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“You checked me out.” She couldn’t seem to get over it. “So that’s how you knew about Jack,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.
“Yeah. Hell of a thing to learn the woman you’re smitten with almost married someone else.” He didn’t say it lightly, jokingly. He was serious, and he didn’t care if she knew it.
Carly’s eyes closed for a moment, and a variety of expressions crossed her face. When she looked at him again, she was as serious as he was. “That was a different woman. I was a different woman eight years ago. I’ve changed since then. In some good ways...but also in some bad.”
“Name one.”
“I’m...harder now, I think. More cynical.”
He tugged gently until she was cradled against his shoulder. “In what way?”
“My profession, for one. I used to be...oh...a little naive, I guess, when it came to journalism. I used to believe all reporters were as idealistic as I was. But I’m not that way anymore.”
He smiled to himself. Carly was still idealistic—she just didn’t realize it. “What happened to change you?”
“All the news coverage about Jack, after he... The way the press hounded me, hounded Jack’s parents. The way our private pain played out on the six o’clock news for everyone to gawk at.”
Shane processed her words, finally understanding why—after she’d tricked her way into his hospital room the week before—Carly had left without a story. “That’s why you said my epilepsy was no one’s business but mine that first day.”
She nodded. “Some things aren’t news. Not legitimate news. Some things should remain private.”
“I agree with you there. But Carly,” he said, kissing her temple, “that doesn’t make you hard and cynical. Just the opposite.”
“No, but it does make me cynical about my profession. Because I know there are some of us out there who will do anything for a story. No matter what. No matter who it hurts. Ambush journalists, I think you called them,” she added with a sad little smile.
“And sleazy paparazzi, let’s not forget them.”
She laughed as he’d intended. “Right. Can’t forget them.”
* * *
Shane’s hands were moving, stroking over her body’s curves, and his lips were doing the same over the curves of her face as he murmured in the deep voice that never failed to move her, “I’m so sorry, Carly. Sorry they hurt you. You didn’t deserve that.”
Her breath caught in her throat at what Shane was doing, and she barely managed to reply, “No one does.”
“Let me make it up to you.”
“You’re not responsi—oh, Shane...”
“Is that ‘oh, Shane, yes’? Or ‘oh, Shane, no...’”
She couldn’t even answer. Could only arch against his wicked hand and whimper, praying he’d accept that as please, yes!
The world condensed down into here and now. Into this moment and the next, and the next. Into Shane and Carly and the way he touched her so reverently, as if he cherished everything about her. Into the emotions that speared through her heart and into her brain. Into the whirling maelstrom where the only anchor holding her safe was Shane.
Eons later, after an orgasm that had left her in tears again, after Shane had lifted her into his strong arms and carried her into the bedroom, after he’d undressed them both without haste, after he’d smoothed on a condom to protect her, he paused at the portal to her womanhood and whispered, “Look at me, Carly.”
Still too dazed to do anything except follow his order, she gazed up into his eyes and nearly drowned in the darkness there. He pressed inward a tiny fraction, saying, “This.”
She arched, trying to take him deeper, but he pulled back slightly, saying, “Isn’t.”
She couldn’t think. Couldn’t focus on anything but his body moving on hers. In hers. Inch by inch. “Just,” he growled, as if he was fighting to hold back.
“Please, Shane,” she whispered.
He filled her. And when he was seated to the hilt, he held her eyes captive and uttered one word. “Sex.” He pulled out almost completely, then surged back in. “This isn’t just sex,” he repeated implacably. “Not for either of us.”
