TWICE A HERO By Susan Krinard

Sleek and smooth, hard and hot. She focused on the texture of him, stroking up and down, watching his face. He was letting her make love to him. A mark of trust that left her humbled and dizzy with quiet joy.

Only when she was sure he was lost did she bend low and take him in her mouth.

His breath sawed in his throat as she tasted him, suckled him as he’d suckled her, all sensation and compulsion. His fingers thrust into her hair, kneading and tugging. She went on until he was rigid and on the edge, and then she slid astride him. It was easy to accept him into her waiting body. Easy to move with his hands on her hips, letting her take him as he’d taken her. Letting her give in the only way he could allow.

But in the end he clasped her waist in his hands and rolled her beneath him, kissing her ears and chin and hair with each slow, deep thrust as she rose to meet it. Hip to hip, belly to belly, chest to breast. Equal. Complete. Together they made it last, drew it out to a pinnacle of uncomplicated, untainted joy. And it was Liam who sent her before him until her exaltation pulled him after.

When it was over she didn’t let him go. He was caught in the afterglow of their lovemaking, and she was ruthless. She pulled him against her, tucked her head into the curve of his arm, stroked his hair. And he took her comfort. He held her with quiet desperation, as if he thought she would rise and vanish before his eyes.

Liam, she thought. The first tear escaped, and she tried not to let him see. Oh, Liam. If only I could tell you the truth. If only you’d believe it.

But for now, for this time out of time, maybe some part of him did.

Chapter Twenty-One

Not heaven itself upon

the past has power;

But what has been, has been,

and I have had my hour.

—John Dryden

SHE SLEPT.

Liam watched her from beside the bed, holding his shirt in his fists. He’d thought she’d never sleep; she’d kept herself awake with a strange fierce adamancy, as if she couldn’t trust him the minute her back was turned.

As if she could keep him here forever.

He wanted to caress her, to love her again. Her dark lashes were thick against her cheek, her hair tangled on her forehead, her lithe body sweetly curled on the bed in unconscious invitation. And she would have welcomed him.

But there was Perry to deal with. Nothing Mac could say, nothing she could do would divert him from his course.

Not even her devastating questions, the way she’d probed and pushed until he was revealing things about himself he had never understood. Flaws even he had not recognized. Revelations she’d presented to him with pity in her eyes, having led him to bare his heart until he had nothing left of his manhood.

She had that power—to make him forget his strength and pride, to suck at his soul with a witch’s talent for overcoming his resistance.

He had been more exposed than any mere nakedness displayed. She knew the full measure of his weakness. And still she’d pulled him down into her arms and he’d let himself be drawn into oblivion, unable to fight for what self-respect remained to him.

She had taken it all. She had made him need, when he’d never needed before. She’d given her comfort with such selfless nobility, generous in her victory.

Victory.

He reached down, his hand inches above her hair. No. He’d not be weak again. Mac was like a force of nature, a quiet storm he couldn’t predict or control. But he didn’t need her. She could give him nothing he couldn’t live without. There were other willing women in the world, women who wouldn’t steal his very soul.

Liam walked away from the bed, tugging on his shirt. Damn her. She’d said she needed him, but that was another of Heaven’s little jests. Mac didn’t need anyone, let alone Liam O’Shea.

But even she had her secrets.

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