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  Mosby listened, nodding.

  “That's right. Yes, Ma'am. I don't want that sort of thing goin’ on out here.”

  He listened some more, thanked the dispatcher, then hung up. He walked to the door, opened it, and breathed in the late afternoon air.

  “Jail bait,” he said, then hawked up a wad of phlegm and spat. “Nothing but jail bait.”

  Glancing at the lowering sky, he shook his head and went back into the office, satisfied he had helped to end the indecent behavior of at least two rebellious youths.

  * * * *

  Sean sat hunched over the steering wheel as he drove toward town.

  “I'm not ready to go back,” Bronnie told him.

  “Where do you want to go?” he asked.

  “Kinchafoonee Creek. Where everybody else goes. I'll show you.”

  He shot her a glance. “And just how the hell would you know?” he asked, his voice tight.

  “Everybody knows where to go parking, Cullen. Doesn't mean I've ever gone. Just means I know where to go.”

  His hands gripped the wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. “Have you ever come out here with someone else?”

  She turned to him. “You tell me.”

  He took his eyes from the road, stared at her for a moment, then snapped his head back around, furious with himself that he had drifted into the northbound lane. The highway was notorious for fatal accidents and the thought of something happening to Bronwyn made him sick.

  “Turn up there,” she said, pointing.

  She guided him deep into the pine thicket that ran along the waterway. Above, scrub oaks formed scraggly arches over the car. Spanish moss snagged on the antenna as they drove under the oaks, festooning the hood with silvery lace. The dirt path she indicated was edged with a rusted barbwire fence that kept honeysuckle and banana vine from wandering too far to the road.

  “Park anywhere here.”

  He nosed the car beneath a tall live oak and turned off the engine. The sound of water and the chirp of crickets filled in the silence. Dusk wasn't far away, and fireflies appeared along the banks.

  Sean grunted. “This place looks like a photograph Ma has of the woods near Killarney where she used to visit a maiden aunt during the summer.”

  “Well, that sure ain't the Boyne,” Bronwyn grumbled. “Creeks around here don't get much muddier than the Kinchafoonee.”

  He shrugged. “Aye, but it has a certain charm, don't you think?”

  “About as much charm as any, I guess.” She looked at him. “What now, Cullen?”

  Sean smiled softly. “Are we on a schedule?”

  She took a quick breath. “I've got a blanket in the trunk,” she said and reached for the keys.

  He snaked out a hand, gripping her wrist harder than he intended. “And why would you have a damned blanket in your trunk?”

  She grinned. “On the off chance you decided one night to bring me out here to neck. Have I ever used it before?” She shook her head.

  He swept his gaze over her face, then snorted at her hoot of laughter. She snatched the keys from the ignition and got out of the car.

  “You're going to be the death of me,” he complained as he joined her at the back of the car.

  She pulled out a red and blue plaid blanket from the trunk. “Aye, I might kill you with love, Cullen.” She headed for a fairly flat piece of ground.

  “Watch out for snakes.”

  Bronwyn stilled, her eyes going wide. “S...snakes?”

  He grinned and made a hissing sound.

  “Don't do that!”

  Sean laughed, grabbed her up, and swung her around. He stopped with her held above him, her hips imprisoned in his strong grasp. “Would I let some slimy, slithering reptile near my lady?”

  “I don't like snakes,” she said, twisting in his grip to look around them.

  “I don't, either,” he said, sobering. “I loathe the sneaky things.” He set her down. “They're about the only thing I'm afraid of.”

  Bronwyn looked out over the water. “There might be cottonmouths out there.”

  The creek was swollen from recent rains and the waters were running faster than normal. Driftwood bobbed on the muddy surface.

  “There aren't any in the car,” he reminded her.

  She tossed the blanket at him. “Then let's see if the backseat is as comfortable as it looks!”

  He made a grab for her, but she dodged him and ran laughing to the car. He dove into the car after her, sliding his body over hers, pushing her down into the softness of the seat. Almost instantly, the laughter left both their faces.

  Sean was stretched out over her, his feet outside the door. He was braced above her, his arms to either side of her shoulders as he stared at her. She was so soft beneath him, her shapely hips and silken limbs hidden by the folds of her full skirt. He wanted to drag up her skirt and touch the satin smoothness of her leg and to run his fingers over the arch of her hipbone.

  He looked at her parted lips, the gleam of her teeth very white against the dark pink lipstick. He saw a vein throb wildly at the base of her throat and felt her erratic breath as she struggled to breathe with his weight pushing down on her. He shifted his body so he wasn't lying completely atop her, but at her groan and the instant restriction of her arms as she enwrapped him, pulling him down to her once again, he lost all thought to her comfort and lowered his mouth to hers.

  * * * *

  To Bronwyn, the weight of him was sheer bliss; she reveled in the solid feel of him. She felt the insistent hardness between his legs stabbing against her thigh. It throbbed in rhythm to the vein pulsing in his throat and she had to tear her eyes from that suggestive sight. She swallowed hard, her eyes locked with his.

  Sean's kiss was unlike any other he'd ever given her. His lips were hard as they slanted brutally across her own, his tongue determined as it slipped past her teeth and delved deeply into the warm recesses of her mouth. He tasted of butterscotch candy, and his breath was sweet in her nostrils. When he flicked his tongue over her upper teeth, she shuddered and tightened her hold on him. He groaned deep in his throat and thrust his tongue deeper still.

  Aching with a need she could not explain, Bronwyn arched herself lower from the seat cushion, straining to feel the heat of him, the rigid steel of him jabbing into her thigh. She shifted so that intruding member could strike at the very core of her. When it did, she gasped, her harsh breath drawing his tongue as deep as it would go into her mouth.

  * * * *

  Sean tore his mouth from hers, moved so he was wedged against the back of the seat. Bringing his knee up between hers, it was all he could do not to ravage her when her swift intake of breath told him she was excited by the invasion of his knee against the juncture of her thighs. He eased his hand to her breast and gently cupped it.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” she whimpered and grabbed his hand to mold it harder to her.

  “Slowly!” he cautioned, feeling the tension in his loins straining to be set free.

  * * * *

  She pressed the palm of his hand against her, closed her eyes to the heat of it, the weight of it plying her. She kept a tight grip on his wrist as he tenderly squeezed her, kneading her flesh. When his thumb moved over her nipple, she lunged upward with a squeak of desire that made him chuckle.

  “Brazen little hussy,” he teased. “You like that?” He moved his thumb over the hard little nub again.

  “Sean!” was all she could say. She strained against him.

  He tried to take his hand from her, but she held on. “Bronwyn, I want to touch you.”

  “You are touching me, nitwit!” she managed to choke out.

  “I want to touch your bare breast, mo Chroí,” he whispered and lowered his head to kiss the hollow of her throat.

  She released his wrist.

  He undid the first three buttons of her blouse. Gently sliding his hand inside, he angled it under her bra and cupped her breast.

  “Ahhh,” she sighed. H
is hand was warm, dry against her flesh. He kneaded the firm mound, then ran his fingertips over her turgid nipple.

  Bronwyn gasped and shuddered violently. She grabbed his wrist once more. When she did, he withdrew his hand, ignoring her moan of protest. He took her hand and lowered it to the straining bulge between his legs. He molded her around him and rubbed her palm over the hardness pushing against his jeans.

  “Feel how much he wants you,” he whispered against her cheek.

  “Yes.”

  “Unbuckle my belt,” he said and released his hold on her wrist.

  She looked into his face. Her pulse raced at the red glints in his passion-glazed amber eyes. She shivered when he ran the tip of his tongue over his upper lip.

  “I want you to touch me,” he said.

  Bronwyn's right arm was wedged between her lover and the back of the seat. She started to tell him it would be nearly impossible to work his belt free of the buckle, but he pushed up from her, one knee on the seat, the other on the raised hump on the floorboard, giving her room to maneuver.

  She unbuckled his belt, tugged down the zipper. He wore no underwear. She firmly gripped his manhood and pulled it free of his jeans.

  * * * *

  “Go slow, Bronnie!” he pleaded, biting the inside of his mouth to keep from shaming himself. His arms quivered, the muscles straining as he arched over her. He stared into her face, watching the need building, and the sight was nearly his undoing.

  “Tell me what to do,” she said, holding him so tightly it was becoming painful.

  “Ease up,” he managed to croak. “Don't...don't... Just ease up.”

  Sweat drenched his face. His jaw was clenched; his entire body was as rigid as steel. She released her death-grip on his turgid member, but kept her fingers around him.

  “You are so big,” she whispered.

  “Don't say that!” he begged, hearing the tension in his voice.

  “Why not?’ she asked, obviously unsure what she should do.

  He had to touch her. His fingers burned to stroke her flesh. Firmly nudging her hand away from him, he insinuated his own between their bodies. He tugged up her skirt, ran his hand over her thigh, and dipped his fingers under the elastic of her panties.

  "Sean!" she screamed as his questing fingertips touched her nether lips.

  He pushed his thumb inside her moist heat and cupped her pubic bone with the rest of his fingers. She came off the seat as though she were attached to a puppeteer's strings. Her shrill cry of pleasure was again almost his undoing. She clamped her muscles around his hand.

  “Bronnie...”

  "Now, Sean! Now!"

  He knew he was forgetting something, something vitally important, but couldn't remember what. All he wanted was to bury himself deeply within his lover's straining body. He wanted to make them one. He wanted to put his brand on her, to claim her, to mark her forever as belonging to him. She was his mate and he wanted nothing more than to possess her for all time.

  * * * *

  When he pushed into her, Bronwyn made note of the discomfort, the slight pain, then filed them away, savoring them as payment for becoming a woman. She gave herself to him—body and soul—and reveled in the possessive heat of his manhood pulsing deep within her. She clung to him, her hands buried in his thick hair. She wrapped her legs around his hips, laughed as his fingertips dug into her rump as he held her. She tightened her thighs around him and laughed again when he grunted with the effort of ramming his flesh into her.

  “Mine,” she heard him say, and felt the first itching vibrations in the core of her.

  “Yours,” she whispered in return, and twisted beneath him, searching for a release for the building sensation in her loins.

  “Mine!” he bellowed, throwing back his head.

  She stared at the pulse beating thickly, rapidly, in the column of his strong neck. She felt his quivering arms as he braced himself atop her. When he lowered his head to look at her, moonlight shone on his golden hair. Her heart swelled, thinking him the handsomest man she had ever seen.

  “I love you,” she said, reveling in the feel of him inside her.

  “I pledge before God and man that I will love you for all time.”

  She squirmed against him, his words thrilling her. Her eyes widened when the itch in her nether regions became a blast of liquid fire that washed over her and threatened to drown her in its power. “Sean?”

  * * * *

  Sean felt the muscles of her vagina tighten around him. He tensed, striving with every ounce of his strength to hold back his release until he was assured of her pleasure. As the pulsing tattoo of her attainment vibrated around his shaft, he let go of the hold he had on his own flesh and poured his love into her.

  * * * *

  Bronwyn's squeal of passion silenced the crickets chirping outside the car. It stilled the rasp of the cicadas and the thrump of the bullfrogs on the far shore.

  Sean's bellow of release frightened away the hoot owl in the tall cypress twenty feet away, and sent a family of raccoons and a lone ‘possum scurrying for cover.

  CHAPTER 9

  Deirdre didn't look up from mending a pair of her daughter's gym shorts when her husband came back to the den. “Who was that, dear?’

  “Put that down,” Dermot said.

  “I'm almost fin...”

  “I said to put it down!”

  His shout frightened Deirdre so badly she jammed the needle under her thumbnail. She gasped, dropped her sewing, and pulled the needle free of her flesh. “What the hell's the matter with you?” she hissed, bringing her thumb to her mouth. As she did, she looked at her husband, and her blood ran cold.

  Dermot McGregor's face was rock hard, his eyes blazing hellfires of fury. His fists opened and clenched so powerfully, the muscles in his forearms bunched.

  “Dermot?” she whispered. “What's the matter?”

  His glare latched on to her like an arrow driven through a target. “I want you,” he said, his jaw tight, his words clipped, “to get up and come with me.”

  “W...where?” she asked, terrified of the unholy gleam in his enraged eyes.

  She thought he wasn't going to answer, but when he did, Deirdre knew a moment of absolute shock.

  “To the police station,” he spat, the words sounding vile as they shot from his lips.

  “Why?” Then Deirdre McGregor felt her face drain of color. “Bronwyn? Has something happened to our daughter?”

  * * * *

  Dermot stared at his wife for a long moment, striving to get his rage under control. He barely heard the panic in Deirdre's tone, hardly noticed her flesh turn as white as chalk. All he saw before him was a semi-circle of zigzagging light in his right eye that always signaled the onset of a migraine. The aura darkened and sizzled in his line of vision, flowing over that portion of his sight as though he were sitting under water. He could feel the nausea lurking at the back of his throat and knew this was going to be one hell of a headache—a condition shared by his wife and daughter.

  Deirdre leapt to her feet and grabbed his arm. “Tell me!” she demanded, dragging on him. “Has something happened to Bronnie?”

  “I'm going to kill that little bastard.” Dermot squeezed his right eye shut, but the aura was still there, disrupting his equilibrium.

  “Oh, God! What has he done to our child?”

  “Lying, degenerate, shanty Irish bastard!” Dermot bellowed, jerking his arm from his wife's grip.

  “Dermot, what did he do?”

  “He took her to Mosby's.”

  Deirdre's hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God!”

  “To Mosby's!” Dermot repeated, the word a curse.

  “Did he...did they...?” Deirdre could not voice the question.

  “Mosby called in her tag number,” Dermot said, running a rigid hand through his hair. “Said that boy rented the room.”

  “Sean Cullen?”

  “Who the hell else would it have been?”

  “Whe
re are they now? Was he arrested?”

  Dermot grabbed his wife's arm and shook her so hard her head bobbled. “Why do you think we're going to the police station, stupid?”

  “Is she all right?”

  “The policewoman said she was bawling her eyes out, begging them not to arrest him. They've got her in a room waiting for us to pick her up!”

  * * * *

  Detective Gail VanLandingham recognized Dr. Dermot McGregor the moment he came through the door. The man bearing down on her desk had murder in his dark eyes, and the woman walking a few feet behind looked as though she'd been trying to keep the man's murderous intent in check.

  “Dr. McGregor?”

  “Where is our daughter?” he demanded.

  “We need to talk first.” Gail held out her hand. “I'm Detective VanLandingham—”

  “I demand to see my daughter!” he snarled, ignoring the gesture. “We can talk later!”

  Gail shook her head. “We'll talk now and you'll get that temper firmly under control.” She met his furious look with a calm one and pointed to a room. “We can talk in there.”

  Dermot stalked to the door and flung it open. He strode inside as though he owned the room. His wife threw Gail an apologetic look.

  “I'm used to dealing with irate fathers,” she told the wife.

  “Is my daughter all right?”

  “She's just fine.” Gail motioned the women into the room.

  * * * *

  “I want the book thrown at that son-of-a-bitch,” Dermot snapped as VanLandingham closed the door.

  “Dr. McGregor, you need to calm down so we can discuss this.”

  “What's there to talk about? It's statutory rape, isn't it? And don't think Felix Mosby is going to get away scot-free just because he reported it! I'll have his goddamned license!”

  A sob broke from Deirdre. She had not allowed herself to think of what might have gone on inside one of the vile rooms at Mosby's Dew Drop Inn.

  “Your daughter never entered the room Mr. Cullen obtained, Dr. McGregor,” VanLandingham said. She folded her hands on the table. “Would you please sit down?”