If I Trust You (If You Come Back To Me #4) (9 page)

She felt her grip on rationality slipping. He leaned down so that their faces were only inches apart. She inhaled the smell of soap and subtle, spicy cologne and felt her body respond.

“There’s not going to be a shooting star to tell you whether it’s right or wrong,” he said. “You have to trust me in this, Deidre.”

She swallowed thickly. Doubts assailed her, but his male scent dulled them. Her lips still felt tender and hot from his kisses, as if the nerve endings had been awakened and clamored for more pressure...more pleasure.

“You’re the chief executive officer of DuBois Enterprises. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t regret it tomorrow.”

“I’m a man, not a job. Like I said, there’s no way in hell I’ll
ever
regret making love to you.”

It was like standing on the edge of a cliff. Maybe she should have demurred, but her heart pounded with excitement.

And she was a diver, after all.

She gave a breathless consent.

Chapter Six

H
e moved so rapidly, so surely, Deidre realized he must have been waiting on a precipice of anticipation, as well. He stood, swept her into his arms and headed for the hallway. He ate up the space with a long-legged stride and kicked the door to the master suite open wide. Deidre smiled and laid her cheek next to his chest. His hastiness in the matter pleased her.

He set her on the edge of the bed. The light from the hallway spilled into the darkened room, letting her see his shadowed face. She waited, her heart starting to perform a drumroll on her breastbone.

He reached out and touched her cheek.

“Thank you for trusting me,” he said, his fingertips running over her jaw and neck, making her shiver.

“I could say the same of you,” she whispered.

For a few seconds, he stroked her and the silence seemed to press on her eardrums.

“You have the face of a rebel angel. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

“Thank you,” she mouthed soundlessly, stirred to her core by the rough gentleness of his voice.

He came down over her, easing her onto the mattress. His mouth settled on hers. She loved the feel of his weight on her. He was so hot...so hard. She drank in his elemental maleness, never before feeling the stark power of her own soft femininity than at the moment, because of the delicious contrast of their straining bodies.

He lifted his head, his hands encircling her waist. He moved, sliding her along the comforter with him until they lay on their sides facing each other, their heads resting on the pillows. His mouth continued to coax her, enliven her as it moved over her lips, cheek and neck, demanding and feverish.

She slid her fingers just beneath his shirt and rubbed. The sensation of his smooth, thick skin covering dense, warm muscle made her grasp both sides of his shirt and part them. The sounds of the snaps popping sent a thrill of excitement through her. She broke their kiss and pressed her face between the cloth, loving the taste of his naked skin, the texture of the springy hair on his chest. He made a low, rough, desperate sound.

He opened both of his hands on her waist, the gesture a blatant reminder of how much larger he was than her, how much of her he could hold in his grasp. She pressed feverish kisses over his chest. He slid his hands upward along the fabric of her sweater, plumping her breasts from below with the hard ridge of his forefinger and thumb. She responded to the erotic caress by tasting a small, erect nipple with her tongue. He made a muffled sound in his throat and covered her breasts with his hands.

She whimpered against his skin while he molded her to his palms.

“Nick,” she pleaded softly.

“I know. I’m going to undress you.” She helped him by raising her arms when he drew her sweater over her head. She shivered uncontrollably when he opened his hand at her waist and slid it over her belly.

“As soft as I thought you’d be. Softer.” He held her stare as his long fingers slipped beneath the waistband of her jeans and he deftly unbuttoned the fly. The movement of his hand next to her stomach and pelvis caused a molten sensation to spread at her core. “Turn over on your belly.”

“Wha—” she asked, confused by his request.

“It’s okay,” he assured. He put his hand on her shoulder and guided her. She’d never felt so vulnerable—or so excited—as she lay there on her stomach and he began to slide her jeans down over her hips. She gasped in aroused surprise when he leaned down and pressed his mouth to the base of her spine.

“I’ve wanted to do that ever since I saw it,” he grated out roughly as he kissed her tattoo; shivers of pleasure rippled up her spine.

He pressed his hot mouth just above the crevice of her buttocks, and Deidre knew he kissed the base of her brilliant rose tattoo that included a golden caduceus spiraling up the stem. She’d gotten the tattoo in an impulsive moment a year ago in Germany. Until that second, it had been a private, secret indulgence. Or so she’d thought.

“When...when did you see my tattoo?” she asked in a strangled voice.

“I went into the workout facility at The Pines one afternoon a few months back and you were on the treadmill with your back to me. I saw it then—most of it anyway. I’ve been waiting to see the rest.” One of his hands cradled her hip as he continued to study her tattoo with his lips and tongue. She shivered in rising excitement. “You don’t wear much when you work out, Deidre.”

“I didn’t know I’d have an audience.”

“An avid one.”

She muffled a moan by pressing her mouth against the pillow when he slipped his hand beneath the satin of her panties and shaped one of her bottom cheeks to his palm. She’d never felt herself to be the focus of so much desire in her life. His mouth rose along her spine, kissing, licking, biting gently at the sensitive skin on either side of the vertebrae. When he reached the cloth of her bra, he flicked open the fastener so effortlessly, she blinked. Then his mouth was back on her skin, finding her neck while his hand explored the contours of her thighs and hip.

“Give me your mouth,” he muttered, and she twisted her torso. His lips found hers, his tongue a sleek, demanding invader. Again, she drowned in his taste, turning on her hip and drawing closer, seeking more...needing more. Her entire body was going liquid with desire. She felt his hand slide along her thigh and realized dazedly he was drawing her jeans off her legs. He broke their kiss and leaned down to peel off her socks. Her breath caught when he caressed her calf and lingered on her thigh. She panted softly when he lay down next to her. He raised a hand and slowly removed her bra, baring her to his gaze.

“Look at you,” he murmured quietly. Enough light flooded in from the hallway that she was able to watch his face as he examined her. He looked transfixed, his expression almost grim with desire. She shivered when his hand coasted along the side of her waist and ribs and then lingered on a breast. His hand covered her. Her nipples tightened almost painfully. He gave a low groan before he seized her mouth again. She fumbled with his shirt, baring his torso and touching him greedily. He finessed her sensitive nipple with his fingertips.

Desire sluiced through her, so sharp she broke their kiss and gave a plaintive cry.

His exploring hand lowered, stroking her hips and belly. He murmured broken words of praise into her ear—a ragged, passionate anthem. Deidre felt herself melting into a heady sensual torpor, utterly intoxicated by the sound of Nick’s rough voice and the sensation of his talented, stroking hand.

He slid beneath her panties.

His fingers sought. She parted her thighs for him, wanting to be found.

His groan sounded like it scorched his throat.

She heard his voice as if from a distance as she drowned in sensation. His fingertips may be blunt and large, but he knew precisely what to do with them. He kissed her mouth more slowly than before, deliberately, languorously. He watched her face through heavy, narrowed eyelids. A delicious burn grew in her until she moaned in mounting excitement and bit at his lower lip, taunting him into giving her what she needed.

“That’s right,” he growled. “
That’s
the Deidre I know.”

He bent his head and covered the tip of her breast with his warm, wet mouth, laving a nipple with his tongue. When he drew on her firmly, she cried out.

She grasped for his waist as pleasure broke in her flesh, her fingers sinking beneath his leather belt and scraping warm skin as if she thought the wave of sensation would drown her. He pressed his finger into her body as she climaxed. She shuddered around him.

“I think you might have been meant for my touch.”

Had Nick really muttered that? As Deidre lay there shaking, helpless in the clutch of desire, she had a sneaking suspicion that even if it had been her imagination, it’d been the truth.

* * *

He looped his arm beneath her as she shuddered, wanting to absorb every shiver of pleasure racking her body. He brought her against his chest, his hand still between her thighs. His jaw clenched tight at the sensation of her small breasts pressing against his chest, her nipples hard with arousal. Her skin was exquisitely soft. He hadn’t been lying when he’d whispered he’d never felt anything like it. He experienced an overwhelming desire to feel every square inch of it sliding against his own skin, against his fingertips, his lips...his tongue.

Her tremors of release eased. She was small, feminine and soft, yet her muscles felt sleek and strong beneath his touch. Her curves fit his hand like she’d been built to specification.

She parted her lips, panting. He plucked at her mouth with his own, his hunger swelling at the sight of Deidre’s face dewy with release. He stroked her skin while she calmed, soothing her until he couldn’t take the ache of his desire a second longer.

He whipped his shirt over his shoulders and attacked the belt on his jeans. She murmured something unintelligible and started to help him, her fingers twining with his as he unfastened his fly. He hissed when her fingers brushed against the hard ridge of his arousal.

She glanced up at him, her eyes looking enormous in her flushed face. She held his gaze while she traced his contour through his clothing.

It was too much for him. He could endure a lot. He
had
endured a lot, keeping himself on a straining leash when it came to his attraction to her. But witnessing renewed desire replace satiation on Deidre’s face while her fingers learned his shape shattered his restraint completely.

He muttered a curse under his breath and shed his remaining clothing like it’d caught fire. He hurriedly located a condom in his wallet.

She opened her arms to him when he came down over her. He groaned at the feeling of her warm, silky skin pressing against his. Entering Deidre was torture and bliss blended. He took her mouth in a kiss, glorying in how she sensed his need, rose to it and matched his passion.

“You’re so small,” he whispered next to her mouth in a choked voice a few seconds later. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re not going to hurt me, Nick.”

Her hands glided across his hips, giving him her assurance...

...her blessing.

He applied pressure and closed his eyes, begging for the strength to endure the agonizing sweetness of the moment. Sweat beaded his brow. Her body’s embrace was tight and warm and every bit as perfect as the rest of her.

Nick had a fleeting thought before he was swept away by torrential pleasure. Fusing his flesh to Deidre’s felt like returning to a home he never knew he’d had.

* * *

Later, they lay with their limbs entwined. Deidre felt sublimely surrounded by Nick. The scent of him filled her nose. Their pounding hearts pressed close, slowing in tandem. Her eyelids grew heavy as he stroked her hair.

“Are you asleep?” he asked after a while.

“No,” she whispered. She burrowed her face between his neck and shoulder and kissed him, smiling to herself when his hold on her tightened. “I think you might have been right.”

“About what?”

She lifted her head and lay it on the pillow next to his, meeting his stare. “It is sort of hard to regret something like that.”

She pressed her lips against the ghost of a smile on his mouth. “Not hard. Impossible,” he said, before their mouths fused in a melting kiss.

“Can I ask you about a sensitive topic?” he asked her quietly a while later.

“Not the will, I hope?”

“No. Maybe an even more sensitive issue. Your mother. And you.”

Her gaze flickered up to meet his. “I know you noticed I was uncomfortable when Addy McGraw was asking questions about Brigit and me. I guess that Lincoln told you that my mother’s and my relationship is...strained?”

Nick nodded.

“Mom kept her affair with Lincoln and my paternity secret, both from Derry and me. I haven’t really spoken to her for most of my adult life,” she admitted, feeling the familiar mixture of defiance and hurt rise up in her. “I realized when we were out there at McGraw Stables that Brigit never shared her love of horses with us because of her guilt. She associated horses with Lincoln and her infidelity.”

“Were you and your mother close, before you had the falling-out?” Nick asked as he rubbed her shoulder in a soothing gesture.

“I was close to both of my parents. I was a Kavanaugh,” she stated, as if that explained everything. “And then one summer evening when I was seventeen years old, I found out I wasn’t.”

His caressing hand stilled. Tears burned her eyes. She pressed her cheek to Nick’s chest, averting her gaze.

“You mean you somehow found out about Brigit and Lincoln’s affair?”

Deidre nodded, her cheek brushing against the springy hair on Nick’s chest. She touched his skin with her fingertips, the sensation reassuring her...grounding her. Suddenly, the story was pouring out of her, as if it’d been waiting to erupt there at the back of her throat for nearly half of her life.

“When I was a kid, I thought my parents had the perfect marriage. They always seemed so happy, so attracted to each other. I had no way of knowing that apparently their marriage had started out rocky. Derry’d had an affair early on, and my mother had discovered it. She reacted by flying to Lake Tahoe and having an affair with her old friend, Lincoln DuBois. My mom and dad reconciled. All of us kids were happily ignorant of the whole thing, but one night when I was a teenager here in Harbor Town, the truth came spilling out.”

She swallowed thickly and continued.

“I’d had a water-skiing accident during an exhibition show here in Harbor Town. I was hospitalized for a leg wound. It wasn’t all that serious, but I’d lost some blood. I required a transfusion. That’s how my dad—Derry—found out my blood type. He suspected that given his blood type, I couldn’t biologically be his daughter. According to my brother Liam, Derry contacted an old friend after that—a pediatrician who specialized in genetic diseases. The pediatrician confirmed that given our blood types, I couldn’t possibly be Derry’s daughter.

“I was discharged from the hospital. Mom and I were the only two people in the house on Sycamore Avenue that afternoon. I remember it was a hot, humid summer evening. A storm broke that night. You could feel it brewing in the air all day. I was bored out of my mind. I could hear Mom doing dishes in the kitchen and figured the coast was clear to get out of bed and call one of my friends on the phone in my room. When I heard Mom coming upstairs a few minutes later, I thought I was caught, but she passed my room and went to hers and Dad’s bedroom. A few minutes passed, and I heard the door downstairs open and close, and another tread on the stairs. I told my friend I had to get off the phone. I recognized my father’s step, and I was surprised he was home. It was a Tuesday, and Dad usually worked in Chicago until Thursday night, when he joined us in Harbor Town during the summers. He paused outside my door—I almost called out to him—I
wish
I had—but then I heard him walking down the hallway toward their bedroom.