by Trish Wylie
Connor swore. ‘And I’m getting yelled at for giving you the one thing you’ve argued with me most over ever since I’ve got here! How does that make any sense?’
‘Maybe—unlike you—I get more satisfaction out of building something good and decent and worthwhile. Something that makes a difference to people’s lives! Because when I wake up each day I have to look at myself in the mirror. Can you do that, Connor? Can you look yourself in the mirror and like what you see there? What happened to the man who built a business from the ground with his brother—the one who helped support an entire family when they needed it—the one who must have worked night and day to make sure it worked? Who cared that much! Where is he?’
‘And your life is so perfect, is it? Hiding away here in this wreck of a place with a load of pensioners, a gay best friend, and other people’s kids? I wouldn’t go throwing any stones if I were you!’
Shannon’s heart cracked open a little inside of her. ‘When a single bit of my life is any concern of yours then you can go right on ahead and make judgements!’
‘That goes both ways, don’t you think?’
‘Well, now that we both know exactly where we stand, why don’t you just leave, Connor? Go away. Go make someone else’s life difficult—I’m sure there are thousands of people living in Devenish buildings who’ll be ecstatic to see you coming!’
But he leaned in closer, his expression dangerously dark, hands holding hers in a viselike grip as he told her in a strained voice, ‘You know your problem, Shannon? It bugs you that you want me as much as you do, that’s what this is really about. If that kiss hadn’t been interrupted earlier we could have been upstairs using all this energy a much better way. You know that whatever was between us before is still here—in all its varying forms of complication. And it kills you that that might mean stepping outside of this safe little world you’ve made for yourself!’
The loud sound of their ragged breathing filled the short pause before he swore again, throwing her hands back from his chest, opening his mouth to say more—and then completely stunning Shannon by yanking open the door and stalking out through it.
Leaving her alone in the sudden silence.
After a moment she sagged back against the wall, staring into space, trying to figure out what had just happened.
She had just said things to him that had to have been very hurtful to him if his life really did feel at all empty. Of all people, she should know that—because he’d been right about her fear of stepping outside the safe little world she’d found. Not that she could ever begin to explain to him why. And yet she had thrown the words in his face to hit back at him regardless—leaving him little choice but to throw equally angry words back at her.
Every cruel, hurtful truth he had said in return had only been what she deserved. She’d made this mess, had probably laid the foundations for it seven years ago.
Why? Why couldn’t she just leave him be to make his own mistakes? To learn on his own? How could it still matter to her so much?
It was the physical attraction addling her brain, wasn’t it? It had to be. It couldn’t be anything else.
If she had to find one thing she could blame her erratic mood swings on, then surely that would be it? Because from that first dance, hell, from the first day he had walked in looking so disgustingly sexy in his expensive suit, she had had to deal with her reaction on the most basic of physical levels. And having spent all evening with her body pressed alongside his, well—
But now she was left feeling so overwhelmingly alone and empty—and frustrated. It was almost as if, in the space of one full day in his company, he had become a part of her life again in all the ways that had made her want him so badly before.
Would she ever be able to just reach out and grab hold of something when she wanted it without worrying about the repercussions? Maybe if the repercussion hadn’t been so life changing the last time…
But surely the one time would have done it? Sex for sex’s sake, for mutual satisfaction and the removal of tension, maybe even to eradicate some of the haunting memories from before—at least for Shannon.
But any chance of that had just walked out the door, along with any chance of saving her building.
All those people that relied on her—all those people that she would now have to sit down to explain how she had lost them the one lifeline they had in their cash-strapped community—they’d be devastated.
Lifting her hands, she pressed the fleshy part of her palms tight in against her eyes, leaning over while she tried to even out her breathing. On top of everything else she really couldn’t allow herself to have a panic attack, or—worse still—to cry…
After a few breaths she pushed up and off the wall, yanking open the inner door to step into the small vestibule so that she could lock the outer door. She reached into the pocket of her sweats to find the key, looked up—and gasped when she found Connor looking back at her through the glass.
The last of a glorious summer’s day was dying in the sky behind him while he stared at her, his jaw line clenching while he thought. And on the other side of the door Shannon stood transfixed, holding her breath, waiting to see what he was going to do next.
‘Open the door.’
Shannon shook her head and he scowled in response.
‘Open the door, Shannon.’
She shook her head again. ‘It’s not locked.’
Stating the obvious tore a small smile from him, before he glanced away, looked heavenwards, and then pulled open the door, stepping into the small space she made for him when she stepped back.
Towering over her again, he searched her wide eyes for a long moment, watching as she pursed her lips together to stop saying something that might start another argument.
Then he took a breath. ‘I wasn’t trying to give you what you wanted to make things worse.’
‘I kn—’
He held up a hand. ‘No—don’t say a word. Let’s not do any more damage, okay?’
Shannon pursed her lips again.
While the hand in front of her curled until he had a forefinger to point at her. ‘You—are capable of making me angrier—’ his hand uncurled again as he held both hands out in a sweeping movement ‘—than any other woman on this planet. I have no idea why that is you can do that.’
She pursed her lips even tighter together. Because that statement was just begging for an answer.
‘But what beats me even more is that I keep coming back, every time.’ He took a deep, steadying breath, glancing briefly upwards again. ‘All right, so I’m not perfect, but you’ve known me a long time, so you’ve always known that. And, frankly, I have no interest in being perfect ‘cos that’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself. So, yeah, occasionally I am going to mess up—like I apparently did five minutes ago when I tried to remove this great pink elephant that always seems to be standing between us communicating.’
Shannon swallowed hard and allowed her mouth to relax. Because she genuinely didn’t want another argument with him, and when he was making this big a gesture by staying to talk it through with her there was just no way she was going to do anything to spoil it.
She even tried a small smile of encouragement on for size.
Which brought his gaze to her mouth for a long, long while before he swallowed hard, locked eyes with her again, and his voice became huskier. ‘The thing about being a crusader, Shannon, is that you have to have a “She who casts the first stone” quality to you. I could say plenty about you building some kind of stand-in family for yourself here rather than making one of your own with someone—’
Oh, and that had to be answered!
But he raised a hand again as her mouth opened. ‘No, now you know that’s true. Don’t bother denying it. Many things I may be, but blind isn’t one of them.’
She resorted to scowling up at him instead.
‘It’s like this. Neither of us are necessarily doing a good job with our lives right now this second. But y
ou can’t make me find my path—that I’ll do on my own—which, right now, leaves me with just the one problem to deal with…’
Her eyebrows rose in question.
And finally he smiled a small smile in return. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what that problem might be?’
‘Oh, I’m allowed to speak now am I?’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘That’s gracious of you.’ She smiled to negate the sarcasm in her words. ‘So, what is your problem?’
‘You. You’re my problem.’
The answer took her breath away, said with such intensity in his voice and his eyes that she was left in no doubt that his inner struggle was as torturous as her own.
Placing them on equal ground for the first time.
‘You see—’ he took a step closer ‘—while I seem to have this inability to stay away from you for long and together we seem to have this ability for ending up in an argument of some kind or another every damn time—I’m left with a real problem deciding whether to strangle you or kiss you senseless. Because you have to know as well as I do that most of this arguing comes down to one thing.’
‘And that is?’ She knew the answer before he said it.
‘It’s sexual tension. What we ended on last time is exactly what we’ve started with this time. We’re not done. We’re nowhere near done.’
Shannon damped her lips with the end of her tongue, watching him watch the movement with heavy eyes and without taking the time to think about the repercussions—she dived right in with the one choice that her pulse rate would be happy with. Her chin rose in challenge.
‘Well, I don’t want to be strangled.’
Connor’s hands reached up to frame her face, his long fingers threading deep into the thick hair at her nape while his head lowered until his warm breath was fanning her lips.
‘Good choice.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
THIS TIME THERE was no question about Shannon not joining in. No question at all—
regardless of where it would take her. She’d deal with the damn consequences later.
The door key she had been holding made a loud jangle as it hit the tiled floor. But Shannon couldn’t hear anything beyond the roaring in her ears, couldn’t feel anything but the pressure of Connor’s mouth on hers. She barely even noticed the taste of Dolly Mixtures in his mouth.
He was right. They weren’t done. Nowhere near it.
That one unmatched night of sheer passion had never left her memory. But the experience had been overshadowed by so much sadness afterwards that she now wanted nothing more than to overshadow the shadows with more of that same passion. She’d just been kidding herself she didn’t want that from the very second he’d walked in the door, hadn’t she?
It was why she couldn’t leave things be, why she argued with him so much. She’d been fighting against something she had no control over—she’d never had control of it.
Her hands bunched into tight fistfuls of shirt against his chest while she moved her head to keep her mouth constantly on his. And she felt dizzy for a second as the memory of his kisses invaded her mind, tangling the past and present together so that it was tough to know what was then and what was now.
The moment he ran his tongue over her bottom lip she sighed, opening up to him. Kissing him was good!
But it wasn’t enough. Not when her body already knew what could follow.
Instinctively her hands flattened, smoothing over the broad expanse of muscled chest, then lower—where she felt his stomach muscles contract. And when he dragged his mouth briefly from hers, she smiled as he grumbled down at her. ‘Slowly.’
Standing up on tiptoe, she continued smiling against his mouth. ‘We did slowly last time.’
‘And slowly worked if I recall.’ He pushed her back against the cool plaster wall, his head descending to the sensitive skin below her ear where his tongue flickered out to taste her and tease her even more.
Shannon raised her arms, frantically tangling her fingers in his short hair to draw his head up to see his face. When his eyebrows rose in question she told him firmly, ‘When we last did this I was a twenty-year-old virgin—slow was exactly what I needed. I’m a fully grown twenty-seven-year-old woman now who has just had a massive row with you.
What we’re about to do is make-up sex. Make-up sex isn’t slow.’
Connor grinned wickedly. ‘And I thought we were just kissing…’
‘We’ve never just kissed.’
At some point, while they’d been ‘just kissing’, he had let go of her face, his hands dropping to her hips to hold her in place. And while she had her arms raised he took advantage of the unrestricted access to her body, smoothing up her sides until his thumbs were underneath her breasts.
‘Make-up sex, huh?’ He looked down at his thumbs as they rose, tracing the lace of her bra through the thin material of her T-shirt. ‘You might have to show me how that goes, because I’ve never actually stayed in a relationship long enough for that.’
Shannon was looking at him in disbelief when he glanced up, a wicked gleam in his eyes.
‘But then, like I said, I’ve never actually argued with someone the way I end up arguing with you.’
His mouth stole the gasp from her lips when he cupped her breasts, kneading through the soft material, gently at first, then with more pressure, until Shannon thought her knees would buckle underneath her. She moaned in protest when he stopped, twisting her head back and forth when he began to tug the T-shirt upwards, freeing it from the waistband of her sweats.
Eventually he tore his mouth free to grumble, ‘Where did you drop the key?’
‘What key?’ There was a key?
‘The key to the door—we really need to move away from here. ’Cos I’m fairly sure that we can be seen from the street.’
Shannon swore softly. You’d have thought that, as the one who lived there, that thought might have occurred to her. If they stayed where they were for much longer, doing what they were doing, then any passer-by was in for one hell of a show.
But it gave her a moment to pause for thought—to seek some sense of rationale. She could stop this if she wanted to.
To hell with that!
When he kissed her again, this time harder and with more unbridled raw passion than before, she knew she was already lost.
She wrenched her mouth free when she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. ‘I dropped it. It must be on the floor.’
They pulled apart long enough to find the key, lock the door, and push back through the inner door to the foyer. And by then they were already wrapped around each other again, lips tangled while they fumbled frantically to remove layers of clothing.
‘Are you sure everyone has gone home? No Yummy Mummies or Briedas to appear from behind one of those doors?’
Shannon’s answer was as breathless as Connor’s question had been while she kicked off her shoes and hauled his shirt down over his elbows. ‘Positive.’
She disappeared briefly underneath her T-shirt as Connor pulled it over her head. Then he took a long moment to kiss her senseless again while he deftly unhooked her bra and slid the scrap of material off her shoulders.
It was only then, as he stood back a little from her and watched his hands on her naked breasts, that everything slowed down a little.
And in the silence of the room their ragged breathing and the thundering of his heart in his chest made Connor feel as if it was a moment he would never forget.
Just as the last time had been.
He splayed his fingers, studying the contrast between his tanned skin and her pale breasts.
When he held his fingers wide that way he could hold each breast completely within his palm—which was sexy as hell—and the sense of urgency came back in a single heartbeat.
He needed desperately to be inside her. He’d waited long enough.
She moved her hands up his arms, grasping hold of his shoulders to rock back a little on her heels, pushing he
r breasts tighter into his hands. And the sight of her arched towards him like that was as much as he could take, his erection straining agonizingly against the buttons of his jeans.
He sought her lips again, plunging his tongue into the sweet-tasting recesses of her mouth in a way that could leave her in no doubt of what he wanted. And she met him kiss for kiss, touch for touch, her hands frantic on his back, grasping hold of his shoulders, nails digging into his skin as she moaned into his mouth.
‘We’re never going to make it up four flights of stairs.’ He looked around the foyer.
Reluctantly he freed her breasts, wrapping his arms around her narrow waist to lift her off the ground and march them behind the large counter, while Shannon’s hair brushed against his chin as she looked to see where he was taking her.
Using his forearm to clear a space on the lower shelf, he hoisted her higher, groaning at the delicious sensation of her soft breasts crushing against his hard chest, before he unceremoniously plunked her down, smiling at her as she grinned up at him.
‘Right here?’
‘We’ve gone past the window of opportunity for slow. And I told you that kitchen counter has been on my mind for days now. So, yes, right here.’
Leaning down, he kissed her again, plunging his tongue deep into her mouth while one hand reached for her breast again, the other snaking lower, turning over, so that his knuckles grazed over her flat stomach and along the edge of her white lace panties.
Drawing another low moan from her throat to echo around the cavernous room. But when she reached out for the button on the band of his jeans he stepped back out of her reach, wrenching his mouth free to rest his forehead against hers for a moment.
‘You do that and you really are going to end up with the hard and fast version of this.’
Almost panting, she looked up into his eyes. ‘I want hard and fast. We just had a fight, remember?’
‘I remember. But we both need to be at the same place. I want you to come when I’m inside you.’
He watched in amazement as she smiled a purely sexual smile up at him, her eyes gazing into his up close and personal as she whispered, ‘Who says I’m not at the same place you are? I want you inside me. Now.’