The Prospect: The Malloy Family, Book 10 (15 page)

He pulled away, breaking the kiss so abruptly she lost her balance and tumbled into him. They landed on the ground with a soggy splat. She stared at him, wide-eyed, her heart racing from the interrupted bliss. His hard staff pushed against her belly and heightened the throbbing she felt between her legs.

“You are going to kill me with that mouth of yours, one way or another.” Declan’s voice was a husky whisper.

She didn’t know what to say. Jo felt ridiculous but strangely happy. She smiled and then laughed, with true mirth and the pleasure of being alive. With this man, free of the fort and their prison. He shook his head, the droplets cascading down his cheeks.

“I might think you’re touched in the head, Josephine.”

She laughed again, and his lips twitched. Jo kissed him hard for good measure. Then he smiled, a full one that took her breath away. Without the beard and the fierce scowl, Declan Callahan was handsome as sin. A gorgeous specimen of maleness with the most amazing blue eyes she’d ever seen.

“You are beautiful.” Her words startled him.

“Isn’t that supposed to be something a man says?” He shook his head. “I never know what to expect from you.”

“Is that bad?” She sat back on her knees, puzzled by his remark.

“A man isn’t beautiful, lass. Women are.” He sat up, and his gaze wandered up and down her face and body. She almost felt his caress on her wet skin. “
You
are.” His soft compliment shot look an arrow through her heart.

Suspicion flooded her. Jo knew she wasn’t beautiful. She was the most plain of the Chastain sisters, with no distinguishing attributes that could possibly be called beautiful. What game was Declan playing? She had already told him she would copulate with him. He didn’t need to try to manipulate her into that.

“Perhaps you need spectacles too.” She looked at him through her rain-spattered lenses, hoping that was the truth.

He shook his head. “You don’t believe me.”

“Of course not. Logic tells me your compliment is untrue. I am ordinary, some would say plain—”

He put his cool fingers across her lips to silence her. “I’ve already told you you’re not ordinary. I don’t know who those blind bastards are, but you are anything but plain.”

She frowned at him, then pushed his hand away. “Falsehood.”

His expression hardened and he got to his knees, facing her. “I might have lied in my life, lass, but I ain’t lying now. You have the softest skin I’ve ever felt—like porcelain petals it is. Your eyes aren’t just brown—they swirl with color, like the finest brandy. And your hair has a life of its own, with a hundred shades to catch the sunlight. And your body…” His gaze wandered down the length of her and back. She was already cold from the rain, and his perusal made her goose flesh get goose flesh. “Like a goddess statue come to life, full of everything to make a man’s cock stand at attention for years, begging for a taste of perfection. Me hands itch to cup your breasts, taste your nipples.”

Jo was speechless, unable to form a single sentence to respond to the almost literary description of her “beauty”. His voice, his words, his eyes, were all sincere. Declan believed what he said.

The question was, did she?

He looked at her with a smug expression. “Ye are beautiful.” His Irish lilt thickened as did her pulse, low and steady. It thrummed through her, urging her to do something, anything.

Jo reached for the buttons on her dress. Declan’s eyes widened, following her fingers with rapt attention. Power surged through her, an invigorating and electrifying feeling. She’d not felt this before, not for anything or anybody. She could get used to it.

The rain continued to soak them, running in rivulets down her skin and hair until she didn’t have a single dry spot anywhere. What better reason to take off her dress? After all, the rain was a natural bath and she was in need of a full soaking.

Her hands shook as she freed another button. He reached out and touched the back of her hand. Jo stopped breathing, her heart hit with more pain than she expected.

“Do not reject me again, Declan.” She didn’t beg or plead, her voice barely audible above the deluge.

He pulled her hands to his mouth and kissed the backs with cool, soft lips. “I ain’t rejecting you, lass.”

Her pulse leapt. “Truly?”

“I cannot fight it any longer. I tried, God knows I tried, but I can’t stop now.” He swallowed hard. “I want this to be just right for you. Being your first time and all.”

She was touched by his sweet gesture but at the same time, she wanted to simply get on with it. No more delays and no more dancing around.

“Do you know what I want? You.” She pulled her hands from his and pushed his shoulders until he fell back onto the ground with a mighty splat. The rain fell down around them as she climbed atop Declan, straddling him.

His eyes watched her, blinking away the rain as it dripped on him. “I don’t think there is a day that’s gone by that you haven’t surprised me.”

“That is a good thing, Declan. We will never be bored.” She settled on his cock, its heat and hardness seeping through her cotton drawers. A very thin material and his trousers were the only thing preventing them from touching. Down there.

It wasn’t the rain making her wet between her legs. Most assuredly not. Her body was moist from the thought of being with him, of touching him in the most intimate way. An experience that had already begun. Every inch of her skin seemed to come alive, tingling with anticipation.

She finished unbuttoning her dress and slipped it off her shoulders. Declan had seen her nude while she’d been sick and after her brief bath. This was different, though. Very much so. She was not unconscious or out of her head with fever. No, she knew exactly what she was doing.

His gaze dropped to her chest and she glanced down, surprised to see her peaked nipples outlined in her cotton chemise. He reached up and cupped her breasts, his thumbs grazing over the sensitized buds. She sucked in a breath through her teeth and noted an answering thrum between her legs. This was not in any book.

“Does that feel good?” His voice was rough, crackling.

“Yes, it feels very—”

His mouth closed over one peak, and Jo forgot what she was going to say. The heat and tug of his teeth, lips and tongue sent shards of pure need through her.

Yes
.

His hand continued to pleasure her other breast while she slowly melted into a puddle of want. Jo had never before experienced such an intense, primal response. She wanted to copulate with him more than she wanted to take her next breath.

Yes
.

He shifted, pressing his hardened staff into the cleft between her legs, against the aching mound that wanted nothing more than to feel his cock embedded within her. She fumbled with his trouser buttons, never once breaking contact with his mouth. It felt too good to stop.

Emboldened by her body’s needs, she freed his manhood from its fabric prison. Jo ran her fingers down its length, surprised by how large and hard it was, at the same time wondering how it could possibly fit inside her.

He groaned and released her nipple. “Your hands are like magic. It’s been quite some time since I, ah, had the pleasure of a woman’s company.”

“I am not just a woman, Declan. I am almost your wife.” Jo hated the jealousy that flared through her at the thought of Declan licking another woman’s breast. She wanted to shoot whoever she was.

His response was a strangled laugh. “Stop thinking, lass, and just let yourself feel.”

Feel.
That was what she’d been doing. She closed her hand around him and pumped up and down its length. He grabbed her hips, his fingers digging into her skin. Power.

His cock pulsed in her palm, eager to be with her. She had read enough books to know a couple could join with the woman on top. Of course, those books weren’t the ones her mother had given her. Jo had been curious, a learner as it were, and copulation was a fascinating subject.

She positioned herself over his staff, guiding the head to her moist core. Her body screamed for her to continue, to
feel
. She met his gaze, saw the need there, plus much more. Affection, love, loneliness. Declan was so much more than the hulking brute she’d thought him to be. He had become everything.

“Easy, now, easy.” He took control of the situation, for which she was grateful.

Jo was out of her element; her book knowledge didn’t carry far enough to know what to do in a pounding rainstorm while straddling her husband’s cock. He eased her down onto his staff. Inch by inch, he entered her. The pain was brief, fleeting, a hard pinch she acknowledged as a rite of passage and then brushed aside.

When he was fully sheathed inside her, Jo realized copulation was not a physical act at all. It was sharing every single particle of her being with another person. It was becoming a woman and discovering there had been an entire half of herself she never knew.

It was about falling in love.

She tumbled into the abyss of emotions she generally set aside, preferring to use logic to get by. Yet this act of pure physicality had shown her what she needed to do. Declan was hers and she was his. Now and always.

“Are ye all right?”

She looked down at him, the man she had given herself to, and tightened around his shaft. It was his turn to suck in a breath through his teeth. She smiled and placed her hands on his chest.

Yes
.

“Show me what to do.”

He might have smiled, but all she could see were his beautiful blue eyes, watching her, half closing as she flexed around him.

“Ye ride me, lass. Up and down. Here, let me.” He took hold of her hips and pulled her up a few inches, then released, and she slid back down. The friction was incredible, inciting tingles within.

Jo knew what to do now. She took over, rising even higher, until the tip of him nearly left her, then back down slow and steady. Rolls of pleasure washed through her. So she did it again and again.

“Ach, ye are going to kill me.” His fingers tightened.

“Does this hurt?” She didn’t want to find such sweet ecstasy at his expense.

“Nay, it’s the most pleasure I’ve ever had. Slow, sweet torture is what it is.”

Ah, that explained it. She hadn’t realized there was more than one speed she could employ. Jo picked up her pace, the friction between them growing hotter. He had been right, of course. The faster she moved, the more her pleasure increased.

Her body wound tighter and tighter, until everything centered between her legs, at the marvelous motion of copulating with the man who held her heart. Then the world shattered around her, an explosion of color and light that stole her breath, her sight, her thoughts. Jo might have screamed his name and she might have heard him shout hers in return.

His cock pulsed within her as she convulsed in the greatest joy she had ever found, pulse after pulse of pure ecstasy radiating from within. She collapsed atop him, her heart thundering like a herd of oxen. The rain still came down around them, cooling her heated skin.

When she found her voice, it was raspy and completely unlike her. “Is it always like this?”

His hand stroked her back. “Nay, lass, it’s never like that.”

Jo smiled, her heart full to bursting with happiness. She had found the part of her that had been missing all her life, all within a man to love. Declan was now hers forever.

They snuggled together hidden beneath the shelter of the trees. The rain had made the branches heavy, bending down to create a thick barrier against the outside world. Declan lay on his back with Jo tucked under his shoulder, her soft snore telling him she slept.

His entire world had been turned upside down. Completely, utterly, irrevocably. He had taken Josephine’s virginity, perhaps planted his seed in her womb. There was no going back, no way to undo what he had done.

Very soon he would be angry with himself, but at that moment, he was caught in the bliss that followed the most incredible experience of his life. She was perfect, they were perfect together. He had not known what he could find with another human being, a woman, a mate. His parents were no example, to be sure, and no one he’d known back in New York was either.

Jo showed him what it meant to be happy with who he was and tell the world to go to hell. She didn’t say it like that, but she acted like that. No matter what happened, she remained honorable and courageous, smart and determined. He admired that. Hell, he
envied
that. She was the person he wanted to be. Too bad he was a no-account street thug with a shady past and a questionable future.

Now he’d tainted everything by giving in to his base instincts. There was no going back to who they had been, especially after all they’d done together. He wasn’t sure he wanted to even if he could. Declan had been so sure of who he was and what life was all about. No longer. If somebody asked him what he was doing, he couldn’t have answered.

Declan had no idea.

All he knew was he needed to get Josephine to her sister and John Malloy. That man had things in hand and knew what was what. If anyone could help them sort out the mess they were in with Drummond, he could. Malloy had spent years in the West, and Declan trusted him. He only hoped they weren’t being followed or they could bring trouble down on the newly married couple. That was the last thing he wanted.