by BETH KERY
Desire sluiced through her, so sharp she broke their kiss and gave a plaintive cry.
His exploring hand lowered, stroking her hips and belly. He murmured broken words of praise into her ear—a ragged, passionate anthem. Deidre felt herself melting into a heady sensual torpor, utterly intoxicated by the sound of Nick’s rough voice and the sensation of his talented, stroking hand.
He slid beneath her panties.
His fingers sought. She parted her thighs for him, wanting to be found.
His groan sounded like it scorched his throat.
She heard his voice as if from a distance as she drowned in sensation. His fingertips may be blunt and large, but he knew precisely what to do with them. He kissed her mouth more slowly than before, deliberately, languorously. He watched her face through heavy, narrowed eyelids. A delicious burn grew in her until she moaned in mounting excitement and bit at his lower lip, taunting him into giving her what she needed.
“That’s right,” he growled. “That’s the Deidre I know.”
He bent his head and covered the tip of her breast with his warm, wet mouth, laving a nipple with his tongue. When he drew on her firmly, she cried out.
She grasped for his waist as pleasure broke in her flesh, her fingers sinking beneath his leather belt and scraping warm skin as if she thought the wave of sensation would drown her. He pressed his finger into her body as she climaxed. She shuddered around him.
“I think you might have been meant for my touch.”
Had Nick really muttered that? As Deidre lay there shaking, helpless in the clutch of desire, she had a sneaking suspicion that even if it had been her imagination, it’d been the truth.
* * *
He looped his arm beneath her as she shuddered, wanting to absorb every shiver of pleasure racking her body. He brought her against his chest, his hand still between her thighs. His jaw clenched tight at the sensation of her small breasts pressing against his chest, her nipples hard with arousal. Her skin was exquisitely soft. He hadn’t been lying when he’d whispered he’d never felt anything like it. He experienced an overwhelming desire to feel every square inch of it sliding against his own skin, against his fingertips, his lips...his tongue.
Her tremors of release eased. She was small, feminine and soft, yet her muscles felt sleek and strong beneath his touch. Her curves fit his hand like she’d been built to specification.
She parted her lips, panting. He plucked at her mouth with his own, his hunger swelling at the sight of Deidre’s face dewy with release. He stroked her skin while she calmed, soothing her until he couldn’t take the ache of his desire a second longer.
He whipped his shirt over his shoulders and attacked the belt on his jeans. She murmured something unintelligible and started to help him, her fingers twining with his as he unfastened his fly. He hissed when her fingers brushed against the hard ridge of his arousal.
She glanced up at him, her eyes looking enormous in her flushed face. She held his gaze while she traced his contour through his clothing.
It was too much for him. He could endure a lot. He had endured a lot, keeping himself on a straining leash when it came to his attraction to her. But witnessing renewed desire replace satiation on Deidre’s face while her fingers learned his shape shattered his restraint completely.
He muttered a curse under his breath and shed his remaining clothing like it’d caught fire. He hurriedly located a condom in his wallet.
She opened her arms to him when he came down over her. He groaned at the feeling of her warm, silky skin pressing against his. Entering Deidre was torture and bliss blended. He took her mouth in a kiss, glorying in how she sensed his need, rose to it and matched his passion.
“You’re so small,” he whispered next to her mouth in a choked voice a few seconds later. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re not going to hurt me, Nick.”
Her hands glided across his hips, giving him her assurance...
...her blessing.
He applied pressure and closed his eyes, begging for the strength to endure the agonizing sweetness of the moment. Sweat beaded his brow. Her body’s embrace was tight and warm and every bit as perfect as the rest of her.
Nick had a fleeting thought before he was swept away by torrential pleasure. Fusing his flesh to Deidre’s felt like returning to a home he never knew he’d had.
* * *
Later, they lay with their limbs entwined. Deidre felt sublimely surrounded by Nick. The scent of him filled her nose. Their pounding hearts pressed close, slowing in tandem. Her eyelids grew heavy as he stroked her hair.
“Are you asleep?” he asked after a while.
“No,” she whispered. She burrowed her face between his neck and shoulder and kissed him, smiling to herself when his hold on her tightened. “I think you might have been right.”
“About what?”
She lifted her head and lay it on the pillow next to his, meeting his stare. “It is sort of hard to regret something like that.”
She pressed her lips against the ghost of a smile on his mouth. “Not hard. Impossible,” he said, before their mouths fused in a melting kiss.
“Can I ask you about a sensitive topic?” he asked her quietly a while later.
“Not the will, I hope?”
“No. Maybe an even more sensitive issue. Your mother. And you.”
Her gaze flickered up to meet his. “I know you noticed I was uncomfortable when Addy McGraw was asking questions about Brigit and me. I guess that Lincoln told you that my mother’s and my relationship is...strained?”
Nick nodded.
“Mom kept her affair with Lincoln and my paternity secret, both from Derry and me. I haven’t really spoken to her for most of my adult life,” she admitted, feeling the familiar mixture of defiance and hurt rise up in her. “I realized when we were out there at McGraw Stables that Brigit never shared her love of horses with us because of her guilt. She associated horses with Lincoln and her infidelity.”
“Were you and your mother close, before you had the falling-out?” Nick asked as he rubbed her shoulder in a soothing gesture.
“I was close to both of my parents. I was a Kavanaugh,” she stated, as if that explained everything. “And then one summer evening when I was seventeen years old, I found out I wasn’t.”
His caressing hand stilled. Tears burned her eyes. She pressed her cheek to Nick’s chest, averting her gaze.
“You mean you somehow found out about Brigit and Lincoln’s affair?”
Deidre nodded, her cheek brushing against the springy hair on Nick’s chest. She touched his skin with her fingertips, the sensation reassuring her...grounding her. Suddenly, the story was pouring out of her, as if it’d been waiting to erupt there at the back of her throat for nearly half of her life.
“When I was a kid, I thought my parents had the perfect marriage. They always seemed so happy, so attracted to each other. I had no way of knowing that apparently their marriage had started out rocky. Derry’d had an affair early on, and my mother had discovered it. She reacted by flying to Lake Tahoe and having an affair with her old friend, Lincoln DuBois. My mom and dad reconciled. All of us kids were happily ignorant of the whole thing, but one night when I was a teenager here in Harbor Town, the truth came spilling out.”
She swallowed thickly and continued.
“I’d had a water-skiing accident during an exhibition show here in Harbor Town. I was hospitalized for a leg wound. It wasn’t all that serious, but I’d lost some blood. I required a transfusion. That’s how my dad—Derry—found out my blood type. He suspected that given his blood type, I couldn’t biologically be his daughter. According to my brother Liam, Derry contacted an old friend after that—a pediatrician who specialized in genetic diseases. The pediatrician confirmed that given our blood ty
pes, I couldn’t possibly be Derry’s daughter.
“I was discharged from the hospital. Mom and I were the only two people in the house on Sycamore Avenue that afternoon. I remember it was a hot, humid summer evening. A storm broke that night. You could feel it brewing in the air all day. I was bored out of my mind. I could hear Mom doing dishes in the kitchen and figured the coast was clear to get out of bed and call one of my friends on the phone in my room. When I heard Mom coming upstairs a few minutes later, I thought I was caught, but she passed my room and went to hers and Dad’s bedroom. A few minutes passed, and I heard the door downstairs open and close, and another tread on the stairs. I told my friend I had to get off the phone. I recognized my father’s step, and I was surprised he was home. It was a Tuesday, and Dad usually worked in Chicago until Thursday night, when he joined us in Harbor Town during the summers. He paused outside my door—I almost called out to him—I wish I had—but then I heard him walking down the hallway toward their bedroom.
“I don’t know why I did it exactly—they would be mad at me for getting out of bed—but I got my crutches and left my room anyway. There was something really strange about Dad coming home. The atmosphere in the house seemed charged. I wanted to see Dad, to make sure everything was okay, even if I did get in trouble. I loved him so much….”
Nick cradled the back of her head with his hand and kissed the top of her head. “You don’t have to go on if it’s too upsetting to you,” he said gruffly. She realized belatedly that she’d dropped into a whisper and finally faded off as she told her story.
“No. I want to tell you,” she said, her voice stronger now. She’d never done this before, never spoken aloud the details of the night that had changed her life forever. She’d told some of the crucial details to Lincoln, but had kept things brief out of respect for his weakened condition and his profound love for Brigit Kavanaugh.
“The door was partially open to my parents’ bedroom,” she continued. “It didn’t take long for me to recognize I shouldn’t go barging in there. My dad wasn’t shouting, but I’d never heard him sound the way he did that night. Tense. Desperate. I remember the tone of his voice scared me, even before I understood the details of what he was saying.”
A thought occurred to her and she lifted her head, staring at Nick’s shadowed face. “I was going to say, ‘do you know what it’s like to hear something and feel like your entire world was just yanked away from beneath your feet?’ and then I realized of course you know exactly how that feels. You lost your parents.”
He reached up and slid his thumb across her cheek, drying her tears. His serious, compassionate expression gave her the courage she required to continue.
“I listened to my father accusing my mother of having an affair. I heard him telling her that I couldn’t be his biological daughter and he sounded so hurt...like he was wild with the pain of it. He didn’t say anything about Marc, Colleen or Liam. Just me,” she said in a pressured whisper. She put her cheek back on Nick’s chest. “I couldn’t be my father’s daughter. Then, my mother admitted there was a chance it was true.”
“You must have been so confused...shocked.”
“I felt like I was dreaming.”
“But your mother didn’t mention she’d had an affair with Lincoln DuBois specifically?”
Deidre shook her head. “All she said was there was a chance I was another man’s child. Then my father told her in no uncertain terms there wasn’t just a chance. His and my blood types proved it as an unassailable fact. I didn’t know the identity of my biological father until Liam completed his investigation last summer. I’ve learned since that my mom told my father the name of the man she’d had an affair with on that night, but that was after I’d fled the scene. I asked my mother afterward. Many times. She refused to tell me my natural father’s identity for all these years.”
“It must have devastated you, hearing that as a kid,” Nick said.
“I was confused. Disoriented. I remember I went back to my room and just lay there, staring up at the ceiling. I heard my father leave and thought I should do something. Go and demand the truth from my mother...something. But I was numb. Scared. I didn’t want to believe it was true. Being a Kavanaugh was such a central part of my identity. I adored my father. I couldn’t comprehend what was happening to me...my family...the whole structure of my life.
“I eventually couldn’t stand it anymore, lying there helpless. I grabbed my crutches and my keys and headed out. My mother heard me leaving, but I had a head start on her. I got in my car and drove. I’m not even sure where I went that night, but I had to get away. I learned later that my mother had also driven the streets and country roads, looking for both of us—Derry and me.”
She paused, lost in her memories. “I eventually returned home...but my dad never did.”
Nick’s body tensed beneath hers. She felt the pressure of his hand on her chin and she lifted her head to meet his stare.
“Do you mean to tell me that was the same night as the accident? Your father died that night?”
She nodded. Pain tightened his features.
“Ah, Deidre...” he muttered, his voice thick with regret and compassion. He drew her tighter into his embrace and held her while she wept.
Later, after her tears ebbed, he laid her on her back and leaned over her. He kissed her cheeks, drying her tears. His lips on her mouth were tender as well, but Deidre laced her fingers through the hair at his nape and deepened the kiss, needing his passion at that moment...starved for it.
He lifted his head after a while and stared down at her. “You must have felt orphaned on that night,” he said.
“I don’t want to compare my experience to yours, but I did feel orphaned, in many ways,” she admitted.
He nodded once. “You’re not alone, Deidre. You’re not alone.”
She watched his dark head, spellbound, as he leaned down to kiss the upper curve of her right breast. He opened his mouth over the turgid crest. Pleasure and warmth inundated her. His tongue laved her nipple, and the sad memories scattered to the periphery of her consciousness. Only the present existed...and Nick.
She sighed his name and surrendered to the magic of his touch.
* * *
After they’d made love again, Nick drifted off to sleep, his head resting on her chest, his arms surrounding her. Deidre lay there for a while, drowsy and transfixed by the sensation of his warm, even breath on her breast.
After a while, she very carefully extricated herself from his arms, taking pains not to awaken him. She grabbed her robe and quietly left the bedroom. The forms for the Vivicor acquisition lay exactly where Nick had tossed them on the coffee table.
She bit at the top of the pen, hesitant for only a moment, before she placed the tip to the paper and signed her name.
* * *
Deidre awoke the next morning slowly, swimming in a sea of drowsy, sensual lassitude.
She smiled, her eyes still closed, when she recalled last night in vivid detail. She’d returned to bed after signing the forms and drifted off to sleep with Nick’s scent in her nose. In the middle of the night, she’d been awakened by his touch. They’d lost themselves in one another again. Nick made love like he was reputed to do business. He was astonishingly patient at times, demanding and relentless at others, so brilliantly talented at his task that it made her toes curl beneath the sheets to remember.
She quickly turned over, both nervous and eager to see the man she’d grown so close to during the night in the light of dawn. Her heart seemed to drop an inch in her chest cavity when she realized she was alone in bed.
“Nick?” she called.
Something about the flat, answering silence told her she was utterly alone in the cottage. Where had he gone? She scooted to the opposite side of the bed when she saw a note propped against the lamp. She quickly scanned the
note written in a narrow, slanting hand.
You were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t have the heart to wake you.
I noticed you signed the papers. You didn’t have to do that, but thanks. I need to fly up to Detroit for a meeting, but I’ll be back late this afternoon. Will you have dinner with me at The Embers tonight? Seven o’clock? I’ll pick you up at six forty-five.
Nick
P.S. I should feel guilty about keeping you up last night when I know how much you need your rest, but I’ll admit I’m having a hell of a hard time regretting it.
Deidre smiled. She sprang out of bed, suddenly feeling as energetic and cheerful as a sixteen-year-old girl on the morning of her first date.
The first thing she did when she walked into the living room was turn on the lights on the Christmas tree. The second thing was turn on some holiday music. Not even her doubts about the wisdom of sleeping with Nick—of exposing her soul to him—could dampen her mood.
She took a hot shower; dressed in jeans, a fitted T-shirt and a flannel shirt; and called Colleen at the Family Center.
“I have a clothing emergency,” Deidre said.
“Clothing emergency?”
“Yes. I need something to wear to dinner tonight at The Embers,” she said, referring to the upscale restaurant in the Starling Hotel.
“Are you talking about a date?” Colleen demanded.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” Deidre mumbled. Colleen had insinuated she should consider Nick as more than her adversary. Deidre was a little embarrassed to admit to her sister just how drastically she’d altered her viewpoint of Nick. Maybe Colleen would be concerned that she’d taken things too far.
They arranged to meet at Colleen’s house during her lunch hour. She said goodbye to her sister and was hanging up her phone when she heard a knock on the front door.