Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(94)

He poised himself over her, tongue thrusting and twining with hers while he stroked the bulb of his penis between her * lips. Up and down, dipping tenderly into the well of lube, and then up, over. More moist, sliding, licking strokes, teasing and swirling himself juicily around her clit. She shuddered and jerked, raising her hips. Silently begging for him to thrust inside and be done with it.

He lifted his head, letting her gasp in some badly needed air. His face was shrouded in shadows, but she felt the raw hunger, barely controlled. It made her heart swell until it hurt. She arched, pushed, forcing his cock inside, crying out with delight at the slow invasion.

They gasped, sighed, with each slow drag out and plunge back in.

She rocked and heaved to get him deeper. She felt flushed and throbbing inside, clenching and moaning as he stirred her around with his thick, hot club. Every squeeze pumped pleasure through her body.

It didn’t matter who was on top, who beneath, who gave, who took. They each gave and took everything, with frantic tenderness. The storm took them, tossed them, like leaves and twigs in wild water.

It washed them up finally, limp and helpless on the other side.

Lily was lying on top of him when she floated back. Sweat cooled on her back, but she was warmed by the scorching heat of his body, the thick presence of his cock, still wedged deep inside her. His heartbeat throbbed, slow and heavy against her womb. Against her heart, too. She rose and fell with the rhythm of his breath.

Only when the chilled sweat made her start to shiver did she lift herself carefully off, sliding his half-hard penis out of her body.

And found herself awash with come.

Hello. She sucked in air. Reality slammed back. She flopped onto her side next to him, trying to breathe. The bedside table had been stocked with condoms. Tam had told them, pointedly.

And they’d just jumped off that cliff without a thought. Again.

Her brain was fried with sex hormones. By now, they were spoiled rotten for skin on skin, hot and wet and intimate. And once a barrier was breached, it was so hard to go back and reestablish it.

God knows, if she ever wanted to conceive a baby, he was the man she wanted to father it. They belonged together. If Fate would just stop smashing at them with a sledgehammer, they’d be fine. They could make it work. That scenario had never been even remotely imaginable to her before. But with Bruno, it was. It really was.

She’d do anything to make that a reality. She would try so hard.

But that didn’t make the timing any less horrific, considering recent events. Or she herself any less irresponsible and stupid.

She snagged the duvet with her toe, yanked it up to cover them both. Entertained a vague notion of going downstairs to wash, but her legs were so limp. She’d probably tumble down that staircase and break her neck. Her body pulsed, glowed. The sore parts that she’d hurt in the last couple of days were tender, but the glow was stronger.

She leaned close to him, just staring. He was so beautiful, it just blew her mind. The sweeping design of dark eyebrows, those smile crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the noble shape of his nose. His chiseled cheekbones and jaw, that sexy beard shadow. Those sensual lips. Her eyes were famished for him, no matter how long she gazed.

He was fast asleep, but what the hell. She said it, right out loud. “I love you, too.”

He didn’t move. The words didn’t technically count if they didn’t reach their target, so she’d say it to his face in the morning. She’d say it, and say it, and say it. She’d shout it and sing it. It made her feel stronger. Like, maybe she could beat this crazy thing and come out the other side. Into something more real and beautiful and special than she’d ever dreamed of. It was possible. Anything felt possible.

She started to giggle, and then silently sob, huddled under the duvet, tears soaking into the sheets. Wow. Look at her, morphing into a weeping optimist. The power of sex hormones was miraculous.

And love, of course. And love.





21


The little kid was making him nervous.

Bruno fidgeted a





t the breakfast table, hiding behind his coffee mug. Six-year-old Rachel, Tam and Val’s little girl, eyed him intently. She was a pretty thing, thin and wiry, her pointy face dominated by huge, heavily lashed eyes, a rosebud mouth, and a tangle of gleaming dark ringlets. She wore pink-framed glasses and slurped pink-tinted milk out of her cereal bowl. She studied Bruno as if he were some fascinating swamp creature that she wanted to catalog and dissect.

The kitchen was a crowded, noisy place, packed with hungry people. Davy sat beside him, chowing down on steak, eggs, and bagels. Getting Davy to talk was like prying rusted nails out of a board, which made him the perfect breakfast companion for Bruno that morning. Zia Rosa was in hog heaven, gleefully presiding over sizzling frying pans as she tossed out short orders right and left.

Bruno sat sullenly in the midst of that loud, banging, clinking, laughing swirl of activity. All he could think about was what a cowardly thing it was to sneak out of bed while Lily was still asleep, but he didn’t know if he’d dreamed what he’d heard her say the night before.

I love you, too.

It might have been real. It really might, and in that case, he could justo ahead and let his head explode. But if it were not, he’d have to open a wormhole and tunnel into a parallel universe in which he had never been born. He was also jazzed by the strange fact that he hadn’t had one of his fight dreams last night. First time in months.