Hot Heroes: The Rules Of Her Rescue

She’d craved him for weeks and now that he was here, she couldn’t turn her back on her own needs. Her own desires.

“Now,” he whispered when he tore his mouth from hers only to trail his lips and tongue along the column of her throat. “I need you.”

“Oh, me, too. Want you, now.” She threaded her fingers through his thick hair and held his head to her neck, loving the feel of him pressed against her. His hot breath puffing against her skin. She wanted more. All of it. Wanted the sensations only he could cause, and wanted them to go on and on.

“Let’s go, then.” He bent, swept one arm under her legs and lifted her off her feet in one easy move.

Laura wasn’t dainty. Nor petite. No man before him had ever picked her up and, ridiculous or not, it was a gesture romantic enough to send her heartbeat into a wild gallop.

He knew where her bedroom was. God knew he’d been there often enough—before.

In the hallway, sunlight speared through the skylight overhead, laying out a golden path that would lead directly to her bed. As he stalked down the sun-dazzled oak floor, his steps echoed out around them and sounded to Laura’s fuzzed out brain, like the hands of a clock, sweeping toward inevitability. He carried her through the open door to her room and stopped dead.

“Useless,” he murmured on a laugh.

Laura followed his gaze and couldn’t stop her own laugh. Her fierce guard dog was in the middle of her bed, flat on his back, all four legs jutting into the air so that he looked like road kill.

“Easy to see why you want such a magnificent animal,” Ronan said softly, a smile curving his incredible mouth.

“He has his good points,” she argued in defense of Beast.

“None of which I’m interested in at the moment,” he told her, then spoke louder. “Beast, you lazy sod, off the bed!”

The dog opened his eyes and turned his head to look at them. A tail wag his only other response.

“He’s tired, poor baby,” Laura said, as her fingers slid through Ronan’s hair.

“Maybe so, but he’s in me way,” Ronan argued. “Go on now. Go sleep on the couch, you great lump of fur.”

With an all too human-sounding sigh, the dog rolled over, jumped off the bed and left the room, pausing only to give them both an offended glare.

Ronan stepped into the room, slammed the door behind them, then carried Laura to the bed and dropped her on the mattress. “Never thought to fight a dog for space in your bed.”

“No fight necessary,” she told him and lifted both arms in welcome.

Ronan was there, in her arms a heartbeat later, his big, warm body covering hers, his mouth on hers again, stoking the slow-burning embers inside into a conflagration big enough to char them both.

Then he rolled over, until she was lying on top of him, and once he had her there, he scooped his big hands beneath the hem of her sweater and tugged it up and over her head. She wore a T-shirt beneath and, in a moment, that was gone, too. Only her bra remained and Ronan’s magic fingers undid the front clasp and then pushed it off her arms to be tossed to the floor with the rest.

“Ah, lovely,” he whispered and Laura felt lovely as his hands cupped her breasts. His thumbs rubbed across her sensitive nipples until she moaned gently at the quiver inside her.

“So good,” she said softly, reaching up to cover his hands with her own.

“I didn’t want to miss you, damn it,” Ronan told her, and Laura knew she should be angry at hearing it. Then she realized what he was saying and she held the words inside her in a quiet, dark spot so she could pull them out later and feel them again.

It was a kind of power, she thought as she stroked her hands up and down his forearms, felt the crisp, dark hairs against her palms. To know that he wanted her in spite of himself.

“I wanted you to miss me, Ronan. Wanted you to be miserable because you walked away.” She reached down for the hem of his green sweater and tugged it up, with him shifting to help her yank it off of him. His shirt was gone an instant later, and she slid her palms across his hard, muscled chest, loving the heat of his body pouring into hers.

He hissed in a breath and stared into her eyes. “You got your wish then,” he ground out, “for I did miss you.” He lifted his hands to cup her face. “I did want you and hated every moment I was away from you. Is that enough?”

“Not nearly,” she confessed and lowered her head to kiss him.

He clutched her tight, rolled again on the bed until he was levered over her. Then he stripped the rest of her clothes from her, tossing them to the floor, leaving her lying naked in a slant of sunlight across the mattress.

She watched him, breath hitching in her chest, as he stood and tore his own clothes off. Her gaze swept him up and down and everything inside her jittered as if lightning had struck her again. Then he was back with her, his body sliding over hers, the hard, thick need of him pressing into her, letting her know just how much he wanted her.

A damp, aching heat settled at her center and throbbed in time with her fluttering heartbeat as they rolled across the bed, wrapped tightly in each other’s arms. Hands explored, mouths worshipped, sighs and groans slid into the sun-warmed air and hung there, sizzling from the combined heat of lovers too long apart.

Laura’s pulse raced. Each breath came short and sharp. He touched her and she burned, he stopped touching her and she ached.

He slid one hand to the apex of her thighs and cupped her, holding tight as she instinctively rocked her hips into his touch. As she groaned and writhed in a kind of panicked need she’d never known before.

“Ronan—”

“I love touching you,” he whispered, dipping his head into the curve of her neck and shoulder. “The hot feel of you moving against me. The sigh of your breath. The scent of you.” He raised his head, looked down into her eyes and muttered thickly, “I missed it all. Missed you.”

He pushed first one finger, and then two, deep inside her and Laura’s mind splintered a little. She grabbed at his shoulders and clung to him. Her hips moved in the rhythm he set with his deep caresses. His thumb rubbed over one incredibly sensitive spot until she actually heard herself whimper his name in desperation.

“I’ll have you now, Laura. As you’ll have me.”

“Yes,” she said, swallowing hard, fighting for breath, “now, Ronan. Please, now.”

He kissed her again, long and hard and deep, tangling his tongue with hers in a frantic dance that only served to drive the ache inside her higher and higher.

When he pulled back from her, she wanted to cry out and bit her lip to keep that secret to herself.

“Condoms,” he blurted. “For all the good they do, are they still here, in the drawer?”

“Yes. Yes.”

He moved away and she heard the drawer open and shut.

“Hurry, Ronan!”

“Aye. I am.”

She watched him tear a condom free and sheathe himself and it was all she could do to keep from reaching for him, doing it herself, just so she could touch him. Indulge herself in the wonder of wrapping her fingers around him.

But the moment passed and he was back, kneeling between her parted thighs, staring down at her as if she were the last steak at a beggar’s banquet. When she met his fevered gaze, she saw raw passion glittering in his eyes. Sunlight streamed across him, catching red tones in his hair and gilding his flesh with a light that made him seem almost unreal. A fantasy.

And for now anyway … he was hers.

“Come here to me,” he said and sat back on his haunches as he took her hands and pulled her up against him.

She straddled him, he took hold of her hips and lowered her inch by tantalizing inch onto the hard length of him.

Laura’s head fell back. A deep-throated groan ripped from her as he invaded her slowly, exquisitely, drawing out the pleasure/torture for both of them. She wanted him fast and hard but this … lingering … was too good to ignore.

When at last she had claimed all of him and he was seated deep inside her, she lifted her head to meet his gaze. She bent her head and took his mouth, teeth tugging at his bottom lip. Sparks flared in his eyes and she felt an answering shower of fire inside her.

Slow wasn’t enough. Tender wasn’t what they needed. In unspoken agreement, he tossed her back onto the bed and followed her down, his body still linked with hers.

She lifted her legs and hooked her ankles at the small of his back. He moved inside her, his hips pistoning suddenly as if he’d held himself on a tight leash as long as he could and now he would claim what he needed. What they needed.

She relished it. The slap of flesh to flesh, the sound of his breath coming faster and faster. The push and pull of his body slamming into hers. She moved with him, against him, and the coil of heat inside her expanded until she felt as though she might drown in it. And she didn’t care.

This was what she had waited for. What she had ached for the whole time they were apart. This … magic that she found only with Ronan. He was it for her and had been from the first. Ronan Connolly and the things he could do to her.

Again and again, they crashed together, each of them fighting for the release that hovered just out of reach.

Her hands swept up and down his back, reveling in the feel of him beneath her palms. Then she moved to cup his face, slide her hands down his neck over his shoulders, across his chest. He hissed in air at her every stroke, and she shivered to know what she could do to him.

What they could make between them.

Tension coiled deep and suddenly exploded. When the first climax took her, Laura shouted his name and clung to him as wave after wave of pleasure shattered her heart. Her soul.

She held him when his own body erupted and with a shout of triumph, Ronan leapt into oblivion, still holding her tightly to him. Laura cradled him close as, wrapped together, they tumbled blindly into the fire.

For a minute or two, Ronan was almost afraid he’d been struck blind. Then he realized he had collapsed on top of Laura and his head was buried in the tangle of her hair. She smelled so damn good, he didn’t want to lift his head, but still, he did, looking down into eyes that were at once energized and slumberous.

“I’m crushing you,” he murmured, and went up on one elbow. His body still locked inside hers, he was in no hurry to disentangle them. The feel of her surrounding him was too damned good to give up just yet.

“I don’t feel crushed,” she said, stroking one finger along the center of his chest.

Fire trailed in the wake of her touch and he idly wondered how he could be shaking from his release only to be craving another?

She lay in the sun like a fallen goddess, all light and golden, her hair a fall of honey across the blue duvet on her bed. She was warm and sexy and he wanted her all over again. But there were things to talk about. And Ronan wasn’t a man to put off the inevitable.

“I didn’t come here for this, you know,” he started and watched her eyes shadow, as if a chill was leaching away the warmth.

“I know. I didn’t mean for this to happen, either.” She gave his chest a gentle push and he took her meaning, reluctantly separating himself from her.

Already a distance was forming between them, and though he knew that for the best, it didn’t make it any easier to abide.

“Damn it Ronan, you shouldn’t have followed me home.”

“I was to simply let you walk away after telling me—”

“Fine. Fine. That was my fault,” she grumbled. “I hadn’t meant to tell you at all. And certainly not in that way, but you just made me so mad …”

“Well, I know the feeling,” he said and his smile faded when she didn’t return it.

How had this gone from heat and fire to cold and ice so quickly? he wondered. He’d felt the rightness of it when he was inside her. And now, it was as though they were different people, standing on opposite sides of a wall that only got higher the longer they were together.

The hell of it was, he wanted her still.

Before he could say such a stupid thing aloud, he made for the bathroom and when he came back, she was still sitting on the bed, still gloriously naked, and for that, he was grateful. If he couldn’t touch, he could at least look. And really, what would be the point in covering herself up when they’d only just been as close as two people could be?

He walked back to her bed and sat down beside her. “We’ve things we should talk about.”

She sighed and pushed her heavy fall of hair back behind her shoulders. “If this is another goodbye speech, I’ll skip it, thanks just the same.”

A twist of temper lodged in the center of his chest, but he deliberately smothered it. “Not a speech, damn it. I’ve only just learned I was to be a father. I don’t even know what to think of that. How to feel.”

“It’s over, Ronan. It didn’t happen. You don’t have to say anything to me about it.”

“I do,” he insisted. “I just don’t know what.”

Infuriating to not know. He was accustomed to being in control. To having the upper hand. And in this, he hadn’t a clue. He was as lost here as he might have been if someone had dropped him in the middle of Kansas.

“Then let me,” she said and scooted off the bed, as if she needed physical as well as emotional distance from him.

She walked to the bathroom, plucked her robe off the back of the door and slipped the sapphire blue, satin garment on, tying it at the waist. The fact that the material gaped enough to give him a glimpse of one creamy breast was something he was sure she wasn’t aware of.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. About us,” she said, walking toward him, but stopping a few feet from him. “If I hadn’t lost the baby, we would have had a connection between us forever, Ronan.”

“And a marriage,” he told her flatly.

She was surprised at that; he saw it in her eyes. She waved it away though and said, “Doesn’t matter now anyway, but my point is, there is no baby. So there is no connection, Ronan. We’re just two people who happen to be really great in bed together.”

He wasn’t sure why he felt he’d been insulted, but the sting was there nonetheless.

“There’s more.”

“Is there?” She laughed and shook her head. “No, there isn’t, and you don’t have to pretend for me. You left because you didn’t want more.”

“That’s not entirely the way of it,” he insisted, though a voice inside told him she had it exactly right.

“Ronan.” She stepped closer, stopping close enough for him to reach out and grab hold of her, but he didn’t because her eyes were still cool, dispassionate.

“Ronan, when I lost the baby, it made me realize something important.”

“Aye? And what’s that?”

She smiled and gave a little shrug that dipped the fabric of her robe even more. Almost enough to expose one pink nipple. His insides fisted in response.

“I want a family. Children. A husband. Forever.”

He gritted his teeth and slipped off the bed, moving past her to grab up the clothes he’d torn off just moments before.

“Don’t look so worried,” she said on a choked off laugh. “I’m not nominating you for the position of husband.”

“Laura—” He looked at her and it took every ounce of his will not to go to her, snatch her up and toss her back onto the bed, where everything between them made sense.

“I said I want a husband. I didn’t say you were the guy.”

Maybe she hadn’t said it, he told himself, but she had thought it at one point or another in their time together. He’d seen it in her eyes.

“I’m not,” he assured her, “though if I were …”

“No ifs,” she told him. “I don’t need you to placate me. Or to patronize me. I just need you to understand that this …” she waved a hand at the rumpled bedclothes behind her “… won’t happen again. I’m not made for affairs. That’s just not who I am. I thought I could do it, have sex with you and keep it simple. But nothing about you is simple, Ronan.”

“Doesn’t sound like a compliment,” he said, tugging his jeans on.

“Didn’t mean it as one.” She walked to him and when she was close enough, she went up on her toes and kissed him, just a slight brush of her lips to his. Then she stepped back, tightened the belt of her robe and swung her hair back from her face. “That’s goodbye, Ronan. Whatever we had together died along with our baby.”

What the bloody hell could he say to that without sounding like a moron?

He’d come here full of fire and righteous fury and he’d leave here satisfied in body and muddled of mind. Did all women have this ability to wreak havoc on a man?

Or was it just Laura?

He looked into her blue eyes and read regret shining there, along with the goodbye she’d just proclaimed. And he knew, that for today at least, they were done.

Six

The stone patio felt rough, cold and damp against his bare feet. He wore only jeans, hitched low on his hips. The icy wind pushed at him from the sea as if slapping at him. Ronan didn’t mind. He needed the cold. It made him sharp. Cleared out the fog in his mind and the heaviness inside him.

He lifted one hand to rub his fist against the center of his chest, in a futile effort to ease the ball of ice settled there. Taking a long pull on his beer, Ronan walked to the edge of the patio, dropped one hand to the wood railing and stared out to sea.

The waves rolled in and crashed on the cliffs below. Moonlight skittered in and out from behind a bank of clouds and intermittently turned the surface of the ocean to a bright silver. From next door came the muted sounds of a stereo and there was a distant hum of traffic from the highway above and behind the house.

His fist tightened around the long neck of the beer bottle and his eyes narrowed even further as he looked not at the scene in front of him, but at his own memories of the day.

Since the moment Laura had dropped her bomb on him that morning, nothing had made sense.

Which was the problem, he thought grimly, taking another long drink of his beer. Following Laura home, ending up in her bed, hadn’t steadied him. If anything, it had only fed the imbalance he felt. As if the world as he knew it had been cut out from under him. As if the stones beneath his feet were no more substantial than the insistent wind tearing at his hair.

A child.

Laura had been pregnant. With his child. And it was gone. How was he to deal with that? He saw her again, in memory, standing beneath the shade of a tree, spilling her secret, and he standing there like the village idiot, as if he hadn’t a mind to think or a tongue to speak the words crowding his mouth. But what could he say?

He still didn’t know what to think of it. But he knew what he thought of what had happened after. The slow boil of Laura facing him down and telling him goodbye. The coolness of her gaze. The polite, distant tone of her voice. She’d shut him out. Shut him down. As bloodlessly, he was forced to admit, as he had shut her down a couple of months ago.

“But this is different,” he insisted to the shadows crouched at the edges of his patio.

How it was different didn’t matter. What mattered was that no woman had ever walked away from Ronan Connolly before today and damned if he was going to let Laura be the first.

“Be damned if I will,” he assured himself, words snatched away by the wind as soon as they were uttered.

There was more between them yet to be settled. The electrifying heat when they came together was still there, so they weren’t finished with each other. Not at all. He’d let her go too early. His mistake.

“But I can fix that.” A slow smile curved his mouth as he lifted his beer for another sip. And standing in the wind-tossed darkness, a plan built in his mind.

Laura’s eyes were gritty and her head was pounding from lack of sleep.

So when Ronan walked into the real estate office, she took a deep breath and held it, half hoping she’d simply pass out. She was in no way ready for another confrontation with the man who had invaded her thoughts all night.

Heck, if she tried—which she wouldn’t—she would still be able to feel his hands on her. Feel the hot, thick slide of his body into hers and—

Oh, God.

“Uh-oh,” Georgia muttered, loud enough that Laura heard her from across the room.

Ronan’s lips quirked, which told her that he, too, had heard Georgia. Great. Just fabulous.

Still, she couldn’t blame her sister, since Georgia had been Laura’s sounding board all morning while she raged about Ronan and figuratively kicked herself for going to bed with him again.

“Good morning, ladies,” Ronan announced, Ireland singing in his voice. His gaze swept the room in an instant, as if to assure himself that no one but the Page sisters were in the office.

He looked good, she thought, which was completely unfair. If she’d been awake all night, unable to sleep, then he, too, should look haggard and irritable. But no, in his black jeans, thick Irish sweater and his hair carelessly wind-tossed, he looked more like he had stepped off the cover of a magazine.

She frowned up at him when he crossed to her desk, planted both hands on the sleek wood surface and leaned in.

“We have to talk,” he announced.

“Um, I think I’ll go for coffee,” Georgia said, jumping up from her desk like she’d been shot.

“Don’t you dare,” Laura warned, fixing her sister with a glare designed to keep her in place. There was simply no way she was going to be alone with Ronan this morning. She was still too … affected by their time together last night. The sad truth was, she didn’t trust herself with him just now.

Her mind might be coolly logical about keeping him at a distance, but her body had other, more interesting ideas.

“Is there something you needed?” she asked, looking up into those amazing blue eyes of his.

One corner of his mouth tipped up. “Well, now, an interesting question.”

Laura cringed. She’d walked into that one. “Ronan, we’re busy.” She picked up a manila file folder from her desk as if to drive that point home.

“As am I, Laura,” he assured her, pushing up from the desk and shoving his hands into his pockets. “’Tis why I’m here.”

Across the room, Georgia was making faces at her and jerking her head as if to shout, For heaven’s sake, just talk to the man.

Easy for her to mime.

Laura inhaled sharply and said, “Ronan we said all we had to say yesterday. You have the answers you wanted, so why are you here now?”

“Oh,” he assured her with a wink, “I’ve not learned nearly enough. But I’m here on another matter entirely. This visit isn’t personal, Laura. ’Tis business.”

Business? Georgia mouthed.

Laura ignored her sister and focused on the man in front of her. Lord knew it was no hardship to look at him. But when she caught the gleam in his eyes, she started to worry.

“I’ve come for your services—” he smiled at her “—your services professionally speaking, of course. I want you to find me a house to buy.”

For one heart-stopping second, she was excited at the thought. She’d helped him find places to rent both for his business and his residence when she first met him. But he hadn’t been looking to buy then, wanting to take his time and scope out the area.

Her commission on the kind of home Ronan would be interested in buying would be enormous. More than enough for a down payment on their building, a voice in her mind whispered. Too bad, she thought, that he wasn’t serious. He was up to something, she knew, and it had nothing to do with buying a house.

“No,” she argued, in spite of the way her sister was tugging at her hair in frustration. “You don’t want to buy a house, Ronan. You’re trying to drag me into some kind of game, and news flash—I’m not going to play.”