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Pulling her into my lap, I held her sobbing body and felt every gasp and shudder like a fist to the chest.
“You have his eyes, but you don’t feel like him. Nothing feels like him. He’s just … gone. He’s gone.”
The next words that I spoke came through me, not from me, and it wasn’t until Clo’s eyes lifted and found mine that I realized what they were.
“Is fíor bhur ngrá.”
Saoirse’s blessing.
And Kellen’s final words to his wife.
Clover’s tear-streaked lips fell open, and my mouth crashed into them like the bursting of a dam, flooding her with all of the confusion, certainty, desperation, and terror that my body could no longer contain. A purging of poison that she accepted with pleasure.
Clinging to my damp shirt with both fists, Clo kissed me back with an urgency that rivaled my own, and something inside of me stirred.
Awakened.
And fucking roared.
Breaking our kiss only to peel her wet dress off over her head, I laid Clover down on the pile of scattered notebooks and continued my assault on her mouth as her fingers made short work of the buttons on my shirt and trousers. We seemed to move in synchrony—every swirl of our tongues, every suck, every sigh was a perfectly choreographed dance that I didn’t remember learning.
Although I’d spent hours with my hands on her body and my mouth on her mouth over the last two days, it hadn’t been enough for me to learn the things I suddenly knew. She’d felt unfamiliar to me—everything had. Every touch, every position had been a first of epic proportions. But this time, when I cupped her tits and traced her perfect pebbled nipples through the fabric of her bra, I knew exactly what sound she was going to make before she made it. I knew the way her moan would vibrate against my lips when I sucked the tender flesh just below her jaw. And I knew the way her back would arch when I kissed my way down her neck, unfastening her bra as I went, and lavished both straining pink peaks with my tongue.
But when Clo unzipped my trousers and took my length in both hands, I realized that she knew me even better. Echoes of some unknown fear engulfed my body in an instant, boiling my blood and seizing my throat, but it passed with every gentle, comforting stroke. Clo touched me like she’d known that I would have that reaction before I did, and the significance of that knowledge hit me like a battering ram.
“Oh, Damien, the things he did to you …”
The shame and rage and nauseating helplessness of a past I couldn’t remember ignited my skin, seared my eyes, but Clo was there to soothe it away, to free me from a burden I hadn’t known I’d been carrying.
And I wanted to free her as well.
I wanted to use this fire that burned beneath my flesh to make her melt, to reduce her to a writhing puddle of ecstasy so that when she finally cooled, she’d be new again. Cracks sealed. Whole and happy.
Kissing my way down her stomach, I hooked my fingers into the sides of her underwear and peeled them off as Clover’s gentle fingers slid through my wet hair.
Her touch felt like home, her thighs, her soft gasps. When I’d tasted her down by the lake, the experience had been a first for me. I hadn’t known what I was doing, and I certainly hadn’t known how she would respond. But now … it was as if I was operating on muscle memory. I knew exactly what to do, how she would moan when I flicked my tongue against her swollen clit. The way she would arch her back when I swirled it around her dripping entrance, greedily chasing the salty-sweet memories that were just beyond my reach. And I knew when those moans turned to whimpers and her legs tensed on either side of my head, that two fingers, thrust in to the last knuckle, would make her come so hard that her legs would shake, and her hips would buck, and her nails would dig into my scalp.
At least, they would have, before.
Now, I kept my hands where Clover could see them. Splayed across her stomach, wrapped around her thighs, pinching and rolling her tight nipples between my fingers. And as her back arched and her breathing quickened, I flattened my tongue and applied more pressure until she did exactly what I’d imagined. Clover clutched my head, sank her nails into my scalp, and rolled her hips against my feasting mouth as the last shreds of my denial burst into flames. My body had just proven what my brain hadn’t been willing to accept. That this woman was mine and had been long before I spotted her across the Irish Sea. That I’d loved her before. I’d lost her before. And I’d cut out my own heart for the chance to be here, doing it all over again.
As if I could feel her watching me, I glanced up to find two awestruck green eyes flickering in the candlelight.
Sliding her hand from my hair down to my jaw, Clover lifted my chin as she slowly sat up, never blinking, never once taking her eyes off mine.
I pushed up onto my knees as her massive black pupils darted back and forth between mine. Then, a sweet smile unfurled across her tear-streaked face.
“Kellen,” she whispered, her chin buckling as her eyes dropped to my lips.
This time, when our mouths collided, it was Clo’s darkness that fed me, her despair that I so hungrily consumed. I wanted to take it all from her. All the pain I had caused, in this lifetime and the last. All the pain she’d suffered while we were apart. I wanted to suck it from her parted pink lips, and when she straddled my kneeling thighs and slid her slick flesh along my cock, I knew she wanted to do the same for me.
“Take it, angel,” I rasped against her lips. “Take it from me. Please.”
And with that whispered plea, Clover held her breath, stared into my eyes, and did exactly as I’d asked.
She took my pain away.
No drug, no anesthetic could possibly compare to the mind-numbing bliss that enveloped me the moment Clover’s tight, warm body welcomed me in. Clutching the back of my neck with both hands, she whimpered against my lips as she began to rise and fall, taking me just a bit deeper each time. I kept my hands above her waist—rubbing her tits, cupping her jaw, gathering her hair in my fist—anything that would keep me from grabbing her arse and filling her with one feral thrust like I wanted to. After everything she’d been through, Clo needed to be handled gently. She was too fucking sweet for this world, an angel in the flesh, and I …
