I raised my hand. I wanted to slap him some more. Slap him until he took it back and said it hadn’t happened. But as I went to strike again a big hand caught my wrist.
“No,” Liam ordered over my shoulder in a steady, deep voice.
I yanked my arm against his grip, incensed. “Get off!”
“Don’t hit him again,” Liam said, still holding me tight.
“Well, did you hear what happened?” I pointed at Quinn with my other hand.
“He’s cheated on me. So much for ‘He’s in love with you, Ariane, there’s nothing between Quinn and Eve.’ Clearly there is.” I gestured to the discarded shirt. “There’s proof
and
he’s admitted it.”
“Don’t hit him again,” Liam said sternly.
“Get off me, Liam.” I twisted my arm and glared up at him.
“Don’t. I mean it.” He let go of my wrist and took a step away.
I clamped my arms at my sides and we all stood in silence. Betsy jumped onto the table and sniffed the pie.
No one did anything about it.
Finally Quinn said, “There is nothing going on between us. It’s not like that.” He touched his cheek, which was rising in color beneath his dense stubble.
“So tell me. What is it like?” I demanded, folding my arms. I was jittery with adrenaline.
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“It was a moment. I got caught up in it. She’s so very…” He shook his head and narrowed his eyes. “She’s so very determined, very focused, and she directed all that at me.” He paused. “I let her kiss me. I thought about kissing her back, doing a whole lot more than kissing but I didn’t. I stopped it.”
I stared into his eyes, which bored down into mine, steady and unblinking.
“I pushed her away,” he said quietly, “and stopped it because I love you, Ariane, and I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”
“But you have.”
“What, by being honest? Jeez, I can’t win, can I?” He rolled his eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh.
“But it’s more than that, isn’t it? You’re attracted to someone else, you’re tempted. I thought I was enough for you and now, now that’s not true.”
“Don’t say that.” He reached for my face but I jerked my head away from his touch.
“You’re more than enough for me and you always will be.” Tears stung my eyes and my throat tightened. “And if I hadn’t seen the lipstick, then what?”
“I would have told you anyway. I’ve never kept anything from you. I would have told you and perhaps I would have been able to stop it being such a big issue.” I thought back to his haggard face when he came in the door. He’d looked as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. He’d held me tight, as if really relishing me in his arms. Perhaps instead of a sick patient ruling his thoughts a confession had been on the tip of his tongue.
“Okay,” I said, wanting desperately to believe him.
Liam popped a beer and took a slug.
“Just okay?” Quinn said.
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“Yes, okay, you were going to tell me. Okay then. Good.” The tears were beginning to build like tiny rivers about to break their banks. I wanted to get out of the kitchen. I wanted to be alone.
Pushing from the table, I dodged past Quinn.
“Ariane, please,” he said as I rushed for the door. “Please, wait.”
“No,” I snapped over my shoulder. “Leave me alone.” I took the stairs at a jog and made for my studio. Once inside I shut the door and leaned back against it. My sight blurred and I could hardly make out the canvases and easels stacked around. Outside the window was pitch-black. I marched to it and pulled the heavy green curtains closed. I wanted to shut myself away from the world, examine my hurt and replay Quinn’s words.
But as I flopped down on my soft chair all I could think of was Eve—Eve with her long, elegant limbs, her pretty hair and doll-like face. I visualized her kissing Quinn.
She was tall, I’d bet her head was level with his as they’d kissed. I dropped my face in my hands and gave myself up to the tears. Had they kissed fast and passionately right from the beginning or had it been a slow buildup? Had he pressed her against the wall, cupped her head in his hands the way he did mine when he was serious about exploring my mouth with his tongue?
My chest heaved, my breaths juddered. Maybe he’d stood still and passive as she’d wound her arms around him, kissed up his neck, across his sharp, bristled cheek and onto his lips. Maybe he’d laid her over the desk or perhaps she’d straddled him on a chair.
“Hey, hey, come on, there’s no need for all this.” Quinn’s arms were suddenly around me, squeezing me against his hot, bare chest. “It’s not worth your tears. Nothing is worth your tears. Please, Ariane, don’t cry.” His pleading voice sounded desperate.
He was upset too.
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I let myself fall against him, pulled in his rich masculine scent as my head slotted beneath his chin. I loved him so much, which of course was why it hurt so much. As angry as I was with Quinn, I needed him. I needed him to hold me.
He smoothed my hair and whispered he loved me. I let my sobs continue for a few more minutes until they calmed. He reached a tissue for my streaming eyes and nose.
“Thanks,” I sniffed.
“Don’t run away from this,” he said. “Clearly we should talk about it.” I juddered in a sob and nodded. “I need to know,” I said in a shaky voice. “I need to know all the details. How you kissed, where you touched her, how long for.”
“But it was hardly anything, a few seconds, that’s all.”
“I need to know, Quinn. Everything.”
“But—” He shook his head as if really struggling with the idea. “But you and Liam have sex, wild sex when I’m not here and I don’t need the details.”
“That is so different,” I gasped. “You gave your consent to me and Liam having sex.
Hell, you’re with us most of the time.”
“Not as much as I’d like to be.”
“No, I agree, but you’re there plenty.” I frowned. “So tell me the details, because I’m married to Liam and you sure as hell aren’t married to Eve. I have a right to know.” Quinn sighed. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but as long as you promise not to get even more upset.”
“Not knowing is what’s upsetting me.” I dabbed my eyes then twisted the tissue between my fingers.
He sucked in a deep breath. The room held the tension of what he was about to say.
“I’d just got out of scrubs,” he said in a low voice. “Put this gear back on and was ready to head home when the door swung open. It’s the male changing room so I was surprised to see Eve standing there.”
“Go on.”
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“She walked in with a bunch of papers for me to sign. She’d changed from her scrubs and had on tight denims and a thin blue top that showed the outline of her lacy bra.”
“I guess I did ask for details,” I muttered.
Quinn stood and tugged me up next to him. “Do you want me to go on?” I swallowed and nodded.
“She placed the papers on the bench and came over to me.” He dropped his hand and took a small step back. “She asked if I could have the papers done by Monday. I said that would be fine. Then she moved in this close.” He suddenly loomed over me, his bare chest just an inch from my lips.
“Of course her head is level with mine, not like you, you’re a shorty.”
“Hey,” I said with a frown. I glanced down and spotted my low milkmaid stool next to the chair. I stepped over and stood on it. “There,” I said. “Now I’m as tall as you.”
His lips twitched in a half-smile.
I blew out a slow breath. “What did she do next?” He stepped in close again, eyes narrowed. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“No, that’s what she said, ‘Are you okay?’”
“Oh.”
“I said I was tired, that I was looking forward to getting home to bed.” He paused and put his hand on my forearm. “She put her hand on my arm and said I could share her bed if I wanted, she was living on hospital grounds and it would be much closer than traveling to the farm.”
I juddered in a breath. She had certainly made herself clear.
“I was shocked,” Quinn said, “but also a little flattered.” I bit down on my lip.
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“She leaned closer. I guess I’d frozen, her invitation was unexpected.” He tipped forward so his nose was almost touching mine.
“Was it really unexpected?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“But I could tell she liked you at the bar last night and I’d never met her before.”
“You could?”
“Yes.”
“So why didn’t you say anything?”
“I hoped nothing would come of it.”
He frowned. “I thought she liked me too, but as a surgeon, a colleague, not as a man she wanted in her bed.”
I stared into his eyes. They were so dark there was no line between pupil and iris.
His lids were heavy, his lashes long and jet-black. Had he really been so surprised by her advance? Maybe. His head could be so full of work that sometimes he noticed little else going on around him.
“Then what did she do?”
“This.”
Suddenly his lips were on mine, not hard, but not soft either. His tongue peeked into my mouth. I held my lips still, not sure what I was supposed to do with the information.
He withdrew a fraction. “That’s what I did,” he said. “I was so surprised that she was kissing me I barely moved my mouth at all until…”
“Until?” I didn’t really want to know.
“Until she pressed against me, like this.” He leaned his body into mine. Slid his arms around my neck and squeezed me to him. “She kissed me again, on my jaw, down to my neck.” He followed the words with the actions and I looked at his ear and the patch of white skin behind it before his hair began. “I guess that’s how the lipstick got 79
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on my collar,” he murmured. He looked back into my eyes. “When her mouth came back up,” he paused and hovered his lips over mine, “I will confess for a split second…
About this long I thought about it.” His lips slammed onto mine, hard, desperate, urgent, but as soon as the gasp of surprise erupted from my throat he spun away. His body heat left me and I was looking at his long naked back disappearing into the waist of his pants as he paced to the drawn curtains.
“That was it?” I asked, my arms hanging at my sides and my lips tingling.
“That was it.” He shoved his hand through his hair and turned. “A split second of thinking about it and then you flooded my thoughts. You, Ariane. I couldn’t hurt you. I couldn’t have sex with another woman behind your back even though I wanted to. It was so wrong. I told her thanks for the offer but I was going home to sleep with my wife.”
I stepped down from the milkmaid stool and sat back on the soft chair. “So there was no passionate slamming against the wall, or bending her over the table.”
“Jeez, no, nothing like that. It was over before it had begun but I still had to tell you.
I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.” He studied me. “Have I made it worse by giving you the details?”
“No, no you haven’t.” I stared up at his worried face. “No, it feels better to know.
Imagination can be worse than reality.”
He came and sat on the arm of the chair, lifted my hands into his palms. “I love you so much,” he said.
“And I love you too.”
He sighed. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I really didn’t. If I could rewind time I would.”
“I know.” We were silent, but the truth hung heavy between us. Eventually I spoke the words. “But you are attracted to her.”
His gaze shifted to a canvas of the paddock I’d been painting earlier in the week.
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“Quinn, please be honest.”
“She’s an attractive woman and…and she doesn’t pussyfoot around me like the others do. She’s assertive and determined and she tells me how it is. She’s not afraid to argue if she thinks she’s right, and hell, she has been. The department’s been working much more productively since she implemented the changes.” He dropped my hands and stood, put his hands on his hips. “But I swear nothing will come of it. I’ll make sure I’m not in a position for anything to happen again.” His face was shadowed with stubble and tiredness. I loved his long, straight nose and his wide, sensual mouth. He was so handsome, so intense, his eyes so desperate for me to forgive.
“Come on,” I said, standing. “It’s nearly midnight, we should get to bed. You’ve been awake far too long.”
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Chapter Six
While Quinn showered I climbed into bed. Liam was already there, stretched out, his big body claiming a huge wedge of the duvet.
“Mm, you okay?” he murmured as I crawled into his embrace and my naked flesh pressed against the length of his body.
“Yes. I think so.” I spread my palm over his hot stomach and found his cock hard and ready, the smooth head tapping his navel. Liam was always hard and ready when I joined him in bed. It was one of the many things I loved about him.
In a sudden, swift movement, I crawled on top. Straddled my knees on either side of his hips and let my breasts press down onto his pecs.
“Oh baby,” he muttered, sliding his hands down my shoulders, back and onto the rounded flesh of my butt. “You feel horse.”
“Horse?”
Silence.
“Do you mean hot?”
“Yeah, so damn hot, baby, fuck, you’re hot.” He made a sound that was half growl, half sigh and his mouth found mine, his tongue caressing but determined as it plunged in.
His cock was straining and bobbing at my mound. My heart rate picked up. I wanted him in me, now.
“Make love to me, Liam,” I demanded as my naked pussy lips divided around his shaft and my swelling clit caught on his length.
In a smooth but fast movement he shunted his hips down then up and, with perfect aim, slid into my wetness. I gasped and sank to meet his upward thrust, gripped the 82
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width of his cock with my pussy. Squirming with pleasure, I succeeded in embedding his flesh even deeper and opened my mouth over his in a cry of delight.
“Can I join you?” Quinn’s voice came over my shoulder, deep, husky but with a trace of uncertainty. I was aware of his damp, shower-fresh body dropping over mine, his lips at my temple.