Night Of The Blackbird (22 page)

“You think someone stole my purse and put it back?” she queried.

He shook his head, eyes on the purse, his slow, rueful smile slipping into place. “I think someone moved it from the well, meant to give it to you, walked around with it, set it down by the bar and forgot it. But since it seems to have mysteriously moved of its own volition, perhaps you should check it out. Besides, I want to see if you've got a bump on your forehead.” He reached out, taking the ice-laden towel from her hand and her head, studying her seriously.

“No bump. Not even a bruise.”

“Good,” she murmured.

“Headache?”

“Not really.”

“Want an aspirin?”

“For my imagined injury?”

“I never suggested you had an imagined injury.” He rose, disappearing into the bathroom, returning with two aspirin and a paper cup of water.

She took the pills from him. “I really don't feel bad,” she murmured. “I should. I'm sure I blacked out.”

He wasn't listening to her. He was watching the television. The reporter was explaining the route the parade would follow on Saint Patrick's Day.

Then suddenly he was looking at her. He reached out, smoothing a tangle from her hair.

He was close. Warm. His fingertips were like magic. “You know, you're really beautiful.”

“You're not supposed to be attacking me,” she murmured.

“I'm not attacking you. I'm trying to smooth out your hair.”

“How romantic.”

“I'm not supposed to be romantic, since I'm not allowed to attack you, remember? Of course, the devastating negligee is a real turn-on. Are you sure you didn't come down here with the express thought of attacking
me?
”

“Attacking
you?
”

“Seducing me?”

“Danny…”

“You know, the lovely heroine in distress, fallen on the floor. The strong, silent hero sweeping her up and all that?”

“When the hell were you ever the silent type?”

“You have a point there.”

His fingers were still moving through her hair. And somewhere along the way he'd stretched out beside her. When she closed her eyes, she breathed him. She seemed overwhelmed by a sea of physical memory. Sight, touch, the sound of his voice, the huskiness, the slight touch of a brogue. She could even remember the taste of his lips on hers, his flesh beneath the pressure of her whisper soft kisses, and more. How long had it been? How in God's name could she feel so natural, lying here with him, wanting to reach out and touch and taste and breathe and more again?

“You know, even dressed that way, you're absolutely beautiful,” he said softly.

“That's a stock line.”

“I mean it.”

“You're prejudiced. Being an old family friend and all.”

“Longtime friend, not old. You're not going to marry him.”

“Michael?”

“You have to ask?”

“Maybe I am.”

He shook his head. “You're here with me. You never risked the night to run out and be with him.”

“Honestly, Danny, if I don't marry him, I'm a fool. He's doing everything in his power to get close to my family. He knows what's important to me. And he cares. He isn't trying to save the world, or destroy it, whichever you're after. I've never been sure. He's an American.” Danny's fingers were still moving through her hair. He seemed to have settled more comfortably beside her, radiating a startling heat. “Grounded,” she continued, wishing it didn't seem quite so hard to keep her focus on what she was saying. He was smiling at her, apparently listening. His face was close. His scent and warmth seemed to seep into her, sweep through her. Irish magic. “Good-looking,” she managed. “Damned good-looking. Dependable. Reliable.”

He curled a tendril of her hair in his fingers, amused. “Dependable. Reliable. What words to describe a passionate relationship.”

“You should listen to a few of my friends who have been divorced. They'd go for dependable over exciting any day.”

He shook his head. “Some of your friends probably do need reliable and dependable. But
you
need reliable, dependable—and exciting.”

“Michael is—” she began.

His lips touched hers, very gentle. Then he moved his face a fraction of an inch away. “Touch of friendship, not an attack,” he swore, his whisper brushing her cheek. “Michael is…?”

“Um…exciting and dependable…”

This time his lips touched hers with a greater force. His kiss parted her lips, brought a wealth of wet, sweeping heat. She was wrapped in his arms, tangled in her T-shirt and the comforter, and the kiss went on and on, wet, ragged, his plunging tongue seeming to reach inside to her womb, caressing every erotic zone in her body. She didn't protest. The amazing thing was that she didn't protest. Every ethic, every tenet of right and wrong, seemed to slip away. Her fingertips moved against his face, threaded into his hair. His lips broke from hers. “That's an actual kiss,” he murmured.

“What? Um…no more so than what I shared with…”

“Michael,” he supplied.

Somehow he was over her. She felt the T-shirt tangled around her waist.

“Michael,” she agreed.

“No, no. With Michael, it was a performance. With me, it was a kiss. Allow me. I'll show you the difference again.”

“You're not supposed to be attacking me,” she reminded him.

“This isn't an attack,” he whispered. “You're free to go, you know.”

“With you draped over me?”

“Well, I don't actually want to make it easy for you to leave.”

She could have pushed him away, but it was easier to convince herself that he was blocking her exit. She lay perfectly still, staring into his eyes. When he kissed her again, she brought her hands between them but still made no move to push him away. As they rolled to the side, mouths still fused together, she found her fingers curling around the buttons of his shirt. She touched his bare flesh. So familiar. The mat of tawny hair that teased her fingertips, the taut muscle beneath. A second later he was halfway up, struggling out of his shirt. Then his hands were on her and her shirt was on the floor. When he wrapped her in his arms again, she was instantly aware of the length of him. Wired muscle, tension, heat. She loved his chest, the feel of her lips against his throat and collarbone, the cradling way he cupped the back of her head. He used one foot against the other to shove off his boots, and she felt his foot move along her calf. The stroke of his hand was on her thighs, fingering the delicate panties she wore. His mouth closed over her breast, and he worked his body down the length of her. He knew how to do things with his tongue that defied silk and mesh. If there had ever been a time to protest, this was it. She spoke his name, but it was nothing more than a whisper. Her hips were moving, arching to his erotic, liquid manipulation. Lava seemed to burn deep inside her, then erupt and flow like a cascade. She nearly screamed aloud at the force of her climax, bit her lip, shuddered in his hold and allowed the volatile climax to sweep through her.

She was barely aware of his movement, his jeans joining the rest of their clothes on the floor, the force of his body between her thighs when he settled over her and into her. Her fingers laced together against his back; her legs locked around his hips. She had forgotten this; she had never forgotten this. Danny made love like he lived, passionately, vehemently, with electric force. He filled her with his physical presence, aroused her anew where she had been shaken and sated, pulsing slowly, giving, taking away, then finding a beat that raced like thunder, building a need within her that was a sweet agony until she bit lightly against his shoulder, feeling her climax seize hold of her again, euphoric pleasure like a blanket of honey streaming through her system. Danny eased to her side, flesh bathed in a fine sheen of perspiration. He had a way of holding a woman after sex that kept the warmth glowing. Fingers in her hair, smoothing dampened strands. Sated, catching her breath, she felt the wave of thoughts bombarding her mind, thoughts that the previous moments had not allowed. She was an evil human being. If there had been any chance of this happening, she should have been honest with Michael. But there
shouldn't
have been a chance of this happening. She was an adult, she was mature, she was…not as much in love as she had tried to convince herself she was. But what she had done was still wrong. Really wrong.

“I have to go,” she murmured.

“That's all you have to say?”

“I have to go
now.
”

He drew his arms away. Shadows hid his amber eyes.

“What did you expect?” she whispered.

“Oh, I don't know. Something like, ‘What was I thinking, even pretending to be so totally in love with another man, when here's Danny, and together we're just so damned good.”'

“Obviously you're good,” she murmured with a trace of bitterness. “I'm here.”

“Well, you know me. I don't just want to be good. I want to be the best there is.”

She didn't tell him that he'd certainly managed that. “And I should have spent my life waiting for those moments when you chose to be in the country?”

“You're right,” he said. “I'm being unfair.”

She had said she needed to go, yet she was still lying beside him, loath to leave. Her knuckles brushed over his abdomen.

“Now you're being an evil woman,” he informed. “That's truly unfair if you're intending on leaving.”

His abdomen gave new meaning to the term “six-pack.” “You're in incredible shape,” she told him. “Curious, for a writer and lecturer.”

“The better to seduce you during those moments when I'm in the same country.”

“You're being flippant. I'm talking about real life.”

“You shouldn't marry Michael.”

“Apparently,” she murmured, “Michael shouldn't marry me.”

“You're on a misdirected guilt trip.”

“Oh, right. He's in a hotel room where I keep saying I'll appear, but I shouldn't feel guilty for being in your bed instead.”

“He's not right for you.”

“Because he happens to be here when you are?”

He shook his head, staring at her intently. “Because he has beady eyes.”

“Oh, God, Danny, stop with that.” She almost managed to rise at that point, but their legs were still tangled together. “Danny, I really should leave,” she said softly.

He shook his head stubbornly. “For what? So you can race upstairs, feed on your guilt and decide to make it up to the guy by running over there and throwing yourself into his arms? Either confessing—or not confessing—and trying to make it up with another performance?”

“No!” she protested angrily. “I would never do anything like that. It isn't me, and you know it.”

“That's right. You're far too Catholic. You'd need a long hot shower, cleanse away the sin and all that.”

“Damn it, Danny, if we'd had any time at all together in the last several weeks—”

“Aha,” he murmured.

“Aha, what?”

“That's not love,” he told her. “I mean, to come to me just because you haven't had time with him…I'm sorry, but you're not in love with him.”

“There's love and then there's sex,” she said primly.

“Yeah, and it's a hell of a lot nicer when they go together.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, in all those years, it never actually occurred to me that you'd come back one day and declare that you actually loved me. To total distraction, above all else, et cetera, et cetera,” she murmured dryly.

“I never said that love should rule your every moment, or that it should make you behave insanely, or take precedence over everything else, like responsibilities, living, et cetera, et cetera.”

“I never know what you're actually saying, Danny. Or what you mean. Maybe that's half our problem.”

“There you go. You're admitting we have a problem, which means we're an us.”

“Danny,
you
are the problem.”

“I'm going to be a lot more of a problem if you keep tickling my ribs that way.”

She clenched her fingers into a fist.

“I didn't really mean you should stop.”

“Danny, I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't have been here. I certainly shouldn't stay.”

“But the sin has occurred already,” he said, shifting his weight so that he pinned her to the mattress. “And, you know, I really do love you.”

“Danny, I believe that you care about me.”

He groaned softly, lowering his head. His hair brushed against her breasts. She wondered how such a simple thing could feel so terribly erotic. “The sin has already been committed,” he repeated softly.