kissed her neck, his breath hot on her skin. His hands slid around her front, one slipping inside her bra to mold her breast, one covering her mound. He pressed her against him, their hips moving to his increasingly breathless humming.
Emma closed her eyes, her hands roaming over herself, his legs, his arms, anywhere she could reach. She moaned as he slipped his fingers inside her panties and found the slippery folds of sensitive flesh. He eased back enough to drop his boxers and then his cock was nudging her from behind, seeking and finding her entrance while his fingers brought her tantalizingly close to climax. She sagged in his arms as her knees turned to jelly. He moved inside her, thrusting and whispering hot sexy things in her ear. He was close, too. She recognized the ragged state of his breathing and the tension in his muscles.
“C-condom,” she managed to moan. She’d almost completely fogged out and forgotten. Lucky...
“You...IUD.”
“No.” It was all she could say.
He groaned but he pulled out and guided her over to the bed. She sank onto the turned-back sheets while he found a plastic packet in the bedside drawer. Within seconds he was sheathed, sliding on top of her and into her almost in one motion.
She met his thrust with a strong surge of her hips, clenching her muscles so she didn’t come immediately. His gaze focused on her as if she were the only thing in the universe. As he was to her. When his eyes started to glaze over she abandoned control. A cry tore from her throat and she was swept away in the climax that she’d been waiting for.
* * *
“HOLLY, STOP!” Emma waved a gloved hand holding a trowel dirty from planting pansy seedlings next to the front porch. “Come back now.”
Holly’s bright red-gold curls bounced in slow motion. Her small sturdy legs sprang toward the red ball rolling along the driveway. She laughed, unaware of the black 4WD reversing toward her....
“No, Holly!” Emma tried to run. Couldn’t...move. She looked down. She was buried up to her hips in the garden bed. “Stop!” she screamed again—at Holly, at the faceless driver, at the universe. “Stop!”
A flash of white face in the driver’s window, panic and confusion. The 4WD jerked once then zoomed backward, smashing into Holly, throwing her through the air—
“Holly! Oh, God. No, no, no, no...”
Emma awoke sobbing, dripping with sweat. She blinked her eyes open and peered at the dark unfamiliar room. Collapsing on the pillow, she closed her eyes but the dream still permeated her mind. Images flashed. Holly, a broken rag doll on the pavement, blood running from her nose. Darcy, hauling Emma off their daughter’s body. The ambulance, siren wailing, then abrupt silence. The paramedic pulling a blanket over Holly’s face. My baby, my baby...
“Em, what’s the matter? Are you okay?” Darcy, his voice groggy with sleep, cupped her shoulder.
She shook his hand off and rolled out of bed, now as repelled by his touch as she had been eager for it earlier. The grieving mother in her longed for comfort. Darcy should have been the one to give it to her. Except that even though he wasn’t driving the vehicle, he was to blame for Holly’s death.
“No, I’m not okay. I’ll never be okay again.”
He turned on a lamp and squinted at her. “What’s wrong?”
“Holly.” She dragged her dress over her naked body and managed to zip it halfway before she got on her knees to hunt beneath chairs for her shoes. How could she have been so stupid as to sleep with Darcy?
He groaned and flung himself on the pillow. “Not this again.”
“Yes, this again.” She should leave this subject alone, but she was still gripped by the horror of the nightmare. “You, a bartender of all people, should know better than to serve your friends alcohol and then let them get behind the wheel.”
Darcy sat up in bed and crossed his arms over his chest. “I barely knew the guy. He came with someone else. And I get tired of being the booze police. I have to do that at the pub. I shouldn’t have to in my own home. People brought their own grog. I couldn’t monitor everyone’s intake. Whatever happened to personal responsibility?”
That was all very well in theory—except that her child had been killed. Someone had to be accountable.
She caught sight of herself in the mirror, makeup smeared, her hair a fright. Who cared? Darcy had seen her at