Briarwood Cottage (13 page)

His face, shadowed as clouds drifted across the moon, revealed a hesitation she hadn’t expected. The one thing that had always been good between them was the sex. Not that they’d had any since the last time they’d been in Ireland.

“No regrets,” he warned.

She shook her head and kissed him. A long, deep, breath-stealing kiss. “No regrets,” she echoed when they finally came up for air. “I want you to take me to bed, Duncan.” She pressed a hand against his chest and felt his heart beating as hard and fast as one of the bodhran drums at the session. Once again in sync, its rhythm echoed that of her own wild, reckless heart. “Now.”

They were no steadier making their way from the SUV to the cottage than they’d been leaving the pub. As soon as they got inside, he spun her around, pressed her against the blue door, and dove back into the interrupted kiss.

Cass followed him willingly as tongues tangled, teeth scraped, heat flared. When his fingers took hold of her short curls and pulled her head back, allowing access to her throat, her entire world narrowed down to his mouth and hands, which were cupping her breasts while his thumbs rubbed her nipples. Which were, unfortunately, covered by that sweater dress she’d thought was so pretty when Sedona had talked her into buying it.

“You’re wearing too many clothes.” He read her reeling thoughts.

He lowered those wonderfully wicked hands to the hem of her dress and lifted it up her legs. “Raise your arms.”

She raised them above her head, wiggling her hips a bit as he peeled it up over her head and threw it across the room.

Then, before she could rip away his shirt so she could feel them skin to skin, his mouth took hers again, his hands streaking over her, causing flames to shoot through her veins as he nudged her legs apart, then moved between them, his hard, urgent erection pressing against her, causing her lower body to throb.

“Damn, I’ve missed this.” His breath was harsh. Ragged. “Missed the way you feel,” he said as he undid her bra and claimed her breasts with first his hands and then his hot and hungry mouth.

Her underpants went next. Then, needing to touch him as he was touching her, she slid her hands up beneath his shirt to touch hot flesh.

It was crazy. Insane. Incredible.

She hadn’t even realized what a dry, empty spell she’d been in until all it took was his hand cupping her, and the stroke of a clever thumb at the same time his teeth tugged on an ultrasensitive nipple to send her over the edge.

She was not alone in her hunger. Her gasp, then shuddering moan fueled his own demand as he kissed her again, his mouth hard. Hungry.

“I wanted to do this right,” Duncan ground out as he yanked open the buttons on his 501s. “Take things slow. Seduce you.”

“I don’t need seduction.” What she needed was that bold, hard nine inches she now wondered how and
why
she’d gone so long without. He jerked in her hand as she wrapped her fingers around him, stroking him in a familiar way that had him yanking a condom from his pocket and tearing the package open with his teeth. The first time she’d witnessed that raw male hunger was the night they’d met in Kabul. Knowing that she was the one who could drive him to such extremes only made her own fires flare hotter.

Cupping her butt, he lifted her off her feet and entered her with one stroke that had her crying out his name. Then he began to move, and as she wrapped her legs around his hips and was dragged into that spinning, whirling place where only he’d ever been able to take her, Cassandra’s last coherent thought was that the cottage could burn down around them, and neither of them would ever notice.

It didn’t take long. Only a few hard, deep strokes for him to find his own release, at the same time she felt herself breaking apart.

Somehow, when she’d floated back to earth, they were lying on the wooden floor. As her head cleared, she realized that she was completely naked. Well, almost.

“I’m still wearing my boots.”

He pressed his lips against her throat and caused her cooling blood to heat again. Then glanced down at her, giving her a lazy, lustful study that had her toes curling in those red boots. “It’s a good look,” he decided. “I think you ought to keep it.”

“And wouldn’t that cause a stir down at Brennan’s?”

His hand settled between her legs with an easy familiarity that was at odds with the fact that it had been months since they’d been this way together. “I had in mind something a little more personal. That you stay that way for me.”

“All the time?”

He glanced over at her. “You have a problem with that idea?”

“Actually, I do. Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Yeah. I like sex. With my wife. Who I’ve really missed seeing naked, so I figure we’ve got some time to make up for.”

“So you haven’t turned into one of those guys with a dungeon?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I take it that’s a no,” she decided as he jerked his hand away from where, if she were to be perfectly honest, it had felt good. Really, really good.

“Where did that idea come from?”

“Well, you know. I’ve been reading how BDSM seems to have become a popular way to jazz up sex these days, so I just thought, just perhaps, you’d taken it up.” His answering glower could have cut through steel. “I guess not,” she said.

“Definitely not.” He began making little circles on the damp inside of her thigh. “And we never had to play any games to jazz up our sex. But if the idea turns you on, hey, I’d be willing to give it the old college try.”

“That’s okay.” She wiggled a bit to encourage him to move those fingers up and over just a bit. “I’m pretty much a vanilla girl.”

His earlier annoyance dissolved as he flashed her a wicked grin. “That’s always been my favorite flavor.” To prove the point, he shifted positions and planted his mouth where his hand had been.

Which essentially put an end to the conversation.

T
hey’d finally made
it to the bed, where they spent the night making up for lost time. The sun had begun to rise in the sky outside the window when Cassandra opened her eyes. “I dreamed of something last night.”

Duncan put his arm around her and tugged her close. Although he’d lost track of the number of times she’d come, and his own count had been a personal best, he was already wanting her again. “In the all of ten minutes you slept?”

“Hah hah.” She playfully slapped his upper arm in a way that reminded him of his old Cass. “What makes you think I didn’t doze off during one of those times when you thought I was just dazed with lust?”

“Maybe because everyone down at Brennan’s probably heard you screaming my name? Along with ‘Take me now, you damn barbarian Scotsman’?”

“I said that?”

“Actually, you shouted it. And while I like to believe I have a fairly strong ego, it would sting a bit to discover that you’ve been using my body to have sex with Gerard Butler.”

“Of course I didn’t do that. Though, and I really don’t want to hurt your feelings, because you’re a fabulous lover, there are admittedly times, occasionally, when I fantasize about you wearing a kilt.”

Duncan felt his face splitting into a bold Highlander’s grin. “I’ll go out and get one today.”

“You wouldn’t get any objection from me. And I couldn’t have been
that
loud.”

“Sweetheart, they’re going to be finding bits of thatch all over Castlelough.” He glanced up at the ceiling. “Because I think we may have blown the roof off.”

“Well, then, you’ll just have to go up there and fix it. While wearing your new McCaragh kilt. While I stand down on the ground and watch.” She laughed and snuggled closer, her hand on his chest. “You know how often dreams don’t make any sense when you’ve been awake awhile?”

“Sure.” The past few years
his
dreams had been more the stuff of nightmares. Of a continually changing kaleidoscope of images that hadn’t made any sense when he’d witnessed them in real life.

“Well, this one keeps calling to me.”

“That’s always a plus.” Duncan was not going to think about those bad times. Instead he was going to focus on being back in bed with his wife.

“It is. I was thinking that perhaps, rather than write a novel about a female journalist, which had been my original idea—”

“Going along with the old ‘write what you know’ adage.” He touched his lips to the top of her head, breathing in the crisp citrus scent of her shampoo.

“That’s what they say. Whoever
they
are. But I’ve no desire to relive my journalism days, so I was thinking more along the lines of a fictionalized version of what’s happening here. Of some sort of event that could be considered by many to be miraculous. And how that changes the people who live in the small, isolated town where the miracle occurs while also changing those who witnessed it.”

“That’s not a bad idea.” Although fiction might not be his strong suit, Duncan could see Cass making it work.

“As I said, I’m still just playing with what-ifs.”

“You’d probably want to stay here a while,” he suggested carefully. Like a month, for starters. “Getting a better handle on the town and residents would give your story more verisimilitude, making it more realistic and believable even though it’d clearly be fiction.”

“I loved how Quinn Gallagher had me suspending disbelief when he wrote about the Lady,” Cass said. “Since I felt I knew the people and the setting, I was able to accept the idea of an underground kingdom beneath the lake and scientists trying to capture her… Maybe once the Lady seekers leave town, I can find a flat to rent,” she mused.

Or move in with me
.

“Sounds as if you’ve pretty much made up your mind.”

“Not quite yet. But I’m getting closer.”

“Maybe some local color will help,” Duncan said.

“That a good idea,” she agreed.

“So, I have a proposition for you.”

“Anything,” she said.

“Great. We can stop for breakfast on the way.”

“On the way? Where are we going?”

“To the Lahinch Surf Shop.”

Her gaze cut to the window, where the day had dawned bright and so atypically sunny Duncan could picture people stumbling around the streets of Castlelough, hands over their eyes, looking up toward the robin’s-egg-blue sky while crying out, “I’ve gone blind! Blind, I tell you!”

“You’re proposing we go surfing?” she asked.

“Yeah. We had fun the last time, so I thought it might be worth trying again. I went online to check while you were knocked out, and although surfing here on the west coast can be iffier than the east where we were before, thanks to the wind changing, the waves are going to be clean and glassy until late afternoon.”

“Which is a good thing?”

“A very good thing. They’ll be perfect for a novice, but you don’t have to worry, because I won’t let you fall.”

“I thought you were supposed to be writing a story for Winston.”

“I only need one a week.” He snapped his fingers. “Piece of cake.” Leaning down, Duncan nuzzled her neck. “Come on, my little beach bunny,” he coaxed. “Play hooky in the surf with me.”

Even as she sighed heavily, Duncan knew she was tempted. “What ever happened to spending the day in bed?”

“After surfing,” he promised. They’d always meshed in bed. Even after that argument the night before she’d flown off to Egypt. Sometime during the night of marathon sex, Duncan had come up with a new plan to show Cass all the ways they fit perfectly together in the rest of their lives. “You’ll love it.”

C
assandra did love
it. Loved looking at her husband in that body-hugging black wetsuit, loved the way he looked at her back, and she especially loved having his arms around her as they’d flown across the waves like Fann, a Celtic sea goddess portrayed in the Ulster Cycle, one of the great collections of ancient Irish mythology.

“That was a grand time,” she said later as they warmed up back at the cottage beneath the shower. “Though I’m still not sure about the pie.” He’d eaten a huge piece of berry pie topped off with a mountain of vanilla ice cream.

“You’ve never eaten a blueberry muffin?”

“Of course. Sedona’s adding them to her menu, so I was her taste tester.” They’d been delicious. And for women who weren’t lucky enough to have Duncan McCaragh make love to them, probably better than a run-of-the-mill orgasm.

“Or a strawberry pancake?”

“From time to time.”

“So, it could be argued, my berry pie was merely the same idea. In a different crust.”

“What about the ice cream?” Cassandra knew she’d lose ground if he brought up the equally high mountain of whipped cream topping off her pancakes.

“Dairy,” he answered without missing a beat. “An important part of the food pyramid. Just like a glass of milk. Or carton of yogurt.” He squeezed some body soap out of the bottle and began spreading it over her breasts. “Or that whipped cream that undoubtedly came with your strawberry pancakes.”

She laughed because he had her there. And then, as his fingers slipped into her with a silky ease while the water streamed down and the room filled with fragrant steam, he had her again.

*