Haunting Embrace (34 page)

“Do not think me more than I am,” he said.

But what she felt radiating off him was somehow purer, richer than anything she’d felt before. Like a flower to the sun, she turned to it, opened herself to him.

“I won’t, then,” she murmured. The tone of her voice made him stiffen, the contradiction of her meaning to his, made him scowl. She didn’t need to spell out that it didn’t matter what denials he made, she would believe in her heart. She would believe in his.

She didn’t say it, though. Words had little importance when it came to communicating with this man. He didn’t trust them. He didn’t trust himself. But she could make him feel, and right now she wanted that more than anything.

Without stopping to question the wisdom of her actions, Meaghan took his hand and led him to the place below deck where he slept. The small cabin was spotlessly clean and smelled faintly of bleach. The bed tucked into the nose of the boat was big enough for Áedán and neatly made. The window above it opened to the fresh salt air.

A palace compared to the storage closet.

With a doomed sense that things were coming to a head, that the Book was churning Ballyfionúir into a crazed and violent beast, that this might be the only chance she had to be with this man who touched her heart, who seemed to have been hers for an eternity and, at the same time, for only a few hours, Meaghan pressed her body to his.

She felt Áedán stiffen, knew some part of him wanted to resist her, but she refused to allow it. The air swirled with his confusion, his desire, and his struggle. As usual, Áedán was in conflict with himself. He wanted her as much as she wanted him, but he didn’t know how to let go of his fears and misgivings and succumb to his yearning.

“What do you want from me?” he groaned, his fingers clenching against her hips, his face dipping to the crook of her shoulder and neck.

“Everything,” she said simply. She took his face in her hands and forced him to look into her eyes. “I want it all.”

He made a sound in his throat, and then his strong arms circled her, pulling her against the hard lines of his body, making her feel every inch of his desperation to have her.

He kissed her, stealing her breath along with her desire to breathe. She kissed him back, showing him how completely she yielded. Áedán’s hands trailed over her back, down to the curve of her hip. He held her tighter, moving against her body.

With care and attention, he worked his way from her lips to her cheek to the curve of her throat, the swell of her breasts. Each brush of his lips, each stroke of his tongue brought another wave of emotion, each stronger, surer, fiercer than the last. Meaghan felt adrift in the chaos and grounded in her certainty that this was where she belonged, in Áedán’s arms.

Dropping to his knees in the swaying boat, Áedán spread his hands over her hips, pressed his face into the soft dip of her belly, then he tugged Meaghan down to kneel in front of him. He touched her face, turning it up to his. For a moment, the two gazed at one another, and Meaghan felt the love, the longing well up inside her own chest and caught her breath, overwhelmed by the power of it.

Love?
Was that what she felt for this complex man?

“Damn you, beauty,” he groaned. “You make me want to be a man once more.” He searched her face with a look of such hurt and surprise that it wounded her. She didn’t know what he saw in her eyes. Her feelings felt too new and raw to expose them. But after a long, still moment, he said, “I cannot believe I’ve been given another chance.”

Whether he meant at life or at love, she couldn’t guess, but now his eyes had grown hot and possessive, and she couldn’t think past the moment.

Heat pooled low inside Meaghan, and it felt like a drug, towing her into a warm place that flowed with sensuality and promise. Áedán was big and powerful, his body itself an aphrodisiac she seemed all too susceptible to. His scent, his taste, every inch of him teased her senses and made her want to take until she could take no more. Give until she was empty inside.

Áedán’s warm hands cupped her face, the pads of his long fingers gentle against her throat. The caress burned a trail down to her heart.

Meaghan’s hand shook as she settled it against the rough stubble on Áedán’s face, returning the fierce look that smoldered in them both, melting them together. She breathed in his intoxicating scent, stared into eyes like the forest, dark and enigmatic, beautiful and captivating. Her lips softened under his gaze, and her body ached for his touch. She might have some mysterious connection to Elan—admitted even to herself that it existed deep within her—but Elan did not define Meaghan.

This moment, however, might change her forever. She held nothing back.

She felt the brief burst of heat against her skin as Áedán exhaled a deep breath. And then he was leaning down and she moved forward, into his arms, into his kiss. His mouth found hers, parted her lips so he could taste her and she, him. The kiss was like a draught of dark wine, heady and sweet, embodied with mystery and redolent with the dregs of tragedy. The velvety softness of his tongue sent a shiver through her, made her want to wrap her entire body around him, hold him to her, within her. His kiss tasted like spice and wine, wild and male. Erotic, enticing and corporeal.

Their clothes suddenly felt too heavy, too hot. She pulled at his shirt and then fumbled with his pants, forcing him to break the kiss while he tugged them off and tossed them on the floor. Finally, his body was naked and gleaming, muscles hard and strong over long bones. His chest was the toasted brown of earth and sun, polished angles and hot skin. Hard, slabbed muscle that had been hewn by hours beneath the open sky, working with his hands aboard the ship, stretched taut over every inch of him. Last night it had been too dark to admire him, but now, in the light of day, he took her breath away.

He was beauty, covered with sun-kissed flesh.

She made a small sound in her throat and leaned forward again, pressing her open mouth to his skin, savoring the salty heat of him. His taste was an addiction she couldn’t get enough of. His hands tugged at her clothes, and she let him pull them off and discard them next to his own. For a moment, he froze, staring at her naked body like it was sacred. In that breath of time, her heart seized within her chest and she wanted to cry out at the fates that had hurt him for so long. Then his hands were warm on her skin, the rough pads trailing her throat, gentling over the bones of her shoulders and chest, then down to her breasts, where he cupped the soft weight in his palms. The sound that came from his throat ignited a flame within her, and she arched into him, needing more. Needing everything she’d thought never to have.

His hands moved again, skimming over her ribs, around to the slope of her spine, his fingers playing a haunting melody of desire against the small bones they caressed. He followed the curve of her hip to her thighs and hefted her up so she straddled him as he knelt on the floor. The shock of his bare chest against hers traveled like wildfire through her, burning away any other thought.

He captured her mouth once more, pouring his heart into the kiss. She felt each sensation, the stroke of his tongue, the soft warmth of his lips, the heady seduction of his need. She let her hands stroke the smooth heat of his shoulders as she gripped him with her thighs, flexing against the rigid length of him. Inside she felt like melted wax. Fluid, pliable, molten.

His touch was so gentle, so reverent, and yet there was possessiveness in every stroke. Demand in each brush.

“Come here,” he said, pulling them both to their feet and then to the bed. She lay on her back, watching as he covered her with his body. Each point of contact made her burn and shiver at once.

He murmured her name as he found the sensitive skin between her neck and shoulder, the crook of her elbow, the softness of her belly. She sank her fingers deep in his black hair, feeling the strands slip through her fingers. His large hands pushed her legs apart as he moved lower, tongue tracing the rounded bone of her hips, the long muscle of her thigh, then hot against her, pulling all of her senses down to that point where his tongue circled and rubbed, his lips nipped and tugged.

Her entire body became a bow pulled by his strength. She was a thing of sensation, tuned only to the flicking suction of his mouth, the brush of his long fingers as he circled and spread, baring her to his touch.

Nothing she’d shared in the few serious relationships she’d had in the past came close to the intimacy of this moment and the touch of this man. But her body responded, knowing what it wanted even as she reeled with the shock of the sensations he ignited. Áedán seemed to understand exactly what she desired, and now a coil of need twisted within her, nocking her like an arrow poised to fly. Áedán bit down, so softly, so gently—his teeth an abrasion that rocketed through her body—and then his tongue followed, pulling everything back to that point of origin until the waves of tension released like floodwaters and crashed around her.

She cried out as Áedán moved up, cloaking her with his body, bracing his arms on either side of her head as he cradled her skull with his hands. For a moment, he stared deeply into her eyes, and then he pressed his mouth to hers, and she tasted herself on his lips, tasted Áedán in the heady mixture, felt the heavy weight of his arousal against her belly.

She lost herself in the forest of his eyes as he moved, dropping his hips between her legs, easing himself into her with slow and deliberate strokes, his muscles bunched with tension, his skin puckered as he fought the desire that darkened his eyes and beaded his skin. She felt something within her give, pool like an underground well finding the surface. Inch by inch, he filled her until she felt there was room for nothing else, and still he pressed forward until at last his hips met hers.

“Meaghan.” His voice was rough and husky. He said nothing but her name, yet she felt the question within it.

She could not find her own words, so she answered with her body, rocking against him, pulling his head down so she could press her mouth to his. With a sound that came deep from within him and reverberated through her body, he began to move, still slow, still gentle. But the tide inside them ebbed and flowed, rising higher and crashing fiercely around them. He became the earth and sun, the moon, the wind, the breath of life, and Meaghan knew only that she wanted more. She wanted everything.

Her body flexed instinctively, finding the rhythm he set and matching it. He buried his face against her shoulder, mouth hot as he murmured her name with words of love that washed through her. His breath quickened and the pulsing beat of his body against hers sped with her heart. He kissed her again, deep and intoxicating, and she felt the rush of pleasure and pain that came with release. An instant later, his arms clenched her tight as he careened over the same erotic edge.

In the quiet that followed, he pressed his lips to hers and murmured words she didn’t understand in a language she thought more ancient than the soul she saw staring out from his eyes.

Love is often a violent and doomed thing,
he’d told her once.

But she refused to believe that, no matter the soft wind of foreboding whispering across her skin.

Chapter Twenty-four

F
OR a long while afterwards, they lay in silence, Meaghan tucked up against Áedán’s side. The steady rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek brought comfort, but at last Meaghan had to break it. The closer she got to this man, the more desperate for a future she became. She hadn’t yet spoken those words, but she would not belittle it and call it less than love. He consumed her thoughts, he possessed her heart. Denying it would change nothing.

“Áedán, I’ve been thinking,” she said.

“No good can come of that,” he answered, his deep voice rumbling against her ear.

“We can’t do this on our own,” she went on, wishing she didn’t have to bring the note of seriousness into this quiet, warm moment. But the cold light of reality would not be doused, and the sooner they found a way out of the maze that trapped them, the better. “I think we should go back to the lighthouse. We need help and they’ve offered it.”

Áedán shifted so he could look into her face. What he saw there hardened the golden flecks in his eyes, turning them a dusky bronze. He pulled away and stood.

“Áedán,” she said.

He shook his head, giving Meaghan a quick glance of absolute disbelief, as if she’d suggested they beseech Satan for assistance instead of the three men who’d come from the same nightmare they had. She felt as if she’d been pressed through Colleen’s washbasin’s wringer.

“You ask too much,” Áedán grumbled as he pulled on his pants and fastened them.

Perhaps she did. But it was the only way she could see out of this mess. Allowing either one of them to be the sacrificial lamb to the Book of Fennore wasn’t on her list of options.

“They know about the Book. Kyle knows the legends—”

“
Kyle.
I do not trust Kyle Mahon.”

“I know, Áedán. But you don’t really trust anyone, do you?”

He looked at her sharply, his eyes the color of fall, his gaze lingering on her bare breasts and becoming the heat of summer. “I trust you.”

His words felt like rain on a parched desert. Despite their dire circumstances, they soothed and fortified.

After a moment, she said solemnly, “Then I need you to trust me on this, Áedán. You said that your arrogance kept you from seeking help once long ago when you needed it. It changed everything for you and the woman you loved. Don’t make that mistake again.”

His mouth tightened at that, but he gave her a grudging nod, and reluctantly he agreed to go with her to the lighthouse. Without another word, he moved above deck, brought
The Angel
around, and headed back to port. After she dressed, Meaghan came up to watch him, feeling like she’d never get tired of seeing the grace of his movements, the power of his body. He caught her staring and gave her a knowing look, the smile that quirked his lips smug, the heat in his eyes possessive. She’d always considered herself a modern woman, but she didn’t mind the ownership she saw in his silent perusal. She didn’t mind because she knew the same look glimmered in her own eyes.