Nora Roberts - The Pagan Stone

“I’m sorry.” A day for apologies, he thought again. And this one might qualify as the most sincere of his lifetime. “Cybil, I’m very sorry I threw that at you.”

“Regardless, he never raised a hand to me. If he were able to stand where you are right now and apologize to me for killing himself, I don’t know if I’d forgive him. He ripped my life in two with that single, selfish, self-pitying act, so I think it would take more than an apology. Which would be useless since he’d still be dead. Your father’s alive, and he’s taken a step toward making amends. Good for him. But for my money, you can’t forgive without trust, and he hasn’t earned that from you. He may never, and that’s not on you. His actions, his consequences. End of story.”

She’d said it all, he thought. She might have said it all in the heat of temper and resentment. But everything she’d said was a comfort. “Can I start over?”

“With what?”

“I’d like to thank you for stepping out and letting me deal with that.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And to thank you for not leaving.”

“No problem.”

“And last, to thank you for the kick in the ass.”

She huffed out a breath, almost smiled. “That part was my pleasure.”

“I bet.”

He stepped to her, held out a hand. “Come upstairs.”

She looked down at his hand, up into his eyes. “All right,” she said, and put her hand in his.

“YOU SURPRISE ME.”

Cybil tipped her head, gave him that long, slanted stare as they walked through the house. “I hate to be predictable. What’s the current surprise?”

“I figured, especially after the mood-breaker, you’d say no thanks.”

“That would be shortsighted and self-defeating. I like sex. I’m fairly sure I’m going to like sex with you.” She gave a quick, careless shrug, while that half-smile stayed in place. “Why shouldn’t I have something I like?”

“I can’t think of a single reason.”

“Neither can I. So.” At the top of the stairs she pushed him back against the wall, crushed her mouth against his. And the easy, the expected glide of arousal inside him banked hard, then shot straight through him.

She bit lightly on his bottom lip once, then spoke against them-each word a separate stroke. “Let’s both have something we like.”

She stepped back, gestured toward a bedroom doorway. “That one’s yours, isn’t it?” With one last glance over her shoulder, one that literally caused the breath to back up in his lungs, she strolled to it, and through.

This, Gage thought as he pushed off the wall, was going to be pretty damn interesting.

She was bent over the bed, straightening his disordered sheets when he came in. “I wasn’t planning on using that again before tonight.”

She flicked a look back at him, eyes wicked. “Isn’t it nice when plans change? I’m a bed-maker myself. I like everything all… smooth when I slide in at night. Or…” She gave the sheets a last pat, turned. “Whenever.”

“I don’t mind a few tangles.” He moved to her, gripped her hips to lift her onto her toes.

“That’s good, because there’s bound to be more than a few when we’re finished with it, and I won’t be making the bed for you.” Sinuously, she hooked her arms around his neck, met his mouth in a long, slow burn of a kiss.

In one lazy glide, his hands slid up, under her shirt, over her sides with a teasing brush of thumbs over her breasts. Her shirt slithered up with the movement as he drew her arms over her head.

“Nice move,” she said when her shirt dropped away.

“I’ve got more.”

“Me, too.” Smiling, she flipped open the button of his jeans, eased the zipper down barely an inch. Watching him, she grazed her nails over his belly, up to his chest. “Nice definition, for a cardplayer,” she added as she pulled his shirt up and off.

She was a killer, he thought. “Thanks.”

Both of them, he knew, understood the steps of the dance, had practiced its variations, its changing rhythms. But for this dance, their first together, he intended to take the lead.

He took her mouth again, a playful meeting of lips and tongues while he unhooked her pants. Then he lifted her off her feet in a sudden and casual show of strength that had her breath snagging even as the cotton slid down her legs to the floor. Gotcha, he thought, and lowered her just enough to bring her mouth to his. And when her sound of pleasure warmed his lips, when the hands on his shoulders tensed, he released her with just enough force to have her falling onto the bed.

She lay on her back, hair tumbled. Dusky skin and frothy black lace.

“You didn’t get that muscle shuffling cards.”

“You’d be surprised.” He eased down, planted his hands on either side of her head. “Fast or slow?”

“Let’s try some of both.” Fisting her hands in his hair, she pulled him to her. The kiss spun out, rolls of white satin, then darkened and fired with the first hungry nips of teeth. Her hands stroked down his back, slid under his loosened jeans to ride over taught muscles. And like lightning her legs hooked around him, her body bowed up pressing them urgently center to center in a move that yanked furiously at his chain of control.

A killer, he thought again, and ravished her neck.

He had a fantastic mouth, an amazing mouth. She let her head fall back so it could sample her wherever it chose. Her skin hummed under it, and under her skin her blood began to beat. His body-long, hard, with the ripple of muscle, pressed down on hers in exactly the right way so that need gathered into tight knots that set pulses drumming.

Heat. Hunger. Hurry.

She shoved the jeans down his hips, pushing them clear as she rolled over to straddle him. He countered by levering up, fixing his mouth on hers as he flicked open the clasp of her bra.

Even as the kiss spoke of speed, of urgency, his hands skimmed, stroked, in a kind of lazy torture that kindled low fires in her belly. When his mouth lowered to taste, to possess what his hands had aroused, she bowed back to offer more.

She flowed, was all he could think, agile and eager. The beautiful lines of her, the lovely curves all in pale gold, an exotic feast for the taking. And she took, grasping her own pleasure, gliding on it. Nothing could have been more provocative to him than Cybil steeped in that inevitable rise of passion.

Had he wanted her this much? Had this clenched fist of desire been inside him all along-waiting, just waiting, to punch through caution and control? It pounded in him now, beating down all reason so he wanted to feel her tremble, to see her writhe. To hear her scream. Pinning her beneath his weight he used his hands to plunder, to loose that slow rise into a hot, fast flood.

She came, quaking under him, her skin sheened from the heat glowing in the sunlight. Those dark eyes, those gypsy eyes seemed to hold a world of secrets when they locked on his.

“All of you,” she said and closed her hand around him. “All of you now.” Wrapping her legs around him, she took him into her.

A flash, a wire sparking in the blood. She let it burn through her, crying out when it brought release, moaning as it whipped her into need again, wildly. She yielded when he shoved her legs back to go deeper, and her nails bit into his hips like spurs to urge him on. Even as the pleasure, dark and intense, battered her breathless, she rushed toward that next swamping wave.

She erupted under him, and dragged him with her into the fire.

They lay flat on their backs, side by side on the bed. He felt as if he’d been kicked off a cliff, doing the tumble down through screaming air to land in a hot river. He’d barely had the strength or the brainpower to roll off her so they could both try to get their breath back.