“We’re not rushing this,” he said, his breath warm against her lips. He scrabbled around under the quilts before coming up with a condom.

She took it out of his hand. “I don’t need this. Do you?”

“Clean as a whistle,” he said, his voice barely a rasp.

And then she was on her back, with his beautiful, dear face just over hers. Her thighs were open around his hips and the tip of his cock just touched her.

“Frankie,” he said, kissing her eyebrow. “Frankie.” He kissed her eyelid. “Frankie.” Her temple. “Frankie.” The top of her ear.

And she knew why. Because this had taken so long to happen. Because this was the only way they didn’t yet know each other.

She bent her knees and opened herself fully to him. He moved into her slowly, so slowly. She held her breath as she felt him easing in, stretching her, filling her. Learning how this felt, how he felt inside her, part of her. No, he’d always been part of her. Would always be part of her. A small, hot tear burned its way out of the corner of her eye, trickling down to sink into the hair at her temple because it was so perfect, this joining.

“A stór, am I hurting you?” He stopped moving.

She swallowed hard. “No, no, please, I want all of you.”

He gave in to her wish. He was there, deep within her, his weight holding her in place so she could feel the beat of his heart, the breath he sucked in as he went fully in, the vibration in his muscles as he braced himself over her.

“This is where I belong,” he said, holding her gaze with his. “Here. Nowhere else.”

She curled her hands over his shoulders, loving the solidity of him. For several long moments, they needed nothing more than this connection, this new knowledge of each other. Then, on a long sigh, they both began to move, languidly at first, shifting angles in tiny adjustments to see how they best fit together.

But it was too good. The tension built and tightened inside her, as he slid in and out. She released his shoulders and shifted her hands to dig into the muscular arc of his backside, tilting her hips to urge him on. He straightened his arms, raising himself up to drive into her faster and harder. “Yes, yes, yes!” She moved with him to bring him in deeper.

He thrust in and ground his hips against her. For what seemed like an eternity, she balanced on the edge of her climax, every molecule of her body pulling in to her core before it all exploded outward like a supernova, sending her arching up and back as her muscles clenched and released, clenched and released.

“Frankie, a rúnsearc!” Liam bowed back and shouted as he pushed into her again. And she felt the liquid of his release, the pulse of his cock, sending another orgasm tearing through her.

He stayed, holding her in place with his weight, while the throb of his cock and the aftershocks of her climax gentled and subsided. At last, he let his arms bend, settling over her and then bringing them both onto their sides as he slipped out of her.

He cradled her against his chest, tucking the rumpled quilts back around her. His heart was pounding against her ear, proving that he had been as affected as she was. She curled her hands in between herself and Liam, wanting to crawl inside him to hold onto the intimacy as long as possible.

She drifted, remembering moments and sensations, her body floating down from the high of their climax. The Gaelic he’d shouted as he came echoed through her mind. A rúnsearc. My secret beloved, the most passionate of endearments. She pushed it away. If it had been wrung from him simply by the power of their orgasm, she didn’t want to know it. If he’d meant it, that was even worse.

No, she would allow herself this day, this night, to be together with him in every way. Tomorrow would come soon enough.

The sun had sunk low enough on the horizon that the surrounding buildings cast shadows over her terrace. She shivered. “As hot as you are in every way, it’s too cold to stay out here without clothes,” she said.

“You must be hotter than I am because I wasn’t noticing the chill at all.” He ran his hand down her back to squeeze her bottom. “Let’s get you bundled up for the trip inside.”

He separated one quilt from the tangled pile and wrapped it around her. “You dash and I’ll grab our clothes on the way.”

She was about to say that she could handle her own clothes. But something stopped her. Something that whispered it would be nice to let another person take care of her for a moment. He wasn’t cold—he’d said so—so why be bullheaded about pulling her weight? “See you inside!”

She bolted for the French doors, the soles of her bare feet burning with cold by the time she’d gotten across the frigid tiles of the terrace floor. Slipping inside, she went straight to the fireplace to hold her feet out one at a time to the flames.

Liam burst through the door, his arms full of quilts, clothes, and boots. “Jaysus, it’d freeze the bollocks off a polar bear out there.”

He dumped his burdens, including the quilt that had been draped over his shoulders, on a chair and strode toward Frankie and the fire, in all his naked, muscle-rippling glory. She didn’t pretend not to ogle him every step of the way, and once again she caught the flash of a green tattoo on his hip.

“You have to pay for looking.” He grinned as he took one corner of her quilt out of her hand, and wrapped it around his big body.

As he huddled in beside her, his chilled skin grazed hers. She yelped. “‘Tis like diving into the bloody Irish Sea in January.”

“You’ll warm me up fast.” He snaked his arm around her waist to pull her into him. She let her eyes close as their skin pressed together, savoring the contrast of his hard contours against her softer curves, the delight of it quickly warding off the shock of that first contact.

“Liam, what’s the tattoo on your hip?”

Chapter Seven

Liam had forgotten about the damned tattoo. It was so much a part of him, he never gave it a thought. But he knew Frankie. She would lock those laser-focused eyes on it the first time she got a chance and ask the question he didn’t want to have to answer just yet.

He couldn’t lie to her, though.

He willed himself not to tense up. “It’s a shamrock, of course.”

“When did you get it?”

That was easy. “My first year at football…soccer academy. The ink was a statement of my ambition to make Team Ireland.”