“No.” Maeve shook her head. “She’s just going through a difficult time right now. She just needs a friend, I think.”
He met her eyes. What was she saying? “We…I…”
“You two were friends. A long time ago.”
“Yeah.”
“Just be a friend to her again, then,” Maeve said gently.
He nodded and left, about a hundred questions bouncing around in his brain. What the hell was going on? And why should he even care?
But he did.
As he’d said he would, Shane picked her up and drove her, again in the police cruiser, to the station to fill out the report. She repeated everything that had happened, including the fact that she’d thought the vehicle forced her to the side,
She could tell from the look on the officer’s face who took her report that people probably told him stories about mysterious vanishing vehicles forcing them off the road, into telephone poles, and over curbs all the time. They thought she was just making it up so she wouldn’t have to take the blame for the accident. She could tell.
It annoyed her because she wouldn’t make something up. Sure, she’d probably overreacted to the vehicle being there, but she wasn’t inventing the whole thing. There had been someone following her too close, for whatever reason, and even if it wasn’t totally his fault she’d driven over the side of the mountain, he had been a jerk. She could still be angry about that.
Shane kept his expression carefully neutral as she made the report, unlike the other officer who didn’t much hide his disbelief, and she wondered what Shane was really thinking. About her. She didn’t want him to think she was avoiding blame.
Shane told her it wasn’t likely her car would be able to be repaired. Great. She’d have to see what the insurance company offered her, but now she was stuck in Kilkenny with no car until then, and until she could buy a new one. Just effing great.
When they stepped outside the small police office into bright sunshine and cool mountain air, she glanced at him.
“What?” he asked, looking at her.
She hesitated then said, “I want to have sex.”
Chapter Eleven
Shane stopped walking. Glanced at his watch. “We’ll have to be fast. I’ve only twenty minutes left in my lunch break.”
She gave a strangled laugh. “I didn’t mean right this minute.”
“I’ll call Jim,” he said, taking her hand and leading her down the sidewalk at a near-run. “He’ll cover for me for an hour.”
“Shane!”
He slanted a glance at her. “I guess we’ll go to my place.”
“Shane!”
He felt like he was dragging her along and he paused, reminded of her recent injuries. “You feel up to this?” He had to ask. But if she said no…
“Well…I am still pretty sore…”
“We’ll be careful.”
They arrived at his car and he handed her in, then leaped into the driver’s seat. He debated putting lights and siren on. Nah, he’d get in trouble if anyone found out he was racing home for sex. He hardened painfully.
“I don’t even know where you live,” Keara said.
“Over on Shillelagh Road.”
“A house?”
“Yup.” He drove with determined, focused speed the short distance to his house, glancing sideways at Keara. Her fingers twisted around each other in her lap, but she hadn’t told him to take her home. Yet.
He pulled into the driveway in front of the double-car garage.
“Nice place.”
He leaped out of the car and dashed around to help Keara.
“Yeah. Thanks. My dad built it a few years back.”
Holding one of her hands in his left, he unlocked the front door with his right hand, then stepped into the foyer and punched the code into the alarm system while kicking the door shut behind him.
Keara tugged her hand back but he didn’t release it. “Um…”
He turned and looked down at her. Her teeth sank into her lush lower lip and her cheeks pinkened. “What?”
He was acting like a caveman. A horny, crazed animal. Shit. He sucked in oxygen. “I’m sorry.”
She blinked at him. He tugged her closer and put his hands on her waist. “Believe it or not, I do believe in foreplay,” he said softly, smiling.
She gave a choked little laugh. “That’s good. I know we don’t have much time, but…”
He pulled her closer, against his body, inhaled that sweet jasmine honeysuckle scent of her. He had a hard-on like a club. “We have all the time in the world,” he murmured.
“Um…your job? Shane…”
He nuzzled the side of her neck, beneath her ear, where the skin was soft and sweetly fragrant. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Oookay.” The word was a breath and he pressed a kiss to her throat, to the pulse fluttering there. His own heart was about to pound out of his chest and his cock throbbed insistently behind the zipper of his uniform trousers. He slid his hands down to her hips and then around behind her to the curves of her ass.
Her breath hissed out, her head fell back and he lifted his own head to gaze at her. Her lips parted and his mouth opened with the need to taste her. He lowered his head and kissed her, at first soft, exploring, coaxing. Then with a groan, he gathered her in his arms and brought her up tight against him, loving the feel of her in his arms, and deepened the kiss, mouth opening over hers, his tongue licking over her bottom lip and into her mouth. She tasted like sweet, delicious female and he realized he recognized the taste of her and the feel of her as if the last time he’d kissed her had been yesterday.
The shock of that jolted him like a live current, made his pulse leap, made his cock twitch. He pressed it into Keara’s softness, felt her arms slide around his neck, her fingers slipping into his hair. If they could have wrapped themselves around each other, they would have, by the feel of her straining against him. Her breasts—not big but damn cute from what he remembered—pressed against his torso.
Christ! He hauled her up by her ass, and her legs wrapped around his waist, their mouths devouring each other. He tried to carry her to the stairs leading to the bedrooms upstairs, stumbling a bit with her across the shiny white tile floor of his foyer.
“No,” he gasped as his raging lust threatened his self-control. The carpeted stairs looked good to him, and he considered stopping there and taking her.
“What d’you mean, no?” She arched against him to rub those pretty tits over his chest.
“I mean, I want to do you right here, but I promised you foreplay.”
“Screw the foreplay,” she said. “I want it now. Right here. Oh God, Shane.”
She rocked against him, her soft center rubbing seekingly against him.
Okay, the stairs it was. He lowered her to the gray carpet, two stairs above him, and started unfastening his pants while she reached up under the full skirt she wore and wriggled out of her panties.
“This is crazy,” she breathed, tossing the panties over the railing. He fell onto her, kissing her mouth, her jaw, her neck, taking himself in hand and finding her wet folds. He nudged at her, her wet heat scalding him, so tight he had to push harder.
“Don’t wanna hurt you,” he muttered, nipping her chin. She hissed.
“Don’t worry.” Her legs opened wider, her pelvis shifted and he thrust harder, submerging himself partially into her hot clasp. Another push, sensation sizzling down his spine, and then another, and he was in her, all the way, deep and tight.
He groaned, fragments of sanity flashing into his consciousness. She was bruised and sore from the accident and here he was pounding into her on the staircase for God’s sake. They hadn’t even made it to his bed.
“I’m sorry.” The words squeezed out between his clenched teeth and he kissed her again, her mouth soft and sweet beneath his, her tongue sliding against his, as urgently as his. He thrust into her once, twice, pressure building, heat spiraling.