Once Upon a Rose (19 page)

She squeezed his fingers again. After a second, he gently squeezed hers back, and then rubbed his thumb over the callused tips of her fingers.

He stopped on the stairs, and she pivoted toward him, held by his hand, gazing up at that stubborn jaw and high cheekbones, at the sensual mouth his stern upper lip tried so hard to protect, at that black, half-curled hair, at that big, muscled body. He was so much bigger than she was. Despite the strength of her own hand, his engulfed it, his calluses easily outmatching hers. It didn’t seem likely, did it, that such a big, rough-edged, growling man could take good care of a heart?

And yet…he seemed to take good care of everything else. She bet he grumbled at that cat the whole time he was stopping his car, picking it up, carrying it safely to its owner.

She sighed. “Women must fall for you all the time.” He was worse than a damn drummer. He even had dramatic, brooding wounds in his past.

Actually he had a dramatic wound in his present as well—her.

In fact, he was currently gazing at her as if she’d hit him with something right between the eyes. He even gave his head a shake, as if to clear the ringing. “They, ah, you—”

Glumness settled over her. “They do, don’t they?” And now she’d put him on the spot about it and made him all awkward. Obviously he couldn’t tell the latest woman about all the others who had fallen for him before her.

He ran his hand through his hair, tousling those glossy half-curls even more. “I mean, not—well—do we have to talk about this?”

She folded her arms across her chest, resting her back against the great old wooden door behind her. Its knocker dug into her back. Maybe it would help dig some sense into her. “I can take it.” She scowled. “I’m used to men who have groupies.”

He shook his head again. “
Groupies
? You think I have
groupies
?”

She looked him over, up and down the hot, muscled length of him. “Oh, yeah.” She glowered a bit herself. What had she been thinking? Flirting with someone like that? As if she didn’t know already how men acted when they could have half the women in a room for a wink?

He started to smile, that slow, deep smile, all his brooding fading away. His body angled in over hers, until his good arm braced against the door above her head. That smile, from that position, made hot sensations twirl all through her body. “And what do you have, Bouclettes?” His free hand came up to catch the tip of one curl and tug it gently outward, his gaze following it, fascinated. “How many men am I going to have to fight for you?”

Her scowl disintegrated in pure delight at the flattery. And his words—as if he was willing and ready to fight for her. God, his eyes from this close were gorgeous. They reached deep inside her and melted her middle out. Her breath shortened from his proximity, the angle of his body over hers. “Nobody,” she said. “I’ve been out there on my own for a while.”

A ghost of self-pity swept through her, a powerful
hold me
,
wrap me up so I’m not alone anymore.

“You must like it, then.” He let her curl relax back into its shape and cupped a handful more, squeezing them gently. “Being on your own. If you haven’t let someone grab you.”

Her self-pity broke under the force of her pleasure. Damn, but he was flattering.

“It’s hard to find the person you…you fit with.” She pushed one hand into the other to try to illustrate.

After she’d figured out relationships that got started on the tour circuit tended to be very bad for her—too loose, too easy, too fueled by loneliness and performance highs—she’d stopped forming them. But her music career had sucked her in and swallowed her whole, so that it wasn’t as if she’d had the emotional energy or even time in one place to find someone outside the industry either.

“Tell me about it,” he murmured, sinking his hand more deeply into her curls, fisting them and then releasing them, then fisting again, as if savoring their texture.

The scent of roses reached her from his hand, mixed with the apples of her shampoo, and she closed her eyes against a wave of hunger. It didn’t help. Closing her eyes meant that all she could do was feel—his hand shifting in her hair, his breath brushing over her lips, the cool shade of the street after the sun of the fields, and the press of a knocker against her back. The silence of the stone seemed to hold her safe in it. A gentle echo sounded of someone walking down another cobblestone street below. She wanted him to talk again, into her darkness.

“Are you going to kiss me?” she whispered.

“Yes.” Just that one deep vibration of his voice through her, while his hand sank deep enough to cup her skull at last, cushioning it from the hard door as his mouth closed over hers.

Pleasure curled like a smile through her body, this sensual happiness that relaxed her lips to his. His mouth was just right. Not too hard, not too grabby. Not too soft, not hesitant. His fingers tightened gently against her skull as he fit himself to her, the silk slide of his lips taking hers, exploring hers. The heat of her own body overwhelmed her so fast, melting her everywhere just at a kiss. Her hands rose up to sink into his hair—oh, yes, those half curls were so silky, exactly like they looked, and her fingers slid through them and found purchase against his head, down over his neck and muscled shoulders, back up to that glossy hair. Every part of him was so enticingly touchable that her hands kept moving up and down, sinking into him, trying to get more of his textures, as their lips met and slid, as the kiss grew deeper and deeper.

She discovered she was climbing up him, pulling herself up and into his body, and finally fell back, breaking the kiss. “Oh, wow,” she whispered. Her heart beat so hard it almost scared her, and she ducked her body in against his chest to find refuge there, her head tucked down so they couldn’t start that bewilderingly overwhelming kissing again. “Oh, wow.” She pressed her cheek against his heart, which thundered against her ear. The gorgeous rhythm of a strong heart beating hard and deep just for her.

One arm still bracing against the door to hold his body off her, he wrapped the wounded arm around her and pulled her in close. His hunger for her pressed against her belly, and she bit her lip against the need to wiggle until it fit into a much better spot. “You’ll hurt your arm,” she managed.

His arm just tightened around her. “The cut’s on the outside of it, Bouclettes
.
” His voice had turned so rough. He squeezed her against him again, and again that pressure of his muscles, that compression of her body, swept arousal all through her. “Besides, a little bit of pain can sometimes help a man keep his head.”

What would help her keep her head?

“I’m scared,” she confessed into his chest.
Oh, I love this thump of your heart.

“What?” His arm loosened, and he started to push himself away from her.

She grabbed onto his waist and buried herself tight against him again. “I actually came here to get my life more under control. To find my feet. Not get swept up like a piece of flotsam in a flash flood.”

Both his arms closed around her now, one hand rubbing gently through her hair. “You want me to build us a raft?” he finally asked.

She laughed a little and tilted her head back. “I want you to kiss me again. That’s all I really want.”

He brought a hand to her face, his thumb tugging gently at her lip. His mouth was…tender. Curving gently, as his fingers petted again through that bane of her existence, those corkscrew curls. She wanted to kiss the scar on his chin. No, she wanted to nibble on it. Bite and lick. “It’s not all I want. But yeah—let’s do it some more.”

Oh, yes, that hungry, thorough heat of him as he kissed her again. The energy and gorgeousness of it. The way his mouth shaped and took and gave. That rose-brushed scent of sun-warmed human man. She gasped and fell back again, bringing up her hand to touch her damp lips. “I think I could kiss you like this forever.”

An intense kick of pleasure ran through his body and leapt in his eyes. “I couldn’t,” he admitted, half-laughing. “I’ll have to go get in a fight with one of my cousins soon.”

That much energy to vent? She petted one of those straining arms, loving that arousal so much. It made her feel hot. Hungry. Happy to be her. Vibrating like her own guitar, as if she’d been turned into pure, eager music.

“But let’s not stop yet,” he breathed, lowering his head. Tongues tangled, her hands digging into big shoulders, and her body lifting, his hands gripping her butt to help her up, pull her in, and—

The door opened behind her and she fall backward, franticly clutching him as he fell with her.

Matt managed to catch them both, a hand grabbing the doorjamb and the other arm yanking her in tight, before they fell all the way. He righted her in a flustered tangle.

“Tante Colette,” he said reproachfully. “You picked a fine time to start answering your door.”

Tante Colette? Meaning—? Layla twisted to see an old woman standing straight and tall, in a long skirt, her white hair neatly pinned on the back of her head. She gave no indication that two hot-blooded young people had nearly fallen into her home. This woman was
ninety-six
? Holy crap, this family had good genes.

“It was making unusual noises,” the old woman said coolly, even as her eyes flicked over Layla, intense and searching. “After they didn’t stop for some time, I thought I should perhaps check on it.”

Layla flushed. Her body against the door knocker must have occasionally sent a sound echoing through the house that she hadn’t even noticed.

“We were polishing your door knocker.” Matt grinned at his aunt, entirely full of himself. “Tante Colette, may I introduce the woman to whom you gave part of my valley?” A little flash of his eyes on that last, a press of his lips together.

For a moment, the old woman just stared at her, eyes widening and searching. Layla held out a hand tentatively. “Layla Dubois.”

She felt shy suddenly, before this old Resistance hero who had given her a house, and she found herself easing back toward Matt, so that her free hand grazed the back of his. A little brush of reassurance came with the contact, a kiss of warmth.

Without looking down at her, Matt turned his hand and simply engulfed hers. One big hand. Callused and warm. Fingers linking.
Here. You need my hand? It’s right here.

She looked up at him, on a sparkle of happiness.

“Well, you’re certainly in a better mood than the last time I saw you,” Colette Delatour told Matt coolly. “Are you resigning yourself to your new neighbor or trying to seduce the property from her?”

Wait, what? Layla turned her head fast to look up at him.

For one second, he just stared at his aunt. Then he dropped Layla’s hand and folded his arms across his chest, his jaw thrusting. “Whatever you think the most asshole thing to do is, that’s probably what I’m doing. Of course.” His arms tightened over his chest, and he angled his head away, his scowl firmly back in place.

“Stop being so touchy,” his aunt said, turning to lead the way down the hall to the kitchen, and Layla looked curiously from her as she disappeared to Matt again, as his scowl grew even fiercer and his biceps bulged with the frustration he was compressing. Did people in his family often do that to him? Slap him with something they said, then blame him for being hurt by it?

“Hey,” she whispered, wiggling her fingers under his good arm, trying to fit between it and his chest.

He looked down at her, so startled his scowl almost faded.

She wiggled her fingers more, trying to get to his hand. “Let’s talk about all the ways you can seduce that property out of me later, all right?” She winked up at him.

The frown disappeared. He stared at her a second, and then a smile grew slowly in his eyes, sheltered by those long lashes of his. “That could be a long conversation.” He unfolded his arms to take her insistent hand. And then laughed, a wicked little gleam in his eye. “Or a short one, depending on exactly how much you like my ideas.”

Layla grinned, feeling wicked herself and deliciously naughty. “There’s nothing wrong with multiple discussions of this issue. Sometimes you have to get things ironed out.”

Matt used his hold on her hand to pull her in closer to his body, warmth and arousal and delighted intent filling those brown eyes as he lifted his other hand to her face. “I’d hate to be one of those men who refuse to communicate.”

She laughed out loud, starting to go up on tiptoe to kiss him.

“It’s a big house,” Colette Delatour said sardonically, poking her head back out from the kitchen. “If you need a room.”

Matt sighed, dropping his hand from her face and turning to follow his aunt. He had the resigned look of a man who had been putting up with his elders all his life and would just as soon have to keep putting up with them for a long time to come, all things considered.

“You’re not going to claim Jean-Jacques didn’t tell you to use any means necessary to get that land back?” Colette Delatour challenged, as they stepped into the kitchen and Matt braced big shoulders against the wall by the door…but didn’t let go of Layla’s hand.

“Maybe,” Matt said. “But sometimes, when a man is caught in a war between two people who have been fighting for the past ninety years, he has to use his own judgment about the best way to handle things. Hurting someone who didn’t have anything to do with any of this and finds herself in the middle of it by accident doesn’t seem like the right choice.”

I really like you a lot
, Layla thought, squeezing his hand again involuntarily.
They hurt
you
, but you won’t pass that hurt on to me?

He looked down at her hand, and that firm upper lip eased as he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles.

“You always were a good kid,” Colette Delatour said quietly.

From the way Matt’s head jerked up, this was the first he’d heard of it. “I thought I was trouble, too stubborn, determined to get my own way, hot-tempered, bossy…”

His aunt’s gray eyebrows went up faintly. “I never said any of those things were faults, did I?”

Matt laughed a little. “I guess I misinterpreted your tone at the time.”