He glanced at me silently, unsmiling.
“Killian.”
This time his gaze was hard, possessive. I was a successful lawyer. I ate dickheads for breakfast and sometimes for supper. I was nobody’s bitch and usually made men mine but right now I had handed any power I wanted to give to the man in front of me. I trusted him. I trusted him with me and that was now the most powerful aphrodisiac I’d encountered.
“Go get in bed for me.”
I left my book on the lounger and went upstairs, hearing the sound of the shower as I stripped. Our bedroom was tidy, military style, the light from the dying sun peeking through the open windows, the sounds of the incoming waves crashing in the distance.
I sat, propped up by the pillows, waiting for him to come to me.
When he did, he was naked, still dripping from the shower. He didn’t speak, simply climbing over me on the bed, touching nowhere else except my lips with his. The kiss was soft to start with, then became more demanding, his tongue pillaging my mouth, claiming and I gave, my legs winding around his, pushing my breasts up to his chest but he arched away.
The lack of touch except for our mouths made me wanton. I started to grasp his skin with my hands, pulling him closer as I needed the friction, touching his chest, his skin, biceps, shoulders and then he grabbed my hands and moved them away from me and him, pushing his weight on them and looking at me. Every inch was taken into consideration, his cock growing harder and I spread my legs further.
My hips thrust into the air between us and I moaned, needing some form of release. Anticipation was a bitch with a nail gun and I was determined to break free. “Fuck me, Killian.”
He paused, removing a hand from my wrist and dropping it to my centre, one finger grazing from my soaked pussy to my clit. And then his hand resumed its grip on my wrist and he sunk his cock inside me, filling me up hard and fast and claiming me, reclaiming me. I came on his second thrust, completely high off the sheer sensation of simply his cock inside me with no words to cushion the feeling.
He ignored my orgasm and continued, his hips set so I was unable to move my legs around him and have control or suggestion over his movements. His own orgasm set me off again, warm wetness surrounding us both, leaving me needy and shaking, my vulnerability requiring a cloak only Killian could provide.
“It’s okay,” he said, holding me into him. “Everything is going to be okay. What I feel is stronger than whatever you have to tell me.”
I faced him. “I know. Maybe that’s what scares me.”
“Nothing needs to scare you. I promise.”
Chapter Eighteen
Killian
I took her to Bodmin Moor. We’d had two days of mooching about Tintagel, walking around the castle ruins and looking at the trees libations in woodland nearby. We saw people dressed in clothing more suited to Woodstock and a group of pagans performing a ritual that Claire watched wide eyed. She was a true Londoner; unused to much other than the bustle and business of the City so the strangeness of ways more associated with the countryside was an anomaly for her. Even at her parents’ home in Oxford, which was in the countryside, there wasn’t the wildness like this.
It had been two days since the card reader had spoken to her about whatever it was she had to tell. In that time, she’d shifted between being herself, the Claire I still knew, and a preoccupied woman who was at sea, as Edward’s wife, Elizabeth, would have put it.
Forty-eight hours later, or nearing that, I’d had enough and I fixed us both in the car and took the roads to the wilds of Bodmin, home of the Beast and of ancient stones and henges, heather and bracken. It was a landscape as different from the city as the moon.
She became silent as we approached, taking the car to a carpark near to Camelford and parking it up there. She had recovered well from the concussion; the headache having gone completely and the bruising beginning to fade. We’d struck lucky with the weather: the sky was again clear although there was a breeze. The moorland was barren, no buildings in sight once we started walking, just the heather and bracken and stone. It was like no other place I’d ever been, even during my time in the Marines. The rolling landscape and warm shades could appear bleak, but to me they’d been a sign of freedom: that even with all the industry and business and buildings, there were still parts of the land that couldn’t be captured.
“This is incredible,” Claire said, after we’d walked for about half a mile. We’d taken a rucksack filled with food and the blanket to sit on. She had her book and camera and we’d both left our phones in the car. “You said there were wild ponies here.”
“One of the few places left in the country where you’ll find them. I don’t know if we’ll see them today. I’ve only caught sight of them a couple of times.”
“How often did you used to come here?”
“Two or three times each summer once Nick had his driver’s licence. We’d camp over or stay in one of the derelict farmhouses if the weather turned. I think it added to our reasons to want to go in the military. Although we both loved the ocean, we liked having to survive just off the land.”
“And now you run a business in the city,” she said, goading me.
I shrugged. “I enjoy it. And I spend plenty of time out of the city too. It is good to be back here though.”
We continued to talk as we walked; me about my parents and Nick, how he was managing with the twins and how he had changed since becoming their only parent. Claire spoke of her siblings, her worry over Seph and Ava and how she wished Max would meet someone who could manage his directness.
“I don’t think he sees himself as being able to have a family,” she said as we climbed uphill, the moor stretching as far as we could see. “He sometimes makes decisions as if he was our father, all work based. Last year he cancelled a trip to the Dominican Republic with a woman he was seeing because a judge wanted to reschedule the court date. He was within his rights to say no and the judge would’ve worked around him.”
I’d known Max for longer than Claire, having met him on our first day at college. She was right; he was driven by success and his work and he’d never had a girlfriend for longer than a couple of months because he grew tired of the time he needed to spend with them. “Maybe he’s just not met the right person yet,” I said.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think sometimes he blames dad for our mum’s death.”
