All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (39 page)

“Diana did.”

“Not by invitation. You’re here. She isn’t. She won’t be again if I can help it.”

She had no answer. She bit her lip and tried to look away.

He added, a sudden intense surge in his voice, “You don’t know what you’re asking. You can’t possibly know what you want already. It’s only been a week—”

Laura broke across his words. “It’s been
thirty years
.”

The fierceness in her voice startled him; it startled her. She felt strength flooding back into her limbs, warmth returning to her body. She felt her skin again, the clothes touching her body, the damp hair on her neck, the cool air across her face. She stood there, Dominic’s daughter, who did not give up, who reached out and held on and never let go. She had a new source of strength now; she had the pain he had been unable to shield from her knowing eyes.

Richard Ashmore loved her. He had always loved her, he just hadn’t known.

“I’ve loved you since I was two years old. Do you remember when we met?”

He said, and he sounded weary, “I was eight. You can’t remember—”

She crossed the kitchen to him. She felt light, as light as that woman he had loved on Sunday afternoon.

“I don’t even know if I really remember or not. Maybe I just heard it from your mother so many times that it’s one of those made-up memories. My father brought us over to Ashmore Park to meet Lucy, and you were hovering around her. You were her guardian angel. You weren’t going to let anyone take your little sister.” This was her precious memory. She’d kept it in her lockbox all these years, during all the cold days and nights of exile, taking it out from time to time to hold against her heart. “Then – your father’s dog, do you remember? I dropped my doll, and he picked it up in his teeth and started running around with it, and you went after him and retrieved it. And you brought it back to me. And,” her voice caught, “you were so tall already, and I was so little, and I tried to hide behind Francie. And you – everyone said you realized your height was scaring me, you said, ‘Laurie, don’t be afraid, I’ll take care of you,’ and you knelt on one knee and held the doll out to me.”

He watched her, making no effort to hide his disbelief. He didn’t believe she remembered this. And why should he believe it? He had no idea how much she cherished that memory, invented or not, because even then her perfect knight had knelt to her and pledged his heart.

“So don’t you tell me it’s only been a week! I’ve had thirty years to know what I want.”

She took a deep breath.

“I want what she threw away. I will not throw you away, I will love you, I will cherish you, I will give you back the years she ruined. I will give you everything I have to give.”

She stopped, and she stared hard at him.

“And if I have to protect you, if I have to go away to make sure she can’t hurt you, then I will damn well do it. I’m over doing things your way, Richard. I’m going to do this honestly, and you’re going to be honest too.”

She saw him swallow once, twice, and his hands, still spread out to his sides on the counter, were white at the knuckles. She saw him fighting for control, and she hoped he lost it. She was sick of his iron control. She was sick of his mask.

“Laura.” Quiet, measured. “Sometimes I wish you didn’t love me so much. You give me too much power over you. I don’t want that kind of power over another human being.”

She walked closer to him and stood just inches from him. He could reach out easily and touch her if he wanted to; she could touch him. She lifted her chin, and she smiled, the woman she really was, the woman she always had been.

“I have just as much power over you,” she said. “And for the same reason. Stop fooling yourself. You’re in love with me, and you need to admit it to us both. Stop acting as if you have a choice not to love me, because, Richard Ashmore, you absolutely do not.”

His face was still, but the pain had drained away from his eyes. She didn’t know if he would say it or not. The last woman he had said those words to had trampled all over his heart and tossed it out like so much trash. Well, she’d meant what she said, and now he had to deal with it. This woman wasn’t settling for leftovers in the night.

“Well?” she prompted.

His lashes swept down over his eyes, shielding his thoughts from her. “
T'a gr'a agam dhuit.
” And when she gave him a look, he said, “Take it or leave it, my dear warrior princess. That’s the best I can do right now.”

“Oh, shut up, Richard. I know Gaelic too.” She paused and then said deliberately, “
Mo grá thú
.”

She heard his sharpened breathing, and then his hand came up swiftly to catch hers. She interlaced her fingers in his and felt his tighten around hers.

He drew her across the kitchen to the stairwell, and she followed without a word. “Is this what you want?”

“I want you to say it,” Laura said. “Say it, say it,
say it
.”

He met her stare for stare. “And I,” he said, “want you to promise you won’t leave. Say
that
.”

Neither one flinched; neither one gave an inch. She smiled at him again, knowingly, and drew his hand down to her breast. He inhaled sharply, and turned up the staircase.

She felt the pressure in the hand guiding her up the stairs. It seemed to take minutes, hours – ages – only seconds to reach the landing outside Julie’s bedroom, and then the light of the storm poured in through the great western window, and she saw his face. His eyes were dark, his mouth set hard. This was not the tender knight of her memory, not the controlled and generous lover of the weekend past. She had thrown down the gauntlet and summoned up the dark possessive lover of her dreams.

He opened the door to his bedroom, and she caught their joined hands to her lips. He gave her a quick, intense look over his shoulder, and then they were inside, and he pulled her hard against him. She felt the whole length of him, the hard masculinity of him all along her body, and she pressed herself back against him, her arms fierce around him, trying to absorb him into herself.

He did not kiss her. He looked down at her and said, “There’s only you.”

“I know,” she said back, and her voice did not shake. “I’m the end of the line for you.
Cinniúint
.”

His hands slipped beneath her shirt and pulled it over her head in one movement, freeing her breasts to his gaze. Dressing in the pitch-black of her house, she hadn’t bothered with a bra, and now she rejoiced that she had not, she rejoiced that not even that fragile barrier lay between them. He framed her face in his hands and then began to draw his fingers down her, down her neck, along the plane of her shoulders, down her arms, and then to her waist, down the slope of her hips, learning her, tracing her, celebrating the beautiful difference of her body from his, and up his fingers then traced, up, up to trace across her breasts. She stood there, unmoving, her heart hammering, as he rubbed his thumbs on her, never lifting his gaze from hers. He wanted this. If she was his destiny, then he wanted her to understand that he was hers also. He wanted to see the fire in her eyes, he wanted her liquid and melting for him, he wanted her open and yielding. She gave him that as a gift.

“My turn,” she said, and she mimicked his movements, she put her hands along his back under his shirt to pull it free from his jeans. She lifted her hands to the buttons and slowly, slowly unfastened each one, and she drew a fingernail down his sternum following the loosened buttons until she reached his belt. Then she pushed the shirt from his shoulders and drew her fingers up his chest as he had done to her, learning the texture and subtleties of his skin, and she did him one better. She raised herself on tiptoe and laid her hands on his arms and sank her teeth lightly into his shoulder to brand him as hers.

She heard his sharp breath. He put his hands on her again, and he picked her up against him so that her breast met his mouth, and he tasted her roughly, hungrily. Arousal flooded her, straight through from her head to her toes, and whether it was pain or pleasure, she didn’t know, maybe both, each streaming into the other. It was hunger; it was desire; it was his need to absorb her into himself. She held his head to her, fingers laced in his hair, and thought,
Mine
.

He laid her on the bed, on the great wedding quilt that she had helped to sew, and she didn’t care that she lay on Diana’s silhouette. She knew, as surely as she had ever known anything, that all those years ago she had sewn the quilt so that someday Richard Ashmore could lay her down on it.
Mine
. She wrapped herself around him, holding him, so that he couldn’t leave her even if he wanted to.

Over his shoulder, illuminated by the storm through the windows, she saw the painting of the woman, taking her hair down for her lover. Silly to have ever seen that mythical woman as competition; silly to have thought she needed to bring it to life so that he would think of her first thing in the morning, last thing at night.
That
was canvas and oil.
She
was this man’s woman, and his hands tangled in
her
hair, and his hand stroked the lovely flare of
her
waist into her hip, and
her
breast was his banquet table.

Their legs moved restlessly against each other, denim to bare flesh, and when he finally lifted his head to draw a breath, she put her hands between them to unbutton the waistband of her skirt. He drew down the zipper and slipped his hand onto her stomach. She felt the heat seep right through her skin. He moved his fingers down to the wisp of silk lingerie she had put on, just for him, and he slipped one of those long, elegant fingers into the soft lotus depths of her, and she hadn’t even realized she was this close, the world narrowed down to his hand, and the bright blackness burst in her mind.

She didn’t know if she moaned, or if she screamed, or why her throat felt so dry and raw. Surely all that keening wasn’t the storm; surely it wasn’t the wind crying, “Oh God, oh God, oh God,
Richard
.” He buried his face against her waist, and she felt the intensity of his breathing against her screaming skin.

I wrote this night, this midnight. I sang it, and you heard.

“Now,” she whispered into his ear, “now. I want you now. I want you inside me, I want you to fill me.
Now. Now. Now
.”

And she licked his ear, like a cat, reached down and unzipped his jeans, and put her hands on the Standing Stone of Ireland.

There was a moment of stillness between them, the shimmering challenge flung down between them, and then he grasped her arms and pulled her hard under him. She looked up at him in that moment of utter domination and saw that he wanted her surrender at a price. He was not going to surrender himself to her unless she fell first.

Well, that was just too bad. She had a right to her conquest too.

She pushed at him, daring him, challenging him, and they rolled across the bed, each struggling for dominance, and they would have fallen right off the bed if he hadn’t put his hand out to catch the nightstand and stop their momentum. His arms were tight around hers; hers were tight around him. Their mouths were on each other; they tasted themselves, they tasted the other. His chest crushed her breasts against him, and in one moment, he surged into her hard.

It was the least tender love she had ever made in her life. It was basic and stark and, in its heart, uncivilized. They might well not have been lying on six-hundred-count sheets; they might have been taking each other on the ancient Celtic hills, with all the symbolic phallic stones and lush, fertile fields around them, no longer Richard and Laura alone. They were male and female, eternal and ancient and young forever, and this was for keeps.

They were mating for life.

He took her, an invasion requested by the conqueror and demanded by the conquered, two sovereigns offering up their kingdoms. She felt him enter, and a long-guarded door opened in her heart. They had stripped each other more than naked and open this night, and Richard Ashmore, surging in and out of her, had spun out of control. No more the cool architect in total command of himself – he moved in her with the tide of the storm, waves rising and falling and crashing against her, swelling again the power of her own desire. She took him, as much a conqueror as he, feeling the power of her body enclosing him, chanting ancient words softly, rhythmically against his ear –
Say it, say it, tell me you love me
– and he said them back to her –
Say it, you will not leave me, I will not let you go
– and they moved across the bed like dancers, like lovers, locked together, mouths never parting, the tempest of longing spiraling up to the shaking heavens. First one higher, then the other, luring each other in a lovely ballet rooted back beyond memory, senses drowning, minds blacking out under the fierce winds of desire, bodies and legs and arms and hands curled around each other.

The phone rang.

They stopped, shocked, in mid-surge.