He played his last game of the year on the same day Lila worked her final hours at the library.
Lila exited the library alone, the reporters having abandoned her story right after the court ruling. She nodded to Brian as she slipped into the front seat of the SUV.
“Where to, Mrs. Wallace?”
“Anywhere but here,” Lila said.
The man refused to start the vehicle on such flimsy orders. “There’s that party tonight at Dave Efflin’s.”
“Home then,” she ordered, stifling a yawn. A long day at work followed by a longer evening wasn’t her idea of a good start to her vacation. Of course Cahal and his teammates would have it harder with a grueling afternoon game behind them before they hit the evening’s entertainment. It would be the last chance for the entire team to meet up before everyone went their separate ways for the holidays.
Thanking Brian, Lila made her way up to the condo and straight into the shower, shedding her clothes along the way. She wouldn’t be surprised if Cahal returned just in time to change and head back out again after hoisting a few beers with the other players.
The waterproof radio she kept in the shower drowned out even the sound of water pelting out of the powerful nozzle. In the end, she felt more blistered than scrubbed, the hot water having awakened her nerves from their earlier exhaustion.
Wrapping a robe around her still wet body, Lila walked out of the bathroom still humming the song she’d just heard and collided with a solid figure.
Cahal’s hands lashed out to steady her at the same time as his eyes drooped to the golden expanse of skin displayed by the robe’s gaping neckline. With her arms imprisoned by his, she could no more straighten out the robe than she could push him away.
“You’re home early,” she observed.
Cahal’s mouth quirked. “The game ended more than an hour ago.”
“I thought you would want to spend some time with your friends on the team.”
He raised an eyebrow, mocking this suggestion. “I see my teammates all the time. I would much rather spend time with you.”
Swallowing a telling remark, Lila said, “We’re supposed to be at the Efflins in a couple of hours.”
He swooped his strong arms down to her wrists and up again to push aside the damp silk. Her blood began to beat loudly.
“I showered at the arena,” he said. “It’ll take me ten minutes to get ready. That leaves us with nearly two hours.”
Again Lila swallowed. “For what?”
The flashing smile distracted her from his pounce. She was in his arms before she drew another breath and that was captured by his lips. His fingers caught in the damp patches in her robe, clinging, still it wasn’t close enough.
His ardent heat leached the chill from her skin and she snuggled closer as he deepened the kiss to something wild and frenzied. Locked within her for far too long, the passion overflowed at the worst possible time, when her defenses, already weakened by stress and forced distance, were taken by surprise.
While her mind may have been confused, her senses knew exactly what was right — the feel of Cahal’s mouth on hers, the hot sweep of his tongue, the firm grip of his hands against her naked flesh. Her only remaining protection was the thin robe lying between his surging grasp and her aching body.
Unable to check her lips as she was struggling to do with her body, Lila moaned his name low in her throat. Cahal’s response was to crush her slim form to his much larger body, fitting them together, and as always, the contrasts between them satisfied a primitive female need. Even if the promise of his strength wasn’t true, she yearned to hear it, over and over again.
This time she allowed the fantasy to consume her, knowing that it was false and wanting nothing more than to forget the lessons of the past. She made no demurral when he hoisted her up into strong arms and carried her to his bedroom or when he laid her down on the cool pale sheets and drew the silk robe from her aroused body.
Gray eyes glittered as he traced every revealed curve, drawing out the agony of anticipation until it became another siren sound of want like those already thrumming through the hidden parts of her body.
Lila ran her hands over the thick swell of muscle visible in his braced arms. “What are you doing?”
It was a soft meaningless question, a way to keep the want at bay for a moment longer.
Frowning, he answered her with perfect seriousness. “I’m memorizing you. In case this is the last.”
Shutting her eyes, Lila refused to make sense of the words. It hurt her to know that he was torn with the same desperation, the same feeling of making love on the edge of a chasm that had just swallowed their marriage and their last chance for salvation. For both of them knew that this physical act, however beautiful, was not enough to hold them together.
“Lila.”
She didn’t realize she was crying until he caught her tears on his lips. But when he would have shifted away she held him to her with a single hand pressed in silent plea against his chest.
“Baby,” his raspy voice was ragged, “what do you want?”
Her eyes opened, the wet lashes like the points of dark stars.
“This.”
She helped him to shed his clothes, letting some fall to the floor beside her and others to twist between the bed sheets, and stilled him when he would have come over her, needing to see all of him. The golden lines of his body were flawless, punished and honed to fierce perfection, his features mirroring that masculine savagery.
With tender trembling fingers, she traced every scar and welt, the faded reminders of injuries past adding to the beautiful whole. It was so long since last she touched him and a couple of the scars were new. Reaching up, she pressed a delicate kiss to an angry bruise at the base of his throat, marking the track of an errant hockey punk.
He watched her with a frustrated glitter.
“How could you do this with someone else?”
Lila didn’t want to answer questions or even talk. When they talked, they ruined that perfect harmony their bodies could achieve.
With an impatient hand, she threaded her fingers through his thick golden hair, pulling his head down for a deep soul-drenching kiss. All of her pent up hurt and pain went into that feverish kiss but so too did all of the love she still held for this man, a strange concoction of innocent first adoration and mature love.
With no space left between them, there was no room for thought. Waves of sensation crashed over her as Cahal’s hands felt every curve of her body, skimming the satiny skin at her hip, the silk of her shoulder, the warm pillowy softness of her breast. She ached for complete possession yet his fingers only teased, cupping her fullness, circling her nipple in a lazy tease. It amazed her that he could keep his wits when hers were fleeing, lost in the almost forgotten agony of the moment.
Gasping his name, she arched into his touch, causing his big hand to close over her breast. His thumb moved in gentle abrasion over her hardened tip, causing it to darken and swell, yearning for his possession.
Just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, Cahal’s golden head lowered to the nipple he had brought to eager life, taking it fully into his mouth. His lips tugged and pulled, his teeth nipping before he drew the engorged tip deep into his mouth and began to suckle. He did the same with the other breast, molding it first in his hand, then bringing it to his mouth so he could take his fill.
After an endless moment of mingled heaven and hell, Cahal’s head lifted. He traced the path of his hand with his silvery gaze as it swept over her thighs and between them. She was hot and ready for him.
With a smothered groan, his mouth met hers, his tongue teasing a response matching his ferocity. As their tongues met and tangled with each other, he came over her, muscled limbs parting her slim thighs.
Lila broke the kiss as she felt him demanding entrance, her body unfurling to accommodate. Closing her eyes, she surrendered to the undertow, letting the primitive invasion swamp her.
Blind, nearly senseless, she used only her instincts as a guide as she met his thrusts with a rhythmic harmony. Rushing toward her was a powerful waterfall and she clung to Cahal’s broad shoulders as if they were her lifeboat. All she knew was that when she went over that precipice, she wanted him next to her.
• • •
“We have to talk.”
Ordinary words, yet they sounded ominous in his raspy voice.
Lila shifted onto her side, giving him a view of one golden shoulder he immediately took advantage of by running his palm over her exposed skin.
“What about?”
He tightened his fingers. “This doesn’t have to be difficult, darling. In fact, this could be very simple.”
She swallowed back a wretched sound. “I’ve apologized. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
Except that she needed him to do the same, without embellishment and coupled with a promise that he would never cheat again.
“I need to know what happened that night.”
Flopping over, Lila buried her head in the pillow. “Except that,” she groaned.
Far above her head, his voice was implacable. “I need to know.”
“Why?” she grumbled. “I don’t want to know about your women.”
“There were no women,” he told her for the thousandth time. With his hand, he cleared strands of hair from around her face. “Tell me, Lila. I can’t stop picturing it and eventually it’s going to drive me crazy.”
Her throat tight, she asked, “How do you picture it?”
It was wrong of her to be curious but she very much wanted to know.
He moved his hand away. “Sympathy and a comforting shoulder, wine in front of the fire. I’m sure my cousin thought of everything. The Wallaces are very thorough.”
“I don’t think he planned it,” Lila protested, “and it was very different from how you describe. The sympathy and comforting shoulder were there but the liquor of choice was champagne, straight up and only slightly chilled.”
His breath fanned the nape of her neck. “I guess you never made it to the fireplace.”
The place where they’d made love so many times. She shook her head.
“We talked and drank at the dining table, staring across at each other.” Even the shoulder to cry on had been a figure of speech until the very end of the night. “I drank too much and when I nearly passed out in my chair I remember Chris carrying me up to the bedroom.”
“Our bedroom?”
The graveled tone told her how much it cost him to ask the question.
“No, the guest bedroom.” She closed her fingers over a hank of sheet and she watched them contract and release, contract and release, in a meaningless pattern. “Cahal, I wouldn’t have — ”
The same cold voice cut her off. “It’s not a question of what you wouldn’t have done. It’s what you did. And what we’re trying to do now.”
It was about her, of course. It was always going to be about her failings, never about his.
As a hockey wife, she’d failed to be blind and when it was impossible to be blind, she’d failed to be credulous or forgiving, as the situation called for.
“What are we trying to do?”
Now her voice was as cold as his and it felt as if it came from a tight ugly place within.
She shook off the hand that came down across her shoulders. Screwing up her eyes tight, she managed to say the rest in a reasonably steady way.
“This isn’t a prelude to a reconciliation, real or otherwise. This isn’t the beginning of something new because a lot of time has gone by before we made this mistake once before. Nothing’s changed. This is just sex. Basically, simply, sex.”
For a long moment, there was a silence as complete as that which descended on an arena full of spectators who saw their team’s hopes for advancement dashed with a single overtime goal. Then the mattress shifted beneath her and he was gone. His touch, his heat, his smell vanished.
Tears squeezed out from between her lashes. Everything she said was the truth. Why did she feel so awful?
• • •
House party rules mandated that the women and men stayed separate, the men gathered around the big screen television in the living room and the women in the kitchen. Children were banished upstairs where the Efflins’ teenaged daughters kept the younger kids occupied. Every so often, a little one would wander downstairs in search of a parent, inevitably gravitating to the kitchen with its cozy warmth and aromas.
The atmosphere was festive with the little ones decked out in holiday hues and the adults in their semi-formal best. Lila’s dark blue satin dress, low cut and flaring out just above her knee was tame compared to her hostess’ gold lamé pantsuit, which clung like a glittering second skin or Nadia Ivanov’s sleek red sheath. The men fared better in dress shirts and pants, a couple in suits, drinking single malt Scotch instead of the usual beer. The Efflins’ liquor cabinet was more of an additional wing to the house and Lila lost count of the number of glasses of fruity red wine she drank.
Hunger forced the men to finally join their spouses in the kitchen where Jennifer Efflin’s carefully prepared five-course meal became a stand-up affair with guests picking at blue cheese and endive salad and tender braised beef short ribs with their hands while the catering staff fluttered between them handing out plates and innumerable paper napkins.
When one of the husbands began feeding his wife morsels of spicy curled prawns, the rest followed his example. More than one woman ended up with a shrimp dropped down the front of her dress.
Cahal’s blunt fingers made imperfect utensils. Lila blushed every time her lips came accidentally into contact with them. Her husband wasn’t as shy. He laughed down at her with silvery eyes, making a show of circling her fingertips with an agile tongue, sucking every last remnant of sauce from them and often taking an entire digit into the scorching heat of his mouth.
After checking on the children, Jennifer Efflin suggested a new game. What about eating food off of other body parts? Husbands and wives only, of course.
The idea sparked the men’s competitive instincts and incited interest in even the most hesitant of the women.
The caterers were left in the kitchen while the rest of the party retired to the Efflins’ den, their host taking the precaution of locking the door.