It took the driver announcing they’d arrived for either of them to notice. Wolfe tossed some money through the partition, and they ran to his door. His church-house door. Her courage faltered for a second. Holding hands with this man and running toward a church wasn’t prophetic, no matter what popped into her mind after an afternoon picturing him as a dad. It was impossible, no matter that hope-drenched lifting in her chest.
Once inside, he twirled her to press against the fancy, pointed door, laying another drugging kiss on her already addled senses. A lock clicked, and they were moving again.
In a long, stumbling kiss, they made it to the stairwell she’d nearly traversed last night and up about three steps. Her foot caught, she only didn’t fall down the stairs because his arms firmed, and he steered them to the nearby wall, to hit and slide down.
“Kissing and climbing stairs is outside your skill set, Dr. Angel.” He laughed against her lips, his voice full of the soft, warm amusement she couldn’t process. He was laughing at them both, and teasing in a way that didn’t feel pointed, or derogatory. Another thing she found so attractive about him. The whole time she’d known Wolfe, she’d never heard him say something harsh or judgmental about anyone aside from his parents. She’d made fun of her attending’s name, but he hadn’t joined in. She was the worst person of them, as if she needed proof.
The thoughts turned her hands clumsier, and when trying to wrestle him out of his sweater she managed to scratch his side.
The sound he made wasn’t so much intended to make her stop—he certainly wasn’t stopping. In fact just after he grunted from the clumsy, fumbled caress, he redoubled his efforts to kiss her senseless, and make her clumsier.
No reprimand came. No making fun of her unartful seduction.
He laughed again. He was just happy, or this was fun to him—not malicious as she’d grown to expect to hear from people. It was warm, as if he even found her gracelessness endearing.
She grabbed his head and nipped at his upper lip until they were both stretched out on the stairs. Not long, he wrapped his arms around her middle and rolled so she straddled his lap and the carpeted angles pressed into his back, not hers.
As soon as she put the slightest pressure on her knee, she cried out into his mouth and leveraged back off. All the way off. Until she was standing.
“Oh, darlin’, I forgot your knee. Let me see.”
“I forgot too,” she panted, both from the shock of pain and from all the oxygen deprivation of the past half an hour.
But he still ushered her up the stairs to the landing, reached for the button of her trousers and unfastened them.
The heavy black material fell loud even against the thick carpet, and he went down with it. On his knees before her, he eyed the bandage, tilting his head as he prodded lightly, no doubt looking for signs of bleeding or increased pain.
“It’s feeling better. It was just a little burning reminder.” The pain passed, and she didn’t mind it anymore. She wanted more of him. If she was going to end up broken and bloody at the bottom of this canyon she was sure she’d spent a lifetime scrambling up, she was going to throw herself over the edge to give the best view on the way down as she fell for him.
Falling. The plummeting in her middle happened whenever she was around him, and only eased with his touch.
But he stayed kneeling, then guided her hands to his shoulders so he could get her shoes off, and continue undressing her.
“Turn around,” he said, his voice thick and rasping with such emotion she could do nothing but obey.
Without the cloth around her ankles, she even managed it without falling.
He didn’t say another word, just hooked his fingers in her panties and pulled them straight down.
The shock of the suddenness left her speechless. She knew what they were up to, and she’d signed up for it—she’d have signed a waiver if he’d asked—but still, he’d gone from gentle and caring to ass-baring in a heartbeat and whatever self-control she had shattered.
And then, when she couldn’t stand it anymore, she felt the first brush of his fingers along the swell of each cheek, stroking a matching arch from her hips, down to the underside of each cheek, ending between her legs.
The shaking in her torso returned, now more of a quiver low in her belly. “Wolfe.”
Her voice sounded strangled and desperate even to her own ears, but he didn’t answer.
Not with words. There was some sound, but he kept up, thumbs pressing and stroking, molding her flesh so that cool air hit parts of her body usually hidden, making clear how exposed she was to his eye-level view. The acute vulnerability summoned her voice again.
“Wolfe?”
It was just his name, and as hoarse as she’d ever heard herself sound. Tense. And excited.
In answer, he gently gripped her hips and turned her back to him. Still there before her, but not for long. He rose long enough to claim another kiss, and another, and soon they were halfway up that second flight of stairs, staggering, stumbling and pawing at one another.
She managed to get his insane sweater off, and threw it over her head, lights still twinkling somewhere.
He helped her out of hers, then her bra, and it was as if the man were all hands and eyes. He couldn’t see enough, couldn’t touch enough, and what had started as fun had suddenly become so intense neither of them smiled or laughed anymore.
They’d reached the top, she realized when she reached back to climb and found only flat floor behind her. It was then that he broke from kissing her, naked but for socks, and kissed his way down between her legs.
Whatever she’d thought sex with Wolfe McKeag would be like, it wasn’t this. He had no hesitation about anything. He wanted to see, he stripped her down. He wanted to taste her, he parted her legs. He made her his, at least for that moment. Without words, without promises, she was his, and he accepted her. Every part of her. Every part he could uncover and lay his brand on.
The consuming pleasure of his wicked mouth and talented tongue had her almost sobbing with the pleasure cleaving through her far too soon, and that plummeting sensation surged into every inch of her, every cell.
He didn’t stop until he’d wrung every shuddering second of her orgasm from her, and then he was up and lifting her.
Wordless, thoughtless, she knew he was carrying her somewhere—probably the bed—but could only hold on. Letting him carry her, without questioning her safety, certain in him.
Trusting. Without hesitation, the thought swam up. Had that ever happened before?
No. The answer rang through her before the question had even fully formed. Not that she could remember. Not even as a child, when she’d felt insecure in everything, even in being carried by her parents—she’d held on tight.
Not even when she’d told Spencer about her past, and how she’d ended up incarcerated for her family. In the back of her mind, she’d been braced for rejection. So well trained to it, when it had come it hadn’t hurt half as much as she’d expected. Just confirmed what a lifetime being tied to her family had taught: the only person she could count on was her. The only one who would be so concerned about her being hurt.
But she trusted Wolfe. She only held on to get closer to him.
“Don’t stiffen up,” he said, rounding a corner in the hall and heading through double doors into a long, dimly lit room.
“I’m not.”
“You are,” he said, voice gruff but gentle. “I won’t drop you.”
“I know,” she said, because she did, down to her bones. And that was the scary part. How dumb was it to trust so implicitly when there had been no promises between them? Nothing but an unspoken understanding that whatever happened between them had a predetermined expiration date.
When they entered the space, a sense of comfort nipped at her, something she hadn’t felt in his massive, beautiful kit
chen or the marble-columned living room.
It was only New York dark inside, but the darkness had color.
He turned to navigate furniture, and she finally saw the source of light. The massive rose window he’d spoken of. It took up the whole wall in the narrow, vaulted room, and the lights of the city glowing beyond sent pinks and blues cascading through.
“You like it. I knew you would.” He sounded genuinely pleased as he eased her onto the bed haloed in the ethereal glow, and crawled over her, the evidence of his need still jutting boldly from his body.
She didn’t want to talk about the window. If her knee could stand it, she’d guide him to his back and regain some control. Because being on top was safer. Because she’d be responsible for her own happiness and satisfaction. Because she wanted to give the same sensation to him, so she wasn’t the only one falling into the canyon.
But she couldn’t. He plucked a condom from the nightstand and the heat and weight of him settled between her legs.
She grabbed his cheeks and pulled his beautiful mouth back to hers. All she could do was pour it into her kiss, into her touch, and pray he felt it too.
This kind of trust couldn’t come without love. She loved him and now had no idea how she could leave or if she even wanted to anymore. If she could keep this, keep him, after Christmas, she’d stay.
* * *
Wolfe was never good at recognizing shifts in a relationship, which was a big part of why his relationship attempts always failed. Until the shift became seismic and the ground actually moved, he didn’t see it. Even the times he’d recognized the stresses building up, he’d never been able to release them without causing destruction.
Lying there with Angel, his head resting on her belly and body angled to keep all pressure away from her knee, he knew the ground was shifting. He just didn’t know what it meant.
The slow in and out of her breathing created a relaxing cadence beneath his cheek, and her arm across his shoulders was gentle, tender even, but it was there, buzzing beneath them.
They’d just made the ground move and now neither of them said a word.
His bag of tricks had one basic trick in it: levity. He could try to make her laugh, but that would diminish whatever had just happened.
“Are you asleep?” she whispered, considerate, and sweet, not someone prone to joking around to dispel other emotions she didn’t know how to deal with.
“No.”
He didn’t know what else to say. Or feel. Or think.
“You want me to go now?”
The simple question, so softly spoken, still shot cold through the back of his neck. He lifted from the bed to look at her, to see what the quiet words didn’t tell him—why she’d asked him that.
He saw the answer, written in the uneven pinch of her brows. Uncertainty tinged with fear.
If she thought he didn’t want dates staying around, he couldn’t really fault her for thinking that. But the now made it feel pointed. As if he’d gotten what he wanted and was done with her. Like a word used to discard her.
“Why would you think that?” he asked, unable to keep irritation out of his voice.
Her eyes shifted to the side and the shrug she gave him washed away his desire to do or say the right thing. He was just going to ask what he needed to ask.
“Are you still judging me by Lyons? I know he was a jerk to you in some manner—that’s just who he is now—but you tell me exactly what I did that made you leap to that insulting conclusion.”
Somewhere in that, his irritation had tipped straight over into anger. Not his intention, but there it was—the best sex of his life came with the most puzzling woman.
“No.” She raised onto her elbows, maybe readying to leave, but her answer didn’t clear anything up.
“No which?”
“Not Lyons...”
“So, I did something.”
“No,” she repeated, then looked so chastised he took a breath before trying again.
“Just tell me what he did. You know I’m worried about him—maybe it’d help me understand how to help him if I knew more.”
Underhanded, maybe. Playing on her sympathies for sure. And still true.
Her blue eyes shone blue-black like a raven’s wing in the low light cast through the rose window, which she’d now focused on rather than him.
If it weren’t for the consideration he saw on her face, he’d have been on his feet, calling a cab for her to go. She was thinking about it, but the fact that she even needed to spoke to how much it had affected her. Even if he hadn’t seen it in her face a dozen times over the past few days, he’d know it now.
“He thinks I’m a stupid hillbilly,” she said finally and didn’t so much as glance at him. Her eyes were so locked to the window, wider than usual, waiting, her whole body stiff.
Once upon a time, his brother had been charming. Just not for the last year or so, and it still had the ability to shock Wolfe.
“He said that?” he asked. “Why?”
Her wide eyes dimmed a bit and she half shrugged. “He implied it.”
“What did he say?”
“He had a patient with a thick accent, and he called on me to translate because she sounded just like me only more incomprehensible.”
Not the worst thing he’d even heard Lyons say this week, but pretty pointed for someone he wasn’t actively quarreling with. “Had something happened?”
She shook her head, and then finally did look at him, worry he’d seen on her face softening just a little. Trusting a little more, but still uncertain. “He just came to get me.”
“And said this incomprehensible hillbilly sounds dumb, you talk to her?”
“He said he couldn’t understand a word, that he wanted me to go talk to her. I asked why, and he said, ‘Because she sounds like she just fell off a mountaintop in Tennessee. Like you, only worse.’”
More incomprehensible than Angel, who wasn’t incomprehensible, but he still didn’t hear the word stupid in there, though that was how she’d taken it.
“Did you tell him it was Georgia? Do they have mountains in Georgia?”
“The Appalachians start in Georgia.”
“Was that the mountain you fell off?”
He tried to joke, because that was the only good tactic in his bag of tricks, but she frowned harder. “I’m not from Georgia.”
“Tennessee?”
“No.” Her shoulders had grown rigid; his own started to ache in sympathy.
She was evasive about where she was from. Anyone else would’ve said, No, I’m from X.
Later. He’d ask where later.
“Still not hearing stupid, love. You think his request means a judgment of her capabilities?”
She snorted then pulled away, moving to rise. “Course it does. He judged her stupid because of her background and the way she talks. It’s a common thing. People do it all the time.”
Judgment. This was about judgment. The reason she kept to herself, all of it.
“What else happened? Who else?”
She paused and rubbed both her hands over her face, now standing beside the bed. “Listen, I know you think this is meaningless talk, but it’s not to me. It’s not easy to talk about some things. Sometimes you have something, or things that happened, and then you just have to try and forget and move on.”
Seismic shift. Wolfe rose from the bed with far greater care, certain even the slightest wrong move would send this spiraling out of his control. But he had to know. “What else happened?”
“You want a list?” She almost laughed, her voice rising, nearly shouting. “How far back should I go? You want to hear about the little old lady at church who tried to wash my freckles off because she just assumed I was dirty?”
He didn’t even know how to process that question, or the anger. But he
understood finally what so unnerved her about the house and made her keep to herself.
“Sweetheart, you have to let these things go. Things happen, I get it, and they change you. But who you are is pretty great. Maybe you wouldn’t be so kind to everyone if these bad things hadn’t happened to you.” There, that sounded right to him.
“So, Lyons should just get over being shot? I doubt that’ll make him feel better.” She started walking to the stairs with a subject change. She didn’t want to talk about herself. “Probably already thinkin’ that to hisself anyway. You think I don’t think that way? Just get over it. Just get over this, and that, and all them other things. And I’m tryin’, but I gotta stop makin’ the same mistakes. If Lyons is gonna get better, he has to do it hisself. It’s good you wanna be there for him, but you can’t force folks to feel this just ’cause you think it’s silly to feel that.”
Or not the right thing to say. He followed, mentally scrambling for the right thing. She was after her clothes, and all that was on the stairs.
“You don’t know what it is like to live with that. You don’t know what it’s like to be him, so you can’t fix him. You might get it was really bad bein’ almost murdered, but you can’t know how it changed the way he sees hisself or the world. And it had ta change him. Big things, sometimes even things that seem small to others, if they happen enough, they leave a mark.”
Definitely not about Lyons. She was compassionate, but she swapped back and forth between talking about Lyons and herself. And the accent. Goodness, the accent got thicker and thicker. She wasn’t shouting now, but her voice wobbled, and she might have sniffed. Like at the rink when she’d fallen and wanted to show the kids that it was important to keep getting back up. Because of all the times she’d had to make herself get back up. He knew without her saying.
“Are you leaving New York because of Lyons?”
“I’m leaving because of all the Lyonses.” She picked up garments on the way down the stairs.
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