The Trouble with Temptation (21 page)

The soft, dazed sound wrapped a fist around his heart and squeezed.

Curling his arms around her, he tucked her head under his chin.

She sagged against him and he could feel the ragged rhythm of her heart, pounding in time with his own. His cock seemed to echo that mad beat, pulsing with a vicious ache, but he was content to ignore that—for now.

Or he might have been.

Hannah wasn’t.

She wiggled against him and worked a hand between them. She palmed him through his jeans and the rigid flesh jerked. Brannon clenched his jaw.

“I want you,” she said, the words spoken against his neck.

He wasn’t going to wait for an engraved invitation.

*   *   *

Hannah’s head was still spinning.

She’d said those words maybe twenty seconds ago and now she was naked.

Brannon boosted her hips up and she stared up at him in shock as he hooked her knees over his elbows.

He was still dressed.

“Here…?” she whispered.

“You wanted to know what happened.” He leaned in and pressed a bruising kiss to her mouth.

“You came here, ran that smart mouth of yours, and I lost it. Kind of like I’m doing now.” He crooked a grin at her and everything female in her clenched at the sight of it. “You just have to be around me and I lose it, Hannah.”

Then he slid against her.

She gasped and arched her hips.

He didn’t enter her yet, though.

“I fucked you right here the first time. And then I took you into my bedroom and I fucked you again.”

She whimpered.

He leaned in and bit her lower lip. She bucked against him and shuddered, then almost screamed because the head of his cock passed over her clit. “When I’m done here, I plan on taking you into my room and fucking you again there.”

He lifted his head and studied her.

Since he seemed to waiting for an answer, she gulped and nodded. “Oh … okay…?”

He shifted the angle of his hips and she groaned as the head of his cock breached her entrance. He watched her, eyes rapt on her face. She braced herself, expecting the hot, heavy drive.

But he slid just a few inches in.

She clutched at him when he withdrew. The head of his cock seemed wedged right at her entrance and it made her shiver. His eyes held her captive as he slowly surged back in. A little deeper, but not all the way.

He kept up that pattern and by the time he was seated completely within her, Hannah was mindless, sweat dripping from her body as she clutched at him. Begging him hoarsely, she strained against him, rising to meet each slow, tormenting thrust.

She clenched around him as he drove inside, squeezing him tight and hoping to keep him within her just a second longer, a heartbeat longer. He growled against her lips and she bit his tongue.

He tensed against her and she speared her fingers into his hair, taking control of the kiss since he wouldn’t let her have anything else.

His body shuddered.

She felt the shift happen in his body and took advantage, sucking on his tongue—
when
she allowed him entrance. When she bit him, he slammed one hand on the wall. Then, tearing her mouth from his, she sank her teeth into his lower lip.

Brannon swore.

And she laughed because she’d finally shoved him past the edge of his control.

He let go of her other knee and she twined her legs around his hips, rising to meet his thrusts and delighting in the feel of him inside, the width and length of his cock a brand.

He savaged her mouth, one hand gripping her ass, his fingers digging into the flesh as he drove into her, harder and deeper with every thrust.

He tore the climax out of her just as she demanded his.

It was … exhilarating.

*   *   *

Hannah woke up crying.

The dregs of a dream clung to her and she couldn’t remember anything but the ache and it was awful.

She swiped at the tears and smacked Brannon’s hands away when he tried to comfort her.

Finally, he gave up and just lay there, watching her.

She couldn’t look at him.

It hurt.

Even the silence hurt and she withdrew inside her own head.

There was something she was remembering—or almost remembering.

It was right there, like a song where she could remember the tune, but the lyrics or the title escaped her.

And it was something that hurt.

Unable to lie there any longer, she struggled free of the tangle they’d made of the sheets and sat on the side of the bed, staring at the window. Through the narrow slit in the curtains, she could see her own balcony and she sucked in a breath. Swiping at her tears, she shot him a look. “You started closing your curtains,” she said. The accusing note in her voice couldn’t be missed, not even by her. She didn’t know where it came from or why.

Just as she couldn’t explain the hot bubble of anger that started to well up inside her.

Brannon sat up slowly, eying her warily.

“Ah … yeah. You sort of snapped at me to do it.”

She sniffed, her nose congested from her crying jag. Getting to her feet, she looked around for her clothes but they were nowhere to be found. In desperation, she moved to his closet and opened it up. Her jaw fell open and she gaped at what lay behind the doors.

That wasn’t a
closet
.

It was a whole fricking
room
.

She’d been happy when she found out she actually had a walk-in closet, but
her
walk-in closet was just that. She could walk in, and if she lifted her arms, they’d brush up against the shirts and what pitiful few dresses she owned.

Brannon’s closet was …

She reached up and rubbed her eyes.

“I don’t know why I’m shocked,” she muttered.

He wasn’t a braggart about it, but everything about the man screamed money. His car was worth more than her entire apartment building, she’d bet. Shit, the McKay family had paid for the four new ambulances the county had received last year.

Shaking her head, she crossed the smoothly polished wooden floors—she actually had to take five steps to reach the shirts she could see hanging across the room. Reaching out, she snagged the closest one. She shrugged into the shirt as she turned around. Brannon stood in the doorway. He’d already pulled a pair of jeans up over his lean hips and he was still watching her with wary eyes. She ignored him for another moment, taking in the neat stacks of shoes she now faced and the suits that took up the far side of the wall.

“So is this
all
of your clothes or do you have more at the house?”

He jerked a shoulder in a shrug. “I’ve got stuff back at the house. Some stuff at Ferry, too, although I’m not there too often these days.”

“You’re a clothes horse, Brannon.” She buttoned up the shirt and tried not to think about the way his eyes kept straying to her fingers. She’d get all hot and bothered again if she did and she was trying to stay out of the zone.

Once she was dressed, she shouldered past him.

His fingers trailed down her back.

“Hannah…”

She shot another look at the curtains, bothered for reasons she couldn’t explain.

Maybe I don’t like being your morning entertainment—

Coming to a sudden halt, she stood there, shaking.

The floorboards shifted behind her and she spun around.

“My morning
entertainment
?”

*   *   *

The dread that had lived inside him for months threatened to consume him.

Feeling too big, too out of place inside his own skin, Brannon shifted on his feet.

She was remembering. More and more.

Tell her what happened.

Tell her you’re sorry.

Do it now.

The voice of reason shrieked at him from deep inside.

He opened his mouth to do just that.

She took a step toward him and he found himself wanting to take a step back. That just made him feel even more foolish and he stood his ground. She lifted a hand and jabbed him the chest with her finger. “My morning entertainment? You’re the one who never bothers to close his damn curtains!”

He caught her wrist and stared into her furious eyes.

Tell her
.

Yeah. Yeah, he’d do that.

Clearing his throat, he went to speak.

But the words that came out weren’t the words he needed to say.

Oh, they were true. But not the ones he needed to say.

“I liked having you staring at me,” he said.

She glared at him.

Stroking his thumb over her wrist, he gave her a piece of the truth because he couldn’t find the words for the rest of it. “I’d been staring at you for years and every time you looked at me, it made it easier for me to look back. Even if it did piss me off.”

Her lips parted.

A shaky sigh escaped her.

He went to tug her closer.

But she twisted her wrist out of his grasp and stepped away.

“Brannon…”

When she turned away, he dragged his hands over his face.
What’s the matter with you, you stupid fuck
?

But he knew.

He was afraid. Over the past few months, he’d finally admitted to himself what she meant to him. She meant
everything
and losing her would shatter him in ways he didn’t know if he could handle.

He had to make her understand she mattered.

Once she knew that, once she realized he was serious about her, once
he
knew things wasn’t going to fall apart after one bad storm, then he could tell her.

A soft sigh drifted through the room and he dropped his hands, staring at her. Her hair, that rich, lush brown, was still mussed from bed and from his hands. It shielded her face from him even as she half-turned back toward him. He wanted to twine it around his hands and tug her head back, stare into her eyes and tell her … everything.

Tell her that he’d been half-stupid about her even when it was the worst thing he could do. She’d still been in high school when he’d first really noticed her and he’d been in college. But even before that, he’d liked her. Not in that kind of way, but he thought she was a sweet kid, a tough one. He knew what she put up with, knew what had been done to her mother.

More than once, he’d talked to Moira and the two of them had gotten together with Ella Sue to make sure that Hannah’s mother had steady work—she’d worked at a dozen jobs, a waitress, an office assistant, a secretary, cleaning houses, doing laundry, whatever it took to make sure there was money to put food on her table.

More than once, he’d wished he could have dealt with the son of a bitch the law called her stepfather. But fate dealt with him instead.

Hannah hadn’t cried at the funeral.

Brannon had hugged her there, touched her for the first and last time up until the day she showed up at his door holding his wallet. His body had come alive with that one touch—something that had been given in comfort and all he’d wanted to do was take big, greedy bites out of her.

Slowly, uncertain of the reception he’d get, he closed the distance between them.

She met him, more than halfway, and the vicious ache that ripped at him whenever he saw her started to ease as she curled into him. Her arms were soft and strong as she wrapped them around him. “One of these days,” she said against his chest. “One of these days, we need to have a talk about whatever it is we have going on here, Brannon.”

“Yeah.” He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against her hair. “Listen, I—”

The sudden, hard pounding on the door interrupted him and he swore.

“Ella Sue would wash your mouth out with soap,” Hannah said. Her eyes were shadowed, but the smile on her lips was a real one.

It didn’t make it any easier to let her go when she pulled away.

“Brannon, you sod, it’s Ian and Neve,” a deep voice came from beyond the door. “Open up. It’s important.”

Hannah looked down at her bare legs and grimaced. “Let me go grab my clothes before you open that door.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Hannah stood off to the sidelines, her arms wrapped around her midsection.

Neve and Ian were a few feet away, but none of them spoke.

Brannon’s face was tight, the five o’clock shadow darkening his jaw adding to his overall menacing appearance. “What else do you need to know?” he asked, his eyes glittering as he stared at the deputy. After Brannon had talked to Ian, he’d called the county sheriff. They’d met at the winery and both Tank and one of his deputies were there.

Ian had been supposed to meet Alison at the pub—trying a few wines, and when she hadn’t shown, he’d called her, then the winery. Then he’d called Marc. Marc had called her house, her cell … she wasn’t answering.

“She pissed off the senator and all of you have seen how well he’s doing with the damage control. He’s screwed. And now Alison is missing.”

“We don’t know that she’s missing,” Tank said.

Brannon’s stream of curses turned the air blue.

Hannah was mildly impressed. She heard quite a bit of swearing in her line of work, and quite a bit of it was directed at her. Some of it, of course, was just directed at the situation. Nothing like having a bone poking out of your skin or seeing your toddler with his head stuck between the top and bottom of your chair to learn just how inventively you could swear—or how ardently you could pray.

Brannon was very inventive. She’d learned that over the past few days, but this was a whole other side.

He’d always been the more laid back of the McKays, but the temper was something people hinted at.

Moira was serene, elegance personified. Once a person got to know her, Moira was also a wonderful friend and warm and funny, with a wicked sense of humor. But one could never consider the eldest McKay to be
laid back
.

Neve was, plain and simple, a hellion. Trouble, just like her nickname said. She seemed to have settled down some, but her temper was just as sharp as ever. Hannah adored her.

Other than the fact that he’d always been prone to snapping at her, Brannon had been the easy-going one of the bunch. If you needed something and were afraid to approach Neve—or too intimidated by Moira—then Brannon was your guy. If Neve had been edging too close to the point of no return, then Brannon had been the one Hannah would reach out to back in school—when he was home.