Wicked Burn

For a few seconds she’d thought she’d offended him. Then he hugged her even tighter in his warm, safe embrace. “You forgot method grunting.”

Laughter erupted from her throat. “Right. Brando would have been the perfect actor for one of your plays.”

“You’re right. He would have.”

She continued to laugh, knowing that he shared in her mirth even though she couldn’t hear or see it.

“Are you going to stand me up again if I ask you to opening night?” he asked, making her laughter quiet and then still.

“I thought not even your mother could stand to be around you on opening night.”

“She can’t,” he said absentmindedly as he ran a hand along her flank, making her skin pebble. “But she never misses an opening anyway. She loves the champagne. She usually talks about the spread at the buffet for the opening night party until even the worst gossips at the Avery Bingo Club duck around the corner when they see her coming.”

Niall chuckled. She felt like her body melted like candle wax into his heat. “She still lives in Avery?”

“Yep.”

“What about your father?”

“Wouldn’t know. He took off when I was four.”

He must have sensed her unnatural stillness.

“It’s hard to miss what you never really knew. My mom always had more than enough energy to be both mother and father to Meg and me. She took it pretty hard when my dad ran off. Meg and I went to stay with my uncle on the farm here in Illinois for a while. But she got over it and ended up being sassier than ever.”

“Don’t you wish she lived closer?”

He sighed, making Niall’s body rise and fall with his own. “Both Meg and I have tried to convince her to move closer to us, but she’s got all of her clubs and her friends in Avery. She’s too busy and too ornery to be thinking about moving in with one of her kids.”

“I can’t wait to meet her,” Niall said as she smiled at the ceiling. She liked the sound of Vic’s mother.

“My sister, Meg, will be here for opening night, too.”

Niall moaned in appreciation when Vic ran the hand that had been tracing her sensitive side up over a thrusting breast. Her thighs pressed tightly together when he pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, then soothed her with his rough fingertips. “The three of us together should be able to survive your opening night wrath, don’t you think?” she asked breathlessly.

“The three of you together could probably survive the apocalypse,” he commented dryly. “Niall?”

“Yes?” she asked, her voice sounding husky with rising sexual tension when she felt him stir and harden against her sensitive flesh.

“Turn around. I don’t think the house christening is finished quite yet.”

Vic started into wakefulness, surprised to see the gray light of dawn peeking around the blinds in his bedroom. It gratified him that he’d slept for a good majority of the night. The reason for his profound sleep was enfolded snugly in his arms.

He’d never really had to convince Niall with words to sleep in his bed that night. After they’d finally left her new condominium, exhausted and completely happy from their multiple rounds of phenomenal lovemaking, they’d ducked into a Thai restaurant for dinner. Vic had guessed from Niall’s heavy eyelids after she’d drunk a glass of wine and devoured almost her entire portion of chicken pad thai that she wouldn’t be long for the waking world. So he’d suggested they watch a DVD together at his place, and sure enough, within forty-five minutes he had an armful of soft, warm, sleeping woman.

He nuzzled the hair at her nape and inhaled her scent. Maybe it was the dampness he found at her neck, or maybe it had been the sensation of the tremors that periodically shook her body that had awakened him in the first place. Or perhaps the primitive part of his brain recognized the scent that mixed with the residual fresh, floral scent of Niall’s perfume.

It was the smell of fear.

His fingers skimmed along her neck and back. Sweat soaked through her shirt. She moaned in her sleep. The sound pained Vic on some deep, indefinable level.

“Niall. Wake up. Wake up, baby,” he murmured as he stroked her sides and pressed his lips against a flushed cheek. She whimpered, the noise reminding him of a trapped animal, both mournful and panicked at once.

He couldn’t stand it.

“Niall.”

She jumped in his arms.

“Vic?”

“You were dreaming,” he muttered close to her ear. He continued to rub her body from her thigh to her ribs, attempting to soothe her. She moved restlessly in his arms and finally sat up. For a few seconds she just sat on the edge of his bed as her breathing slowed, her face shadowed by the dim light and her huddled posture. Neither of them spoke when she finally rose and went to the bathroom.

She returned to the bedside a minute later. “I’m sorry for waking you,” she said in her low, smoky voice that seemed perfectly suited to the muted, gray light of dawn.

“I slept better last night than I have in weeks. You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” Vic told her when she perched on the edge of his bed. He wanted to reach out and pull her back into his arms. He wanted to keep her safe from whatever plagued her dreams. But something in her tense posture made him wary about touching her.

“Maybe I should just go,” she whispered.

“Don’t.”

He saw her head fall forward, sensed her uncertainty . . . her vulnerability.

“I’m all sweaty.”