by Melanie Rawn
“It’s nice.”
“That’s lame.”
He turned from examining a lovely plein aire oil painting of a flower-strewn meadow. “So whaddya want me to say? At least it’s not decorated.” He waved a hand to indicate his disgust with homes where couches were designed to make the pillows comfortable, not the people.
“Oh, thank you,” she snapped. “I’m so glad I took off all the plastic slipcovers before you arrived.”
“Look, lady, what do you want? I say I like it, you slap me down. I say the reason I like it is because it doesn’t scream money, and you get insulted. Make up your mind.”
“Oh, shit.” Holly bent her head, dark red hair falling forward to hide her face.
He sat next to her on the couch, placing his brandy glass on the table. “Hey.”
“I’m sorry, Éimhín.” The slurring Irish version of his name — Ay-veen — trembled a little. “I just—I wasn’t prepared for this. For you being here.”
Brushing aside her hair, framing her face with his hands, he gently coaxed her to look at him. Insecurity? It was all over her, from the bitten lip to the apprehensive eyes to the defensive tension tightening her square jaw. It hit him out of nowhere then, and with all the subtlety of a freight train: she didn’t know whether or not he still wanted her, and she wanted him to — because she wanted him.
So he kissed her, gently at first, then with more urgency. She needed persuading tonight; she was still nervous. Worried about his reaction. Maybe she was right. Not that he’d been afraid to find solid-gold faucets and Louis Quinze furniture—not her style—but it was a big place with a lot of expensive stuff in it. And the rocks in her earlobes weren’t rhinestones, either.
So I’ve caught myself a rich one, he mused as he unbuttoned her shirt. The old lady would be so fucking proud of me. Good thing she’s dead so she can’t gloat.
He’d never be able to give Holly diamonds like these, he thought distractedly, parting her satin shirt. The scent of her perfume in the warm hollow between her breasts usually drove all other thought from his mind. But that damned insecurity still nagged at him. He couldn’t give her what she was used to. What if she wanted more than he could—
“Hey. Lachlan.”
He lifted his head. “Mmm?”
“If you’re going to be here with me, be here with me, okay?”
Now, how had she done that—sensed that his mind was wandering?
“Kiss me like you mean it,” she whispered, “or get your coat and go.”
“And don’t come back?”
She nodded slowly.
He pulled away from her, reaching for the brandy. Draining it down his throat, he set the glass aside and got to his feet. When he looked down at her, the hurt on her face was more than he could bear. Swiftly he bent, one arm going beneath her knees, the other around her back. He lifted her up—unable to prevent a grunt of effort from escaping his lips. She was no anorexic, this one.
Holly was laughing at him. “Nice gesture, Lachlan—now put me down before you get a hernia!”
Growling, he hiked her up more firmly in his arms. In four long steps he was at the fireplace, and knelt, setting her down. The gold-patterned hearth rug was scarred here and there by scorching, and he liked what that said about her: nothing about this place was perfect, and she kept things she loved even if they were a little worn. He stripped off his sweater and shirt while she reclined on her elbows, watching him with firelight dancing in her eyes.
He would never know quite how it happened, but all at once she had pulled him down, shoved him onto his back, and was undoing the buttons of his jeans. The heat of the fire caressed him all along one side—and she was on the other, her hands and lips and tongue everywhere, starting at his forehead and covering every inch down to his groin. Following her fingers and tongue was the tantalizing silken caress of her hair.
“Holly—take your clothes off — come on, babe, I want to see you —”
She shook her head and coaxed snug denim down his hips and thighs. “It’d interfere with your concentration. No distractions, lover-man. This is all for you.”
Kneeling, she hooked his legs around her back, the position damned near precisely the one he should have been in, and the reversal of roles was doubly arousing. Sometimes a woman asked if he wanted her to be the aggressor; sometimes a woman did so without asking, and didn’t much care about his satisfaction as long as she got her precious multiple orgasms. Which he was always happy to provide, being more or less a gentleman, though he did get a little weary sometimes of feeling like nothing more than a convenient, anonymous cock.
But when Holly was in a mood to ravish him—her word, damned writer’s vocabulary—she took unrepentant control. He was hers to play with, hers to drive insane slowly or swiftly as whimsy took her. A nameless convenience was the very last thing he felt like when she did this to him. Looking up at her dreamy eyes and sultry smile, he realized that tonight was going to be one of the slow ones. He gave an involuntary shiver of mingled anticipation and impatience. He knew she was about to drive him totally, thoroughly, absolutely berserk, and leave him a wrecked, ruined husk; she’d done it before, though not quite this way. He’d felt her lips before, but only as a prelude to his entering her. Tonight would be different.
“Close your eyes,” she whispered. “Just feel, a chuisle. Don’t do anything but feel.”
He couldn’t have done anything else if his life depended on it, not after hearing that endearment again; it seemed to melt every bone in his body.
A long time later he felt her snuggle down with her head on his chest. “Back among the living yet?” she teased.
“You —” He cleared his throat and tried again. “You been savin’ that?”
“Your reward for being a sweetheart. Mostly a sweetheart, anyway.”
“Wasn’t exactly fair,” he murmured.
“Very considerate of you, a chuisle, but don’t worry about it. Making you crazy is my idea of a great time. Sort of an early Christmas present to myself.”
“Sadistic bitch,” he accused amiably, and sighed down to the bottom of his lungs. “Christ, Holly, I won’t be able to get it back up for a week.”
“I can wait.”
“I can’t.”
She chuckled silently. “Stake your claim?”
“You got it. Besides, I’m startin’ to think it’ll only come up for you.” He knew he sounded bewildered. He hadn’t meant to admit that.
“Precisely what I had in mind. That’s why I staked my claim just now.”
He thought that over — Hold Fast — and grunted.
Sliding off him, she stretched luxuriously and dragged a well-worn brown afghan from a chair. Quite matter-of-factly she stripped, tossing skirt and shirt and hose and silk underwear wherever, then threw another log onto the fire. At last she draped the afghan around them both and cuddled her cheek to his shoulder.
“We’re sleeping here?” he asked fuzzily.
“I like looking at you in firelight. And I promise I’ll wake you up before Isabella comes in tomorrow.”
“I might wake up first.” He grinned, leaving no doubt as to his meaning.
“I thought you’d decided you’re incapacitated for the next week.”
“Darlin’ Holly,” he smiled, “never underestimate an Irishman in love.”
It went right through her, every muscle flinching, every nerve jumping. “What did you say?”
“I said I’m in love with you. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“And when did you realize this?”
“When I found out how rich you are.”
She nipped at his lower lip. “Cute, Lachlan. Damned cute. You’ll pay for that. Now tell me for real.”
“I’m in love with you. For real.” And then, as her head lowered once more: “Christ, Holly, don’t bite me again —”
But this time she kissed him, soft and sweet, until he was sighing in her arms. “Sleep, a chuisle mo chroí,” she whispered agains
t his lips, and put her head back where it belonged on his shoulder. He held her as tight as he possibly could for a moment, then relaxed his arms into a comfortable embrace.
HOLLY WAS RUDELY AWAKENED WHEN Evan yelped and jerked his knee into her thigh. “Huh? Evan — ?”
He sat up, half the afghan going with him. “What the hell was that?”
She was spared having to answer by the arrival of a warm mass of long white fur that wriggled into the space between her and Evan. She grinned into amber eyes shining from the black mask covering most of his face; the cat responded by trilling softly. “Hi, Mugger. Meet Evan—whose toes I bet you just tried to have for a snack.”
“Does he do that all the time?” Lachlan demanded.
“Just to me. He probably spent a while padding around, sniffing at you. And because you smell of me, and I smell of you, Mugs decided you were okay.”
“Imagine my relief.”
“C’mon, scratch his ears. Yeah, right there. See? He does like you.”
“Jesus,” he muttered. “What woulda happened if he didn’t? Or don’t I want to know?”
“Oh, he’s not vicious. He didn’t actually bite, did he? Just nibbled. If he didn’t approve, he’d just ignore you until I took the hint and got rid of you. Cats have ways of letting you know what they think.”
Mugger levitated from a half-crouch to settle himself across Evan’s broad bare shoulders, and proceeded to purr like a Porsche. Evan froze, eyes wide.
“He’s never done that before,” Holly remarked.
“Great,” he replied sourly. He reached up a hand to scratch white-tufted black ears. “So he likes me enough to let me stay?”
She stifled laughter, knowing he was imagining the possible timings of Mugger’s feasts. “Relax. He sleeps in his own bed in my office. But don’t move too suddenly. He isn’t declawed.” She doubled over laughing as his eyes went wider than ever with apprehension.
“Holly—get him off me, willya? C’mon —”
Five minutes later, with Mugger duly ensconced in his pillowed basket, Holly crawled back under the afghan and huddled against Evan to warm up. Why was it, she mused, that when you put any two people together, one of them always slept warm and the other always slept cold? The warm one—and Evan was a furnace — always kicked the covers off, and screamed bloody murder about cold hands and frozen feet, and —
But there was nary a complaint from him. There never had been. He simply tucked himself along her back from neck to knees and took her chilled hands between his big warm ones while his feet rubbed hers. Heaven in ostrich-hide cowboy boots, she told herself happily, and snuggled back against him.
“So how long you gonna be away for Christmas?” he asked, lips moving on her nape, deep voice rumbling through her chest.
“I’m not. Every airport between Maine and Atlanta will be snowed in by tomorrow afternoon. First in a series of storms all the way to Christmas Eve, or so they say. Aunt Lulah called yesterday and told me to stay here. So — no Christmas in Virginia. But that’s okay. I already got my present.” She brought one of his hands to her lips and pressed a kiss in the hollow. “A big Mick cop who says he’s madly in love with me.”
“Huh. Don’t recall saying ‘madly.’”
“It was implied. I hope. What about you—are you going to your father’s? Your sister’s?”
“Neither. I work Christmas so the other guys can be with their families.”
“How very sweet and noble of you.”
“Nobility has nothin’ to do with it. It saves me from my sister’s cooking. I take New Year’s to compensate — otherwise everybody’d think I have no life,” he finished wryly.
“Want some company at the office? Just point me to an empty desk. I’ll bring my laptop and work on letters or something.”
“Holly, you must have friends you’d rather be with —”
“Nope.” She paused. “I know a lot of people, but I don’t have many friends. Not real ones, like Susannah. In my business you kind of become a collectible, you know? I can usually tell when somebody wants to know Holly McClure the person or H. Elizabeth McClure the commodity. However it plays out, I spend a lot of time by myself. A writer’s life is only spasmodically social, anyway. And even then it’s mainly schmoozing.”
“You’re good at it. I was watching you today in the store.”
“Years of unwilling practice.” She gave a little shrug. “I don’t get out much, when it comes to it. Besides, there’s too many people out on those mean streets.”
“New York scares a country girl like you?” He snorted. “I don’t believe it.”
Holly gave another uneasy shrug. “So—can I spend Christmas with you? You wouldn’t be taking me away from anything. There’s nobody I’d rather be with.”
He was quiet for a time. Then: “So I guess you’re in love with me, too.”
“Didn’t I say so?”
“No.”
Extricating herself from his arms, she turned and propped herself on her elbows and looked down at him. “I’m sorry, Éimhín. I thought you knew. You must’ve known practically since the first minute I set eyes on you. I’ve been obvious enough about it—haven’t I?”
He shook his head slowly.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I would’ve bet the farm that you’re the type of man who never says it first. And I’m one of the few people you’ll ever know who actually has a farm to bet!”
“Are you trying to distract me from the main issue?” But he was smiling.
“If I wanted to do that, I’d kiss you here—and here — and —”
“Holly. Say it.”
“Say what?” she asked from behind his left ear.
“You know damned well what! C’mon—you’re madly in love with me. Say it!”
She took his face between her hands, gazing into his eyes. They changed from hazel to forest green to darkest brown depending on his mood, what he wore, how much sleep he’d had — and sometimes, she could swear, even the weather. But the one constant was the brilliant golden sparkle that came into his eyes when he looked at her. A fire that wasn’t holy—not him! — but certainly splendid.
“I love you, Éimhín Liam Lochlainn. I love your eyes and your smile and your amazing body —” She nipped an earlobe. “Stop smirking, you conceited pig, I’m not finished! I love talking with you, and listening to you, and making you laugh, and I even love how goddamned mule-headed you are—no, I do!” she insisted as he shook with silent laughter. “I love everything about you—I’ve fallen madly, passionately, hopelessly in love with you.”
“Mmm …” He gave her one of those impossible, irresistible grins. “I can see there’s definite advantages to getting a writer-lady in bed. You do know how to sweet-talk a man, Ms. McClure.” He smoothed her hair back. “I gotta tell you, though—‘madly’ and ‘passionately’ I like—but ‘hopelessly’? That sounds pretty grim, lady love.”
“Far from it. Trust me, a chuisle, it’s wonderful. It means all I can do is relax and enjoy the ride. That’s never happened to me before, and it’s kind of fun.”
“Even if I’m dangerous?” He looked up from under a thick screen of black lashes.
She laughed, felt herself blush. He’d heard all of it this afternoon, right enough. “Dangerous? Lachlan, you’re a menace.” Lips teasing his earlobe. “A threat to decent women everywhere.” Tongue tickling his long throat. “Ruinous to a lady’s self-control.” Fingers stealing down his belly—she smiled as muscles tightened involuntarily. “Definitely a lethal weapon —”
She gasped as she was flipped onto her back. He loomed over her, grinning.
“Fully loaded, darlin’,” he purred wickedly.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, gazing up at him. It wasn’t a beautiful face, strictly speaking—the nose was too big and the mouth not quite wide enough. But any less nose and his face would be nothing but eyes, and any difference in the mouth would forfeit the tender, vulnerable curve of the lower
lip.
He took his time—and took her over the edge again and again and again. Softly at first, with exquisite care, so subtle that she whimpered and sighed with the silken pleasure of it.
“Sing for me,” he murmured against her mouth. “I love to feel your body sing for me—”
“Oh, a chuisle, you’re the only song I know —”
He chuckled low in his throat. “Nice line, writer-lady. You gonna use it in the book?”
“Line — ! Lachlan, you miserable —”
He smiled at her and she caught her breath. His eyes had become dragon’s eyes. He reached down with one arm, hooking the elbow under her knee, opening her to him completely — and began to make love in earnest. His endurance maddened her; his control infuriated her. She clawed his back like a crazy thing, cursing him, begging him, using everything she knew about him to hurry him on. When she swore at him, he laughed. When she pleaded, he kissed her and said, “Shh—easy, now, lady love. I’ll give you what you want — don’t I always?” With him, she got more than she’d ever learned to want. And he knew it, the smug son of a bitch.
When she finally came back to herself, with very little memory of where she’d been except that it had been glorious, he was smiling an insolent little smile that somehow managed to be incredibly sweet. It was, in fact, the most beautiful face she’d ever seen.
“Were you saving that?” she murmured.
“Your present for saying you’re in love with me.”
Holly thought this over. At last she said, “If that’s your idea of a present, Christmas will be the death of me.”
“If you don’t freeze first. Fire’s almost gone —”
Yawning, she made a thoughtless gesture. In an instant, flames flared up from the logs, sparks snapping against the brass firescreen.
“— out.”
“Oh, damn,” she whispered, and turned away from him. Idiot! Moron!
It took several minutes for him to get his voice back. When he did, his words were very soft, very controlled. “That was interesting.”
Holly covered her face with her hands.
“Is there a reason, or does spontaneous combustion just come naturally?”