The Reveal (7 page)

Brynn, on the other hand, needed to go home. She had a business to run and a life to live that would someday include a relationship with a man who wasn’t going to let her down.

“If Macy’s men see the smoke, they might come and check it out, but they won’t do it with guns blazing. Dante uses this place to decompress. They’ve been instructed to give it a wide berth. In the morning, we’ll head up to the main house. And we’ll ditch the truck. If we go on foot, we’ll be less of a threat.”

Brynn listened to his efficient mission review, her glossy eyes wide and her mouth open with surprise. She’d made a move. He’d turned her down. As much as it killed him, he had to start the separation process.

No time like the present.

Sean moved to the door. “I’ll get more wood. Looks like that pump might work,” he said, pointing at an iron contraption attached to a sink by the boarded-up window. “Maybe if you find a pot in a cupboard, we can eek a couple of cups of coffee.”

He didn’t wait for her to acknowledge him. He pushed himself out of the warmth in the cabin and into the frigid night air. He focused on the task of collecting wood and piling it up by the door, no matter how much he wanted to go back inside, out of the cold, into the heat of Brynn’s embrace.

Hard as it was, he resisted. He had nothing to give her. In another time or place, he might have managed to gift her with a piece of his heart, but as a whole, it was still too bruised and battered to be of any use to anyone, particularly an amazing woman like Brynn.

By the time he’d reentered the cottage, she was standing at the sink, pumping water into a pot she must have found in the door-less cupboards. He ramped up the fire in the hearth, scooting out of her way when she carried the filled pot to the hook. Without words, he took the cast iron vessel from her and swung inward.

“I guess we should go make a space for sleeping,” he suggested.

She didn’t reply, instead taking her tartan blanket to a corner of the room, beside where they’d stashed their bags. She retrieved a pocketknife and took a little too much pleasure cutting away a large swatch of fabric. He almost asked what she was doing then decided he didn’t want to know.

Okay, so she was giving him the silent treatment. Maybe it was better this way. Maybe the break between them would be easier if she was pissed off. Or hated him. Shouldn’t be hard to get her all the way there. He was a master at turning women against him.

He grabbed the sheets that had been tossed over the furniture and went outside to shake them out. He had no fancy duvet to offer her, so these would have to suffice. He doubted Brynn had ever slept anywhere so filthy, but she wouldn’t complain—not if complaining meant she had to talk to him.

But by the time he returned, Brynn had finished her surgery with the blanket and had used one thick swatch to swing the hot pot of water out of the fire. She dipped the other cut-away corner into the scalding water, wincing as she wrung out the excess, then gingerly wiped her cheeks, neck and décolletage.

He tried to concentrate on turning the lump that had once been a mattress into a decent bed. His eyes, however, had other ideas. They could not resist watching Brynn wash, particularly when she allowed the water to drip enticingly down her skin until her braless nipples were visible through the saturated fabric of her shirt.

“Do you mind?” she asked, shamelessly whipping the shirt up over her head.

His mouth dried. “Do you want me to leave?”

Her narrowed gaze nearly knocked him on his ass.

“Actually, I was hoping you’d watch.”

His knees weakened as if she’d kicked him from behind. He dropped to a crouch against the far wall, his back braced against the bed frame. She turned to the side and slowly, purposefully, peeled off the rest of her clothes. Swirls of orange light caressed her naked skin as she piled her hair on top of her head with a clip, allowing tendrils to snake down and curve around her shoulders and nape.

Her eyes downcast, Brynn dunked the swatch of tartan into the heated water, dipping and wringing until she achieved the desired saturation. Sean was transported back through the centuries, to a time when luxuries like running water hadn’t been conceived. When women had bathed in the open. When men had to have earned great trust for the privilege to watch.

The cottage was sparse but had what they needed—just enough chilled air to prickle her nipples to ripe peaks and sufficient heat from the fire to chase away the bitter cold.

And the water. He suspected it was crystal clear and sweet, sucked from the spring that ran deep under the earth.

He watched her wash, stroke by stroke, up her arms from wrist to shoulder. He licked his lips, his tongue desperate to lap up the drops clinging to the tips of her breasts after she swirled the sopping cloth down her neck. She lifted her foot onto the pocked top of a hobbled stool and squeezed a stream of water over her thighs.

“You’re killing me,” Sean said.

The fire crackled cozily, but the air blazed as if they’d stepped into an inferno.

“That wasn’t my intention,” she replied.

“Wasn’t it?” he challenged. “Your strategy is sound. Fall back on what worked before. Seduction.”

She leaned forward to wash her ankles, her breasts bouncing forward so that their sweet pear shape nearly drove him mad.

“So you think I’m trying to seduce you to keep you from leaving me after we meet up with Macy? That’s a little arrogant. What if I just want one more night before we say good-bye?”

If Sean lived to be one hundred, which he doubted he would, he’d never meet a woman as remarkable as this one. They were nothing alike, and yet, she knew precisely what to do and what to say and what to feel to bend him to her will. One more magical night wouldn’t change his resolve to release her from her obligation to him. He no longer needed her help, but damn, he needed
her
more than he wanted to admit.

Sean stripped off his shirt, nearly tearing the fabric. He kicked off his jeans, half hoping they’d disappear in the dust and filth.

Her coy glance nearly dropped him to his knees. Then she turned. With his hands level with her curvaceous ass, he cupped her hungrily.

“I need help with my back,” she said.

“I can help anything that needs attention.”

Her shrug was nonchalant. “I’m nearly done. Just a few spots left.”

“Don’t fool yourself,
cher
. It’s the important parts that are left…and we’ve just gotten started.”

Eight

Sean’s lusty grin was like accelerant on an already raging fire. Never in her life had Brynn hungered so desperately for a man’s touch. She wanted him with a desperation that she’d hate in herself if she’d felt it toward any other man.

But Sean wasn’t any other man. He was everything she’d ever secretly wanted in a lover—strong, brave, clever, resourceful, sexy and giving. He was also lonely, scarred, arrogant and on the fringe—qualities she would have resisted if the situation had unfolded differently. And yet, despite his determination to push her away, she wasn’t letting go of him without a fight—or at the very least, one last good-bye.

She slipped the wet cloth into his palm, biting her bottom lip as he dunked the rag into the pot and then squeezed a shower of steaming water down her back. She was awash in moisture as the water trickled down her body and blended with the hot cream curled within her labia.

He smoothed the cloth around her bottom, down the back of her legs and then up, pressing the wetness of the material to the wetness of her sex. The jolt of pleasure was instantaneous.

“Oh,” she sighed. “Yes.”

“See? I told you that you missed this spot,” he teased.

“I did,” she confessed, cupping her hand over his, showing him precisely how much pressure she needed. “I really did.”

He rubbed the cloth up and down. Friction built into a needful inferno that nearly had her writhing out of her skin. He paused long enough to douse the cloth again then resumed until she was panting and begging him to bring her to the brink.

It was shameful how easily he took her to the edge. Shameful and delicious and amazing. He abandoned the cloth and dropped to his knees, swinging her leg over his shoulder so that he could suckle her the rest of the way. Pleasure exploded the moment his mouth met her sex. He tongued her to orgasm, applying constant pressure to her clit until her climax eased from spikes to a steady, relentless thrum.

Pleasured, but not fulfilled. His kisses left her wanting, needful. Hot.

He dropped onto the stool, maneuvering her so that her legs were on either side of his. He guided her onto his lap, his erection thick against her belly. She wrapped her hand around him, murmuring her delight at the silky feel of his skin. He was hard, but she could get him harder. Longer. Thicker. With Sean supporting their weight and her feet flat against the stone floor, she possessed all the power.

“You’re going to miss me,” she said.

He gripped the edges of the seat. “Never said I wouldn’t.”

She brushed her thumb over the tip of his cock. The head was hot and moist. She wanted to taste him, but not nearly as much as she wanted him inside.

“I’m going to miss you, too.”

“You’ll get over me.”

“Will I?”

He lifted her, expertly adjusting their position so that she glided onto him with electric ease.

“God, I hope so,” he crooned, his hands roaming ravenously around her bottom as he made a miniscule shift that drove him even deeper inside her. “You feel so good.”

“Do I?” she asked, rocking to a stand so that the tip of his cock was barely inside her.

Her first orgasm had cleared her head. Sean might think leaving her would be easy, but she was going to show him how wrong he was.

He groaned, grabbed her hips and pressed her down again, but she leveraged herself back to a half-standing position. If he wanted her, he was going to have to work for it—which he did, by taking her nipple into his mouth and working the nub with his tongue and teeth until she slammed down into him and started the rise and fall that would take him precisely where he wanted to go.

“That’s it,” he said, digging his fingers into her flesh possessively. “Aw, yeah,
cher
. That’s the way. Let it go. Don’t hold back.”

She rocked, rose and descended. He held on for dear life, kissing her hard, taunting her and promising her the world if only she’d make them come.

The conflagration of sensations burned into her with each word that tumbled from his mouth. Each utterance took them lower, to the earthy base of lovemaking, to the
fucks
and
dicks
and
cunts
that somehow sounded like sweet poetry when tumbling from his lips. She could think of nothing but driving his thick hardness deeper into her body so that it seared her core from the inside out and left her as nothing but cinders and ash.

But Sean, as always, had other ideas. He slipped his arms beneath her bottom and stood, stumbled to the bed then dropped her onto the dusty coverings. Now, he was on top, pounding into her, plying his hand between them and tuning her orgasm to his. She cried out, lost in the maelstrom, until she was no more than a receptor for his voracious need.

She stroked his chest, kissed his arms and wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, crooning and cajoling him into letting go.

His eyes popped open wide just before he crashed. His hot seed seared her, burned and branded her as his. This was a sensation she never wanted to forget—never wanted to do without.

She simply had to convince him of the same.

* * *

Sean had nothing left.

No breath. No blood. No bone. He was a gelatinous collection of overstretched skin and muscle. But beneath him, Brynn stirred, so he shifted his mass with a grunt and wondered if his innards would re-form or if he’d become just another wasted fixture in the cottage, useless and abandoned.

Fortunately for him, Brynn opted to bring him back to life. After rinsing herself clean by the fire, she brought over the pot and cloth, dropping them near his feet, which hung over the edge of the lumpy mattress. She took her time, practicing the same tender care she’d shown when he’d been half-conscious from his injuries and unable to appreciate her bedside manner.

She dried him off then shoved a large log onto the fire until the fire roared again and heated the entire room. As she hung the tattered tartan by the fire beside her wet clothes, Sean forced himself to sit up.

They’d had their fun. They’d had this moment. Dawn was a few short hours away. This fantasy he’d willfully allowed himself to indulge again would soon be over for good.

“Brynn,” he whispered.

His voice barely broke through the crackle and pop from the hearth.

Brynn stood, as beautiful and breathtaking as a Renaissance statue, facing the fire. Her body was outlined by the glow as if her skin was marble. Her gaze, which he could see only in profile, was once again mesmerized by the flames. He had to fight the instinct to go to her, wrap her in his arms and bring her back to life with his warmth.

He was an idiot. He’d had all that he deserved. In the morning, he had to move forward.

Move on—without her.

“We need to talk,” he continued.

She spared him a glance over her shoulder. “Do we?”

Two words, shot from the other side of the room, impacted against his resolve and reduced it to ash.

Unlike him, Brynn wasn’t a fool. She had started their relationship. She knew as well as he did when and where it would end.

He changed course. “Is the food still in the truck?”

She spared him a tiny grin before turning back to the flames. “Mmm.”

He’d take that as a yes.

“I’ll just go get it then.”

He dragged on his jeans and shirt but, before he left, draped his jacket across her naked shoulders, careful not to do more than brush his knuckles against her hair, now tumbling haphazardly around her. Even that miniscule contact flamed his skin, burning him to his core.

On his way out the door, he caught her burying her nose in his lapel. Her cat-in-the-cream smile nearly cut out what was left of his soul.