things I don’t like to talk about. Things that have made me less than happy.”

“Like your mother?” he asked quietly.

“What makes you say that?”

“That first night we met. You mentioned something about how she’d never really been anyone’s mother. I’d imagine that would leave a person with some bitterness.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” she answered warily.

“And…I need to apologize again. It’s in my nature to pry. It’s part of being a good dominant, getting to know what motivates the person you’re playing with. But you don’t need to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

She shrugged again, plucking at the edge of the gray quilt with her fingers, looking down at it. “Oh, you know, absentee parents. Or…a flaky mother and a totally absent father. I’m sure you’re familiar with that story.”

“Not from personal experience. Most of the time I wished my father were
more
absent. He was a right asshole.”

When she looked back up at him she could see the pain in his eyes; maybe he wasn’t awake enough yet to hide it.

“I’m sorry, Connor.”

“Yeah, well. That’s my bitterness, I suppose.”

“I never knew my father. He left before I was born.”

“Some people might say you’re better off.”

“Maybe. I’ll never know, will I?”

“You could find him, meet him, maybe.”

“Evie never told me who he was,” she said softly, hardly believing she was telling him this, but wanting to for reasons she couldn’t explain to herself. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know. We lived in a series of communes and odd share rentals. Who knows how many men she came into contact with? She’s beautiful. There’s never been any shortage of men for her. And she was a real free spirit. Still is.”

“You said she’s an artist.”

“Yes. She paints. Works in clay. Makes jewelry. She has real talent, but she’s never done much with it. She was always too busy moving us around when I was a kid. Sometimes we’d pick up and go, and she’d leave a dozen canvases behind. Amazing work.”

“That must be where you get your artistic abilities.”

“Yes. That’s the one thing she’s given me.” She paused, had to swallow the gnawing ache in her throat that came with that admission. “No, that’s not entirely true.”

“That must be where you got your beauty, from your mother,” he said, his green and gold eyes shining. Sincere.

“Well, thank you. But I meant my sister, Raine.”

“Are you two close, then?”

“Not so much anymore. We grew in different directions at some point, except that I guess you could say we’re both…” She trailed off, not sure if she was revealing too much.

“You’re both what?”

“We’re both sort of…hyper-responsible.”

“Why was that difficult to admit? I am myself.”

“It just sort of slipped out. I’ve always thought of myself—consciously, anyway—as hardworking. Hyper-responsible sounds a lot more neurotic.”

Connor grinned. “If you’re neurotic, then so am I. But in my
mind hyper-responsible is a hell of a lot better than irresponsible. Tell me more about you and your sister.”

“When we were kids it always seemed like just the two of us against the world, Raine and me,” Mischa went on. “We were a team. Except that her dad was around and mine wasn’t. I mean, I didn’t resent her for it. I was glad she had a father in her life. I was just…envious.”

The truth was she’d always wondered why Raine was good enough for her father to stick around and she…obviously wasn’t. She could see in her head the movie that had been playing over and over for most of her life: the cards and gifts arriving on Raine’s birthday when there were none for her. The front door shutting as Raine went out for a day with her dad, leaving Mischa behind. It still hurt, a small, empty stab to the chest. But she wasn’t going to say any of this to Connor. She’d said too much already.

“What about you?” she asked, anxious to change the subject. “Are you close with your sisters?”

“Not so much. They’re a bit younger than I am. Clara by eight years, Molly by nine. Hard for a boy to relate to little girls. By the time they were more grown I was gone. Moved to the States.”

“That’s when you got married?”

“Yeah.” He went quiet, and she was about to steer away from the topic, but he took a breath and went on. “I was twenty. It seemed like a good idea at the time, which is a sorry excuse for mucking up someone else’s life. I wanted to get away from Ireland. Which is an even worse excuse.”

“What did you need to get away from?”

He looked at her, his pupils dark, liquid, as his brows drew together. “My father. He was not a nice man. This tattoo here reminds me how much I don’t want to be him,” he said, sitting up and stretching out his left forearm.

“What does it say?”

“
Cha tèid nì sam bith san dòrn dùinte
. It’s Gaelic for, ‘Nothing can get into a closed fist.’”

Connor shook his head, trying to shake away the reason for the tattoo. Memories of his father coming home drunk. It had been nearly every damn night. And when the man was drunk, he was hard on his mother. On him. He’d been a hard man when he was sober. But he’d treasured his girls. Connor would never have left them behind if it had been otherwise. He hadn’t been that self-serving, even at twenty.

Not quite. He’d left his mum to deal with the old man, hadn’t he? And he’d used Ginny in the process, by marrying a woman he hadn’t truly loved, which made it even worse.

Don’t think of it.

Not now, with this woman in his bed, so sexy with her mussed hair, her fair skin gleaming in the morning light.

“Does that have anything to do with the scar under your eye?”

“Yeah. Bar brawl at eighteen, like any good Irish lad.” He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but her small, brief frown let him know he hadn’t entirely succeeded.

“You don’t have to say any more,” Mischa told him.

He smiled at her. “We’ve had a baring of souls this morning, haven’t we?”

She smiled back. Beautiful, brilliant smile. “We have.”

“Perhaps that’s enough for one day, then. How do you feel about a long, hot shower?”

“I definitely need one. So do you, frankly.”

“Ha! Nice of you to tell me so. Come here, you wicked wench.”

He grabbed her and rolled her into his side, then slipping his
arm around her waist he lifted her from the bed, carrying her toward the bathroom.

“Connor! Put me down!”

“Not a chance. You’re the one who’s demanding we shower.”

She struggled, but he held her tight. And didn’t admit to himself how damn good it felt, his arms around her sweet flesh.

Her naked flesh.

Yes, concentrate on that.

That was easy enough, focusing on the squirming armful of gorgeous girl. He got to the bathroom, reached in without letting her go to turn on the water. He felt her body loosening, accepting his hold on her. Yielding to him. Whether it was his sheer strength that was overpowering her or something else didn’t matter. He liked that it was happening.

He was getting hard. Not that it was any surprise. She did that to him, easy as silk. He could get hard just thinking about her. He had the few times they’d been apart, had jerked off to her image in this very shower, coming hard as he remembered the feel of her, the taste of her. How many times in the last week? Less than a week.

Was it only six days ago they’d met? Why, then, did it seem so natural to pull her into the hot shower with him? To start soaping up her body, his hands running over her sleek flesh, as though he’d done it every day of his life?

Don’t be stupid.

That was what she did to him. Made him stupid. With lust. With…something else. He didn’t know what to call it. He’d just met the girl, for Christ’s sake. And he wasn’t going to go all philosophical now. She was naked in the shower with him, the water running down their bodies. Making her breasts look spectacular. Succulent. He ran his hands over them, pausing to pinch her nipples.

“Hey!”

“Are you protesting because you don’t like it?” he asked her.

She laughed. “I think the answer to that is obvious,” she said, her fingertips briefly caressing her hardening nipples, making his cock jump with need. “But we’re dirty.”

“Yes, we are,” he said, grinning. “I rather like that about myself. Even more when it comes to you.”

“Clean first,” she said, her lush mouth setting in mock sternness.

“Ah, she’s bossy this morning.”

“I promise to be quite submissive again once I’m clean,” she answered, grabbing his bottle of shampoo and starting to lather her hair, then spreading the lather over her body.

“I’ll see to it you are,” he told her, trying to sound grim and failing utterly. He gave up and started to soap himself.

“I’m sure you will. You always do.”

“Complaining, are we?”

“I…take the Fifth.”

“Ha. There’s no constitution around here, my girl. Here, time to rinse.”

He used the shower wand to spray himself off, then her, doing a thorough job on her silky skin, between her thighs.

“Oh, that’s nice,” she murmured.

“It looks nice.” He moved in closer, swiped at her shaved sex with his free hand. “Feels even nicer.”

She sighed, her lashes fluttering. He loved when she did this. When she gave herself over to whatever was happening. Pleasure. Pain. His command. She was submitting to him even now, through the sensation of his hand between her thighs.

He set the shower wand back on its hook.

“Mischa, turn around.”

She didn’t say anything, just blinked up at him for a moment,
then turned around. He ran his hand over her tattoos, taking a moment to admire the delicate lines and shading in the orchids, lotus blossoms and chrysanthemums, the scattered cherry blossoms, all of the work done in classic Japanese style. Beautiful. So much a part of her.

She shivered as he feathered his fingertips over the curve at the small of her back, then he slipped his hand lower, over the perfect heart shape of her ass.