He’s rough, but because I know it’s passion, not anger that fuels his roughness, I welcome it.
His thrusting falters, and he shudders, moaning.
“Yes! Come! Let me feel you let go!”
He surges forward, falling onto his elbows on top of me. He grabs my face. With his eyes wide open, he kisses me, then climaxes with a primal grunt and violent, full-body spasm that shakes the bed.
Buried deep inside me, his cock pulses as he empties himself.
The entire time, we stare into each other’s eyes.
He gasps my name.
I wrap my legs around his waist.
And that tall cliff I was worried about earlier?
I just jumped right the fuck over, headfirst.
27
Spider
We lie entangled on the bed in the dark.
I don’t know how long we’ve been like this. Hours, maybe. Days? Years? Who fucking knows. I’ve lost all sense of time. All I know is that I’m here, in a place I never dreamed I’d be, with a woman who makes me feel like life might be worth living after all.
Her head rests on my chest. Her legs are twined between mine. Her warm hand is pressed flat over my beating heart.
My stunned, achy, battered heart that doesn’t have a bloody clue what just hit it.
It’s been bitten by a viper with sharp fangs and the sweetest venom.
After a heavy exhalation, Reyna whispers, “What happens now?”
“Now we figure it out, I suppose.”
There’s a brief but tense pause. “Is it…”
“What?”
“Is it always like this for you? I mean, this intense?”
I close my eyes and exhale. My lungs ache, too. “No, lass,” I murmur. “Not for me.”
“Good. If you’d said yes, I was going to rip out your nipple rings with my teeth.”
Chuckling, I comb my fingers through her long silky hair.
Stirring, she presses a soft kiss to my jaw. I turn my head and look at her, stunning even in shadows.
“Did your mother really name you after the artist Winslow Homer?”
“Aye.”
“That’s nice.”
“She was a nice person.”
I can tell she wants to say something else, but she doesn’t. She just toys with my beard and watches me with those mermaid eyes, glittering in the dark like sea glass under shifting waters.
Feeling a thousand years old, I turn my head and stare at the ceiling. After a while, I say, “I’m thirty-eight.”
“Hmm. You don’t look a day over fifty.”
“I deserve that.”
“You do. What else? Tell me more.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know… What’s your favorite song?”
“‘God Bless America.’”
She laughs. “That’s not your favorite song.”
“It is.”
“Really?” She digests that in silence for a moment. “How strange.”
I shrug. “I like you, too. You can’t account for taste.”
She laughs again, softly, tugging at my beard. “Good one.”
Then, a moment later and sweetly hesitant: “You like me?”
And she calls me an idiot.
My sigh is a huge gust of air. “Aye. I like you. But then again, I’m a glutton for punishment, so there’s that.”
“That’s such a weird phrase. ‘Glutton for punishment.’ What does that even mean?”
“It means you love what hurts you.”
A delicate shiver runs through her body. Burrowing closer to me, she whispers, “Don’t love what hurts you, Quinn. Whatever hurts you doesn’t deserve you. You’re made for so much better than that.”
A thousand knives carve her name into my heart. Bleeding, barely able to breathe, I say gruffly, “Goddammit. Stop being sweet. I can’t handle it when you’re sweet.”
“Yes, you can, you wuss. C’mon, we’ll practice.” She lifts up to an elbow and smiles down at me. “Hi, Homer. I’m Reyna. It’s nice to meet you. You look like an orphan’s idea of Christmas morning.”
Closing my eyes, I take a breath and pray for the Lord to help me.
Not that he’s listening. He was done listening to me a long time ago.
She whispers, “I love it that you’re this big tough guy who runs around shooting people like it’s just another day at the office, but inside, you’re all gooey. One little compliment and you melt.”
“That wasn’t one little compliment. It was a smile that could end wars and the only time you’ve ever said my first name and a metaphor about how you think of me that felt like a goddamn standing ovation.”
“It was pretty good, wasn’t it?”
When I turn my head and look at her, she’s grinning at me.
She pokes me in the ribs. “Now you do one.”
I cup her jaw in my hand and stroke my thumb over the lovely curve of her cheek. Gazing into her eyes, I murmur, “You’re a privilege I don’t deserve, but I’m going to spend the rest of both our lives trying to be worthy of you.”
She’s stunned for a moment, swallowing and blinking. Then she turns her face to my neck, closes her eyes, and says faintly, “If you make me cry again, the rest of your life will be very short.”
That makes me chuckle. “Now who’s the gooey one?”
Hiding her face, she shakes her head and says nothing.
Rolling onto my side, I gather her in my arms, bury my face in her hair, and inhale deeply. When she slides an arm around my waist and squeezes me, I feel as if someone just handed me a crown and ushered me into my new castle.
After a while, her voice muffled, she says, “I don’t know how to be a wife.”
“That’s okay. I don’t know how to be a husband.”
“No, I mean, I don’t know if I can be a wife. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve got a lot of baggage from the matrimony department.”
I stroke a hand over her shoulder and down her back, gently tracing the outlines of her scars. More than ever, I wish that worthless fuck of a dead husband of hers were alive.
Oh, what I would do to him. All the ugly and wonderful things.
“If it makes you feel better, I have zero expectations. If you’d let me look at you naked every once in a while, that would be grand, but other than that, you don’t have to do or be anything.”
Sounding confused, she says, “Are all Irishmen as easy to please as you are?”
“Are all Italian women as gorgeous as you are?”
“There are a million Italian women who look like me, Quinn. Tits, ass, lots of sass. It runs in the gene pool.”
“Hmm. Sounds like I need to book a trip to Italy.”
She slaps me on the back, making me chuckle.
“That was a joke.”
She mutters, “Better be.”
“I’m sorry, is this the same person who accused me of being jealous and possessive? Because hello, pot, meet the kettle.”
“I’ll put a bullet in that stupid kettle if you don’t shut up soon.”
My chest shaking with silent laughter, I roll on top of her, brushing her hair off her face.
She glares up at me with flashing eyes.
“My God,” I breathe, staring down at her lovely, livid face. “You’re a fine thing, Mrs. Quinn.”