Michael (Connelly Cousins #3) Read online

  With his cock still buried deep, his face in her neck, he fell over her in convulsive shudders, attempting to recover from the most intense orgasm he’d ever experienced. That wasn’t sex. It was a life-altering, mind-blowing, sharing of souls.

  He had finally found the one he would spend the rest of his life with. The only one who could ever make him feel like this. As if he’d just injected his entire body into hers. As if his soul was now lodged somewhere deep in her chest, entwined forevermore with hers. She filled that part of him that had been missing, soothed the beast within him like no other. It was total bliss. Unfathomable utopia. He was home. He was whole. And he would never be the same again.

  Returning to the confines of his physical body was harder than he thought. It was like trying to wake up and not being able to open your eyes, or trying to walk against the current in a raging, flooded stream. It was so much easier to just lie there in the wonderment of it at all, letting things ease back slowly.

  He didn’t know how much time had actually passed before he realized her entire body was shaking beneath his, and he had his first inkling that something was wrong.

  Bailey was too quiet. Except for the residual tremors, she wasn’t moving. Tiny hitched breaths escaped from her throat. As his senses came back online, he realized he couldn’t feel her hands on him anymore.

  Michael lifted his head and the blood froze in his veins. Bailey’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut, her face was drenched .... with tears? His heart stopped beating and his stomach filled with icy dread.

  What had he done? Sweet Jesus, what had he just done?

  Chapter Seven

  “Bailey, sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

  A strangled sob bubbled out from her throat. Alarmed, he withdrew from between her legs – eliciting a cry of pain – and pushed himself to his knees. Her arms immediately came up and folded over her chest protectively.

  “Ssssshhh, baby, don’t cry, it’s okay. I’ve got you.” He pulled her to him, rocking her in his arms while his mind scrambled in blind panic.

  Bailey’s sobs against his chest felt like a blade cleaving him in two. “Did I hurt you? Oh, God, I did.”

  Michael cursed under his breath. It seemed the more he spoke the harder she cried. Even more frightening was the way she curled herself into a ball, shutting herself away. He held her against him but her arms did not reach out for comfort; she drew them tightly against her body, hugging herself, retreating from him the only way she could.

  He continued to rock her against him, not knowing what else to do. He held her in his lap, rubbing her back, stroking her hair while his heart ached.

  Eventually her sobs quieted to little hiccups and he loosened his hold, though he continued the stroking. “Baby, I am so sorry,” he whispered against the top of her head. Other than a sniffle or two, she remained silent.

  Michael moved his hands to her shoulders. “Bailey, look at me, please.” She kept her head down, shaking it ever so slightly. “ Please.”

  He placed his hand under her chin and tilted her face to him. Somehow he managed to keep his voice gentle, nothing at all like the terror screaming inside of him. Slowly she raised her eyes to his and he stopped breathing altogether, because what he saw in those eyes nearly killed him. Hurt, pain, and ... shame.

  The look only lasted a second before she squeezed them shut again, pushing out a few more crystalline tears, but that look was burned into his brain forever. His hands dropped from her shoulders. That’s when he noticed the blood – staining the blanket where she’d been laying, smeared across her lap and his. Not a lot, but enough to be visible in the stark light of early morning. His first thought was that she had somehow been cut on the rocks, but the shocking truth hit him only a moment later with the force of a freight train.

  “Sweet fucking Christ, Bailey. I didn’t know! Why didn’t you tell me?!”

  The words came out with a harshness he had not intended, exploding out from the battle raging in his chest. She’d been a virgin, and he had just ravaged her. Pain shot through him like a white-hot poker when she flinched and turned away, but she could not hide the rise and fall of her shoulders that told him she was crying again.

  Rage threatened to consume him – rage at himself for getting carried away like that, for not goddamned knowing, for not recognizing that impossible, tight resistance for what it had been.

  The anger shifted, allowing an unfamiliar emotion to gain purchase: fear. Fear that by losing himself in the bliss that was his croie, he had hurt her.

  So many things he should have done. He should have prepared her better, made sure she was ready for him. He should have made love to her slowly and tenderly, held her hand and whispered words of love as he did. He should have allowed her time to get used to him, while he eased the pain away. She’d offered him the most precious gift a woman could give a man, and he’d been an animal.

  Bailey crawled from his lap and grabbed for her clothes, inching away. He didn’t stop her, though he ached to. Clenched his fists at his sides was the only way to keep from pulling her back into his arms. He’d been enough of an animal for one morning.

  The look on her face sliced through him, as did the gut-wrenching fact that he’d been the one to put it there. All he knew was that he wanted to gather her into his arms and make her pain go away.

  “Bailey, I’m so sorry. I fucked up. This was a mistake. I never should have -”

  Her head snapped back and he saw the shocked look in her eyes, actually heard her heart breaking. He regretted the words the second they crossed his lips.

  “Christ, that’s not what I meant!” He ran his hands through his hair, frustrated that he was just making things worse.

  * * *

  Bailey looked away, avoiding his eyes. What was supposed to be one of the best moments of her life had turned into one of the worst. Shame and humiliation enveloped her, made it hard to breathe.

  She wanted to crawl under a rock, to disappear from the face of the earth and never be seen again. How could she have been so naïve to think she could handle herself with a man like Michael Connelly? A man who, quite obviously, had believed her to be far more experienced than she was.

  She’d wanted it, literally begged him for it, but she hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.

  And it wasn’t just the physical pain, it was the way he’d taken her. When they started, she felt like he was right there with her, so skilled, wickedly playing her body and making it sing. But then something happened and he’d changed, taking her with a ferocity she hadn’t foreseen, ignoring her cries and pleas to slow down.

  In her fantasies, he’d been a gentle, caring lover, with all the practical knowledge of sex that she lacked. Taking his time, knowing exactly what she needed, easing her through it. In those dreams, her cries had been those of raging desire, not pain. And they had reached the heights of passion together, then basked in the afterglow, snug in each other’s arms.

  The reality was so much different than the fantasy. She was blubbering like an idiot schoolgirl, and he looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else. There was nothing romantic about the situation now, just terribly awkward. And he was already backtracking, attempting damage control by apologizing and calling it a mistake.

  The only mistake was her being a naïve fool.

  “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

  His deep voice, so filled with regret, was like a blade to the heart. She took a step and felt the uncomfortable burn between her legs, mortified by the smears of red visible in the stark morning light. The thought of straddling the motorcycle seat for a long ride down the mountain was not a pleasant one.

  “I – I need a few minutes to, uh, ...”

  He didn’t even look at her as he reached for his clothes, but his profile couldn’t hide the hard set to his features “Sure. Take all the time you need.”

  Grabbing her clothes, she held them up to cover herself as much as possible, then carefully climbed from the ledge and back onto
the path, setting a course for the privacy of the trees.

  * * *

  “Fucking goddamn it all to hell!”

  Michael winced when he saw how gingerly she walked. Christ, he’d brutalized her, and it sickened him.

  Damn it, he should be holding her naked in his arms right now as she dozed against his chest, spent and sated from their lovemaking. She should not be running away from him in tears, feeling the need to hide herself from him.

  Next time, he would be infinitely gentle and tender. He swore to himself that he would never lose control with her like that again. He’d greatly underestimated the power of joining with someone he loved...

  The realization hit him like thunderbolt. He loved her.

  Sure, he’d accepted that she was his croie, but until that moment, the real truth of it had remained hidden beneath the heavy mantle of desire. Somehow, during those late night visits and topical conversations, she managed to wrap herself around his heart without him knowing.

  He heard the sound of splashing beyond the trees, knew that she was trying to wash away the evidence of her shattered innocence, but nothing could erase the truth. Even now the pleasure of that fact roared inside him like some feral beast, and he wondered again what had come over him.

  Because with Bailey it was not sex. It was something else entirely; something so powerful it rocked him to his core. From the moment he entered her he had lost control, swept away by the power that came with their joining. He’d given himself up to his baser needs, assuming she was right there with him. There was only the insane, crushing, undeniable need to take her, to make her his own, forever. Bailey was not just another woman, not just a bed partner. She was his mate, the other half of his soul, the one he would make his wife.

  Did she understand this? No, probably not. He didn’t quite understand it himself, though somehow he knew it to be true with every fiber of his being. He would find a way to explain it to her, because she had to know. This was not something either of them could walk away from; that choice had been taken off the table from him the moment he first saw her. When he had looked into those amazing blue-green eyes and his heart lurched as if it suddenly had been granted a reason to beat.

  Every time he saw her after that it became increasingly clear that she affected him like no other woman ever had. He lived to see her face, to hear her voice, even if it was only asking him if he wanted more coffee. He’d discreetly watched her from the corner, increasingly aware of the gentle sway of her hips when she walked and the effect it had on him. Even now that simple image had him hardening again, especially since he now knew the glory of what lie between those hips.

  Christ, he really was a selfish bastard. At the very moment she was suffering the effects of his savage possession, and all he could think about was how he wanted her again. Now that he’d had her, he knew he would never be satisfied. He would always want her. He would always crave more.

  “Fuck!”

  Michael rubbed his face with his hands, trying to push back the memory of how it felt to release inside her. To hold back the hungry need to do it again and again. That wasn’t what she needed right now; and he had to be what she needed, he realized, his very life depended on it.

  Another thought flashed through his mind, then, one that had him both elated and terrified at the same time. He had released in her. A forceful, substantial release, without a single thought of using protection. It was yet another indication of exactly how far gone he had been.

  What if he’d gotten her pregnant? It was a definite possibility. The Connelly men were infamous for being a virile, fertile bunch, which is why he had always taken so many precautions (this morning notwithstanding). He’d been conceived on his parent’s wedding night. His mother often joked that Johnny was created with little more than a potent look from his father, and that Celina came along with a suggestive thought. If she hadn’t developed complications and had an emergency hysterectomy after Lina was born, he’d probably have a dozen more siblings.

  “Son of a fucking bitch!”

  Given that Bailey was a virgin, he had to assume that she was not on any kind of birth control. Inexplicably, that pleased him on a basic level. That primitive part of him reared up again at the thought of Bailey carrying his child. If he thought he felt protective before, he was now absolutely obsessed.

  He would be asking her to marry him, of course, regardless. That was a certainty. But first, he had to convince her that he was not really the insensitive, lust-driven monster he appeared to be. That might be tough. Michael lifted his face to the sky and vowed, to himself and to God, that he would spend the rest of his life making it up to her.

  * * *

  Michael’s curses carried on the still morning air. Some words were easily identifiable, others, not as much.

  The sex hadn’t exactly been what she’d hoped for, but knowing he regretted it so much made her feel even worse.

  It had been stupid on her part to romanticize it, no matter how hard she’d fallen for him. She’d been doing such a good job (or so she’d thought) of keeping her feelings hidden, but that was a whole lot easier to do when she was serving him coffee than it was while lying naked beneath him.

  She picked her way carefully down the incline, aiming for the shore. The task would have been easier with two free hands and footwear, but she was sufficiently agile enough to make it to the water line without injury.

  Another oath rent the silence as she dipped her cami in the cool water and used it to clean the tender area between her legs. She felt a stab of sympathy for him; he probably wasn’t used to dealing with situations like this. Given the ferocity of his reaction when he’d realized the truth, most of his hook-ups weren’t as inexperienced.

  Probably so he could avoid scenes like this one.

  Bailey dried herself and carefully slid her damp legs into her jeans. In retrospect, she should have worn something more giving, but it was what it was.

  She didn’t bother with the soggy cami, opting instead to go with just the button-down. The soft, brushed cotton felt good against her skin, a small comfort at least.

  “Bailey!”

  Michael’s voice called out from somewhere above, probably anxious to be on his way and put this whole morning behind him. That made two of them. The difference was, if she had the chance to set the clock back several hours, she’d probably do the same thing all over again.

  Because somewhere along the line, she’d done the unthinkable. She’d fallen in love with him. She should have kept her distance, fantasizing from afar, keeping their relationship to the innocent flirting over coffee and cinnamon rolls. That would have been the smart thing to do.

  But no, she’d selfishly allowed it to progress to the next step. And in doing so, Michael had transformed from the quiet, unattainable protector to the personification of male sexuality. Everything about him, from his hardened, sculpted body to his sweet, warm breath, promised ecstasy. His skillful touch and masterful kisses had her nearly insane with desire. And the size of him down there, well, she didn’t have a lot of experience with that sort of thing, but even she knew that wasn’t normal. No wonder so many women spoke of him in hushed whispers.

  And no doubt every one of them had been a better lover than she had, she thought bitterly.

  “Bailey! Where are you? Is everything okay?”

  She laughed, a muffled, strangled sound. No, everything wasn’t okay. But it would be. People couldn’t actually die from humiliation, right?

  “Give me a minute,” she called back. Or a hundred. She needed to work up her courage before she faced him again.

  Clothed and feeling marginally better, she wrapped her arms around herself and walked farther along the shoreline, breathing in the crisp morning air. The warm rays of the sun felt good, but it wasn’t enough to take away the chill that had settled inside her.

  The public boat launch was just ahead, a gently sloping expanse of fist-sized white and gray rocks. An older model pick-up truck was backi
ng down, pushing a bass boat and trailer toward the water where an older man waited, guiding the driver with fluid hand signals. His tan fishing hat was studded with feathery lures, just like his vest.

  Bailey moved back toward the trees before they spotted her. Her father used to like early morning fishing, too. When she was little, he’d take her and her siblings on hours-long float trips. Her mother would drop them off, then go wait for them downriver. They spent more time untangling lines than actually fishing, but it had been fun. At the end of their trip, her mom would have a big spread laid out, and they’d eat sandwiches and chips and juice on blankets beneath the trees...

  She sighed, the familiar sadness settling over her. She missed them so much. They’d been good, loving parents. As kids, they’d never wanted for anything then.

  She still had trouble believing how quickly everything changed. Everything.

  The fire that claimed her mother and father had been ruled accidental, but Bailey knew better. She’d seen Simon that night, and knew in her heart that he’d been behind it. Unfortunately, she had no proof, and he had enough officials in his pocket to squash any further investigation. Anyone who tried to prove his involvement in the fire ended up dead.

  Or worse. If Simon managed to find her, her fate wouldn’t be as kind.

  Becoming CEO of her family’s multimillion dollar company wasn’t enough. Simon wanted to own it. And for that, he needed her.

  The dismal thoughts were a grim, though much-needed, reality check. She couldn’t afford to wallow in self-pity or lament the impossibility of something more than a quick tumble, not without putting herself and her sisters in danger.

  She’d come here with Michael, knowing what would happen, and knowing it was a one-time deal. So what if it hadn’t been all fireworks and rose petals? It was what it was. She got what she wanted (more or less), and now it was time to pull up her big girl panties and move on.

  She turned to go back up to the ledge, back to Michael, then she hesitated. How was she going to handle this?