Kellan

connection.

He hadn’t planned on unplanned sex. Part of the reason he’d focused on her earlier was that he wasn’t really sure he had any condoms with him. He usually kept a box in the side pocket of his duffel, but he’d put his emptied bag in the boot of his car to get it out of the way.

Gelsey pressed her palm to his chest. Kellan was sure she could feel his heart slamming against it. He’d always had such control around women, trying to figure out what they wanted, and what he was willing to surrender to get what he wanted. It was like a chess game, only with naked bodies and unsatisfied desires.

But he didn’t want to think now. He just wanted to feel. And when Gelsey ran her palm between them, then wrapped her fingers around his shaft, Kellan closed his eyes and groaned. He didn’t know anything about her, except her name. And one other thing. She could make his body ache like no other women ever had.

“I need to go get a condom,” he murmured.

“You don’t keep them in the bedroom?”

“They’re in my duffel. I think.”

“Where is your duffel?”

“In my car.” Cursing softly, Kellan crawled out of bed. This would no doubt prove to her that he wasn’t the smoothest guy on the planet.

“Aren’t you going to put some clothes on?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. That will take too long. I’m just going to make a run for it.” Kellan hurried to the front door, grabbing his keys from the table as he passed. With a squeal of excitement, Gelsey followed him, tugging the quilt off the bed and wrapping it around them both.

“You don’t have to come with me,” he said. “It’s freezing out there.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her body against his, kissing her deeply as his hand skimmed over her bare torso. When they finally pulled the front door open, a cold, wet wind hit them both in the face. Gelsey covered him with the blanket and stood in the doorway, naked and shivering. “Run,” she cried. “Hurry.”

Drawing a deep breath, Kellan started down the garden path. The bricks were freezing and slick under his feet and by the time he reached his car, he was already soaked. Fumbling with the keys, he tried to keep the quilt wrapped around himself, but a gust caught it and exposed his nude body to the full brunt of the storm.

When he reached the front door, duffel in his hand, Gelsey was waiting with a towel. She rubbed the rain from his face and hair, then slammed the door shut and gently pulled him along to the fireplace.

“It’s bloody cold out there.”

“You’re stark naked,” she said with a giggle. “What did you expect?”

He glanced down. “I think I’ve done irreparable damage to my manhood.”

Gelsey looked up at him, sending him a coy smile. “I can take care of that.”

As she continued to dry him off, he reached out and cupped her cheek in his palm. “Who are you? What are you doing here with me?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I do know that I don’t want to leave yet.”

He brought her lips to his and kissed her, a rush of warmth snaking through his body. It wasn’t enough to possess only her mouth. Kellan pulled her against him, stumbling back against the door and dropping the leather duffel.

Grabbing her hips, he spun them around and pressed her against the door. Gelsey slipped her hand between them and slowly began to stroke. She’d been right all along. She had a very simple antidote for the cold. In little more than a minute, he was hard and ready and aching to bury himself in her warmth.

Outside, the weather raged, the wind roaring up from the sea and the rain pelting at the windowpanes. But inside the cottage, they found the storm between them just as powerful and overwhelming.

Kellan’s mouth savaged Gelsey’s and he felt himself losing all sense of control. The last time had been gentle and slow, but this time he didn’t want to wait. For Kellan, there was no longer any point in pretending. Since he’d held her body against his on the beach, he’d known this moment would come. It felt as if he’d been waiting for this his entire adult life-waiting for a woman who could make him feel real raw passion.

“Condom,” he murmured.

She reached down and picked up his duffel and he rummaged through it until he found the box. Saying a silent prayer that it wasn’t empty, Kellan opened it. A single foil packet fell into his palm. “Stroke of luck there,” he murmured.

Gelsey grabbed the packet and tore it open, then quickly sheathed him. She drew him along to the sofa, then pushed him down, straddling his hips with her knees. Gently, she guided him inside her. He wanted to slow down, to just take a moment and enjoy the anticipation. But the instant he felt her warmth close around him, Kellan was lost. He held his breath, marshaling his control, trying to fix his mind on something other than the woman above him.

Programs, he thought to himself. He had to do those damn wedding programs. Ribbon and little red jewels, Nan had said. He didn’t know what the hell she’d been talking about, but as long as he focused on his brother’s wedding plans, he’d be all right.

“Do you want me to move?” she whispered, her words soft against his ear.

“No,” he said.

“It works better if I move.”

He leaned back and found her smiling down at him. “I know. I have done this before.”

“Really? It’s hard to tell.”

Chuckling softly, he clasped her hips and moved. “Better?”

“Do it again,” she said with a laugh.

He did as she asked and she groaned softly. “See how good that feels?”

She leaned over him and touched her lips to his. “You were right,” she whispered.

“About what?”

“You are very good at this.”

3

GELSEY SNUGGLED into the soft covers of the bed. It was still warm with the heat from Kellan’s body, even though he’d gotten up an hour before. She was beginning to feel almost normal and attributed part of that to the passionate interlude she’d shared with her rescuer.

Sex had always been an important part of Gelsey’s life, but never for the right reasons. According to a long string of therapists, she used sex to create a false sense of security, the security she’d never enjoyed as a child.

Her early childhood had been spent with her nanny, Marie, a wonderful Frenchwoman who had been more of a mother than Dorothy Trent Woodson had ever been. And Gelsey had been happy with that life, even if she rarely spent time with her parents.

But after the divorce, Marie had been sent away, there one day and gone the next. And Gelsey had been packed and shipped off to a Swiss boarding school, a place where she was to be well educated and carefully prepared to take her place in society as some billionaire’s charming wife.

At first, she’d accepted her fate and done her best at school. But then, she’d discovered boys. And along with boys came a sense of exhilarating freedom. There was nothing to stop her from living her life exactly how she chose. That first spontaneous kiss with Kellan had been just the start of her pursuit of pleasure.

Thinking back on it, it had been a terribly bold move on her part. But her grandmother had always told her that if she wanted to be happy, she had to grab happiness wherever she could find it. At that moment in time, Kellan had represented everything that was wonderful about life.

She’d watched him and his brothers from afar, hidden behind the rocks on the cliff. He’d been the one she’d fashioned her silly schoolgirl dreams around, the dark, brooding, handsome boy with the pale blue eyes and the confident air about him.

He’d been her first, but he hadn’t been her last. Schoolgirl fantasies gave way to teenage realities. Once back in Switzerland, she’d begun to sneak out after curfew. A few years later, there were ski weekends with college boys,