With a leg over hers, he widened her thighs and traced her sensitive lips with featherlight touches. Mairi clasped his shoulders, pulling him closer, needing to feel his strength against her. With a gasp for air, he broke their kiss and moved his lips to her throat, all the while tracing her clit with a teasing touch that drove her wild. She needed. There was no other word for it, only stark, desperate need.
“Keir,” she gasped. “Please.”
She expected him to joke about her lack of patience, but instead he leaned over her and stared into her eyes as his teasing fingers stilled. She watched as he started to say something, something he could never take back, and she pressed a finger to his lips.
“Later,” she whispered, begging him to let her have this moment without the pressure of the past, or worry for the future, crushing her.
He let out a curse and slammed his mouth on hers, the kiss turning ferocious as his fingers plunged inside her. And just like that, Mairi shot up into the stratosphere and exploded. Panting and clinging to him, she felt him spread her legs to make room for his hips. She opened her eyes and leaned forward to trace the red swirls over his heart with the tip of her tongue. She wanted to memorize every line, in case it was the last time she saw them.
With a grunt, Keir plunged into her, and Mairi’s head fell back. Her neck arched, and her legs wrapped around his thighs.
“Yes!” She dug her fingers into his shoulders and held on tight.
“You make me crazy,” he growled against her throat, giving her his weight as he slid in and out of her blissfully happy girl parts.
Mairi bit his shoulder and ran her tongue over the sting. He tasted musky and clean and smelled like warm sheets straight from the dryer. She wanted to wrap herself in him and never come out. A safe haven from the world. And that thought, that need, scared the life out of her. He was inside her, under her skin, burrowed deep, as she suspected he had been all along. She would never be done with Keir, and part of her never wanted to be.
As he took her away from herself, Mairi let her mind float on the sea of sensation he created. Aware only of Keir and what he made her feel. Aware of the desperate explosion building inside of her that he alone controlled. As they fell over the edge of sanity together, Mairi realized just how much she’d missed Keir’s touch and wondered if she’d ever be able to give it up again..
For long minutes, she clung to him as they gasped for air. His weight was a comforting blanket and his heat seeped into her through her pores. She almost sobbed when he kissed her and headed for the bathroom, leaving the bed cold and empty without him. A minute later, he returned, turned off the lights and climbed in behind her. With an arm over her stomach and a leg thrown over her legs, he pinned her tight against him, his front to her back.
“Go to sleep, Rusty. Things will be better in the morning.” He kissed her temple and curled a hand around her breast, as though he possessed it.
Mairi didn’t sleep. She lay there, watching the shadows play over the walls and listening to Keir breathe behind her. The rhythm of his chest rising and falling was soothing to her. The heat from his body wrapped around her, keeping out the cold of life. A while later, he turned over and away from her, allowing her the chance to slip out of bed.
Stealing a blanket, she tiptoed down the stairs and curled up on the couch to think.
And that was where Keir found her hours later.
“Rusty, wake up.” His gentle voice roused her, and she blinked up at him.
The light from the unadorned windows was stark, illuminating everything she had to deal with that day. Keir was dressed and crouched beside her. He gently brushed her hair from her face.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked.
“Was thinking.”
His smile was gentle. “You come to any conclusions?”
“Aye.” She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. “I’m going to take you up on your offer. I’m going to marry you, and I plan to tell everyone about it at a press conference tonight.”
Keir’s hand stilled on her hair. “You sure?”
“It’s my only choice. You’re right—my back is against the wall and I need you.”
The light in his eyes dimmed somewhat. “Good decision.” He stood and walked toward the door. “I’m making coffee. I’ve put a t-shirt on the bed for you, and your shorts are still good. Once you’ve had some breakfast, I’ll take you home.”
And then he was gone. Leaving Mairi alone to wonder what she’d just done.
Chapter 22
The minute Mairi told Keir she planned to take him up on his offer of marriage, he knew it was a mistake. He’d honestly thought he would take Mairi on any terms he could get her, but he’d discovered he was wrong.
Once he’d dropped her off at her apartment, which was still surrounded by news crews, onlookers, and fake boyfriends, Keir told Hamish he was on his own for the day and then rode to his brother’s place in the middle of Campbeltown.
“Do you realize how early it is?” Sean said as he swung his door wide.
Keir stalked inside and headed straight for the kitchen, which was at the back of Sean’s second-story apartment. “It’s eight.”
“Like I said, do you realize how early it is?”
“I’ll make coffee.” Keir reached for the pot.
“Then I forgive you. Now what the hell is wrong?” Sean slumped at the tiny two-person table in the corner of his equally tiny kitchen.
Keir purposely kept his back to his brother while he filled the coffee machine, because he really didn’t want to see his reaction. “Mairi’s taking me up on my offer to get married.”
There was silence. Keir carried on, spooning coffee into the pot and waiting for a reaction. Once he’d switched the machine on, he turned around to find Sean was no longer half-asleep.
“This is good, right?” Sean ran a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. “I mean, this is what you wanted.”
Keir leaned back against the sink and rubbed his hands over his face. What a bloody mess.
“I thought it was what I wanted. I thought I’d be happy to take Mairi any way I could get her. Turns out I was an idiot. She doesn’t love me. She made that clear when she said she’d marry me. I don’t think she’ll ever love me again.”
Once the words were out, he turned away, and took mugs from the cupboard above the coffee maker. The pain in his chest was getting worse by the minute, and he rubbed the spot over his heart. The spot that was being torn in two.
“She literally said, ‘I don’t love you’?” Sean sounded somewhere between panicked and incredulous.
“No, she said she had no choice, that her back was against the wall. She’s marrying me because she has no other option. It isn’t like she has the money to run off and start again somewhere else.” Keir took a breath and looked out of Sean’s kitchen window over the rooftops of Campbeltown to the boats in the harbor. “Marrying her now will mean she’ll always resent me. It will ruin any chance I have of getting her to love me again.” He snorted. “Even if I had a chance to begin with.”
“You’re talking mad now. Of course you have a chance. You just fell for the world’s most stubborn woman. You can’t expect it to be easy. This is Mairi we’re talking about. Nothing is easy with that woman.”
Keir turned back to face his brother. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s possible to get past the damage I did to her.”
Damage that had taken her out of his bed in the middle of the night, because she’d rather sleep alone on the sofa. Keir had woken in a panic, thinking she was gone. Instead, he’d found her curled in a ball, looking broken and bruised, as she told him she’d marry him.
“I can’t do this,” Keir said. “I can’t hurt her again.” He pushed away from the bench. “I’m taking off for a few days. I need you to explain to Mairi that it’s for the best. She doesn’t really want to marry me anyway.”
“Are you insane?” Sean shouted, and crossed the distance between them.
For a moment, Keir thought Sean was going to try to shake some sense into him.
“You can’t head off for a few days. That’s exactly what you did last time. You left her when things got intense.”
“Not by choice,” Keir pointed out.
“Like she’d see the difference.” Sean clasped handfuls of his hair. “Look. You need to stay. You need to see this out. You’ll never get her back if you leave.”
“I can’t marry her, not like this. Not when she doesn’t love me. I can’t do that to either of us. I’m not running away. I just need a few days to think things through and regroup. I’ve got her into bed—that’s further than I thought I’d get with her—but I can’t marry her. Not when she’s doing it under duress. What I need to do is slow things down, get her used to being with me again, without this marriage thing hanging over her head.” He nodded. “It’s for the best. I can’t marry her like this.”
“You stubborn bastard. Put your hurt feelings in a box and man the hell up. You can’t back out now, not when she’s told you she’s willing to marry you. It’s taken months to get to this stage. I didn’t set this whole thing up to give you a chance at the woman, just so you could get all noble and bail at the first bloody setback.”
Keir stilled. “You what?”
Sean’s eyes went wide, and the color drained from his face. “Oh crap.”
Keir stepped into his brother’s space. “You set this up?”
His mind raced. This was just the sort of dumb thing Sean would do. He had the computer skills. Hell, he had a degree in computer design and spent his life setting up websites for people all over the world. On top of that, he was carrying around a ton of guilt over being the reason Keir went to jail and blew his relationship with Mairi. Of course he’d done this.
The interfering bastard.
Keir pulled back his arm, made a fist and punched his little brother right on the jaw. It was very satisfying.
Sean staggered back, clutched his face and glared at Keir. “I’m giving you that, because I probably deserve it. But you hit me again and I’m hitting back. Arsehole.” He stalked to the freezer, pulled out a bag of peas and held it to his chin. “Feel better?”
“Not much.” Keir folded his arms. “Tell me everything.”
♦♦♦
Mairi found Agnes sitting at the dining table with the laptop open on a hotel staff recruitment site.
“Am I Mum?” Mairi said as she plopped down into a chair beside her sister.
“What are you talking about now?” Agnes sat back in her chair and folded her arms.
“Logic, that’s what I’m talking about.” Mairi reached for the nearest box of chocolates and ripped into them. “There are four of us—odds are that one of us will take after Mum. I want to know if it’s me.”
Agnes rolled her eyes before helping herself to a chocolate. “Yes, it has to be you. It couldn’t possibly be the sister who can’t say no to anyone—just like Mum.”
“Oh, I never thought of that. But...” Mairi bit into a caramel, and then tossed it at the bin. Caramels were only eaten when you didn’t have anything else to eat, and her living room was full of chocolate, which meant she didn’t have to waste time on caramels. “Am I Mum like she is with Dad?”
“Do you mean her going back for more when he treats her like crap, or her making excuses for everything he does?”
“Both.” Mairi focused on the chocolates because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. Whatever it was, Agnes would give her the brutal truth.
“Honey.” Agnes covered Mairi’s hand with hers. “You’re nothing like Mum. And Keir is nothing like Dad. Keir made one mistake with you, years ago. If you want to try again, then that’s perfectly okay. It doesn’t turn you into Mum.”
Mairi looked at her sister and saw only understanding in Agnes’ eyes. “What if he does it again?”
“He’s highly unlikely to run out and steal a car while he’s in bed with you. I think he learned his lesson.”
Mairi ignored the sarcasm and gave her sister the truth: “I think I’m falling in love with him all over again.”
“Oh, you precious child, you. You never stopped loving Keir. You’ve just been in a really, really bad mood with him for the past six years.”
As soon as Agnes said the words, Mairi felt something fall into place inside her. It was true. She’d never stopped loving Keir. That was why that horrible night still hurt like hell.
“I don’t know if I can ever trust him again,” she confessed.
“Trust doesn’t happen just because you decide it should, but you need to think about how Keir’s behaved since he got out of prison. Heck, how he was before that night, too. I don’t know what happened that night, but it was completely out of character for him. Sure, he was wild when he was a kid, but look at him now—he runs a successful business, people rely on him and he’s known for stepping in to help when it’s needed. Maybe all of that outweighs the other stuff. That’s for you to decide.”
Agnes wasn’t saying anything that hadn’t already occurred to Mairi. “I want to marry him,” she blurted. “And not just because I have to. I’ve wanted him to be mine since I first saw him.”
“I know.” Agnes smiled and squeezed Mairi’s hand.
Whatever else she was going to say was lost when the door down to the garage burst open and a furious Keir strode in, followed by a pale and sheepish Sean.
“Tell them what you told me,” Keir said, batting the balloons that were still hovering at the ceiling out of his way.
Mairi sat up straight, the chocolate forgotten, as the obvious seriousness of the situation hit her.
“What is it?” she asked Keir. “Jonas is okay, right?”
His face softened. “Jonas is fine, but this idiot’s life is in the balance. Talk.” He smacked his brother’s shoulder.
“Give me a chance, then,” Sean snapped.
He took a deep breath and stepped back, putting a bit more space between him and the sisters, which made Mairi’s hair stand on end. This wasn’t going to be good. Not. At. All.
“Okay,” Sean said. “I’m the one who hacked you. It was my idea.”
Mairi froze, and Agnes let out a threatening little rumble that made Sean pale further. He shared a look with his brother, one that was particularly threatening on Keir’s part.
“Why?” Mairi said.
Keir’s threatening look got about a million times darker, and Sean swallowed hard. “No reason. Just thought it would be fun.”
And Mairi snapped.
One second she was sitting there with chocolates on her lap, the next she was hanging off Sean’s back, with her arm around his throat, trying to choke the life out of him.
“I’m going to kill you,” Mairi shouted. “I’m going to chop you into pieces and put them on stakes outside in the street to warn off the next idiot who thinks it might be fun to mess with me.”
Sean staggered around the room, tripping over chocolates and flowers, popping balloons and getting tangled in ribbon—all while Mairi was attached to his back.
“Someone get her off me,” he whined.
He sounded strangled. That was good. Because strangled was exactly what she was aiming for. If his hair had been longer, and she could have gotten a decent grip, she would have pulled that out too, just for good measure.
“You ruined my life,” she shouted. “You deserve death.”
“Get her off!”
Mairi tightened her grip.
“I’m dying. I can’t breathe,” Sean shouted, proving he could breathe and was just being a wimp.
A strong arm wrapped around Mairi’s waist and another hand pried her arms from around Sean’s throat. She kicked against Keir. “Let me at him. He deserves this.”
“I agree.” Keir held Mairi under his left arm, while he punched his brother’s nose with his right fist.
“Is anyone going to listen to me if I tell you violence isn’t the answer?” Agnes said from
the table.
“No!” Keir and Mairi shouted.
“That’s it,” Sean said, while he held his nose with one hand and rubbed his neck with the other. “I don’t deserve this. I’m telling her—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish, because Keir dropped Mairi to the floor, grabbed his brother by the back of his shirt and threw him out the door, slamming it firmly behind him.
“Tell me what?” Mairi said.
“Nothing. He’s just being a moron.” He folded his arms, making his biceps bulge, and looked immovable.
Mairi wasn’t going to get any further explanation out of him.
“I hope you two are going to clean up the mess you made,” Agnes said.
Mairi looked down, and sure enough, the floor was littered with mashed chocolates, trampled flowers and burst balloons.
“It looks like Valentine’s Day has been massacred in our living room,” Mairi said.
“I’m sorry, Rusty,” Keir said. “If I’d known it was him, I’d have stopped everything.”
“I know.” She looked at his impossibly handsome face. “Will he tell everyone at the meeting tonight?”
“I’ll make sure he does.”
She toed some of the trampled flowers to avoid looking him in the eye. “I guess this means we don’t have to get married, then.”
“No. You don’t have to marry me. You’ve been saved from that.” His voice was completely flat, giving nothing away.
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” She looked at him but couldn’t read anything from his face. It was closed up tight.
“Aye. It’s good. It’s what you wanted.”
“Yeah,” Mairi said softly.
They stared into each other’s eyes for the longest time, and Mairi saw pain in Keir’s, maybe some regret—but worst of all, she saw resignation.
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