by Kylie Brant
She turned and propped herself against the railing so she could watch his face. “Are you going to look for them?”
“Who?”
“Don’t be annoying, Sullivan. You know who. Your brothers.” Nothing like taking the bull by the horns, she thought. But left to himself, Sully would bury the information he’d learned today in that dark, tormented spot he shoved all unpleasant memories, safe from the light of day.
“There’s no point.”
She waited, but he said nothing else, seeming to find the tip of his cigarette fascinating.
“No point in what? No point in the Marlins playing out the rest of the season? No point in Congress continuing to fund Star Wars?” She waited a heartbeat, then added, “Or no point in letting yourself start to care about two brothers you never knew you had?”
His eyes did meet hers then, and irritation was visible in them. “Knock it off, Ellie.”
“No, I don’t think I will,” she said with a calm she was far from feeling. She’d never pushed Sully deliberately before. It was a little like baiting a tiger. She knew that he wouldn’t hurt her, but she couldn’t be exactly certain what she’d unleash. “You can’t tell me you don’t wonder about them, about what happened to them. What are they like? Do they look like you? Have either of them made you an uncle?”
“That’s enough.”
The hint of warning in his voice had nerves prickling along her spine, but it didn’t convince her to quit. “It wouldn’t be that difficult to ask a few questions, would it?”
He stared hard at her, then shook his head slowly. Gradually he relaxed again against the railing. “Adoption files are closed.”
“You’re assuming they were adopted,” she said. Triumph reared up inside her. He had to have been giving it some thought to come up with that idea. “They may not have been. They could have remained in foster care until they were grown. Or if they were adopted, they may have opened the file themselves by starting a search for their birth mother.”
“Drop it.” Although his voice was even, the words sounded as though they’d been chipped from a glacier.
“I’m not going to drop it, Sully, and neither should you. You might have been alone all your life, but you don’t have to be anymore. You have family out there somewhere. All you have to do is look for them.”
“Family?” The disbelief in his voice lashed at her. “Because we share a mother? That doesn’t make us any more a family than a litter of pups. I’ll admit that I don’t have much experience with the concept, but even I know that.”
“So you’re just going to give up on them.” Her temper was beginning to simmer. “You’re not going to make any moves to find your brothers, because then maybe, just maybe, you’d have to open a little of yourself up and let someone else inside. And that would be too much risk for you, wouldn’t it? Sully, the emotional submarine. At the first hint of rough waters, your instinct is to dive.”
His eyes had chilled to ice, but she didn’t care. An unfamiliar recklessness was coursing through her. “You think I don’t understand why you let me come with you today?”
He snorted. “Let you? I’d have had a better chance trying to stop an earthquake.”
“I think part of you wanted me to see how you grew up.” He stiffened a little, but remained silent. “You could have told me yourself any number of times over the years if you wanted, but you never did. You didn’t want to today, either, so I can only guess that you had other reasons. What were they, Sully? Did you think I’d be so disgusted by what I saw here that I’d walk away?”
She saw the truth in the clenching of his jaw, the flicker in his eyes, and it hurt, it hurt unbelievably. “That’s it, then.” Her gaze dropped to the railing, which her hands were clutching, white knuckled. Consciously she relaxed them. “I guess you place me in the same category of those ’do-gooders’ you once dodged.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“You’re the one being stupid, Sullivan.” Tears were forming a hot ball in her throat, and she hated it. She wasn’t going to cry, not now. She’d much rather take a swing at his hard, stubborn jaw. “You’re stupid if you think that your wreck of a childhood makes you any less than what you are. A decent man, who cares more than he wants anyone to know.”
He brought the cigarette to his lips and inhaled. “Yeah, that’s me. Saint Sullivan.”
“Not by a long shot, buddy. But you’re not exactly Satan’s long-lost twin, either.”
Very deliberately he drew deeply from the cigarette one more time, before dropping it to the ground and grinding it out. “We’re not going to discuss it, Ellie.”
She took a step closer to him, her chin angling up. “Yes. We are.”
He turned and walked back into the bedroom. She trailed after him. “You aren’t going to get rid of me. I’m not going anywhere. I wish you’d let yourself believe that.”
His voice was emotionless. “You’d be better off if there was a little distance between us for a while.”
“The way your brothers would be better off if they never knew of your existence?” she countered. “That’d be the easy way out, wouldn’t it? Then you’d never have to let yourself care, never have to take a risk that maybe, just maybe, you could get something more from life.”
“I’ve gotten everything in this life I’ve got coming to me.”
“That is such a crock!” She strode over and tugged on his elbow. He didn’t move, so she shoved in front of him, where he’d have to look at her. Have to face her. “Happiness isn’t rationed. You have to reach out and take it when you find it.”
“Leave it alone.” His eyes were cold, but with a shimmer of anger that threatened to erupt.
“Or what?” Her voice dared him. “Or you’ll slice me out of your life, as well as any chance you’ve ever had to be happy?”
He lowered his face close to hers and snarled, “I shouldn’t have to slice you out of my life. You oughtta be running, baby. If you had the sense God gave a gnat, you’d be putting as much distance as you could between us, and then you’d keep it that way.”
Satisfaction snaked through her, winding through the nerves. The lid was off his tightly controlled emotions. They were boiling now, churning out of him. “And why would I want to do that?”
“That room today was a mirror of every place I’ve ever lived. That neighborhood was everywhere I’ve ever been. You were out of place there, but I belonged.”
“No. It’s where you used to belong.”
He started to whirl away, but she stopped him with a tug on his belt loop. When his eyes met hers again, the icy indifference was gone. She recognized the fury, welcomed it.
“You think because of what you saw today you understand all there is to know about me?” He stopped, raked a hand through his hair. “I’m not what you think I am. There are things I can’t tell you, or hell, maybe I can, but I haven’t.”
It was hard to watch him wrestle with his demons. Poison still leaked from wounds he’d long thought healed. “You’re the only one who can open that door,” she said softly. “Take a chance, Sully. Let someone in.” Before he could regain that rigid control he’d let slip, she slid her hand up his shirtfront. Muscles jumped reflexively beneath her palm. “Let me in.” Her fingers trailed back down his shirt, then up again.
“Is it really that difficult?” She ignored his soft curse, and when he took a step back, she followed, keeping the touch intact. “Do you want to be alone the rest of your life, or are you just scared to take a chance?” She didn’t know whether his start was in reaction to her words or to the finger that had slipped inside his buttonhole to touch scalding skin.
“You don’t get it.” The words were little more than a rasp, but she smiled, slow and serene.
“I think I’m beginning to.” Her words should have distracted him from the button she released on his shirt to gain better access to his chest, but from his hissed breath she’d only partly succeeded. “I really think I’m beginning to.” His
hands came up to pull hers away, so she leaned closer and pressed her lips against the skin she’d bared. His heart was rocketing in his chest, thudding in her ear.
She took strength and courage from the sound. He looked like he was fighting a war with himself. Whatever feelings the day’s events had unlocked, they were raw now, close to the surface.
She watched his throat work, then freed her hand from his and traced the muscle that was jumping in his jaw. He jerked away as if her touch scorched him and retreated a few steps.
“You should go back to your room.”
His words made her heart stutter for a moment, before it began a rapid tattoo beat. He was looking everywhere but at her, and for the first time since she’d met him she’d swear he was wearing nerves. The air-conditioning made the slight sheen above his lip unnatural, and his fingers were clenching and unclenching, until he shoved them in his pocket with barely restrained violence.
The gesture made her breath hitch with apprehension and something else, something she’d only recently gained the experience to identify as desire. For the first time she thought about the dangers of baiting the tiger. Especially one as hungry as Sully. She almost felt remorse at pushing him so hard at a time he was most vulnerable. But vulnerability was rare in the man; vulnerability stripped layers from those defenses until she could see what he strove to hide from the world. Emotions, dark and turbulent, frothing white water from a lifetime of being forced back deep in the caverns of his soul.
And she’d have them. She’d have every last one of them.
“Make me.”
His head whipped to hers and if she’d been able, she would have smiled at the disbelief on his face. But her lips couldn’t fashion a smile, could barely control a tremble. Her limbs felt heavy; she couldn’t have left the room if she’d tried.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“I know what I’m not asking for. No soft lights. No mood music. No careful little seduction.”
He was completely rigid, the force of his control almost palpable. She approached him on legs that were inclined to wobble, and her fingers went to his shirt, stumbling over the buttons. He was still while she unfastened them, pulled the shirttail from his jeans. The only hint at the powerful battle waging within him was in the flare of his nostrils, the muscles quivering beneath his skin.
His words sounded strangled. “I can’t give you what you need.”
She studied that expanse of taut flesh before her, neatly bisected by its triangle of chest hair. Her hands slid up the smooth skin on his sides, fingers lingering over knots of scar tissue. Blindly she leaned forward, opened her mouth against him in a shocking need to taste flesh. His flavor shuddered through her, and he was forced to take more of her weight, as her knees grew weaker.
She never thought of it as seduction. Never imagined she could wrap its velvet chains around him, around them both. She only knew that however it had begun, she was tangled in a web of her own making. It was harder to tell the effects on him when they were blurred by her own yearning, clawing to get free.
“The only thing I need is you.” The voice didn’t sound like hers, the words thick in her throat. “Wanting me. Showing it.” Her head fell back, too heavy for her neck. “Show me again, Sully.”
She could actually feel the effort it took for him to remain rigid in her embrace. Could feel the shudders rippling across otherwise unyielding sinew and tissue. She heard the short, staccato breaths, felt his chest expand with each one.
And she felt it when that control snapped, when the blood raged through veins and nerve endings and muscles surged to life. His arms clamped around her with a force that should have frightened, but instead exhilarated.
The tiger had sprung.
His mouth covered hers with a bruising force that might have been terrifying if she didn’t crave just that proof of his need, didn’t return it with an answering greed. Other women might want pretty words and gentle hands. But right now, from this man, all she wanted was the hunger, clean and sharp. Unvarnished. A match for her own.
He wasn’t careful when he pulled the sleeveless top over her head, yanked the skirt down over her hips. He had her bared to her camisole and tap pants within a matter of seconds. Her hands were just as frenzied. She pushed his shirt aside, and he shrugged his massive shoulders to let it drop from his arms. She got no more than the button undone on his jeans before she was caught in a dizzying twirl and tumbled on the bed. They rolled once, twice, before settling, him above her.
Damp flesh was pressed to damp flesh. Skin heated wherever it touched. His hands moved over her body, gripping, pressing, possessing. Hers were no more gentle. His mouth was streaking over her, and her body was vibrating under his. She was ravenous for every sensation he could give her, every peak he could drive her to. She wanted to feast on all the simmering, violent emotion he’d fought to keep chained for years.
Her teeth grazed his shoulder as her mouth went in search of his. His kiss was hot, avid, carnally explicit. She could taste the tang of the wine he’d had for dinner, the slightly bitter taste of tobacco and the dark, mysterious flavor that was uniquely Sully. His tongue swept her mouth, stealing her breath, then his lips moved lower.
Her neck bowed for the scrape of his teeth, the rasp of his beard. A gasp strangled in her throat as his mouth strung a burning line of kisses along the sensitive cord below her ear. His hands snaked inside her camisole and cupped her breasts. She murmured a pleased sound as his thumbs rubbed against the sensitized nipples, then his hands were gone. The lacy top was pulled over her head and thrown over his shoulder, and he lowered his mouth to suckle.
Rich, dark tendrils of pleasure twisted deep inside Elizabeth with each flex of his cheeks, each stroke of his tongue. Her heels pressed into the bed, and her back arched, straining to offer him more. Unconsciously her hands came up to fist in his hair as she held him to her. There was a wildness, a greed in him that struck a responding chord. If he was desperate, so was she. His impatience fired her own. The prick of his teeth against her skin had her blood churning thicker, hotter. She could feel the primitive, rhythmic pulsing just under her flesh.
One callused palm skated down her side and cupped her thigh, stroking up again in one smooth movement. His fingers just grazed the skin where leg and hip joined, and nerve endings sang. She burned with the need to touch him, to show him even a fraction of the heat he’d generated. She pushed frantically at his shoulders until he raised his head.
His eyes were hot, lambent, with an edge of barely leashed urgency. He lifted away a little, so she was free to slick her hands over damp, heated skin. Out of control, she thought dimly. She was as out of control as he was, and reveling in it. She reared up and pressed tiny, nibbling kisses across his chest and throat. She was fiercely glad for the early-evening sun slanting in through the windows, making it possible for her to study his every nuance of reaction. She couldn’t get enough of it, couldn’t get enough of him.
Impatience bucked inside her, and her hands dropped to his jeans. She’d never known she could feel this kind of passion for a man, never known a man to respond in the same way. The hunger was honed to a painful edge. She drew the zipper down over the tight bulge in back of it before her wrists were braceleted.
“No, not now,” he rasped in her ear. “Not yet.”
His mouth careened down her torso, licking over tight, sensitized breasts, pausing to dip his tongue in her navel. Her hands were released and they dived into his hair. He could make her forget. He could make her think of nothing but the sensations slapping through her, each with enough force to send her reeling.
She could feel his heated breath between her legs, against the silk covering her. Her eyes had only a moment to flutter open as the panties were drawn down and his tongue traced the crease of her thigh. She gave a little sigh of contentment, a murmur of pleasure, then his mouth streaked to her center and that heat became an inferno. She cried out, shock holding her rigid, before th
e flood of sensation began to rise.
He tilted her hips to his mouth and devoured her, thrusting her deeper into the eye of the storm. The pleasure was razor sharp. The air was too thick to breathe; she had to fight it into her lungs. Each stabbing motion of his tongue had the tension drawing her body tighter and tighter until her body was a mass of-quivering nerve endings and tearing needs. The heat and lightning were staggering her. A knot clenched in her stomach, and then the explosion rocked her, and she was crying out, shocked, shattered.
The climax left her limp. She floated down from its peak, her body weightless. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused when she heard Sully’s voice.
“More.”
He shot her from relief to wanting with one sure touch. She could feel her inner muscles clenching around him greedily, and impatience reared again, chiseled by desperation. With every motion he had the ache spreading, until even her bones throbbed with it.
“Sully, please.” The words sobbed from her chest, from her lips. Her fingers clutched at his shoulders, nails raking in a desperate attempt to force him to join her, to end it together. He stood and shimmied out of his jeans, taking time to protect her, then made a place for himself again between her legs.
He entered her with a powerful lunge that had her arching her back, striving to take him deeper. He dragged her legs over his hips to open her fully and thrust harder, driving twin moans from both of them.
Elizabeth could already feel the comet of sensation zinging through her body, see the kaleidoscope of color exploding under her eyelids when Sully stopped above her, within her.
“Open your eyes, Ellie. Look at me.” His voice was low, urgent, little more than a growl. She forced her heavy eyelids open to see him, only him. The muscles in his biceps quivered as he braced himself above her. She was trapped in a cage of his making. There was nowhere she’d rather be. She stretched beneath him and felt him stir within her, and his eyes went dark. “I want to watch you.” His mouth came down on hers, devouring. “I want to see you.”