Hot Whispers of an Irishman (27 page)

Vi stood in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to quell her smile and manufacture an acceptable pucker. She knew she was being ridiculous, trying to apply lip color that would be gone minutes from now, and doing a clown-poor job of it, too. But after the days locked in the studio, she looked like the dead. Even a vigorous scrubbing in the shower had done little to get her blood moving.

For the first time in her life she wished for wildly extravagant silken lingerie. Hand-stitched, French, and deep green in color would be quite grand. Naturally she had none, so the white of her skin would have to be adornment enough. She took one last glance at her face in the minuscule mirror and then gave a shake of her head so that her curls would tumble wilder yet over her shoulders.

“Fine enough for a dead woman,” she said, then left the steamy warmth of the bathroom. At the bedroom door, she gave Rog a quick pat on his head, then slipped inside, leaving her hound in the hall.

Liam had turned back her bedcovers and lay there, as naked as she. The pleasure Vi got from looking at him made even her feet tingle. Liam’s pleasure was far more obvious. He was hard for her, and she longed to take him in her hands.

“Grand, isn’t it,” she said as she prowled toward him, “us being past the age where we need to be coy?”

Never one to deprive herself pleasure offered, she settled on the mattress’s edge and touched him. He didn’t move his hands from behind his head where he had them casually cushioned, but she wasn’t for a moment fooled. She knew what it cost him to hold back, as she was spending the same in not simply flinging herself on him.

“I don’t recall you ever bothering with artifice,” he said.

She smiled as she noted the slight hitch to his voice. “Aye, you’re right. All that nonsense was too much work to manufacture, and only took away from the time we had to be doing this.”

She crawled over him, knees to either side of his hips, then leaned down and settled her lips on his. Liam’s reaction was immediate and breath-stealing. He rolled her beneath him, shielding her with his arms so that his weight stayed off her. Then he kissed her hard, as though it were a brand of possession.

Possession.
Lord, how she’d always hated that word. She had chafed under the proprietary behavior of other lovers. Not with Liam, though. He might claim to own, but she in equal measure owned him. As she returned his kiss, she reached for him, hoping to urge his body into closer contact, but he would have none of it. He took her hands, locked her fingers between his, and pinned them to either side of her head.

“But is it all about this, Vi?” he asked. “Do you see us as the sum total of our body parts?”

These were the emotions she was ill-prepared to face, and if she could dance by them, dance she would. She let her gaze move leisurely down his body. “It’s not such a horrible fate, Rafferty. Yours are some very fine parts.”

He briefly squeezed her hands tighter. “Not this time,” he said. “You won’t be distracting me. I’m about to give you words that I threw about with far too little respect fifteen years ago.

“I love you, Violet Kilbride. Did always and will always. You can make light of this if you wish, but I came here because I love you, and when I’m moving inside you, it’s more than fine body parts at work. I love you, and I’m awed to have the chance to say it again.”

Vi hadn’t realized that she’d begun to cry until the first tear rolled out of the corner of her eye and then was quickly joined by more.

Did she love this man? Aye, but to say the words and then lose him again would be more than she could bear. She tugged at her hands, trying to free herself, but he wouldn’t let go, and instead kissed her again, then spoke.

“You’re the other half of me…the one who has the bluntness to speak the truths I’ve been conditioned to only think. You’re the one who never once laughed at my adventures, not even one as totally mad as looking for that gold. And you’re also the one I’ve never forgotten. Not in one empty night of my life.”

“I’ve never forgotten you, either,” she said, her voice thick with what tears she’d managed to withhold. “I know we’re more than this, I promise I do. But I’m not ready to give words, Liam. I’m just…not,” she finished, for words of love weren’t the only ones difficult to summon.

“I’ve misjudged matters, then?” he asked.

She fumbled for something to say. “I truly appreciate your—”

“Appreciate?”
He laughed, but it was a sound made more of frustration than humor. And she knew it was well deserved, too, for next she’d be spouting greeting card verse.

“Christ, after I praise your blunt ways, you mean to kill me with politeness?” he asked. “Tell me this…. Right now, should I leave this bed…leave you…and let you tend to the life you’ve got here?”

“No! Of course not!”

Tension left Liam’s face. He closed his eyes for an instant and exhaled a slow, almost cautious, breath.

“Good, then,” he said.

Vi smiled, though she knew it was a wobbly affair. “You might think of letting go of my hands, though. I won’t hit you or run, I promise. I just need to wipe my tears.”

“Ah, but that I can do for you.” He dipped down and kissed her forehead, then either side of her face, at the wet and salty sensitive skin beneath her temples. Then he set her hands free. “I love you, Vi, and now I’ll make love to you. Do you want me to use protection, or are we safe?”

“Just you inside me,” she said, knowing that all but her heart was safe.

He kissed her breasts and belly, and stroked her between her legs as she caressed him. The afternoon sun spilled onto the bed from the open curtains, and she took pleasure in making Liam move just so, where she could watch the play of light and shadow fall across him.

Together, they were art and subtle miracles. They were the sort of beauty that always stayed just beyond her fingertips. She might not be able to capture it and have it serve her whims, but she could live it. In time, the sheets were a rumpled ridge at the foot of the bed, and Vi and Liam were angled across the mattress.

He entered her slowly, whispering, “My Violet.” It sounded a sweet poem to her, and she considered that her name might sometimes actually suit.

They were totally skin to skin, and it was paradise. She ran her palms up his arms, feeling the strength of muscle and sinew. She drew his head down to hers and kissed him, letting her tongue slide against his.

When Liam began to move, it was such a slight action that at first she thought it might have been her imagination, or perhaps the instinctual rocking of her own hips, which she could no sooner stop than she could will her blood to move more slowly through her veins.

She asked him for more, but he shook his head. “Not yet. Move your legs up around me.” When Vi did as he asked, he said, “Now close your eyes and just feel.”

Vi felt the rising and falling of his abdomen pressing into hers as he breathed. She felt the tiny sting of flesh still relaxing to accommodate him, the pounding of her heart as her passion grew, and the fullness of Liam inside her. The tangy, almost primal scent of their lovemaking surrounded them, and the combined heat of their bodies rippled across her skin, making her feel as though she’d been dancing too close to a bonfire’s flames.

She fixed all these impressions in her mind, for the artist in her was greedy, taking and keeping what was needed to fill creativity’s wellspring. This wasn’t using. It was simply who she was.

Vi opened her eyes and caught Liam looking at her with a tenderness that was enough to break her heart.

“Do you have it now?” he asked.

Her heart jumped, for he knew. In a way that defied reason and experience, he knew her down to her soul.

“This, Vi, is love,” Liam said, then withdrew and returned into her, making her back arch and her breath hitch.

And he did indeed make love to her as he’d vowed, slowly and with a caring that diminished her defenses in a way that a show of breathless acrobatics never could. His words were simple and all bearing the same message—that she was loved. She’d never been so aroused.

Vi came to a shuddering climax and lay trying to regroup her resources before he’d even peaked. Liam withdrew from her, and she clutched his upper arms, trying to stay him.

“Where are you going?”

“Exploring,” he said, then gave her a bold smile before heading south.

Cool air replaced the cover of Liam’s warm skin. She lay replete and pliable as he slid her closer to the mattress’s edge, until her lower legs were dangling. He nudged her thighs wider and kneeling on the floor, settled between them, contemplating her as though he’d never before seen a woman’s body, when Vi knew for certain he’d seen plenty.

“Are we to be here a while?” she asked, earning the chuckle she’d hoped for with her casual tone.

“It all depends,” Liam said.

“Ah, well, if it’s depending on me…”

She reached upward for the pillow she’d left behind, drew it forward, plumped it a bit, and then tucked it beneath her head. Even with the added cushion, she had to work up the energy to lift her head and watch as he brushed his fingertips back and forth across the hair at the joining of her thighs.

“My fire, for certain,” he said, his attention fixed on what he was touching.

“Embers at best,” she said. “You’ve done me in.”

“A challenge, then.”

Vi lay back and smiled, for she knew there was nothing Liam liked better than a challenge. He nudged her legs the smallest measure wider, and she swallowed convulsively as she felt him expose damp and tender bits not accustomed to the cool November air. It might be time to run the furnace and not just occasionally the fireplace, she thought.

And that proved to be the last wander her mind would take, for Liam’s tongue gently flicked against what he’d exposed. As he dallied, pure pleasure worked its way up to her heart, which sped its beat. There was a possibility that she wasn’t beyond rousing.

One particularly wonderful caress had her fully awakened, her toes flexing, then pulling tighter with a pleasurable anticipation that she hadn’t expected to feel. When she begged him to come back and be inside her, he smiled up at her.

“Embers?” he asked.

“Arrogance,” she answered, softening the word with a smile.

Liam crawled onto the bed, moving her upward enough that he could slide home.

“I love you, Vi,” he said, then began to move with determination. “Did always…will always.”

This time when she came, Liam was there with her, and Vi knew that her world was forever and frighteningly changed.

There was no sound like a dog noisily sniffing at the bottom of a closed door.

Liam smiled up at the ceiling as he listened to Roger, who was quite obviously curious about whatever might have taken place on the humans’ side of the door. The dog could remain curious, too.

Liam swung his legs from the bed, then reached for his watch, which he’d left on the small table at the bedside.

“Damn.” He’d slept longer than he’d thought, for it was nearly four-thirty. Soon he’d have to return to Muir House, but he’d hoped for a few more words with Vi before then, as he recalled that he was supposed to pass along an invitation from Jenna Gilvane for Vi to also have dinner at Muir House this evening. She was face-down, though, and closer to comatose than asleep.

Liam rose, gathered his clothing, and made his way to the bathroom he’d earlier been barred from. Once he’d showered and dressed, he checked on Vi again. Other than one finger twitching, she hadn’t moved at all. Roger, though, had apparently made the great leap to the foot of the bed.

“Should she wake, tell her I’ll be in the kitchen,” he said to the hound.

Liam returned to the front room, then paused, thinking perhaps he heard someone upstairs. The noise didn’t return, so he retraced his earlier steps to the back hallway, off which the kitchen sat. Feeling oddly at home, he opened the fridge and was thankful to find three bottles of German lager in the back corner. One could be taken without too much guilt.

He’d opened the bottle, sat at the kitchen table, and was taking a first long drink when a tall, broadly muscled, and very redheaded young man with a bandaged left hand came in. Liam suddenly wished for dry hair and a shirt buttoned to the top instead of three buttons still open.

“You must be either Dan or Pat,” he said once he’d swallowed.

“Pat,” the younger man replied, then reached into the fridge and pulled out a large bottle of still water. He began to uncap it, wincing as he gripped the bottle with his bandaged hand.

“Need some help?” Liam offered.

“It’s just a few stitches. I can fend for myself.” The youth succeeded, then tipped back his head and drank. When he was done, he gave Liam a level, appraising look.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Liam Rafferty. A friend of your sister’s.”

“And of her shower, from the sound of things when I got home. Where’s Vi?”

“Asleep.”

“Then you might as well be on your way. She sleeps for days after one of her runs in the studio.”

“I’ll wait a while, thanks.”