Wicked Burn(85)

“Good,” he said simply.

“Was Donny okay when you picked him up?” she asked. Meg and she had offered to get him after the movie, but Vic had flatly forbidden them to go over to the Farrell farm. It had left Niall feeling chilled that the young man that she’d come to care for so much lived in a place that Vic didn’t want them to go near.

Vic grunted. “Yeah.”

“You worry about him, don’t you?” Niall asked quietly as he paused to open the screen door of the cottage.

Vic didn’t answer until he’d closed and locked the door and carried her into his bedroom. He set her on the edge of his bed and turned the bedside light to a dim setting before he sat down next to her. His dark hair had fallen forward onto his forehead. Earlier, when she and Meg had looked in on him before they’d left for the movie, he’d been wearing his glasses while he worked. Niall couldn’t decide which of his personas she liked better, the handsome, intense intellectual or the man who sat before her now—the long, lean, dead sexy cowboy who had come to claim her for his bed. Maybe the fact that he was such a magical combination of both was what fascinated her so much.

And aroused her almost beyond her comprehension.

“I worry about him,” Vic said simply. He reached out and began to matter-of-factly unbutton the satin pajama top she wore with a pair of matching shorts. “But there’s not much I can do about it. I’m not his father.”

Niall put her hand over his, stilling his actions between her breasts. Her nipples pulled tight at the nearness of his fingers. Niall tried to ignore the sensation.

“You’re more of a father figure to him than he’s ever known,” she said softly. “You should hear how he talks about you. He worships you, Vic.”

He gave a small, off-center grin. “It doesn’t take much to please Donny.” He tried to resume removing her top, but Niall again halted him gently. He looked up at her in slight surprise.

“You’re kidding, right?” she challenged. “Donny trusts about as easily as I climb on a horse.”

Vic’s smile widened to show off that sexy off-center front tooth, making Niall’s lower belly seem to erupt into a slow, molten, downward-moving burn. Still, she refused to be sidetracked until it was absolutely necessary.

“You got on a horse today,” Vic reminded her, his light eyes sparkling.

“Only because you hauled me onto it,” she admonished. “Seriously, Vic, Donny trusts you . . . maybe more than anyone. And he’s very vulnerable right now.”

Vic threw her a dark look. “You’re not about to recommend that I go have some kind of heart-to-heart talk with him, are you?”

“No, it’s not that. He’s a boy. I know how boys are. They communicate everything through actions. But maybe if you took him out riding, or you two did a project together, he would open up about . . .”

Vic smirked slightly as he deliberately removed her hand from restraining him and slid two buttons through satiny fabric before he spoke. “How would you know so much about how boys operate, Niall? You’re the most girly girl I know.”

“I know because I had one.”

His grin faded. His light eyes flashed up to her face.

“What’d ya mean?”

Niall swallowed convulsively. Maybe because she hadn’t been planning on saying it, the words came easier. “I had a little boy,” she whispered. “He died three and a half years ago.”

Vic’s lips moved silently. His eyes narrowed as he studied her closely. When he finally spoke, his words surprised her a little. “What was his name?”

“Michael. He would be eight this September if . . .”

Her voice faded. She hadn’t realized that tears spilled down her cheeks until Vic cradled her face in his hands and slid his thumbs over her skin gently, sweeping away the moisture.

“You were a mother,” he stated rather than asked. He looked awestruck.

“Yes.”

Much to her surprise, Vic smiled. He leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers, at first reverently, then with increasing heat.

“You know . . . I can see it perfectly, Niall,” he whispered hoarsely before he gently pushed her back onto the pillows. Without saying another word he removed her satin shorts and parted her nightshirt. He studied her in the golden glow of the dim light for an eternal few seconds before his dark head lowered to her breast.

Niall gasped out loud at the pleasure of his slow, sweet suck. Her back arched off the bed.

Boys communicate through actions, she reminded herself dazedly.

She closed her eyes and listened very carefully as Vic spoke to her in his own poignant fashion.

She groaned in rising arousal and his warm, abrasive tongue lashed tenderly at her left breast, as if to soothe her for drawing on her so stringently. His big hands spread wide across her ribs and back, in an embrace that struck Niall as cherishing as well as possessive, as he held her off the bed for his hungry mouth. Her chest seemed to ache with love even as her womb drew inward with desire. She wondered if Vic really knew how much he held her heart both literally and figuratively in his hands.

Her fingers raked through his thick, unruly hair when his mouth lowered down over her ribs and belly, whispering his lips across her sensitive skin, scraping his teeth ever so lightly on her sides, dipping his tongue into her bellybutton. She cried out his name when he transferred his hands down to her hips and lifted her * to his mouth. His warm tongue prowled between her swollen, damp labia, sometimes a gentle tease, making her whimper with longing, other times a firm and insistent master that caused her to cry out sharply with desire at each hard lash and stab.