East Rising (Naive Mistakes #2)

by Rachel Dunning

  Because when his arms locked me there, on that stool, his eyes searing into me, I got warm. And it wasn't the fire in the next room. No ways, brother. (Actually, that fire wasn't doing shit, come to think of it.)

  His voice went low. His shoulders hunched. "Leora, I don't love you." He shook his head to emphasize the point. "Love is too weak a word. You are the sun rising in the East. You are the star I look for in the dark. You are everything to me. To say I love you is a misnomer, the greatest crime that could ever be committed against another human being, or mankind itself. I so much more than love you." He looked down, grappling for better words. "You...are my sunrise, my sunset, my day, my night, the firmament, the stars. You are the moon, the flowers, the scent of dew in the early wind, my morning coffee, my evening drink, my pillow, my comforter, my bed, my garden..." He came closer as he spoke. I was too stunned to move. "You...are my Leora, because your name encompasses all those things to me. And even though the name, Leora, is explained to us as meaning compassion and light, I know they got it wrong. Because Leora means everything, all that is important. You are my everything. My Leora."

  His right hand moved away from the counter, his eyes still trained on my own so that I barely noticed him move. He pulled his shirt up on the right side, revealing the most exquisite oblique muscles I'd ever seen. My heart thumped. He pulled his shirt higher... And there it was:

  In perfect script, with curlicues and flourishes and covered with vines and little angelic leaves...was my name, on his body, permanently:

  LEORA.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  -1-

  "You know it's a bad idea to get a tattoo of a girl's name on your body, don't you? That's Tattoo 101."

  Conall eased his shirt down, the top now hanging loosely over the band of his slacks. He placed that hand back on the counter behind me, came closer. "Is that so?" he said, moving in toward my lips, but only so far, just enough to make me break out in that nervous sweat so common of being with him.

  "Y — yes, it is..." I said, trying to focus. Really, really trying. But my focus was going quickly.

  Conall swayed, left, then right, as if eying prey. His glare lit a flame across my skin.

  "And why is that?" he asked. "Why should I not put the name of the only person I've ever loved" — oh, fuck, he just said it. He just told me he loves me! — "on my body? Because I'll never stop loving her, ever. And I want to never forget that. Because, if I ever leave her — if I ever leave you, Leora — then I deserve to be reminded of you, every day, every time I look at myself in the mirror... Forever."

  "And you do that often? Look in the mirror?"

  "All the time..."

  I swallowed. "It's warm in here, isn't it?"

  Conall said nothing. He eased his lips to just below my left ear, gave me a dry kiss on the lobe, pulled it a bit. His cologne wafted into me so that I swayed, momentarily light-headed.

  He moved his head down, still not touching me, but close, so close to me. I felt the breath from his nose go down from below my ear to just above the collar of my red leather coat.

  "I think you need to take this off," he whispered, such a manly voice, such a gentle, reassuring rumble...

  My legs, which had been together very prissily, opened, just a bit, automatically. And I felt a small throb, minor, but it was there. Oh it was there alright...

  My eyes closed.

  Before I knew it, the song had changed... A remote? For an iPod? I don't know... I hadn't been looking.

  It was our song again. Our song...

  I shook my head in disbelief. "How many times have you heard this song since you've been here?" I asked him, my eyes still closed. His fingers curled around the collar of my coat, tickling my shoulders and sending a galvanizing shiver down both sides of my back. I put my arms to my side as he slid the coat off of me, letting it drop to the floor.

  "I've heard this song every day since I left. It's the first thing I hear when I wake up, the only thing I listen to when I take lunch, the last thing I hear before I go to sleep..."

  I felt his wavy hair, sweet apple scent, graze across my nose as he moved his head to the other side of my neck. Dry lips scraped against my neck, up, this time, to my ear. And then his hands touched me, around my waist, then under my blouse. And my head dropped.

  I hit his shoulder with my forehead. My arms curled instinctively around his back as his hands moved up around my sides, to my own back. This felt different, so different. This felt...human, emotional. This felt...way too strong for it to be only physical.

  This felt...like Conall. Conall Williams. My Conall. My only one.

  "You feel good," he said.

  Self-conscious, I said, "I've picked up weight."

  "Don't lose it. You look magnificent."

  Conall, always the diplomat, always the salesmen. That's why they pay him the big bucks, I remembered thinking about him after he'd beaten the shit out of that drug-dealing lowlife.

  Except, this sounded nothing like diplomacy. It sounded completely like he meant it.

  The word echoed around in my mind: Magnificent.

  I smiled, slightly embarrassed. His index finger eased itself under the clasp of my bra, pulling it back, tightening the cups against my breasts. Then he brought the strap in again, still clasped, slow. Always slow. Conall always took his time, and it always made me desperate for him, desperate for cooling water in a parching desert; every move, every touch, every confident scrape and caress, planned, calculated, made me yearn blisteringly for this man. My Conall.

  His left hand gave a gentle scratch with its nails across the small of my back.

  I became suddenly wet. I shifted, easing my legs more outward.

  The pain of the last six months was still there, just outside a door of my mind on which it knocked. I understood, rationally, logically, that he'd had no choice. That if he hadn't done what he'd done, I might be...in Hungary! Logically, consciously, I knew all these things.

  Emotionally, none of it made sense. None of it was fair. And all of it hurt. My skin — the skin he know rubbed so assuredly with his hands — was bruised.

  My emotions whispered the next words: "Conall, I died when you were gone. Don't do that to me again. I don't care what the circumstances. Just...never leave me again. Ever."

  Before speaking, his lips stopped at the base of my neck. He kissed me, gently, wetly now, his tongue only momentarily flicking on the skin, making me shiver. "Leora, I died a thousand times in the last six months."

  My emotions continued, all logic aside: "Conall, I mean it. I don't care what happens, what the dangers are. Please, I won't survive it again. And I don't know why, but... I just can't. You are my everything. I know what you mean by that. I know it. I..." I wanted to say it, to tell him I loved him, only he was right, love wasn't the right word. What we had, especially right now in this room, was so much more.

  "Love is a misnomer," I said, "for what I feel for you."

  He smiled. "A crime against humanity."

  His magnificent, regal, turquoise-blue eyes quivered as they looked into mine. I was always naked in front of him. Conall had entered my life again. Crawled under my shell and cover and become the most important person, thing, subject in the world to me. If I fell off that cliff again, this time, I wouldn't survive.

  The song changed. I Was Made for Loving You, the Maria Mena version. And, boy, you gotta believe that that made me hot. Because, tonight, I wanted to give it all to Conall, in the darkness...

  We went at it.

  -2-

  He kissed me. I mean, really kissed me, his tongue and moisture on my traps. He grazed his teeth against me and it made me writhe. I groaned. I groaned without thinking. I groaned from so far down that the groan felt like something from the Stone Age, primal, needful, instinctual. A vibrating rumble that shook the floor and walls and rafters above.

  He pushed me against the counter and my foot slipped from the bar at the bottom of the stool. The stool leaned back, on two l
egs. I looked up, let him kiss me on the front of my neck, across to the other side. Each kiss precise, soft, leaving just a little bit of moisture so that his breath cooled my skin. He blew on it. Quivers ran up and down my skin like ants to sugar.

  He pushed against me but couldn't get closer because of that damn bar stool. He braced his hands firmly around the sides of my back, lifted, kicked the stool away! The stool crashed, nothing supporting me now but Conall's hands. My legs fell, only my toes touched the ground. Conall held me up. I was bent backwards, virtually dangling in the air.

  He leaned in closer. I let my arms ease around his back. I was ready to be taken. Why bother trying to control things? Just let him do it. Conall liked that. And I liked it. I enjoyed that, in his hands, I was putty, that he could do whatever he wanted to me, and that I would let him, and that he would never disrespect me.

  The song changed. Slow Down Baby, Christina Aguilera.

  No, please don't, baby.

  He eased his arms down, my feet now flat on the ground, and he pressed against me. Oh. God.

  I felt his hard-on, right up against my pelvis. But it was more than that. It was him. His manhood. Our connection. Against me. Wanting me. And I wanted him.

  I love you too much for my own good, I thought. A part of me believed he felt the same.

  With the rhythm of the music he rubbed against me, side to side. Fuck! I exhaled, opened my legs. Damn skinnies! Conall kissed me, and it was heaven. As he did it, he breathed in deeply, as if taking a breath for life.

  His hand went to the back of my head, hard, pushing me into his mouth. "I've missed...you...so...much," he said, kissing me all the while.

  The heat got higher. He kissed me faster, and I kissed him back. Tongues touching lips, fighting teeth. His hands ruffled my hair. He inhaled me into him. My hands massaged his wavy black hair, felt all its strands in the webs of my fingers.

  My back hurt from being pushed against the counter so hard. And, still, I felt him, his manhood, rub against me. He had it precisely positioned, right on my clit, and my body heat changed to a squirming need.

  "Conall," I said.

  He said something, but I couldn't understand because he hadn't stopped kissing me as he'd said it.

  "Conall..."

  "What?"

  "You need to take my pants off." I was throbbing now, warm, abso-fucking-lutely drenched... So much pressure. So much. Damn it. I needed to come. Now. But I knew he'd make me wait...

  "I'm getting to it," he said. His chest heaved against mine.

  Mother...fuck...

  He fanned his hands across my back, pulled me against him... "Oh yeah," I groaned there, because my clit went right to his belt buckle. My head lolled to the left. "Mmmmmmmm," I said, all without will. I was losing focus, just letting the pulses of energy take over me.

  Then the song changed.

  And then he went for my belt.

  The song was Lady Marmalade from the Moulin Rouge Soundtrack. And you know what they sing about in that song...

  I smiled. "You are such a player," I said. "Did you plan that all along?" I asked, my buckle now undone, my zip open.

  Conall scraped his fingernails gently down my pubes, put his middle finger right between my legs, then the index, pushed in, thrust, pulled up — the tip of his fingers right up against that sweet spot, baby! — and he said, "Of course I planned it." Only I didn't really hear him say that. My eyes were at the back of my head, and somehow I was on my tip toes.

  He massaged me. And I moaned and I groaned and didn't know what the fuck was going on now but it was so good and it flowed all around me and through my legs and his hand felt like heaven massaging away all the pain and sending me into a blissful oblivion. Somewhere along the line my legs gave way, not fully, but mostly. Conall's left arm held me up by my back and he massaged and thrust and rubbed into me with his right and — oh, god, he did that thing again, pressed toward him from inside.

  "Urrrrrrrgggghhhhhhmmmmmmpffffff," I cried, a primordial statement of pleasure. My pelvis moved back and forth with his hand.

  And then, without warning, as if it had always been there but only now snapped, I came. Hard, shuddering, tensing convulsions pulsed in and around my crouch, my legs, up the bottom of my back, back to the front. My head shook. My legs shook. My chin dug into his shoulder so badly that I'm sure I hurt him. I bit my lips. Growled and groaned, long and deep and echoing in the room...

  Then it slowed, almost stopped. Almost. One more shock of pleasure.

  I exhaled.

  And I held Conall, satisfied.

  I put my heels on the ground. He kept his hand between my legs, his fingers still inside me, moved them around slowly, and they felt so good, just lolling, left, right, back and forth, up and down. They squished audibly. I smiled embarrassedly. He kept at it.

  Bliss.

  With his hand still in me, I put my eyes to his shoulder, sniffed in his manly scent, breathed it all the way into me so that it filled me, and I said, "I love you."

  "I love you, Leora. More than words can tell."

  The song changed. Just Hold Me, Maria Mena.

  What a fucking player...

  I loved him for it. Loved him so much. Loved him so much it scared the shit out of me. Because I'd lost him once.

  I couldn't lose him again.

  CHAPTER NINE

  -1-

  Conall convinced me to spend the night. It didn't take much convincing.

  He ordered pizza from Dominos and we sat on the floor eating it.

  "Can I wear one of your shirts and walk around without underwear if I sleep over?" I asked.

  "Of course you can. You can also walk around without one of my shirts and without underwear."

  The pizza slice in my hand stopped as it entered my mouth. He laughed at me.

  Later that night, when it was time for bed, I lay on my side and looked at him, my head on my palm. He stared up at the ceiling.

  "I have to work tomorrow," I said. "Will you take me to the train station?"

  He looked at me like I'd insulted his mother. "Of course not, I'll drive you there myself."

  "It's a two hour drive."

  "One hour and forty-five minutes."

  "Oh, you've done that drive? Was your P.I. not enough that you had to come over and spy on me yourself?"

  "I never spied on you myself. The P.I. was just a precaution. I did all I could to respect your privacy while still keeping enough of an eye on you to keep you secure."

  "Sorry, I was only kidding."

  He looked serious, not the joking type on this subject at all.

  "Conall, I want to thank you."

  He swallowed, cleared his throat. "OK."

  "Wow, usually when someone thanks you, you tell them it was your pleasure!" I undid his top shirt button as I spoke.

  "Oh, that's very proper Ms Caivano. England teaching you well then, is it?"

  I chuckled. "You're so full of shit, you know that?" I undid his second button.

  He turned to his side, facing me. "Leora, I didn't say it was my pleasure because it was because of me that you might've been in danger. It wasn't my pleasure. It was my duty. The worst is I don't even know if they would've come for you. So all that pain, these last months, might've been for nothing after all. I fucked it up for us. And I'll spend as long as I have, making it up to you."

  He grabbed my hand, the one that had been unbuttoning his shirt. I'd gotten down to three buttons. He held it firm so that my fingers squeezed under his grip.

  "I get it," I said. "But thank you anyway..." I ran my fingernails across his chest hair. His skin had gotten so much darker. I wanted to ask him about that, but I was distracted now. Distracted by the curly hairs tickling me under my fingernails. Distracted by his magical eyes which now scorched me from the top down.

  "I'd actually wanted to" — he cleared his throat — "do a little bit of talking tonight," he said.

  "M-hm?" I moved down and kissed his neck. He pushed the bac
k of his head into the pillow. I put my right leg over his crotch. He rubbed my thigh.

  "That was a good idea to put on my shirt."

  "You mean, it was a good idea to take off my pants, don't you?" I kissed him across his neck, feeling more confident. Feeling, for the first time, like I was on equal footing with him. Like I would be the one to control things, at least sometimes, in the bedroom.

  I also thought, This is the first time we're actually doing anything in the bedroom!

  "Yes, that's actually what I meant. Your bare skin feels good under my hand."

  I moved down to his chest, licked his chest hairs.

  "You're more tanned now. Showing people your tattoos?" His hand eased over to my butt, under the strap of my underwear. His index pressed lightly against my anal hole, not penetrating it. My confidence shriveled, and a flush of cool, exhilarating air washed over my skin. I had not been expecting that. The move had been gentle, caring, and maddeningly arousing...

  I started sweating.

  He moved his hand down, touched me at my crotch, on the lips, just on each side a little.

  Nope, I wasn't going to control this. I stopped kissing him, put my forehead to his chest, and just waited for him to make the next move. I was all his now. As I always was when he started moving his hands confidently around all my hot spots.

  He kept tickling me there, just moving around lightly on the outside, making me more wet with every move. I straddled him, pressed against him, getting some friction going on my clit. He still had on the jeans he'd changed into and it helped. I got more turned on and pressed harder, rubbing and rocking my pelvis back and forth, slowly, grinding. My mouth opened, my breath got hot. I was going to come already! Just like this, gentle, easy. It didn't have to be sizzling and intense all the time with him. It could also be easy like this, like a slow morning fuck. I thought of this as I rode him, pretending it was the morning already. My eyes were closed so I could pretend whatever the hell I wanted to.