Hot Whispers of an Irishman (13 page)

He stuck to the fringes of the small crowd around her, waiting for this particular song to end. True, they were a nation of emigrants and he’d hardly been the first to leave, but this felt so bloody personal, coming to him in her voice. And it seemed personal to her, too, the way she sang with eyes closed, telling how the woman died, never to love again. When she was finished, she was met by silence, then loud applause.

She thanked her listeners, then said, “Fine tune, but stupid woman never to love again, don’t you think?”

Liam joined in the laughter, not quite sure if he should be insulted or relieved. When the couple in front of him left, taking with them his anonymity, his gaze met Vi’s.

Smiling, she slipped from her stool and told her admirers that she was well and truly sung out. She looped her arm through Liam’s and said, “You’re early, and I’m glad for it.”

As was he. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“A bottled water, I think. Our bartender’s been plying me with wine to get me to sing. Little did he know I’d do it for free, eh?”

They were to the bar then. Vi got her water and Liam a whiskey, neat. With her still smiling and chatting as though among old friends, they wove through the remaining crowd and found a seat on a small sofa in the far corner of the dark, wood-paneled room.

While he’d been out supporting the Dublin economy with what was left of his failed one, she’d changed into a sleek black skirt and a low-cut silk top of black that also seemed to shine dark red where the light from the brass chandelier overhead hit it. She also smelled wonderful, of exotic spices whose names he’d probably never know. Liam felt himself rising to the occasion. Ah, she was still his siren, and his alone.

“So your shopping trip went well?” Vi asked.

He focused on giving a lucid answer when reason was bolting for the door. “Well enough that all Meghan wants is room service and MTV Europe.”

“Grand,” she said, then shook her hair, which she wore loose this evening, back over her shoulders.

She took a swallow of water, and Liam shifted uncomfortably. God, he was in desperate straits if the sight of her swallowing could make him ache even harder. He kept a smile in place and one leg crossed at the knee in a poor effort of camouflage as yet more admirers came to chat with Vi.

“I’m thinking we should move someplace more private,” she said after the small group departed.

Liam downed his whiskey in one mad gulp and said, “Then let’s go” over the fire in his empty stomach. He stood and offered his hand to Vi, who took it and rose.

“My room?” she suggested.

He wasn’t fool enough to disagree.

They cut through the bar, hands clasped. While they waited for the lift to come down she said, “I talked to Nuala Manion again after you left the museum this morning.”

Liam made what he hoped passed as a vague sound of semi-interest. He had no wish to talk of Ms. Manion or gold. In fact, all he wished was to be alone with Vi. Unfortunately, the floor number indicator was firmly parked at three. He was about to suggest the stairs when she spoke again.

“It’s a sad thing, how much of our heritage ends up out of sight.”

“True, but there’s still ruins enough to keep the tourists hopping from town to town.”

“That’s hardly the point, now, is it?”

Again he thought of sailors and rocky shoals, for the seas were growing rough. “Have you something you wish to say, Vi?”

“I do. If any gold is found, we should give the museum the right of first refusal and sell to them at a reduced rate, of course.”

Liam retreated into silence. It seemed to work well enough for Meghan.

Two…One…Finally, the lift arrived and a middle-aged couple emerged. They nodded a polite greeting, which Liam returned. He and Vi entered, and she tapped the button for the fourth floor.

“Have you nothing to say?” she asked as the door slid closed. “Not a ‘you’re so right’ or an ‘I’d have it no other way’?”

“I take it back,” Liam said instead. “I take it all bloody back. I don’t want women to say exactly what they’re thinking, especially when it makes hell of my plans for the evening.”

She raised her brows and tilted her head to an inquisitive angle. “Shall I take that as your vote against the museum?”

“There is no vote but mine.”

Even after that pronouncement, she still held fast to his hand. Were this his ex-wife Beth and one of their disagreements, she’d be pinned to the lift’s opposite wall about now, looking to get even farther away from him.

Vi gave him a slow smile, one so sensual in nature that his fingers tightened reflexively over hers.

“One vote only?” she said. “Really, now?”

He glanced at the elevator’s display. Two…Three…Could this damned thing move no faster? “Yes, really.”

She laughed. “You can keep thinking that, if it makes you feel better, but when the moment comes, Liam, I’ll not let go of my rights. Sue me, fight me, do what you must, and be sure I’ll do the same.”

He blinked. “Am I right in thinking you just declared war?”

“I believe I did.”

Finally, the fourth floor. The door opened, and Vi led him out. “Now, the way I’m seeing it, we have two choices. You can storm off to your room and I to mine, or we can meet in mine and I can see how the rest of you looks naked.”

There was something shocking about this talk of sex when a line had just been drawn. “I, ah…”

Vi released his hand, then trailed her fingers warm and sure along the line of his jaw. “Go check on your daughter, Liam. Then come to room four-twelve.”

She walked down the hall, slipping her key from a pocket in her skirt. He was still staring and likely slack-jawed when she unlocked her door.

“And don’t be wasting time,” she said, then disappeared.

Liam shook his head. His siren was leading him, no doubt about it. And there was also no doubt that in this, he’d be well pleased to be dashed upon the rocks.

‘I’ve seen you before,’ as the cat said to the hot milk.

—I
RISH
P
ROVERB

“Y
ou’ve never exactly been a slip of a girl,” Vi reminded herself as she stood sideways and regarded her naked reflection in the bathroom mirror. “And you’ll not get there in the next five minutes, either.”

She turned and gave herself a front-on view, which she found more satisfactory than the side one, despite the flaws there, too. Her months of frozen inactivity—both mental and physical—seemed to have expanded her bottom. Some might find it lush, but she was finding the thought of Liam seeing it bare just a wee bit daunting. Ah well, if that was the worst that resulted from her days of grayness, she was a lucky woman, indeed.

Tidy, teeth brushed and anxious to get the event rolling so that the self-analysis would end, she slipped on her crimson silk robe and then settled into a curved armchair by the window to wait for Liam. She had no doubt that he would arrive. She felt his need as strongly as she did her own, and hers already had her trembling.

She stilled one shaking hand with the other, not ruing the way she felt, but marveling at it. It wasn’t as though she’d not had a lover since Liam. There had been a decent number of them, always carefully chosen so that she might guard her heart, and surely never more than one at a time. Not once, though, had she felt this kind of hunger, as though she had to have him or cry to the moon.

Vi closed her eyes and pictured Liam striding down the quiet, carpeted hallway from his suite, giving the imagining enough depth and detail to will it into reality.

“Soon, now,” she murmured.

She’d silently counted to
caoga,
then back down to
a haon
again when a knock finally sounded at the door. She rose and padded there barefoot. A glimpse through the peephole confirmed that it was him, looking as on edge as she.

Heart pounding, Vi opened the door. She’d no sooner closed the door behind Liam and perched herself on the edge of the bed than he began talking more quickly than a car salesman trying to sell poor goods.

“Meghan’s still fixed in front of the television and room service has arrived, though I can’t imagine how she’d be hungry again, with all the fried junk she’s eaten. I’ve told her that we’re going to the Italian place I saw round the corner, and should be back before nine. And I’ve brought these.” He reached into his trouser pocket and dumped a fat handful of condoms on the nightstand.

Vi laughed. “A bit overambitious, I’m thinking,” she said with a nod to the stash.

He prowled closer. “And if I arrived with one, I’d have been understating my goal.”

“Which is?”

“You,” he said. “All of you.”

She shivered with pleasure. “Now you’re sure about this?” she teased. “It’s a risk, you know. One wrong move and you’ll have destroyed a legend forever.”

Surprise chased his brows upward. “A legend? I was twenty, for God’s sake.”

She scooted forward on the edge of the bed until she could unbuckle the fine leather belt he wore. Always the best for Liam. “So you’re saying that now I’ve reached my prime, you’ve passed yours?”

He laughed. “No, for my ego wouldn’t have it. I’m saying it was more about frequency of performance than quality back then. Now do I get all of you or do we talk our stolen time away?”

Vi stood and wrapped her arms about his neck. “You get me.”

Blue eyes intent, Liam worked his hands beneath the Chinese-embroidered lapels of her robe, spread his fingers wide and wrapped them over her shoulders. He trailed his thumbs back and forth over the ridge of her collarbone a few times before easing the robe loose so that it slipped with silken ease to drape low on her arms. She would have shrugged the rest of the way out of it, but he stopped her.

“Not yet. We’d best take this part slowly. The way I’m feeling, the rest will go fast,” he said, then added, “…the first time, at least.”

Slowly? He asked for the impossible when already she burned. But for Liam, she would try.

He brushed his fingertips over her breasts, then around to the undersides, lifting them slightly. “They’re fuller than when you were seventeen.”

“Unless you like fuller, don’t be looking at my rear,” she said, then immediately wished the nervous words back.

Liam laughed. “God, I’d forgotten what a mouth you have.”

Vi hadn’t forgotten his, especially the way it felt when he drew hot and wet on her nipples. And she wanted that perfectly marvelous mouth on her now.

“I need your kisses,” she said.

“Where?”

“Here,” she replied, raising her left hand and touching the very corner of her jaw.

He used his fingers to sweep her hair—which she’d worn down the way he’d always liked—round her ear, then he obliged her with a slow and tender kiss.

Smart man, he knew to tease her well.

“And here,” she said when he was done, settling her fingers against her throat.

Even better this time, he kissed her open-mouthed, his tongue pressing against the pulse strongly beating just beneath her skin. Then he suckled there, ever so briefly, earning a gasp from her and a chuckle from him.

“I’ll not mark you,” he said. “That is, unless you want me to.”

The summer she’d been seventeen, she’d worn the marks of his kisses on her throat as though they’d been jewels. She’d been young and foolish and quite sure they were the only two in the world who so understood grand passion.

“No marks,” she ordered.

“More kisses, though?”

She smiled. “Always more kisses.
Always,
” she repeated, guiding his head to her with one hand, and holding her breast for him with the other.

He was also an obliging man, Liam Rafferty.

He replaced her hand beneath her breast with his, then flicked her nipple with the tip of his tongue. A small thrill shimmered straight to her toes, and gooseflesh began to ripple across her skin. He tasted her in earnest then, his mouth closing over her as wet and hot and perfect as she recalled. Her breath left her in a gasp.

As he kissed first one breast, then the other, she sifted her fingertips through his thick hair, remembering well these conflicted feelings of control over the moment, yet total abandonment. It had always been this way with Liam, life a confusing, heady mix, defying logic.

When she was ready to beg him for even more, he instead let his mouth leave her. He still touched her though, fingertips tracing the contours of her shoulders.

“I’ve always missed you, Vi. Even when you were out of my thoughts…” He shook his head. “I don’t know…It’s as though you’re in my bones.”

Vi’s heart—always too bloody easy—began beating faster. It was in that easy heart of hers to tell him that she felt the same, but for once, caution guided her words.

“I’ve missed you, too,” she said.

When Liam reached for her robe’s sash, she was ready, broad bottom be damned. She let the garment go to the floor and stood willing beneath his gaze.

He walked a close circle around her, and she had to admit to a moment of nerves when he was catching the full backside, but when their eyes met again, she had no doubt that he’d liked what he’d seen.

He touched a lock of her hair where it lay against the upper slope of her breast. “You’re a woman for the ages, Vi Kilbride. And I’m one lucky bastard, having you naked before sundown.”

“Ah, but barely before,” she said, as the sunlight chasing through the part in the draperies was weakening. “And there’s some unfairness afoot, here. Barefoot, actually,” she said with a glance to her toes. “You’re able to gawk at me all you please, while I’m getting a businessman, still all buttons and starch.”

“You’re meaning these?” he asked, gesturing at what were doubtless expensively tailored shirt and trousers, when she was more interested in what lay beneath.

“I am.”

He grinned. “You should have thought of that before you sent all your bargaining power to the carpet. What’ll you give me if I take off the shirt?”

Vi’s smile grew. Another game, and it had been so very long since she’d had a chance to play like this.

“Arrogant man. The question you should be asking is what you’ll give me.” She reached out and unfastened his shirt’s top two buttons.

“But we already know what I want to give you,” he said with a mock leer and a waggle of the brows that would have done any over-actor proud.

Vi laughed. “And you’ve not heard me complaining, which should be gift enough.”

She worked free the rest of the buttons, including those on his cuffs when he presented them one by one. Instead of tugging the shirt off, she strolled behind him and slid her hands underneath the fabric and onto his bare skin. At the feel of his muscles beneath her palms, she drew in a sharp little breath of pleasure. He was broad shouldered, a man who had done his share of physical labor. She moved her hands round to the front, tracing the lines of his ribs.

Rising on tiptoe, she said softly into his ear, “You know, I’m thinking we can leave your clothes on, and maybe even forego the main event. I’m sure I can find plenty to do with my hands as it is.”

That grand lie busied him.

“Not a damn chance,” he said.

He had toed out of his shoes even before she could come front to watch the show. Shirt joined her robe on the floor and trousers soon did the same, which left him doing a mad jig to rid himself of socks and then boxers.

When he was finally as bare as she, Vi took her time admiring him. Liam had filled out to be most impressive, and the more she looked, the less inclined she was to remain standing.

She walked the few steps to the bed and pulled the thick feather down duvet to the footboard. Liam quickly walked to the other side and did the same. They each climbed onto the bed and lay on their sides facing one another. Vi propped her head on her hand so she could have a fine view.

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t looked at him when he was twenty. She’d been relentless, treating him as her own private plaything, touching and tasting and learning what aroused him…and her. She knew the coarse feel of his pubic hair, the taste of his mouth, the scent of his skin as they made love. She smiled, recalling all of that.

Liam drew closer to her, or perhaps she to him. However it happened, their mouths met and then met again. Hungry nips, slower kisses, their hearts sped. As he caressed her breasts and kissed her yet more, she draped her leg over his hip, bringing them nearer still.

She was a strong woman, and more or less fit, too. Yet he rolled her onto her back with an ease that impressed her, though it would never do at all to admit that to him.

He moved between her open thighs, kneeling above her. She wanted to reach for his erection and run her hand up and down it until he’d be done with this playing about, but he touched her between her legs first.

The feel of his fingers, of the way he knew to stroke her, was familiar, yet not. She closed her eyes for a moment and focused on the sensations, the tightening of inner muscles as he worked one, then two fingers inside her. He found a rhythm with his thumb she was certain he hadn’t known last time they’d done this, but she didn’t want to think of him with other women. Not now, in this intimate moment. Surrendering herself to his sure touch, she rested her hands, palms up, on the pillows above her head. As her passion built, Vi could feel an utterly abandoned smile work its way across her mouth.

Liam’s answering smile was slow and a wee bit smug. “Herself is pleased?”

“Working my way to it,” she said.

“It seems to me I’m doing all the work, just now,” Liam teased, then moved his hand away long enough to resettle next to her.

She did reach for him, then. He was a large man in all ways and the feel of him hot and thick beneath her sensitive fingers sent a tremor of pure passion through her and then into him. She ran her thumb over his erection’s head, where moisture had begun to bead. She wanted to taste him, but knew they were both too close to the edge, and told him as much, too.

He groaned.

She gave him an arch smile. “Then you’re through being slow?”

“I am.” His gaze was vague, somehow, as though if he looked directly at her, he’d turn to cinders.

Without otherwise moving, she reached out her right hand and felt her way across the nightstand to his mound of condom packets. When she had one between her fingers, she waved it in his face with a quick twist of her wrist, as one would a flag at a parade.

“Get busy,” she instructed her man.

He took the packet from her, opened it, and withdrew the goods. Vi watched as he rolled the condom into place.

He braced his weight over her. She guided him until he was poised to enter, then smoothed her hands over his hips to the firm muscles of his bum. Lucky man, he’d experienced little of the expansion she had. She supposed she’d forgive him that flaw.

Then his gaze met hers, deep and serious. “I would never have thought…” he murmured.

Vi didn’t need him to finish his words, for she had never thought this would happen again, either. Then the sheer miracle introduced an uninvited guest: worry.

“What if it’s not the same?” she asked. She’d been teasing earlier, but not now. Admittedly, her timing had gone lackwit, as he was already partway inside her, and her body was easing to permit him the rest of the way.