Dark of the Moon (26 page)

"Caitlyn ..."

Despite the restless flaming of his eyes, he was still reluctant. So Caitlyn boldly rose up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to that hard mouth.

"Caitlyn ..." Belying the attempt at protest that was her name, he was not putting her away from him. Encouraged, Caitlyn tilted her head sideways, closed her eyes, and pressed her mouth more firmly to his. Her heart began to pound; her breathing quickened. His lips felt firm and warm beneath hers. Greatly daring, she stroked the line where they met with the tip of her tongue.

For a moment longer he resisted her gende assault. Then his breath drew in in a long, shuddering sigh, and his hands freed themselves from hers to slide around her waist.

"On your own head be it, then," he muttered against her mouth. And then it was he who was kissing her.

He kissed her fiercely, as if he were starving for the taste of her mouth. Wrapping her arms around his neck, Caitlyn kissed him back. Her heart was pounding so loud that she could barely hear his harsh breathing. A quickening started in the pit of her stomach. Her knees grew weak.

She clung to him as the only solid thing in a whirling universe.

"Ahh, Caitlyn." He lifted his mouth from hers to trail kisses across her cheek to her ear.

Caitlyn took a deep, shuddering breath, burying her face in his neck. The warmth and male smell of him enticed her. Parting her lips, she touched her tongue to his throat.

His arms tightened around her and he pulled her up on her toes as his mouth traced a blazing path down the side of her neck. When he reached the place where her neck and shoulder joined, he paused for a long moment while his mouth seemed to burn through her skin. Her nails dug into his shoulders, her mouth opening against the side of his throat. Then he lifted her off her feet and laid her down in the straw.

She raised her arms to him, her eyes drugged with longing, but there was no need. He was already coming down in the straw beside her, his hard body close against hers as he bent over and took her mouth again.

Enthralled, she stroked his shoulders through the thin linen of his shirt, traced the line of his spine, burrowed beneath his collar to touch the bare skin of his nape. When his hand slid from her waist to close over her breast, she gasped and trembled at the wonder of it.

"I love you, Connor," she breathed in his ear and felt the hand on her breast clench for the merest instant. Then his hold loosened again and his mouth lifted from hers.

"My lovely Caitlyn," he said unsteadily, raising himself a little bit above her and looking down into her face.

"Don't stop," she whispered, sliding her hand from his shoulder to rest over his hand where it lay on her breast. She pressed his fingers harder into her softness. His lips parted slightly and his eyes blazed anew.

"Even if I wanted to, I could not," he confessed with the barest glimmer of a smile. And then he was kissing her again with increasing hunger as his arms slid around her and he fumbled for the buttons at the back of her dress.

Caitlyn could scarcely breathe as he slipped the dress and then the shift down her shoulders.

Watching him, she saw his eyes flame as he slowly, tenderly, bared her breasts. Then he touched her, stroking the hardness of a small strawberry-pink nipple with reverent fingers. The ensuing jolt of feeling made Caitlyn moan and arch her back.

"Easy, my own." He murmured the words to her, his eyes on her face now, watching the passion shine from her. Her head rested back on his forearm as he leaned over her, tracing a line from one taut nipple to the other. She thought she would die from the sheer wonder of it.

Then he lowered his head.

Caitlyn watched, eyes glazed with need, as he touched her nipple with his tongue. He repeated the butterfly caress on her other nipple, and she cried out his name.

At her cry, she felt the muscles of his shoulders clench beneath her hands. Then his mouth was on hers again, hard and hot and demanding, and he was crushing her back into the straw.

His hands slid down the length of her body to tug at her tangled skirts.

"Conn!"

The voice belonged to Liam. Connor's hand, in the act of sliding up Caitlyn's bare thigh, tightened and stilled. Her whole body stiffened as she tried to shut out the intruding sound. She whimpered, wordlessly begging him not to stop. Connor's broad shoulders blocked the rest of the loft from her view as he looked toward where the ladder ascended into the loft. Liam's voice had come from the foot of it. Willing him to ignore the intrusion, she twined her arms tighter around his neck. He spared her a flickering glance, his eyes moving from the soft whiteness of her thighs, bared by the skirt he had pushed out of his way, to the pink-tipped, quivering breasts above the lowered bodice. She was nearly naked beneath him. The knowledge melted something deep inside her. She quivered, and Connor's eyes, as hot as the midday sun, lifted to meet hers.

"Connor!" Liam called, insistent. Connor tore his eyes away from her to look toward the source of the sound again.

"Aye, what is it?" he answered, his voice not quite steady. Then, as if he couldn't help himself, his eyes returned to her. They moved over her once more, fixing finally on the thigh where his hand rested in dark contrast to her ivory skin. Those aqua eyes darkened. An instant later his mouth twisted violently. Despite Caitlyn's mewling protest, he removed his hand.

With methodical pre- cision he pulled her skirt down, smoothing it over her legs. His face was a study in passion, regret, and something else that Caitlyn finally recognized as resolve.

"Fools and children," he muttered under his breath. Caitlyn remembered him saying something similar once before. Before she could quite recall the context, Liam's voice interrupted her chain of thought.

"Ah—your visitor is taking tea in the parlor. She's wondering where you've got to." He was still speaking from the foot of the ladder.

"Damn, I forgot all about her!" Connor followed this appalled statement with a string of muttered curses. Then he disengaged Caitlyn's arms from around his neck and sat up, running unsteady fingers through his hair. At the reminder of Mrs. Congreve, Caitlyn scowled. The passion that burned in her eyes was joined by smoldering anger.

"Keep her occupied, will you? I'll be right there," Connor called down to Liam.

"Aye." There was the sound of muffled footsteps, and Liam was gone. Caitlyn sat up, pulling her bodice up with angry jerks, glaring at Connor all the while. The flush that passion had brought to his cheekbones faded as he quickly retied the ribbon that held his hair. That he could go from her to that—that
woman
made Caitlyn want to bash him over the head with the nearest deadly object. Fortunately— or unfortunately, depending on one's point of view—there was no deadly object within reach. Lip curling into a sneer, Caitlyn reached out and plucked an errant straw from those black waves. Connor looked at her, his brows lifting.

"We wouldn't want your lady friend to think you've been doing something you shouldn't, would we?" she asked with bite, holding the straw aloft before dropping it disdainfully to the floor. Connor's eyes hardened as he took in her anger.

" 'Tis you I'm thinking of," he said grimly. "Do you want it all over the county that I've been making love to you in the hayloft in the middle of the afternoon? 'Tis your name that will suffer, not mine."

"Do you think I care?" Her voice was fierce. Connor glared at her, his temper ignited by hers.

"You're a fool, Caitlyn O'Malley, and I'm a bigger one. But I've no time to discuss it now."

With that he surged to his feet. For a moment he stood, hands balled on hips, glaring down at her as she sat at his feet. He looked very formidable as he towered over her, every inch the virile male from the still-rumpled waves of his black hair to the toes of his scuffed boots.

Beneath scowling black brows, those aqua eyes impaled her. Even the set of his chin spelled trouble. But Caitlyn was not intimidated. She scowled back at him mutinously, her arms crossed over her breasts. What had been wonderful only moments before was soured now by anger.

"What are you standing around for? Go on! Meredith is waiting for you." Venom dripped from every word. Connor's eyes glinted dangerously at her for a moment. Then he took a deep breath. Reaching down, he caught her arms and hauled her unceremoniously to her feet.

Without the protection of her hands holding it in place, her bodice gaped indecently away from her chest.

"Let go of me! What do you think you're doing?" She tried to catch the falling bodice and at the same time shake free of him as he whipped her around. The neckline slipped off her shoulders and drooped dangerously near her waist. Only her thin shift saved her from utter indecency. Furious, mortified, Caitlyn yanked the bodice of her dress back into place and held it there with both hands.

"Buttoning your dress," he said through his teeth. He steadied her in front of him, her back to him. His hands on her shoulders gave her a hard warning squeeze before he let go and started to do up the back of her dress.

"Had lots of practice acting as lady's maid, have you?" she asked nastily as he completed the job in record time. As soon as his fingers had secured the last button, she jerked away and turned to glare at him. He crossed his arms over his chest and gave her scowl for scowl. Then something in her expression caused his anger to fade.

"I told you, you've no reason to be jealous of Meredith. What is—or is not—between her and me has nothing to do with you. Nothing at all."

"I'll not share, Connor. I warn you." He looked at her silently for a moment, his eyes narrowing, his lips compressed.

"You're taking entirely too much for granted, Caitlyn O'Malley. If you're bound and determined to be my mistress, you should know that a mistress has no rights over a man at all.

Only a wife has that."

"Then I'll be your wife." As soon as she spat the words at him, Caitlyn knew that it was exactly what she wanted: to be his wife.

" 'Tis considered proper to wait till you're asked." Connor's voice was dry.

"Then I'm not proper!"

"Amen to that!"

They glared at each other, neither giving an inch. Then Connor shook his head impatiently.

"I've no more time to bandy words with you now," he said, turning away.

"Musn't keep dear Meredith waiting, must we?" she shot after him as he headed toward the ladder.

He swung back to look at her. "Damn it, Caitlyn . . ." he began furiously. Then, with a muttered curse, he stepped onto the ladder and disappeared from sight. Caitlyn stamped her foot. If there had been anything close at hand to throw, it would have gone sailing through the air. But straw made a poor projectile. Impotently she stamped her foot again, mentally castigating Connor d'Arcy as three kinds of sons of the devil.

She saw Connor again at dinner. Though she stuck her nose in the air and studiously ignored him, she was secretly relieved to see him there. She had been more than half afraid that he had escorted Mrs. Congreve home, or perhaps disappeared to Dublin again, as he had done after their last aborted lovemaking session. But there he sat, at the head of the table as always, scowling and silent to be sure, but present. Caitlyn felt a great surge of relief.

It was hard to ignore a man when one was serving his dinner. Banned from helping with the cooking by popular request (by all four d'Arcys, who had been unanimously appalled at the various lumps and foreign objects which her unskilled hand had caused to appear in their food when Mrs. McFee had undertaken to teach her the rudiments of cookery), Caitlyn had been drafted into helping dish up the food. Now she made her way around the table, dropping big ladles full of boiled potatoes onto china plates. A scowl was fixed on her face, and the potatoes landed with an audible plop and considerable splattering.

Although Connor, as the head of the household, was usually served first, she had deliberately left him for last as a small measure of revenge. Her lip curled with satisfaction when she discovered that, by the time she held the ladle poised over his plate, there were only three smallish potatoes left.

"Here, now, watch what you're about!" Mrs. McFee scolded sharply as the meager helping nearly missed Connor's plate altogether. Connor sent Caitlyn a sharp look, his expression as ill-tempered as her own, but said naught. The misshapen potatoes landed scant millimeters from the edge of his plate, where they teetered precariously for a moment before skittering toward the slices of mutton at the center.

"Caitlyn's out of temper," Cormac observed teasingly, his hazel eyes glinting at her as she set the empty bowl on the sideboard with a clatter before taking her seat.

She scowled at him across the table by way of a reply. He grinned and opened his mouth to say something further. A surprised look came over his face.

"Here, what are you kicking me for?" he demanded, sounding amazed as he looked over at Liam.

"Just shut up, idiot," Liam advised him in an undertone. Connor's attention was directed momentarily at Rory, who was asking him something about the sheep and earning for his pains a growled reply. Liam seized the chance afforded by his older brother's averted eyes to cast a significant look at Connor, then at Caitlyn. Caitlyn, who didn't miss the telling look or its import, flushed. Cormac's eyes widened as he looked from Connor's tight expression to Caitlyn's neatly identical one.

"What are you two whispering about?" Connor's question had an edge to it. Pinned by his oldest brother's inimical stare, Cormac hesitated, then shrugged and returned his attention to his plate. Liam too was silent. Connor looked at the two for a moment, then focused on his own food. No one spoke except to say things like "Please pass the bread" for the rest of the meal.

They were just getting up from the table when Mrs. McFee appeared, a pair of soft kid driving gloves in her hand.

"I found these in the parlor, yer lordship. The lidy left them." She directed a triumphant look at Caitlyn as she spoke. Caitlyn's eyes narrowed, and she stiffened. Because she was in the act of rising, this caused her chair to slide back with a clatter and nearly overturn. Liam caught it in the nick of time, returning it to an upright position. Caitlyn scarcely noticed. Her eyes, burning with outrage, were fixed on Connor. He was looking at Mrs. McFee and holding out his hand for the gloves.