A Prince Of A Guy

11

MRS. TRYKOWSKI greeted them with a smile that faded as soon as she saw Sean’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“Thank you for tonight,” he said, ignoring her question. He pulled some money out of his pocket, but the older woman shook her head, refusing to take it.

“I don’t want money for watching your darling niece.” Slowly, she divided a glance between Sean and Carlyne, who wanted to die of mortification because she knew exactly how she looked.

Like a circus performer.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Trykowski said with a sigh. “The jig is up, huh, dear?”

Carlyne gaped at her. “You knew?”

“I have eyes in my head, don’t I?” Turning to Sean, she lifted a finger and wagged it in his face. “And if you search your heart, you’ll realize it doesn’t matter, Seany, my boy. She’s still a ten, and she’s still the one for you. So don’t you go doing something stupid now.”

“Wait. She’s the one who lied, and you’re getting mad at me?”

“You’re the male, aren’t you?” With a secret smile aimed at Carlyne, she left.

Leaving Carlyne alone with Sean. She was so cold. Cold and sad. Oh, and destroyed, let’s not forget that, because in one foolish move she’d blown her chance for anything and everything she’d ever wanted.

She started to shake, though whether it was the chill, her wet clothes or grief, she hadn’t a clue.

Sean took one look at her, one really long look from head to toe. It was a look that might have made her melt with longing only a couple of hours ago, except all that heat she’d come to know had turned to quiet fury.

“Go change,” he said roughly, then turned away.

Her clothes weighed a ton, but she hadn’t explained, they hadn’t talked. Without knowing how to make this right, she followed him.

He went into Melissa’s bedroom. Kneeling by the bed, he reached out and smoothed the little girl’s covers, then gently touched her cheek.

Carlyne couldn’t see his expression, but there was tenderness pouring from him. Tenderness and tension.

Tension she’d given him.

Standing, he brushed past her and moved out of the room.

She caught up with him in the hallway. “Sean.”

Shocking her, he stopped, and she wondered how to begin. “We need to talk about it.”

Jaw tight, face grim, he sighed. “You’re shaking, dammit.”

“Because I’m afraid.”

A frown curved his mouth downward. “Not of me. I would never hurt you.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to lose the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Don’t.” His eyes closed, and she briefly glimpsed a world of pain behind his controlled temper. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

But she needed to. Needed to tell him how she’d meant to come clean sooner but hadn’t known how, needed to tell him how much she cared about him. “I-” A terrible bone-shaking tremor struck her, and she had to clamp her mouth shut, wrapping her arms around herself.

Sean turned away. “Go to bed, Carly. Princess,” he corrected immediately. “You can wait until morning to leave.”

But she couldn’t move.

“Go on,” he said harshly, and when she looked at him, he swore the hallway blue. He stalked toward her and swung her into his arms. Without a word, he strode into his bedroom, his arms taut and quivering with tension.

Or maybe it was her quivering.

Both miserable and in heaven, she laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I never meant to hurt you. I just wanted-”

“Save it.” He practically dropped her to the bathroom floor in his rush to get his hands off her. “You’re frozen solid.” He flicked on the hot water. “Get in the shower and warm the hell up.”

She stared at the steaming shower, everything blurring because of the tears she refused to shed. She’d brought this on herself. There was no one else to blame.

Somehow she’d broken all her rules. She’d fallen in love with Melissa. She’d fallen in love with Sean, a man who represented every part of every fairy tale she’d ever told herself. He was strong and independent with a sense of humor and a mind of his own. A man who might have even loved her back-as Carly.

How ironic was that? She’d finally found herself locked in Carly’s persona, and now that woman was gone, as well. Now she was a woman halfway between. A woman who would be happy to spend the rest of her life this way, with a small, intimate family who loved her. Her.

“Get in the shower, Princess.”

“Carly,” she whispered.

“Carlyne.”

“I want to be Carly.” She tried to unzip her sweater, but her fingers were shaking so badly it took her a moment to get a good grip.

“Dammit.” Apparently unwilling to wait, Sean shoved her hands away and tugged the zipper down, parting the sweater, exposing her pale skin to his gaze for the first time. Ever. One more tug, and the water-soaked weight fell off her arms. As he already knew, her silky white bra had a front clasp. It was also wet, which left the material so sheer she might have been wearing nothing.

Jaw clenched, Sean opened that, too, and with a deep, ragged breath, peeled it away from her skin.

Her nipples were two hard, aching peaks. He closed his eyes but didn’t say anything. She thought she heard a soft moan escape his lips, but she couldn’t be sure. “Sean-”

“Don’t.”

Her skirt came off next and, kneeling on the floor, he went after her boots, leaving her in thick tights and panties.

The tights had to be peeled away one leg at a time. The feel of his fingers on her, the way his dark head bent to his task, the way he held his breath, all combined to string her so tight she thought she might snap. Her heart certainly hadn’t gotten the message that he would never again touch her the way he had on the beach, because it was racing in anticipation. Her every nerve had done the same, so that a simple stroke of his hand down her leg caused her to tremble all the more.

Finally, he slid his hands up her thighs and hooked his thumbs in the sides of her panties.

She stared at him, not breathing.

He stared at her, his breathing rough and uneven.

As the air danced over her wet, chilled body, she really did get cold.

But his hot gaze warmed everywhere it landed, and it landed plenty. No matter what he wanted to feel, he still desired her. He couldn’t hide that.

He wasn’t immune! It gave her a surge of hope, because he couldn’t both hate her and want her, too, could he? No, she decided, he couldn’t. Maybe it would have to start from physical release, his forgiving her. She’d appeal to him on an emotional level after, when he was ready.

Slowly he skimmed the panties down her legs, and if she’d expected him to avert his gaze, he didn’t. He looked right at her, all over her, and along with her trembling came a need she’d never known before.

He couldn’t have missed how aroused she was, not from his vantage point with her breasts just above his head, nipples thrust out, hard as stones. Between her legs she felt her own creamy wetness, which had absolutely nothing to do with the rain.

Standing there, completely exposed to his hot, hungry, angry gaze, she felt yet another powerful shudder go through her.

Suddenly, he surged up, pulled off her black wig and dropped it to the floor. She didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t for him to slip his fingers into her real hair. He massaged her head for a moment. She let out a soft sigh. Then, with hard eyes and grim mouth, he stepped back and opened the shower door.

He was going to shove her into the shower and pretend none of this existed between them. He was going to shut the door on her and walk away. She couldn’t let him, so she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed close.

Swearing again, he slipped his hands around her waist, lifted her and turned toward the open shower door.

And for that one second, when she was plastered against him, she closed her eyes and savored the feeling. Her thighs, her belly, her breasts were all smashed against his wet, cold clothes, but the sensation of being so open and vulnerable, of being completely naked to his fully clothed body, was startlingly arousing.

His eyes were tightly closed, as if he was trying not to feel her.

So she wriggled. A lot. Wrenching another curse from him.

“Be still, dammit.” But he couldn’t deposit her in the stall without getting into the shower himself, so they hovered there.

“Sean-”

“Quiet.”

“There’s only one way to make me quiet,” she whispered, and brazenly slid herself over the bulge straining the fly of his pants.

A strangled sound escaped him. “I am absolutely not having sex with you.”

Sex. That’s what it had been to him.

To her, it had been much, much more. And she might have had a chance at making him think so, too, except for her deceit.

Swallowing hard, she leaned forward, pressed her bare breasts to his chest and was gratified to see his jaw clench. “I hurt you, Sean. I’m sorry. Please, let me tell you about it.”

“I knew something was off,” he said with a shake of his head. “I just kept excusing it, excusing you.” A mirthless laugh escaped him as he looked into the spray of water. “Joke’s on me. Again.”

“I reminded you of Tina. Mrs. Trykowski told me what she did to you,” Carlyne said when his head whipped toward her in angry surprise. “She told me you locked your heart up after that, and-”

“Not good enough, I didn’t.” He gave a cynical smirk.

She’d have to show him how good it could be, if he’d just give them a chance. Gently, she nibbled at a corner of his mouth. Then the other corner.

“No,” he said, much less convincingly, and she tilted her head to the side to deepen the kiss, using her lips, her tongue, her heart and soul to tell him what he had to know-that no matter what she’d done, she still loved him, she’d always love him. He moaned and gripped her body tight as if he meant to pull away.

She softened their connection, tender and gentle, because she knew that was the true way to his heart, not aggression or heated passion, which he could have gotten from anyone.

He moaned again, then again when she used her hands, dancing them over his shoulders, his arms, anything she could reach, until finally he stepped with her into the shower fully dressed.

Wrapping her arms tighter around his neck, she breathed his name, but his eyes were tightly closed, his face a mask of agony and indecision.

He was still going to change his mind.

So she kissed him again, kissed him and slid down his body so she could start on the buttons of his shirt. He resisted, standing still and rigid as she kissed every inch of skin she revealed when she tugged his shirt down his shoulders, letting it fall to the shower floor, until he let out a helpless sound of pleasure and lent his fingers to the cause. His pants came next, and she went to her knees to drag them down his legs. Again, she kissed what she exposed, starting with a lean hip, a tense thigh, the spot between the two…

She’d barely gotten started when he lifted her, pressed her back against the wall and slid a hand between her thighs. Already he knew her, knew exactly where to touch to make her insides burn and her bones dissolve.

He opened his eyes, lifted his head and watched her with dark intensity as he slowly and purposely brought her to the very edge.

Her eyes fluttered closed.

“No,” he said in a rough whisper. “Don’t you hide from me, not ever again. Open your green eyes and look at me, dammit. Show me you, the real you this time.”

“It is me,” she gasped, because his touch was her world at the moment. “It’s always been me.”

“But I’ve never seen you. Not like this.”

His fingers never changed their rhythm. On the very verge of coming, she could hardly hear or see past the roaring in her head, past the raging need. “I…I can’t stand, Sean.”

Still stroking her, he wrapped his other arm around her waist and lifted her up, bracing her between the wall and his body, completely supporting her weight. “Do you want me?”

“Yes!”

She barely had time to spread her thighs wide when he thrust inside her with a single powerful stroke.

Instant orgasm.

When she could breathe, she blinked him into focus, his wet body, dark hair and those direct, intense eyes.

Still buried deep inside her, filling her to near bursting with his hot, throbbing length, he demanded, “What the hell do I call you?”

Spread wide, open to the touch of his body and his gaze, she couldn’t recover. Little aftershocks were still rocking her body. “What?”

“Your name,” he said roughly. “What do I call you?”

Oh. Oh.

Carly.

Carlyne.

Her deception, his pain.

Her own pain.

If she stopped to think about what would happen after tonight, she’d lose it, but she still had this, she had right now. And right now he was deep inside her, pulsing, hard as steel, with his hands all over her.

“Carly,” she whispered, choking back a sob. “I want to be Carly.”

“Carly,” he said thickly, withdrawing from her slowly only to plunge back inside.

He kept touching her, everywhere, and her insides started a deep trembling she couldn’t control. Unbelievably, she was going to come again. Her eyelids fluttered, but she forced them open so she could meet his gaze and see everything he felt, let him see everything she felt.

Another slow, purposeful stroke, and she was lost. She was always lost with him.

And when she was with him, she was found.