The Bride and the Mercenary Read online

  “I knew that.” Ainslie looked through her lashes at him. “Why do you think I always wore my Calvin briefs with the lowest-cut jeans I owned, Malone? But I just don’t see me in a lace thong.” She shook her head slightly, and the ends of her hair swung against her cheeks. “My sister-in-law, Bailey—she’s beautiful. Tara’s going to be a stunner. I’m just a grown-up tomboy.”

  “You’re crazy, honey.” His tone was mild. “Gorgeous, but crazy. With that blue-black hair and those blue-purple eyes and that creamy skin, you’re definitely a femme fatale. Sorry to disillusion you, champ. Even in the ring, there was never any doubt.”

  “You never saw me fight,” Ainslie retorted, idly running a finger down the side of his neck, and pausing at his collarbone. She bit her lip regretfully. “I wish you had, Malone. It wasn’t long after that I hung up my gloves professionally. I still practice with my girls at the gym, but real competition is different. I was good.”

  “I know.” To her surprise, he winced slightly. “The night after we met you had a match. I’d played hooky from the Agency all day, and I told you I had to catch up on some paperwork, but really I snuck off and bought a seat about twenty rows back. When you put on those gloves and that head protector, and your handler shoved that mouth guard between your teeth, I didn’t know if I could stand to watch the actual fight. But I made myself stay, even though I was a nervous wreck all through the thing. You were up against a Latina boxer, and she connected once—a wicked punch right over your eye. The guy beside me began rooting for her, and I nearly started my own personal fight right then and there. But in the fifth round you put her down, and she stayed down. The crowd went crazy, and I went crazy with them.”

  “I remember that fight. Marlena and I still get together for sparring practice once in a while.” She frowned suspiciously. “And I remember what happened afterward, when I came home to you. I don’t think we got to sleep at all that night.” Her eyes widened in belated comprehension, and a gurgle of shocked laughter escaped her. “You’re bad, Malone! You got all hot and bothered watching me, didn’t you?”

  “There’s something very sexy about a woman who can kick ass, honey,” he admitted with a grin. “And believe me, I wasn’t thinking tomboy while I was watching you. I was thinking babe.”

  “So instead of a thong and garters, you’d really like me to wear headgear and a mouth guard in bed with you. You’re so twisted, Malone,” Ainslie murmured. “Besides, if I did I wouldn’t be able to do this.”

  He was still astride her, and she slid down a little on the bed. Flicking her tongue against the vee of dark hair arrowing from his chest to his stomach, she watched with interest as he tensed.

  “Or even this,” she added thoughtfully. She placed her lips against the smooth expanse of tanned skin, and brought her teeth together in a gentle nip. She felt a tremor run through him.

  “That’s true.” His voice sounded strained. “But I could still do this.”

  So adroitly that she wouldn’t have been able to prevent him if she’d tried, he pushed the stretchy bottom edge of the workout top up and over her breasts. Not stopping there, he tugged it over her shoulders and her head, pulling it completely off and tossing it aside casually. His gaze met hers innocently.

  “And this.”

  As he spoke, his hands wrapped around her waist, and he lifted her effortlessly out from under him. Ainslie found herself in the same kneeling position as he was, their bodies almost touching as they faced each other. She placed her palms on his bare chest and felt the heavy beat of his heart against his ribs.

  “You’re right.” There was a husky edge to his words. “You don’t need lace. Your skin is pure satin, all by itself.”

  She felt her breath catch in her throat, and she blinked, her vision suddenly blurred. “You lied, Malone,” she said unsteadily. “You said romantic was beyond you tonight.”

  “I thought it was. But romantic is how you make me feel, Lee.”

  The diffused glow from the light near the floor softened the hard angles of one side of his face, leaving the other in shadow. His hands slid up the length of her arms and stopped at her shoulders, his grip suddenly almost desperate, as if she might slip from his grasp.

  “I look at you and I wish I was a poet. I wish I could tell you to pick any star you wanted out of the sky, and give it to you. I wish I could make the world perfect for you.” His lashes dipped briefly. He shook his head. “Hell, Lee, I never knew what you saw in me. I was just damned glad you seemed to be blind, where I was concerned.”

  “I’m not blind, Seamus.” Leaning forward slightly, she brushed her lips against the corner of his mouth. “I see a man who’s gone through hell, and survived. I see a man who never took the easy way out. I always saw the real Seamus Malone, even if I didn’t know exactly what his profession was. I fell in love with him.”

  She met his gaze. “But you can still give me stars and poetry,” she said softly. “You’ve given them to me before.”

  They were so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath stirring the strands of hair at the side of her face, so close that she saw his eyes shade to deep emerald, and then even darker.

  “When we reach heaven, honey, just tell me which one you want and I’ll bring it back for you,” he said huskily.

  This time it was his mouth that lightly brushed hers, but even as their lips touched his grip on her shoulders tightened and he pulled her to him. From somewhere in the back of his throat she heard him give a small sound, half sigh, half purring growl, and then his mouth was open on hers in an urgently seeking kiss. His hands spread wide, slid past her shoulder blades, met at her spine, locking her in his embrace.

  Ainslie felt her head tip back on her neck, and her own hands moved up to frame his face. She felt the rough prickle of stubble under her palms, and then her open fingers moved into the coarse silk of his hair. Holding him to her, she returned his kiss with hungry desperation.

  She remembered the way he tasted, she thought dazedly, feeling his tongue flick against hers. He still tasted like that—brandy and sugar, hot and sweet. She could get drunk on him, she told herself, searching deeper and feeling him going deeper in her—no, she already was drunk on him, because nothing else could explain this dizzy, soaring sensation.

  “I want more of you.”

  His words were almost inaudible, murmured against her parted lips, but when she tried to answer him she found that she was incapable even of that much. She nodded instead, her eyes still closed, her hands still framing his face. She felt his mouth, open and wet, moving unhurriedly past the curve of her chin, down the line of her neck and then to the hollow at its base, felt his tongue lapping at her as if she were cream. Her fingers tightened in his hair as he reached her breasts, and her back arched as she felt him take one nipple into his mouth and slowly trace a tantalizingly lazy circle with his thumb around the other.

  It felt as if depth charges were being set off inside her, she thought, biting her lip to keep from crying out, each one plunging further down into the very depths of her being before exploding; each tiny explosion sending shock waves radiating through her.

  “All of me, Seamus.” It was all she could do to whisper the unsteady command. “Take all of me into you. I—I want to feel you surrounding me.”

  He’d always made her feel like a wanton, she remembered with a thrill of erotic satisfaction as she felt his mouth gently cover the tight, hard peak of her nipple and the soft swell above and below it. He’d always led her further than she thought she dared go, had always brought her most secret desires to urgently heated reality. Sometimes they had made slow, languorous love, and sometimes he seemed to know instinctively that what she wanted was rawer, more immediate, more elemental.

  She’d known earlier today that slow and languorous wasn’t what she needed from him this time. She’d had two years of making dream love with Seamus Malone, two years of fantasy kisses and couplings so fragile that they disappeared with the dawn and her tear
s. But he was back with her now.

  He was real. He wasn’t a dream, he was solidly male, solidly real. Now she wanted everything to be as hard and as urgent and as basic as they both could stand it—because only that could totally reassure her that he wasn’t the ghost that had visited her when she’d thought the man had left her for good.

  His mouth moved to her other breast, the blunt ends of his hair flicking against the sensitive tip of her nipple, and she felt his palms flat against the tautness of her stomach, slipping easily on her suddenly slick skin. His thumbs hooked under the waistband of her briefs, and then pushed them down and over her hips. As he cupped the twin curves of her rear she felt one hand slip between her legs, and immediately she was suffused with heat. Hardly aware of what she was doing, she shifted slightly, parting them a fraction wider.

  He pulled her close enough to him that the denim of his jeans was barely a barrier. She felt him press hard against her thigh, felt his biceps automatically tightening around her, and she knew neither of them wanted to wait any longer.

  Her fingers trembling, she felt blindly for the zipper on his jeans, found it, and attempted to slide it all the way down. She felt it jam.

  And then his hands were on hers, helping her release him, his fingers fumbling with impatience, too.

  “Aw, hell, Lee.” His voice was an unsteady rasp. “Are you sure? Is this going to be right for you, honey?”

  As he spoke the zipper suddenly eased downward. Malone’s breath caught harshly, as if he was trying to impose some semblance of control over himself. Still guided by the hands covering hers, Ainslie felt the rigidity of him move slowly into her grasp, felt her fingers slide into the dense thicket of coarser hair as she gently gripped him.

  A stiff shudder ran through him. Looking up at him in the shadowy half light, she saw the cautious rise and fall of that broad expanse of chest, saw the thick bulge of muscle tightly delineated in those strong arms, saw those dark lashes brushing his cheekbones. He dragged in a shallow breath. He opened his eyes just enough to meet her gaze.

  “Maybe they buried me, Lee,” he whispered hoarsely. “But they buried you, too—buried you so deep in my memory that I thought you had to be just another of my illusions. Is this how we both come back to life?”

  “Make this as real as you know how, Malone.” He felt the same way, Ainslie thought hazily. He needed this, too. “No one walks away from this thinking it was a dream or an illusion—no one.”

  There was a sudden note of desperation in her voice, and at it, he nodded tightly. His smile was little more than a momentary flash of white.

  “I’m not your dream lover, sweetheart. But you want me to prove it, don’t you?”

  Before she could reply, his hands were on her waist, lifting her out of her kneeling position and laying her back against the pillows, her legs slightly bent. His hair falling into his eyes, his own legs still braced as he knelt in front of her, he leaned over her and one-handedly scooped her derriere a few inches off the bed. With his other hand he maneuvered her briefs past her hips, one corner of his mouth lifting briefly as he did.

  “Sexy as hell, babe,” he said tersely. “But they’ve gotta go.”

  Stray strands of her hair had fallen across her face. Ainslie didn’t bother to push them away. She stared up at him through it, seeing the sheen of moisture on his hard torso, the indisputable evidence of his readiness for her no longer confined by his unzipped jeans. This was the Malone she’d believed she’d lost forever, she thought, liquid heat running through her like a tidal wave. The briefs she’d been wearing slipped down her calves, past her ankles, and then he was looking at her, his hands at his jeans, his eyes glazed with desire.

  She reached up to him and tugged at a belt loop. Even that small movement seemed to make the room swim dizzily around her in a swirl of shadow and light.

  “Sexy as hell, babe.” Her voice was softly slurred. She was amazed that she could speak at all. “But they gotta go.”

  “I was hoping you’d change your mind and let me get them off,” he murmured, moving to the edge of the bed and sliding the worn denim down the lean muscles of his legs. He turned back to her. “Everything else can go exactly how you planned, honey.”

  “Then this is how I planned it, Seamus,” she breathed.

  She pulled him onto her, and as his mouth found hers she let her eyes close completely. This wasn’t the dream, she thought hazily, lifting herself slightly to meet him. This couldn’t be the dream she’d had so often, the dream that always ended with her arms empty, her heart crying out in anguish. This was Malone’s rough cheek grazing hers, these were Malone’s arms, corded with muscle and sheened with moisture, on either side of her, and this was the man she loved—first, last, and always—entering her.

  She gave an involuntary little gasp, and he slowed immediately. She caught her bottom lip in her teeth and with difficulty moved her head from left to right on the pillow.

  “No, don’t…don’t stop.” Her voice was low with urgency. “I want you in me, Seamus. We’ve waited too long for this.”

  She looked up at him through her lashes, and saw him nod, once, his jaw tight.

  “Way too long, Lee,” he rasped. “But never again, I promise.”

  He thrust gently forward again, and she felt herself opening to him, taking him in. Her teeth sunk deeper into her bottom lip, her hands on his shoulders tightened, and then she felt him deep inside her and the pain had disappeared. She exhaled softly.

  All at once everything was right, everything was perfect, everything was real.

  He’d come back to her. He’d walked away from her, but that didn’t matter anymore, because he’d finally come back to her. He was here with her now. He was here with her now, and she would never, ever let him go again.

  He was withdrawing and moving into her, with slow, steady thrusts, going deeper each time. She found herself moving with him, matching his tempo effortlessly, as if even the blood in her veins was surging in time with his.

  This was basic. This was elemental. This was the pulse beat behind everything. It had been going on since the dawn of time and it would still be going on, long after Ainslie O’Connell and Seamus Malone were just a memory, she thought disjointedly. But for right now, they were part of it. She was the dark, wet shore that he poured into, and he was the wave that ebbed and flowed, covering her and retreating, only to surge farther into her each time.

  A bubble of laughter burst silently inside of her like the pealing of an invisible bell—a silvery little laugh of pure joy, partly because of her fanciful notions, but mostly because she couldn’t help herself. There had always been such an edge of sadness to her dreams, she thought, even when in them he’d been holding her desperately close. But all that was gone now, like the troubling but rapidly fading memory of some scrap of nightmare. She felt him enter her again, felt as if she was on a swing, rushing upward toward a blue, blue sky, and then she was arcing toward the ground again.

  At some point the bonds that held them here would break totally free, Ainslie thought. Any moment now they would both fly higher into that blueness—higher than the trees, higher than any vee-shaped flight of birds, so high that it would be as he’d said. They would sweep upward through a field of stars, she would pick one out, and he would pluck it for her from the sparkling sky. Then the two of them, wrapped around each other, would slowly float down again to the soft brown earth far below.

  …ashes to ashes, dust to dust…

  She froze, her nails digging into him, her eyes suddenly wide open. Above her, his eyes were in shadow and for a moment she saw only blackness where there should have been brilliant green. A terrible coldness seemed to wrap itself around her—coldness, and something else.

  Red roses for true love…

  A heartbreakingly lovely scent, like wine and perfume and a lover’s kiss all swirled together in one, drifted through the room, wafted closer to her and the man holding her, and began to fill her very being. She felt the m
uscles in Malone’s arms tense, heard his breathing falter slightly, and all of a sudden icy fear gripped her. She held him tightly to her, squeezed her eyes shut to block out the shadows, and put her lips to his ear.

  “Take me there now,” she said, her voice thready with desperate urgency. “Take me with you. Take me with you now, Seamus.”

  As if he’d been waiting for her to say the words, his eyes opened, and that deep green gaze locked onto hers. His lips were parted, and he dragged in a rasping breath, his body rigid with effort.

  “I love you, Lee.” His voice was barely audible. “Whatever else you believe of me, you have to believe that. I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you. I’ll love you till the day I die, and beyond.”

  His gaze held hers steadily. Wide-eyed, she stared back at him, and slowly the fear disappeared, the sadness melted into the past, and the intoxicating scent of roses drifted away, leaving only a ghostly memory in the air.

  “You only die once, Malone,” she said softly. “I won’t let you go into the darkness a second time. Whatever else you believe, believe that.”

  “Oh, I do, champ.” Brief humor touched one corner of his mouth. “I think you’d fight the devil himself, and win.”

  Even as she spoke she saw the last of his control slip away, saw those green eyes close, saw that black hair fall across them in damp spikes…

  …and then she was with him, and nothing was holding her back. A molten heat began spreading through her, heavy and dark, as if her blood was turning slowly to liquid gold, as if her whole body was becoming something less stable, more formless. She knew he was saying her name over and over again, and as if from a long way away she thought she could hear herself calling out his, but then everything shattered around her in a blinding explosion of heat and pure, brilliant light, and she was leaving her own body behind.