Niall’s face collapsed. “I’m so sorry, Vic. That’s why I’ve wanted to explain . . .” Her voice faded. “Do you mean religious morals?” she asked uncertainly. The entire time she’d been with Vic, he’d never once struck her as being a strict adherent to organized religion.
He shook his head slowly. “I’m talking about personal principles. My father ran off with another woman when I was four years old, leaving behind his wife and two kids. My mom was blown away by his infidelity and abandonment even though she eventually got back on her feet and did an amazing job of raising Meg and me alone.”
Her chest cavity felt like it had been filled with tiny pieces of gravel that scraped her lungs as she watched Vic turn to his dresser and open up a drawer. God, that look on his face before he’d turned away . . . like she’d caught the briefest glimpse of a four-year-old child’s hurt and complete confusion at being abandoned by a parent for no apparent reason. Why hadn’t Meg ever told her that this might be one of the reasons for his intense fury at her? The realization that he might be comparing her in his mind to his unfaithful father made her wretched.
“Not all circumstances are the same, Vic.”
He shut his eyes and pressed his fingers to them. “I know that. I
know
that, Niall. But that doesn’t change anything I said before.” He dropped his hands and opened his eyes, meeting her gaze directly. “This is what I can offer you right now,” he said with a grim hitch of his head toward the bed, leaving little doubt in Niall’s mind as to what he meant. “If you can’t accept that, then there’s nothing else to say at the moment. If you
can
accept that, then what I said still stands. There really is nothing for us to talk about.”
Niall stared blankly at Vic’s six-foot-by-seven-foot bed. It was a small space, yes. But it was a space where he was agreeing to meet with her . . . where he would have to at least acknowledge her existence. If Vic truly cared for her, he would eventually have to face his feelings on this tiny little island that he’d agreed to share with her.
Wouldn’t he?
Niall swallowed convulsively. “All right, then,” she said softly before she rose and gathered her clothing, afraid to think about what she might have just sacrificed by making such a pact with the man she loved.
NINETEEN
Niall quickly shoved the letter she’d just received into her shorts pocket when she heard someone approaching on the gravel driveway that evening.
“The mail finally came, huh?” Meg said in a friendly fashion. They’d quickly made up last night after their tiff in the car.
“Charlie’s mail truck gave out on him,” Niall explained as she passed the mail to Meg.
“I’ll bet he was fit to be tied,” Meg murmured amusedly as she flipped through the envelopes. Charlie Travers was a local institution whose mail deliveries usually arrived like clockwork. They began to walk slowly back to the house. The crystalline day had evolved into a delicious, lazy summer evening, the sort of night that Niall associated with youth and innocent dreams and endless possibilities. Definitely not the kinds of things that went along with the letter that burned in her pocket at present like a piece of hot coal.
“How’s Donny been doing in your class?” Meg asked.
“He’s excelling at the class itself. He never misses, never is a minute late. He’s very intelligent, but he gets really quiet sometimes . . . moody, you know? I was hoping he would make more friends,” Niall mused. Her step slowed as she studied Meg’s profile. “Why do you ask?”
“I saw Sheriff Madigan today in town. He said that Donny’s oldest brother, Errol—the worst of the bunch—is home on parole. That’s sure to make Donny a little extra moody. Just what the kid needs this week, first Jake getting arrested and now this.” Meg shook her head worriedly. “The last time Errol got busted, it was for selling guns along with drugs. He was doing it out of their house.”
“But surely with the police watching him so closely, and being on parole, Errol won’t—”
“It’s not what Errol is selling or not selling that I’m worried about most,” Meg said, cutting her off. “It’s the guys Errol double-crossed and cheated regularly before he got sent up to Joliet that I’m concerned about.”
“He was in Joliet Prison?” Niall asked shakily. She knew the kind of prisoners they kept in Joliet. She knew all too well.
Meg nodded.
Niall inhaled slowly. “Have you told Vic?”
“He’s going to drive over in a little bit and try to talk Donny into staying here tonight.”
“Good,” Niall responded quickly. Her eyes inevitably flickered over to Vic’s cottage. It wasn’t a long-term solution, but the more the boy was safe at the farm the less time he spent in the unhealthy environment of his brothers’ home.
Meg sighed and scraped her fingers through her dark hair, as though trying to clear her mind of worries over which she had limited control. “Do you want to take Vic’s mail out to him?”
Niall blinked, realizing Meg must have noticed where she’d been staring, maybe even recognized the longing in her gaze. She knew that Meg was curious about what was going on with Niall and her brother, but Niall felt too vulnerable about what had happened earlier that day to chat about it.
“He’s writing right now,” Niall said as she began to walk slowly. “I’m sure he wouldn’t want to be disturbed.”
“Is that right?” Meg asked doubtfully.
“Yes,” Niall said firmly. And then, in an attempt to change the subject, “Hey, do you want to go see a movie in El Paso with me right now?”
“Sure,” Meg said as she studied Niall’s face closely.
Niall forced a bright smile. “Good. There’s a romantic comedy playing at that little theater downtown that I never got to see when it first opened.”
All in all, Niall thought her idea for the movie had been inspired. Later that night, when she bade Meg good night and retired to her room, Meg hadn’t had much of an opportunity to question Niall about Vic. They raced to town in order to catch the beginning of the show. Of course they’d been totally absorbed during the movie and Niall managed to keep Meg talking about the plot and the actors on the ride home. By the time she’d hugged Meg and gone upstairs to bed, she’d managed to spend a nice evening with her friend without having to discuss the potentially volatile topic of her relationship with Vic.
In the middle of the night she startled anxiously into wakefulness. She was so accustomed to awakening in such a fashion that it didn’t strike her immediately that she hadn’t been dreaming.
“Shhh,” a deep whisper soothed, followed by a hand caressing her neck.
“Vic?” She blinked in amazement at the large shadow that sat on the edge of her bed. Her surprise at him being there never got the chance to ease before he stood and pulled back the covers. The air-conditioning felt cool on her skin, but Vic radiated heat when he slid his arms beneath her and lifted her as if she weighed as much as her pillow.
“Vic, what the—”
“I’m taking you to my bed, where you belong,” he said in a low voice as he reached for the door.
It felt like heaven to hear him say that, to pretend that he meant more by it than just the purely sexual parameters in which he’d defined their relationship. She pressed her face briefly to his chest and inhaled his clean, spicy scent.
“How’d your work go?” Niall asked him huskily when they were on the gravel turnabout beneath a globe of bright stars set in a lacquered midnight blue sky. She pressed her lips to his neck lightly, skimming them across his skin between kisses. His footsteps faltered slightly at her caress, then speeded up.
“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 pussy 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.
Niall writhed in a haze of blissful agony when he inserted two fingers into her drenched slit and twisted his wrist before he withdrew. Her hips bounced on the bed at the unexpected harsh jolt of pleasure that rocketed through her. Vic’s steady suck on her clit pitched her excitement unbearably higher. When she felt his fingers withdraw from her aching vagina, along her perineum to her sensitive asshole, her lips and eyes parted wide in tense anticipation.
His tongue polished her clit until Niall was surprised it didn’t burn, it sizzled with so much heat. She begged him for release between cries of bliss, without ever being conscious of forming the words. When he pushed his finger into her ass to the first knuckle, withdrew and quickly reinserted it all the way, Niall screamed helplessly in orgasm. He kept her flying around the realms of bliss for a seeming eternity by sucking on her clit relentlessly and finger-fucking her ass with increasing force while pleasure blasted through her.