Brynne was a maze of contradictions, and he adored every twist and turn that made up the woman he loved. The woman he’d lost due to his own arrogance and their mutual failure to communicate. The woman he’d do anything to have again.
“Tell me ye are happy.” He glided a finger along her jaw. Curled it beneath her chin. Nudged her head until there was nowhere she could look but into his eyes. Nowhere she could hide. Not from him. Never from him. “Tell me ye are happy, and I’ll leave.”
“I…” Her throat convulsed as she swallowed. “I am fine.”
“That’s not happy.”
“Maybe not,” she acknowledged stiffly. “But it’s a far cry better than miserable, which is what I am with you.”
A dagger shoved between his shoulders would have hurt less.
“Bry–”
“This not going to work, Lachlan. It wasnevergoing to work.” Her hazel eyes flashed with a combination of frustration and bewilderment. “Your coming here changes nothing.”
“And is that what ye feel for me?” he challenged roughly. “Nothing? Because the goose pimples on yer flesh when I do this”–he trailed his fingers along her neck, traced the coarse pads across the slanted lines of her collarbone, slid down to outline the rounded curve of her breasts with his palms–“say otherwise.”
She swallowed again. Skimmed her tongue between her lips. Shifted her weight.
“Physical attraction is not everything,” she said after a long, ragged pause.
“Aye,” he whispered, watching her eyes drift closed as he rubbed his thumbs across her nipples. Nipples that were hard and swollen beneath the thin layer of her muslin bodice. “But it’s not nothing.”
Bending his head, he brushed his mouth across hers.
Just a fleeting taste.
A memory of what had been.
A hope for what might be.
Her mouth hardening beneath his, she began to pull back…but then with a tortured, breathy whimper that went right to his loins, she rose up on her toes, grabbed on to the lapels of his jacket, and turned the taste of attraction into a torrent of desire.
“Bry,” he groaned, cupping her breasts and slipping his tongue between her lips as a bolt of lightning sizzled through the air and slammed into the ground at their feet.
Fire enveloped them, flames licking up their bodies as they hungrily devoured each other like two poor souls starved. And in a way, they were. Starved for love. Starved for affection. Starved for the connection that had brought them together…and then snapped, leaving them floundering in dark water with no way to kick themselves back up to the surface.
For eighteen months he’d been treading in that obsidian pool of despair, longing for those late nights and early mornings where all he had to do was roll onto his side and Brynne was there waiting for him, a slumberous smile on her lips and passion in her eyes.
He backed her up against the wall. Filled his hands with all those rich, luxurious waves of tawny blonde hair as they deepened the kiss. As they used it as a lifeline to draw themselves out of that damned well and into the light.
Inch by inch, stroke by stroke, touch by touch, they went higher, and higher, and higher. The pleasure of having her in his arms, of feeling her heartbeat against his chest, of knowing she was right where she was supposed to be…it was indescribable. Itwaseverything. But just as they reached the edge, just as he thought they might actually have a chance of making it out of that inky darkness…the rope broke.
And down they plunged.
“I cannot,” Brynne gasped, wrenching herself free. Shoving away from the wall, she ducked under his arm and stumbled around the edge of the table. Steadying herself on a chair, she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth then clasped it to her belly. “I cannot do that with you without picturing you doing it withher.”
The “her” Brynne referred to was Allison Adair.
Lachlan’s mistress…and the biggest bloody mistake of his life.
His short nails digging into the sides of his temple, he raked them along his skull and hissed out a breath. They’d had this conversation a dozen times.Twodozen times. He’d explained, and apologized, and even begged until he was blue in the face.
But it always ended the same.
With his heart bleeding in his hands…and Brynne walking out the door.
“I don’t know what else tae say that hasna already been said.”
