by Amy Olle
Maybe he never had been.
The warm whisper of his breath teased her ear when he asked, “Do you remember the first time I touched you like this?”
The night he’d returned from that first summer spent on the freighter, he’d climbed through her bedroom window and drowned her with kisses and apologies. She’d tried to extract promises that he’d never leave her again. Rather than give them, he’d teased and fondled her flesh until, panting and sobbing, her first orgasm screamed through her. When he’d left her bed in the black of night, he still hadn’t made her a single promise.
Her head moved with a jerky nod.
He skimmed over her wetness and then stroked deep, the touch so intimate, she couldn’t speak for the tears clogged in her throat.
He brushed a brief, hot kiss against the side of her throat, then slipped one hand to her back as he eased her down onto the table. Shoving the hem of her dress high above her waist, one work-roughened hand rubbed slow, drugging circles over her belly while the other tenderly stroked the source of her craving.
She watched him watching her body, mesmerized by the beautiful clash of hard and soft on his face. His probing, ravenous gaze fed her arousal until the sweet torture grew impossibly high and taut. Arching her back, she swiveled her hips, unabashedly chasing the pleasure his gentle, circling strokes wrought. She neared the peak and was ready to fling herself over the precipice when his fingers suddenly left her body.
Her protests died in her throat when he frantically worked the drawstring on his loose-fitting shorts and yanked the cloth down over his hips to stand naked before her.
She swallowed with an audible gulp.
He was big. His proud erection pressed against his stomach, so long and thick that the dusky head concealed his belly button. Though she’d never been with any other man, she spent her days around women in the mood to talk. Curious about some of what she’d overheard, she once took to the internet and came away convinced Shea was large. Larger than most. By a lot.
“Open your legs.” His husky voice rasped with his barely restrained control.
She never could deny him for long.
When he stepped between her thighs, his hips spread her wide. His hardness pressed against her vulnerable core and her flesh resisted him, just as her heart did. With the tip of his heavy shaft poised at her entrance, he teased her with his fingers until she’d returned to the mountaintop and hovered at the edge of the cliff.
He nudged inside.
She cried out with painful joy as her body sucked him deeper. He resisted. She shifted her hips and moaned when he slipped another fraction inside her.
Then it was a sensual altercation. With little wiggles and undulations, she tried to entice him farther inside, but he delayed, teasing and tormenting her aching flesh until she begged him in a hoarse whisper to “do it now, please.” She needed him inside her.
That she begged him rankled, but her anger fractured to tiny bits of nothingness when he pushed inside the wet constriction of her body, gentle in the way only a big man could be. Her body succumbed to his power even as she squirmed at the impossible thickness of him.
“That’s it, a chuisle mo chroí. Let me in.”
Pulse of my heart.
The endearment pulled a sob from her.
His lips caught at hers while he pushed into her honeyed core, inch by glorious inch. When she’d taken him all, a shaking breath rattled through her. If he could give her more, she’d have taken that, too. There was no part of him she could refuse. Not in this moment. She wanted all of him. One last time.
He grasped her bottom, his fingers biting into the plump roundness, and set a steady, upward plunging rhythm. With every voluptuous plunge, sensation spiraled and multiplied. Each thrust drove another memory from her mind. The first time he kissed her. The first time he made love to her. The first time he took her from behind.
Moisture leaked from the corners of her eyes as all her senses burst to colorful life. Having been dulled and grayed for so long, sensation overwhelmed her. She clung to him, lifting her knees to wrap her legs around his lean waist. The position allowed him to wedge deeper and a guttural groan tore from him.
He tugged her wrists above her head and anchored them to the table. “You think another man is going to be able to give you this?”
A broken sob escaped her.
“You think you’re done with me?” He thrust in a tireless rhythm, in and out, the friction slippery and sweet and carnal. “Tell me you never want me again. Tell me you can bear the thought of never being with me this way again. Say it and I’ll stop right now.”
No one would ever fill her the way he did. No one would ever be able to touch her so deep.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Never,” she whispered.
His big, driving body was unrelenting, as though if he loved her fiercely enough he might be able to push out all the anger and hurt and fear.
“We are not getting a divorce, Isobel. Do you hear me?”
He couldn’t stop her. They both knew it. But their bodies sang with the promise they made to each other long ago, with their words and their bodies.
“You are the only one,” he rasped. “There can be no others.”
His hands braced on either side of her head, she gripped his wrists and held on while the orgasm crashed over her. Turning her head, her teeth scraped over the script tattoo on his forearm while the muscles of her pulsing core spasmed with brutal pleasure. With her throaty moans, she swallowed the Gaelic words inscribed in his flesh, translating roughly to “one heart, one way.”
Inside her, Shea grew unbearably thick and hard. His long, deep plunges became short and urgent until he shuddered and his heat flooded her in violent pulsations.
In the silence afterward, their ragged breathing mingled and for one brief, painful moment, she lived in him as the beating of his heart.
With the pad of his thumb, he wiped away the tracks left by her tears. She blinked rapidly as she returned to herself. To the place where grief and doubt outlasted passion.
Unlocking her legs from around his waist, she wriggled out from under him. She tried to pull away, but he caught her easily with one hand at the small of her back. He tugged her close, drawing her against his body until her cheek rested against his collarbone.
He held her, his mouth near her temple. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
She swallowed convulsively. “It’s all we do anymore.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
With the sharp bite of longing, her eyes filled with tears once more.
Shaking her head, she pressed her palms against his chest, but her soft shove didn’t budge him. “We’ve tried everything. Nothing ever works for long.”
Weariness filled his frustrated sigh. The sound, small and seemingly harmless, carried with it years of arguments and painful memories, and might as well have been a slap to the face.
Shame built as a sob in her throat.
Snatching the envelope off the counter, she thrust it at his chest. “Just sign the papers, Shea.”
His expression hardened, and for the first time that day, she recognized him as the man she thought to divorce.
On his chest, his larger hand covered hers. Instinctively, his fingers sought the secret crevices between her knuckles.
“We had a deal,” he said, his voice like velvet wrapped in steel.
Alarm bells went off inside her head. She tried to pull back her hand, but his grip tightened.
“You’ve had your kiss.” She rattled the envelope. “Sign.”
A cold sneer curled his lip. “I wasn’t talking about kissing your mouth.”
Chapter Nine
They belonged together, and after what had happened on his boat, she could no longer deny it.
But in case she thought to, Shea was prepared to get her naked and prove her wrong, over and over again, until he’d drilled the truth into her pretty little head.
The bell chimed above his head when
he entered the store.
He knew sex wouldn’t fix their marriage. Might make things worse, in fact, if he didn’t handle it right. But he didn’t plan to make things worse, and sex with his wife might just be the opening he needed to break through her barriers. Just a tiny crack; if he could exploit the breach, he might be able to barge the rest of the way back into her life and her heart.
There were no guarantees that he’d know what to do once inside her walls, but it was a chance. One he had to take if he was going to win his wife back.
And he had to win her back. There was no other option. Not for him.
He hadn’t laid eyes on her days. Not since she’d tugged her dress down over her naked hips and scurried from his arms looking more shaken and fragile than he’d ever seen her. Though it’d gutted him to let her go, he could see she needed some space. He gave it to her, a part of him recognizing that he’d never be able to hold onto her by grasping too tightly.
But then last night, she sent Ava to pick up Connor and Maisie, and his mercy came to a swift end.
Summoned by the chime, Isobel emerged from the back room, a bulbous heap of frilly fabric in her arms. He despised the world-weary frown that pulled at her features when she spotted him.
She picked her way through the clothing racks and edged close to him. “What are you doing here?” she hissed.
She’d drawn her dark hair into a sleek ponytail, and as usual, makeup she didn’t need painted her beautiful face. If he hadn’t peered closely, he would’ve missed the puffy bags under her eyes.
A dark pleasure spread through him as he contemplated what might be keeping her awake at night. “Why haven’t you returned my calls?”
She glanced in the direction of a woman rummaging through the horde of white dresses at the back of the store. “Have you signed the papers?”
“We haven’t finished our negotiations.”
Pink rushed into her cheeks. “That wasn’t a negotiation. It was extortion.”
Beneath the flowy black blouse she wore, black leggings hugged her lush bottom and shapely thighs.
“All I asked for was a kiss.” He dragged his gaze back to her face. “The rest happened because we’re meant to be together.”
She offered her customer a weak smile, then sliced him with a look. “Can we not do this here?”
“Where would you like to do it?”
The warm color on her cheeks spread to her neck and chest, and her lips parted with the slight hitch in her breathing. Triumph and lust tugged at his balls.
“It was just sex,” she whispered, panic churning in her stormy eyes.
“It was good sex. Fucking fantastic sex.” He pushed into her space. “It’s a whole new ball game now, my sweet wife.”
Holding the dress tightly to her chest, like a shield, she backed away. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m not giving up on us. We’re good together, Isobel. Incredible.”
“Sex was never our problem.” She came up hard against the counter. “Our issues are bigger than that. Sign the papers, Shea.”
Slowly, he reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair that’d escaped her ponytail off her forehead. “I will never forgive myself for what’s happened to us. I didn’t guard our relationship with enough jealousy. But that ends now.”
The pink tip of her tongue came out to lick her lips.
“I’m going to win you back, a mhuirnīn.”
Her expression softened. “Shea, I told you, it’s too late.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“You’re not listening to me.” She pressed her palm to his chest, as though she intended to push him away. “It’s over.”
“I disagree.”
Her hand over his heart, her gaze locked on his mouth. “It doesn’t matter if you agree with me or not. It’s wh-what I want.”
His patience ran out. “Goddammit, Isobel, we are not getting a div—”
“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice interrupted.
Isobel’s head snapped around while Shea bit down on a curse and eased away from her.
The woman with the shitty timing pointed to the dress in Isobel’s hands. “Can I see that dress?”
Isobel blinked rapidly and then hoisted the crumpled gown filling her arms. “This one?”
The woman lifted the pale pink dress high, letting the fabric unfurl. “I love this color. Blush is so trendy right now.” Her head bent to one side as she studied the gown. “Who’s the designer?”
Words seemed to stick and slip on Isobel’s tongue. “Oh, uh, she’s no one you’d know.”
The woman dropped her chin to glower at Isobel over the rim of her tortoiseshell eyeglasses. “What’s her name?”
The pink in Isobel’s cheeks heightened and spread, pulling a frown from Shea.
“Uh…” With a nervous side-eye glance at him, she offered the woman a feeble smile. “It’s me. I made it.”
Surprise slammed into Shea and his head whipped from the extravagant gown the woman held up to his wife. “You made this?”
“Do you have any other dresses I can see?”
After a moment of stunned paralysis, Isobel sprang forward. At a nearby rack, she rifled through garments and soon hauled a white puffy one from the throng.
“Here’s a drop-waist ball gown, and I have a sheath over here somewhere…” With her free hand, Isobel shuffled through more gowns. “What style are you looking for?”
A spurt of laughter burst from the woman and she pushed a lock of her lightly graying hair behind one ear. “I’m not buying for myself. Where is the sheath?”
Isobel hauled another dress from the store rack and hooked all three gowns onto the crossbar, laying them atop the other gowns.
The woman shoved her eyeglasses on top of her head and stepped back.
Shea stared at the dresses right along with her. How had he not known Isobel made a wedding dress? Three of them. At least.
Why hadn’t she told him?
“I think there’s one more in the back.” Isobel bit down on her bottom lip. “Do you want me to get it?”
Frowning in concentration, the woman nodded. “Yes, please.”
While Isobel scurried away, Shea watched the woman inspect the gowns. She hunched close and examined the beading on one dress while on another, she lifted the hem and inspected the stitching on the gown’s underside.
What in the hell was going on?
Isobel reappeared with a creamy white dress, which the woman lifted from her hands with a hum of appreciation. “Ooh, I love this fabric. Is it silk?”
Isobel nodded. “I couldn’t resist making a dress with it.”
Hanging the dress alongside the others, the woman plucked the eyeglasses off her head. She chewed lightly on one temple tip on the glasses.
Then she twisted to face Isobel. “Your designs are beautiful. They’re trendy, but they’ve got a real vintage-inspired feel, don’t they?”
Isobel’s soft smile landed like a physical blow in the center of Shea’s chest.
“My mom was a seamstress,” Isobel said. “She loved vintage clothing.”
“Did she teach you how to sew?” the woman asked, her no-nonsense expression softening a bit.
“She tried, but I was a brat and didn’t listen to her.” With a rusty laugh, Isobel gave her head a small shake. “Oh, how I have suffered for it ever since.”
The woman’s eyeglasses cut through the air. “No one listens to their mother. Especially teenage girls. It’s the rite of passage for every woman to learn the hard way that her mother was right all along.”
While the women shared a laugh, his heart battered his sternum.
“I like to look at old pictures of her.” Isobel’s soft voice sloped through him. “I didn’t realize it when she was alive, but she was very stylish. She’s inspired a few of my designs.”
The woman’s gaze returned to the dresses. “I love this one.” She touched the delicate fabric. “The cut is amazing.”
He gaped, his mouth slightly ajar, at the sudden reappearance of the soft, tenderhearted woman he’d married. It’d been years since he’d seen her. Happy and hopeful, with no traces of worry or resentment. God, how he missed her.
“And the way you mix vintage with trendy touches is remarkable. You have a gift.”
Despite her obvious pleasure, a frown puckered Isobel’s brow. “You know a lot about wedding dresses. Do you work in the industry?”
The woman stuck out her hand. “I’m Vanessa Dubois. I’m the editor at Stylish Bride magazine.”
A strangled sound erupted from Isobel. “Oh! I—I—I love your magazine. I read it every month.”
The wide smile remained on Vanessa’s face as Isobel shook her hand with enough vigor to cause injury to most people. “What’s your name?”
“Isobel.”
“Isobel what?”
Isobel froze, then her gaze darted to his face.
She swallowed thickly. “Nolan. Isobel Nolan.”
“Nolan?” Vanessa stuck her glasses on top of her head again. “Do you know Leo?”
“It depends,” Shea interjected. “What’s he done?”
Vanessa turned intelligent eyes on him. “He’s marrying my niece.”
Isobel gasped. “Prue is your niece?”
Over the odd sound of Isobel’s sputtering shock, Shea said, “Well in that case, I’m Leo’s eldest and most charming brother.”
“The oldest brother?” Vanessa eyed him thoughtfully. “Luke?”
“Close,” he lied. “I’m Shea.”
“Shea and Isobel.” Her gaze traveled between them. “That makes you Colin and Mary’s parents?”
“You’ve met Connor and Maisie?” Isobel asked.
“Prue and I were at the beach scouting sites for the ceremony when we ran into… Noah? With the kids.” A calculating gleam came into Vanessa’s eyes. “You have a beautiful family.”
Isobel suddenly appeared slightly ill.
“And we’re delighted to be adding your lovely niece to the clan,” Shea said easily.
Vanessa assessed him openly, and he offered her a smile, the one he knew made most women blush or giggle, sometimes both.