Their gazes remained locked for several long seconds. “I’ll never forget the look on your face that day when you saw how I reacted to the truth about you being married. It was like I’d just confirmed all of your fears about revealing the truth to me . . . like you accepted the judgment I passed on you. God, I’m sorry for that, Niall. You have no idea how much. I had no right to pass judgment on you.”
His thumb tenderly caught the tear that skittered down her cheek.
“I’m sorry, as well,” she admitted. “I shut you out after that night because of my own guilt. It’s sort of hard, when you’ve been surrounded by so much misery and grief for so long, to think that it’s possible to deserve something as wonderful as the way I felt about you . . . the way I
feel
about you,” she added in a whisper.
She felt his softly caressing thumb go still.
“How
do
you feel about me?”
Niall rolled her eyes in mock exasperation, causing several more tears to course down her face. “I’m in love with you. What’d you think? That I just fall into bed with every guy who gives me a Scotch and grunts ten words at me?”
Vic grinned slowly. Heat fanned out from her lower belly to her sex. Her nipples pulled tight next to the cool sheets. God, his smile was deadly. Niall suspected he knew precisely what effect he had on her when he tugged firmly on the sheet and blanket and they fell around her waist.
“It must have been at least twenty,” he said as his light gray eyes leisurely traveled down her naked torso.
“If you include your dirty talk in bed later on,” Niall teased, but her voice had gone husky at the impact of his gaze. Her lower lip fell away from the upper one and a puff of air slipped from them both when Vic reached up and shaped her breast to his curving palm.
“Well, we can’t forget that.” Niall noticed that his voice was just as hoarse with desire as her own.
“Vic?” Niall said sharply when she saw his dark head begin to lower to her breast. She ached for him, but still . . . “Don’t you want me to explain the rest of it . . . the parts that Kendra doesn’t know?”
“I want to hear anything you want to tell me, but I want to make something clear to you first. We’re not here like this right now because I’ve
forgiven
you after what I learned about you today.”
Her brow crinkled in confusion.
“There’s nothing to forgive. I went after you this morning because I knew I’d been wrong to judge you in the first place. I was going to apologize for the way I’d been acting before I ever talked to Forrester or Kendra. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
His face tightened with emotion ever so briefly. “Thank
you
, baby. Thank you for walking into my apartment that night and giving yourself so unselfishly to me. Thank you for doing the same thing every damn time I look into your eyes.” He grimaced slightly as he watched his hand caress her shoulder. “I don’t deserve you, but if you’ll have me, I’m yours.”
“I’ll have you,” she said so quickly that they both smiled when their eyes met.
“Then so be it,” he mumbled before he dipped his head and kissed her so sweetly and so hotly that Niall felt literally dizzy with desire.
“Now you decide, baby,” Vic mumbled next to her lips half a minute later. “We can talk and then make love, or we can make love and then talk.”
“Make love and then talk,” Niall said decisively. “And make love in between . . . and afterward?” she finished tentatively.
Vic flashed a wicked grin. “Your wish is my command,” he promised as he whipped the covers down over her lap. “Hmmm, just the way I like you—naked and ready.”
“Ready for what?” Niall purred as Vic ran his hands over her hips and back.
“Ready to be loved,” he replied softly. His hands found her breasts and she moaned in pleasure. “You know what I think I’d like?” he asked as he watched her face intently.
“What?”
His right hand dropped to her thigh, caressing the length of it.
“I’d like you to spread these beautiful legs wide for me, the way you do when you exercise,” he stated gruffly.
Niall gave at him what she suspected was a lust-glazed stare. His slow smile when he noticed made liquid bubble from her pussy.
Vic tossed the pillows onto the floor. “Go on, baby. Sit up against the headboard and open wide for me,” he instructed in that calm, confident manner that had driven her wild from the very beginning. The fact that he somehow knew she’d never refuse him made her so hot that she wondered that steam didn’t rise off her skin.
Neither of them spoke as she moved to the head of the bed and spread her legs as wide as they would go comfortably. The fact that her pussy was completely exposed to Vic’s penetrating gray eyes excited her immeasurably. For several long seconds he just stared between her legs as if he were trying to commit her to memory.
“Vic,” she finally pleaded softly.
His eyes flashed up to her face. He came and knelt in front of her.
“Do you remember that evening I walked in on you at the farmhouse while you were like this?” he asked her.
Niall nodded quickly, recalling all too well. She moaned softly when he ran his fingertips over her right nipple and then gently pinched her.
“I came out to the cottage after that and jerked off like a madman while I thought about being between your legs while they were spread wide, with my cock buried in you,” he admitted without a trace of embarrassment.
Niall instinctively shifted her hips on the bed to try and still the sharp ache of arousal that arrowed through her.
“Shhh,” Vic soothed as he stilled her hips with both hands. “We’re going to live that particular fantasy here in a moment. But first . . .”
Niall’s head fell back on the headboard of the bed and her back arched slightly when Vic slid his finger between her labia.
“That’s my Niall,” he whispered as his hand moved subtly over her sex. “Always so ready, always so creamy, always so sweet . . .”
Niall whimpered as he held her still with one spread hand on her hip and strummed her clit, building a delicious, simmering friction in her. Because she sensed that it would please him, she kept her hands flat on the mattress beside her and tried her mightiest not to squirm and wiggle too much as he stroked her. After a minute of that exquisite torture she noticed his small smile. She whined plaintively when he suddenly withdrew his finger.
“Shhh, I’m going to make you come now,” he promised.
Niall felt sweat bead on her upper lip as she watched him insert his middle finger into her pussy. They moaned in unison.
“I love all of you, Niall, but you’ve got the sweetest pussy in existence,” Vic stated baldly. He withdrew and spread the bounty of juices he’d found in her depths into her already slippery cleft, doubling the amount of juices. Niall couldn’t help but squirm and whimper at his touch. He used his left hand to gently pinch her spread, sensitive lips together just below her clit.
He pushed his forefinger down between the glossy lips from the top and began playing her sensitive flesh once again. Niall groaned as he tortured and agitated her clit while he kept it in such tight confinement.
“Now that’s a juicy little pocket,” Vic teased lovingly when a wet, clicking sound reached both their ears as he played in her liquefied flesh.
Niall’s head rolled on the headboard in ecstasy. Her hips made uncontrollable little jumping movements against Vic’s finger, increasing the pressure on her clit.
“Ah, God . . .
it feels so good
,” she cried out in disbelief.
“Then come for me,” Vic whispered close to her lips.
When she did, he covered her mouth and kissed her fiercely, claiming her rampant cries of bliss as his own.
“You burned me back to life back then,” Niall muttered hoarsely from where she’d sagged down slightly on the bed after her shattering climax. She watched Vic undress hastily at the side of the bed with a heavy-lidded gaze.
“What?” he asked with a small laugh as he rejoined her on the bed, this time completely, gloriously nude. She touched his taut abdominal muscles with a sense of awe and lust combined, fascinated at the way that they leapt beneath her touch. She met his gaze.
“I felt like I was one of the walking dead after Michael was murdered, like my heart had been put in deep freeze. But you unfroze me, Vic. Somehow, some way, when you touched me I awoke, I came back to myself . . . came back to life. I’ll never forget it,” she whispered emphatically.
“I won’t, either. I’ve never lied so much in my life as when I told you that what happened between us was nearly forgettable.” He leaned forward and brushed their lips together sensually, speaking to her, as always, as much with his touch as with his words. He guided his cock to her entrance and thrust his hips as he continued to pin her with his stare. Niall’s face tightened with intense emotion mingled with ecstasy.
“Now burn for me again, sweet Niall,” he whispered gruffly next to her parted lips.