HardWind (18 page)

of her tongue slipped into the oozing slit of his cock and probed, causing heat to settle

deep in his groin with a heaviness that made him ache. She was doing wicked things

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with that sweet mouth of hers. When she took him as deep into that warm cavern as his

cock could go, he began to pant.

Star gently massaged his balls as she suckled him, lapping at his rigid flesh, tasting

the saltiness of his juices. She released her hold on his rod and lightly scraped her

fingers down his taut thigh, feeling him quiver at her touch.

“Baby, please,” he pleaded, his voice a husky pleading.

She eased her mouth from his stony erection and moved up in the bed, straddling

his hips once more, reaching down to take his cock in her hand and guide it to the wet

heat that radiated from between her own legs. Poised above him, she settled her cunt

down his hard length—smiling at his quickly indrawn breath—and began to ride him

in a rolling motion, lifting and scooting her hips forward, fitting so sweetly into the

cradle of his hips.

Dáire pulled on his bonds, tried desperately to draw his knees up, but the silken

ropes binding him to the foot posts of the bed did not allow for much movement. He

was open to her invasion, at her mercy, lying there being milked of his essence in such a

way he thought he well might bellow when the building release came.

“You want it, baby?” Star whispered.

“Yeah,” he breathed, thrusting his hips upward, the slide of cunt along his length

driving him mindless with need.

“Tell me you need it, Dáire,” she commanded.

He had no choice. “I need it.”

“Say you really need it.”

He was at her mercy. “I
really
need it!”

She lifted almost completely off him then slid down, rocking furiously.

He exploded like a rocket, bucking beneath her as his hot juices flowed copiously

into her warm, slick channel. His hands clenched into fists and his toes curled with the

violence of his orgasm. Coming down from that zenith of lust, he sagged against his

bonds, his head fell to one side and he lay there completely spent until the first minute

tremors began in his lady’s body and he managed to snap his head around. He stared

up at her as Star hunched there atop him. Her head was thrown back, her long hair

trailing over the sensitive tops of his thighs, her beautiful breasts arched upward in an

invitation he would have loved to have accepted had his wrists not been tied to the bed.

Her cunt quivered in a succession of ripples so powerful she gasped, biting her lower

lip hard enough that a bead of blood dotted the dusky surface. The undulating tremors

that moved through her moist heat made Dáire’s mouth water and he licked his lip as

he strove to get his harsh breathing under control.

“My God, Starlight,” he whispered, absorbing the last little squeezes that caressed

his cock.

She collapsed atop him, stretching her long legs beside his body, her wet nether

curls mingling with his, her lax body pinning him down to the damp sheets. Her cheek

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pressed against the side of his neck and he pulled on the restraints, aching to enfold her

in his arms. Little puffs of sweet air fanned over his chin—her breath smelled like

wintergreen. One of her fingers was idly swirling a lock of his chest hair around and

around its circumference.

“I love you,” she said softly.

“I love you,” he replied.

They fell asleep with him beneath her, his body—like his heart—restrained and in

her keeping.

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Chapter Ten

He knew he looked silly in the vinyl shower cap some nurse had perched atop his

head, poking his dark brown hair beneath the elastic rim. The hospital surgical gown

was a hoot too as he grimaced at the feel of the sheets touching his bare ass through the

neck-to-hem slit. The woebegone expression he turned up to Star as she bent over to

kiss him must have made her day.

“Behave,” she warned, lightly pressing her lips to his.

“I hate it,” he complained.

Dáire was lying on a gurney with a needle the size of Kansas stuck in his arm, a bag

of fluid swinging in preparation for feeding him the knockout juice. They’d already

given him a shot to soothe his nerves and all it had done was to give him a bad taste in

his mouth.

“You’re such a baby,” she reprimanded.

“I don’t like hospitals,” he said for what had to be the fifth time. He was glaring at

the beefy black nurse who was ready to roll him down to surgery.

“Hospitals ain’t too fond of you neither,” the orderly chuckled.

One last kiss, a long, promising look and Dáire was taken away.

Star knew she’d never be able to sit calmly in the surgical waiting room so she just

stood there until she could no longer see her lover—the father of her child—then began

what would be a long pace from window to pop machine to double doors to snack

vending machine and back again and again and again.

Inside the surgical suite, Dáire watched everything they were doing. He craned his

head around until the surgeon came in jovially and chatted with him a moment before a

couple of nurses stripped off the tacky surgical gown and they had him turn over. A

blood pressure cuff was wrapped around his right biceps. The anesthesiologist stepped

forward and the lights in Dáire’s world were turned off.

* * * * *

He woke with a nagging pain in his hip and a pulverizing headache slamming into

his temples. The migraine was back and it had brought a friend. Struggling to open his

eyes, he felt himself shivering, but before he could open his mouth to protest, a warm

blanket was laid over him and he relaxed. He knew he was drooling—could feel it—but

he couldn’t lift his head from the cool pillow.

“Dáire?” someone asked, pronouncing the name as
dare
instead of deh ruh. “Are

you with us?”

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“Where else would I be?” he mumbled, and a laugh followed his ill-tempered reply.

“Does your head hurt?”

“Like a mother,” he said softly. The pain between his temples was barely

manageable.

“Okay, baby. You just relax.”

“Humph,” he managed to comment, and once more tried to force his eyes open. He

was lying on his stomach and all he could see was a tiled wall.

But there was bright light surrounding him and he groaned. The intruding

brightness was too much for the migraine. Around him, he heard the rustle of material

and knew he was in recovery. The squeak of nurses’ shoes was annoying the hell out of

him.

“Here you go, sweetie.”

Someone lowered the warm blanket, exposed his bare back to a coolness he could

have done without and then stabbed him in the ass with liquid fire.

“Somofabitch!” he muttered as the thick liquids spread to the muscles of his rearend.

“That should help, sweetie.”

“Help what? Fry my ass?” he asked ungraciously.

“Somebody is not a happy camper,” another voice joked.

He opened his mouth to curse the joker but then quiet lassitude drifted over him in

a soft, warm, welcoming wave, and he subsided, letting himself float on the strong

narcotic winds that were plying over his body.

“Better?”

“Uhm,” was all he could manage.

His eyes were open as he was rolled out of recovery and down the hall to his room.

All he could see were waists and legs and the occasional lower arm as he was rolled

along. When they had him in his room, he heard Star’s voice and tried to lift his head.

“Starlight?” he called out.

“I’m here, baby.”

A cool hand stroked his forehead and soft, warm lips briefly touched his cheek

before he was being gently lifted from the gurney and dropped like a fragile flower

onto his cool, clean bed.

“My ass hurts,” he told Star.

“He got a shot of Demerol on the way down here,” someone pointed out.

“Still hurts,” he mumbled.

“Your head still hurts?”

“My fucking ass,” he responded. “My fucking ass hurts.”

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There was soft, muted laughter and a hand rubbing his sheet-covered leg as he lay

there on his belly looking at a pair of garish drapes.

“Behave, Cronin,” he heard Star tell him.

“Don’t wanna behave,” he said on a long sigh. “Want my ass to stop hurting.”

“Is it your rump or your hip, Dáire?” that person who insisted on calling him
dare

asked.

“Same thing,” he replied.

“His hip will be sore for a few days, perhaps longer. Doctor took about two quarts

of marrow.”

“Two quarts?” Dáire gasped.

“You’ll make more,” that daring person dared to tell him.

“Dáire, how’s your head?” Star asked.

“What head?”

There was another rubbing of his leg and he thought it might be Star’s gentle hand

on him but he couldn’t be sure. He closed his eyes as everything around him started to

fade into the background.

* * * * *

When he woke again, he was lying on his back and the first thing he saw was Star’s

smiling face looking down at him as she bent over the bed.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” she greeted him.

“I’m sore,” he told her.

“That’s normal. How ’bout your headache? Do you still have it?”

He thought about that for a moment, tested the waters then decided he didn’t.

“Nope.”

“Jillian came through the procedure just great,” she informed him. “They’re

watching her closely but so far, so good.”

He closed his eyes and said a quick prayer, grateful to Whomever was looking out

after his little girl. “What time is it?”

“Almost closing time,” she said, glancing at her watch. “They are about to run me

outta here.”

“Uhm,” he grunted.

Star bent over and kissed him on the forehead. “Sweet dreams, pretty boy,” she

teased, but he was asleep again.

“Likes that Demerol,” one of the nurses said.

“Seems to,” Star agreed. She adjusted Dáire’s covers then turned away. “When he

wakes up, tell him I’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

“Will do,” the nurse promised.

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* * * * *

It was close to midnight when Dáire woke again. He lay there frowning, feeling the

pain in his hip but deciding it wasn’t enough to be a bother. He tried moving—thought

better of it—then fumbled with the call button. Almost as though she were waiting for

his summons, a young nurse came bustling quietly through the door.

“Whatcha need, hon?” she asked.

“How’s my little girl?” he asked.

“You want me to check?”

He nodded, trying to scoot up in the bed and wincing as he did. The nurse left but

came back a few minutes later to tell him Jillian was doing just fine.

“I’d like to see her,” he said.

“I’ll put a note on your board to have someone take you over there in the morning.

How’s that?”

“I’ve never seen my little girl,” he said. “I don’t even know what she looks like.”

The nurse’s face softened. “You can see her in the morning.”

He gave her one of his million-volt winning smiles. “That the best you can do?”

Her eyebrows drew together and she seemed to be trying to make up her mind. She

bit her lip. “If I got a chair and wheeled you over there, would you promise not to

disturb her?”

Dáire put a hand over his heart. “Promise.”

She held his gaze for a moment then shrugged. “All right, but you’d better behave.

If she’s asleep, you aren’t to wake her. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” she assured her.

The hallways were quiet as Melissa—she had given Dáire her name as she rolled

him from his room—pushed his chair along the pristine floors. His hip was hurting and

he kept shifting in the wheelchair, but he knew that was mostly because he was nervous

about seeing Jillian than anything else.

Melissa pushed him up to the nurse’s desk on the pediatric floor. “This is Jilly’s

father,” she said, and one of the nurses behind the desk frowned. The other just

nodded, not even bothering to look up from the computer screen where she was

playing solitaire.

Jilly’s room was right across from the nurse’s station and Melissa wheeled Dáire to

her bedside. The little girl was sleeping on her back, her face turned toward the window

so he could not see her. Melissa engaged the handbrake and walked out into the hall to

give him some privacy.

Holding his breath against the pain in his hip, Dáire pushed up from the wheelchair

and wrapped his hands lightly around the bedrail of Jilly’s bed. All he could see in the

semi-darkness of the room was a thin halo of dark brown hair and the sweep of one soft

cheek.

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“Hey there, little lady,” he whispered. He ached to reach out and touch the sleeping

child but he didn’t want to run the risk of waking her. His eyes swept over her from

head to the lumpy protrusion of her little feet beneath the covers and back again,

settling on that pale plain of her averted face. Tears gathered in his eyes. “I’m your

daddy.”

As though she had heard him, the child turned her head toward him and her little

eyes fluttered opened. She smiled gently, sighed and then her eyelids closed. Pale rose