Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 79232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
“If anyone sees me…” I try to protest but naturally he doesn’t heed me.
“Don’t care,” he says. “One night apart was enough. I was an idiot for letting even that happen.”
“Nolan,” I begin. I have to tell him everything I’ve decided, that I can’t let his family suffer for mine any longer. “You have to let me go. I can’t go with you. You need to listen—”
“I’ll listen,” he half-growls, crossing the landing by the stairs and bringing me down the hallway that leads to his room. “When I’m balls-deep in you and your eyes are locked with mine.”
“My God,” I whisper. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Nope. The most honest answers I get out of you are when you’re being properly, soundly fucked. So that’s how we’ll talk.”
Right, then, my ovaries twitch again and I think I just got struck with lightning, for my body’s sizzling right about now. A tiny, little voice inside is telling me to protest harder, not to let him seduce me, that I have to stand my ground and do what’s right. He yanks open his door, drags me in, and pushes me up against it.
Suddenly, the little voices in my head stop talking.
He wraps his hand around my throat, not harshly, but enough that I’m pinned against the wall and can’t get away. He bends, brushes his lips against mine, then plunders my mouth. His tongue sweeps against mine, and I feel as if he’s swallowing me whole. For every sigh I release, he breathes in deeper. I’m boneless, unable to stop this, when his hands reach for my waist and he strips my clothes off. First, the t-shirt, balled in his fist and whipped over his shoulders to land on the floor behind him. Next, the joggers, yanked down my hips until I’m standing before him stark naked.
“Bloody hell,” he mutters. “Jesus, you’re a picture.”
I whimper when he brings his mouth to my neck and suckles the delicate skin while he pinches my nipple between his thumb and forefinger. I’m dwarfed by him, and not just physically. His energy and need to possess me clears my mind as it makes my heart dance a crazy rhythm.
“It was a mistake,” he groans, releasing me just long enough to strip off his own clothes.
“What was?”
His forehead falls to mine. “Letting you go for even that one night.”
Chapter 21
Nolan
We lay in the stillness of early morning. I left the balcony door open, and a chilly, salty breeze rustles the bedsheets. Sheena draws closer to me, her head on my chest. She grips me so hard I feel she may never let me go.
And Jesus, I hope she doesn’t. I hope she never lets me go.
“I’ve always left when things get difficult,” she says. “But I won’t, Nolan. I won’t.”
“Good. I won’t let you. I’d track you down and drag you home by the hair.”
She shivers and smiles. “Mmmm, I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
I grin.
I love this woman.
“Mam is going to lose her mind,” I tell her. “Three more to call her Granny? Well, one. I think Fiona and Tiernan may not go for the granny thing.”
“Fair enough,” I say around a grin.
Keenan may lose his mind, too, when I’m telling him I’m moving away from here. My plan isn’t to move far, though, but right by the Church. There’s a little cottage there, big enough for all of us. For now. I don’t tell Sheena it’s likely Tiernan will board at St. Albert’s soon.
We’ll work the details out later.
We shower and dress, and when we go to meet her family for breakfast, we tell them the news. Neither of us sees the point in holding back any longer.
“Where’s the ring?” Fiona asks with a little dance.
Sheena rolls her eyes. “Give us time, Fiona. My God, but you’re a little matchmaker, aren’t you?”
Lachlan walks in the room and Fiona clams up so quickly, it’s amusing. I look from him to her, then back again.
He smiles warmly at her, before he takes a plate and loads it up with food. He doesn’t eat it, though, but walks over to Fiona and places the plate in front of her. “You love the currant scones,” he says. “Have to get them before Cormac comes in.”
She smiles and flushes even deeper.
Sheena narrows her eyes, having watched this exchange. “Mother of God,” she says to me through gritted teeth. “If that brother of yours thinks for one goddamn minute that my child of a sister—”
“Is no more than a child who’s here under the protection of the brotherhood? A friend, as it were? Aye,” I tell her. “Trust me, Sheena. He wouldn’t think of it. And if for some ridiculous reason he ever did get the notion in his mind? I’d kill him with my bare hands before you got a chance yourself.”