Forever My Love (Berkeley-Faulkner #2)(118)

“I was the one… I was the one who found Holt’s body,” Alec muttered. She gazed at him compassionately and stroked his arm in a gesture of comfort. “It was late at night, in a dark alley. I didn’t notice any details about it then… I was half-drunk to begin with. I just realized all at once what had happened, and… there were signs of a fight, a vicious one. The bruises on him…” He stopped suddenly and then resumed more calmly. “Just, now I remembered that there were playing cards scattered on the ground.”

Mira did not understand why the fact was significant to him. “Perhaps Holt was carrying them,” she suggested, and he looked at her seriously.

“Perhaps he was.”

Again she had the feeling that the observation held a meaning for him that escaped her. “How did you find him there?”

“I was supposed to meet him at the Rummer, which isn’t far away from the spot. He had sent me a message saying that he had something important to discuss with me.”

“What about?”

“About a girl named Leila. He loved her… she disappeared, and he was looking for her.” Alec seemed to look right through her as he added distantly, “I

think he had found out what had happened to her, ft who had taken her.”Mira stroked his arm once more and sighed. “It’s so very late… let’s go to bed.”

“Why don’t you go on? I’ll join you soon.” Picking up a card, Alec stared at it absently, seeming to forget her in his preoccupation. Mira smiled uncertainly at him and left the room.

He came to bed much later. Mira stirred groggily as he unfolded his long body beside hers and forced himself to relax. Willing himself to sleep, he shoved aside the thoughts that riddled his mind and shut his eyes tightly, but in sleep there was no escape from the questions and the memories. Restlessly he fought to escape the disturbing dreams, kicking the covers off and moving his head from side to side. He woke up from the middle of a nightmare with a muffled curse, his whole body jerking awake. Overheated and uncomfortable, he drew a forearm across his perspiring forehead, brushing aside the hair that clung to his skin.

Mira, who had been elbowed, kicked, and tossed for hours as a result of his bad night, lifted her head and regarded him exasperatedly. “You’ll be cooler if you try to keep still,” she said.

“I’ll be cooler if you’ll stop pulling the damned sheet up!” he snapped.

“A nightmare about Holt?” she asked, ignoring his bad temper, and he sighed heavily, dropping back against the pillows.

“Partly.”

Since he had no desire to talk about the dream, she repositioned herself on her side of the bed and drifted back to sleep. Several minutes later, she was again awakened by his restless tossing. Yawning and grumbling to herself, she crawled over to him. At the sight of the small indentation of worry that had worked itself between his brows, her irritation fled. She brushed his tousled black hair away from his forehead in a soothing motion, waking him up with a whisper.His spiky lashes lifted. “What?” he murmured.

“You were moving around again.”

“I’m sorry,” he said wearily, closing his eyes again. The apology was her undoing.

“Here, move to the middle of the bed. The sheets are cooler.”

“There’s nothing you can do to—”

“And let me rearrange the pillows. Better?”

“A little,” he admitted ungraciously, the aggravated male in him placated by her soothing. She smiled as he settled his back more deeply into the mattress.

“You should try to stop thinking about it for a little while,” she said softly, and he made a sarcastic sound, turning his face into the pillow.

“It’s not that easy.”

Leaning over him, Mira touched his lips lightly with her own. Her mouth was cool and sweet, and the tender, patient feel of it robbed him of his former annoyance. She brushed each corner of his lips with the tip of her tongue, then, delved further inside his mouth to savor the warm, intoxicating taste of him. Alec’s head shifted on the pillow, his mouth turning up to hers with growing interest. Her hands trailed across his chest, then traveled down to his flat midriff, and her fingertips drew across the muscle-strapped flesh. “It’s very easy,” she whispered, kissing the strong clean-cut line of his jaw, breathing in the fresh sandal-wood scent of his skin. “Just turn all of your thoughts to me…” As she moved closer to him, the soft peak of her breast grazed his side, and Alec caught his breath sharply. Grasping her elbows, he hauled her halfway across his chest and pulled her head down to his. She gave him a deep kiss, and every sane thought, every question and problem that had been plaguing Alec the entire night disappeared in a single moment. The locks of her hair trailed like flossy fire over his body as her small, sensitive hands swept over him. Though he urged and murmured to her impatiently,she took her time. The cool touch of her fingers drifted to his manhood, encircling leisurely, and Alec bit his lip as she aroused him to forceful readiness. Mira’s lashes lowered as she felt the driving power of him under her palm. She wanted nothing more than to have him inside her, but somehow she managed to resist his efforts to pull her on top of him. Like a butterfly playing with a swiping cat, Mira eluded his grip and continued to torment him with light caresses. The stillness of the night was broken by their harsh gasps, and the pleasure was prolonged until finally Mira made no demur as his hands grasped her h*ps and urged them over his loins. Her head fell back weakly as she felt the thick, hot sliding of him in her body, as he drove into her with heavy, grinding strokes. She was soaring too high to breathe, paralyzed in a hurtling flight, her mind going black in those few seconds of rapture.