Just then, there was a tentative rapping at the dividing door. My father’s voice from the other side: “Charlotte? We heard a noise. It sounded like … Is everything all right in there?”
Sean raised his eyebrow in my direction.
Well, are you going to lie to them again? Pretend there’s nothing wrong?
“Everything’s fine,” I said, a pain in my belly like a twisted knife as I watched the light fade out of Sean’s eyes. “We knocked over a lamp. It’s fine.”
There was a long, dubious pause. “All right,” my father said heavily. “If you’re sure.”
“Yes,” I said, almost normal. “I am.”
Sean started to turn away from me, closing down. I knew I was losing him and I couldn’t have been any more scared if he’d been dying.
I levered off the wall and went for him again. This time, when he tried another almost dismissive throw, I countered, stepped in close, got my hip under his and used his own demonstrated advantage in size against him.
The room was too small for fighting. Sean landed hard and awkwardly, halfway onto the bed, and jackknifed straight back onto his feet again, light as a cat, but there was a glitter in his eyes now. I told myself that anything was better than the dull-eyed beaten stare he’d had before.
“You knew what you were taking on with me, Sean,” I told him harshly. “If you wanted somebody perfect, you should have taken Madeleine home for real, while you had the chance.”
“I never wanted Madeleine,” he said, quietly vehement. “I only ever wanted you, from the very first moment I laid eyes on you. Wanted you so badly it was like a bloody sickness. I’ve never changed my mind about that. But sometimes I think you have.”
The words were spoken with such soft certainty that I felt something break inside. It must have been something connected to my eyes, because they began to flood with tears.
“You know how I feel about you, damn it,” I said, keeping my chin up and my gaze on his even though my sight had blurred away. He tilted his head to one side and regarded me as though he could see right through to my soul. He probably could. I’d laid it bare for him. “I love you. That’s never changed for me, either.”
“Hasn’t it?” He held his arms out, in challenge as much as invitation. “Then prove it.”
I moved into him without hesitation, reached up and fisted my hands in his hair and pulled his mouth down to mine. Despite that, the kiss started out slow, smooth, tender. I had no intention of letting it stay that way.
Something ignited, as it always did when I was with Sean. Sometimes I thought that fire was never entirely extinguished, like a pilot flame waiting for the explosive rush of fuel to become a full-fledged ferocious burn. All consuming, unstoppable.
In moments, I had his shirt peeled open and was fumbling with his belt. He yanked the holstered Glock out from his waistband and dumped it behind him onto the bed. He’d already done the same with my SIG, had parted my shirt from my trousers and jerked it upwards to dance his fingers across the heated gap of skin between the two.
I don’t remember him unclipping my bra, but suddenly my breast was in his hand, his mouth. I let my head fall back, gasping, as any logical sections of brain fell over and refused to reboot.
Eyes blind now, I was barely aware of his hands lifting me onto the desk. My trousers and the rest of my underwear had gone somewhere along the way and those diabolically knowing fingers teased and tormented until it was all I could do not to implore him for release.
My shirt was off my shoulders, bunched and tangled around my elbows, riveting my arms behind me. I fought the terror of being restrained, battled it down, opened my eyes as Sean leaned in close, bit my lower lip oh so gently.
“Trust me,” he murmured and I knew he’d seen both the fear and my attempts to resist it. “I’ll never hurt you, Charlie … .”
“I know.”
He smiled at me, an utterly beautiful, heart-stopping smile, and began to trail slow burning kisses along the length of my neck, almost reverently across the scar that circled the base of it, and down the bow-tight, quivering arch of my body.
His breath accentuated the sweat dewing my skin, created an acute sensitivity that made me flail helpless under his touch. The thrumming moan in my throat was guttural, barely human. The need was prowling through me, starting to rage as he kept me teetering on the knife edge of utter ruin. My hands thrashed weakly and the telephone followed the lamp onto the floor, crashing off the edge of the desk.
Glazed with desperation, I lifted a weighted head on the end of a feeble neck and found him watching me through slitted lids. And then I understood what he was waiting for. I’d spent the last few days kicking him squarely in the ego and now he wanted total surrender by way of recompense. More than acceptance, only a kind of mindless subjugation would do.
I gave it to him.
His hands and mouth demanded more. I was panting, crying, clawing towards a peak I couldn’t quite reach.
“Sean! For God’s sake …”
“What?” he demanded, and the grip he was having to exert on himself made his voice sound coldly furious. “What do you want?”
“You!” I nearly shouted it, throat raw. “I want you!”
“Careful, Charlie.” He spoke in my ear, whisper rough, almost mocking. “These walls are terribly thin, you know, and we don’t want your parents to know what we’re about, now do we?’
I fought my arms free, tearing my shirt into tatters in the process, and grabbed him with vicious fingers.
“I don’t give a shit about my parents,” I managed through gritted teeth. “Just do it. Right now. And don’t you dare hold anything back or I swear I’ll kill you where you stand.”
He was too far gone to laugh, but I just had time to see the triumph, the pure male exultation blaze into his eyes. Then he was inside me in one long driving thrust. I hadn’t touched him but he’d done enough for both of us. A wild cry leapt from my throat as my body closed greedily around him, and that was all it took. The twisted mass of frustrated tension that had been building up inside me burst loose, bellowing with wrath and glory as every sense overloaded.
“Hold on to me!” Sean demanded, hoarse. “For the love of Christ, hold on to me … .”
Still his hands gripped my hips, almost cruel, heedless of bruises old and new, balancing me at the edge of the desk and making it slam into the wall with every wild plunge of his body into mine. He’d tortured himself as well as me, making both of us wait. But by the time he let go with an almost primal roar, I followed him over again.
And disintegrated, like an overrevved race engine, pushed too hard to the finish. I was dying and certain of it. No way could my heart hit that hard, that unevenly, without one or other of us going into full cardiac arrest.
And then I realized the pounding was a fist on the dividing door.
“Charlotte! Are you all right?” My father’s voice again, sounding shaken to the core. “Open this door! What the devil is going on in there?”
Sean’s face was buried in my shoulder, arms wrapped tight around my body, muscles trembling violently. We both were. I let my head fall back against the wall behind me, closed my eyes and felt his lips brush against the side of my neck.
“Haven’t you ever heard two people making love before?” I called back, croaky. “Go away and leave us alone … .”
CHAPTER 22
I faced my father’s staunch disapproval over breakfast the next morning.
He’d called horribly early—a little before six—and announced, almost defiant, that he intended to go down for breakfast and assumed one of us would feel obliged to accompany him.