Lissa- Sugar and Spice (The Wilde Sisters 3)

“It’s the truth. You think that’s easy for me to admit? You think any of this is easy for me to admit?” His voice was low. Raw with emotion. “I didn’t plan on anything that happened, Lissa. Not on going to your room, not on making love to you.”

Her heart was beating fast and hard. She didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to forgive him, but there was pain in his voice. What if there was?

It didn’t change things.

He had hurt her badly last night—she knew damn well that her subsequent fury at him had actually been a way of trying to defuse that hurt.

And he was an actor. A very good actor, and she knew all about actors. For all she knew, this was Scene Two of last night’s Act One. Maybe he had enough of a conscience to want absolution. Maybe he figured she’d be fool enough to welcome him into her bed again. Whatever his reason, she wasn’t going to fall for the performance.

“See, that was the problem,” she said with a cool smile. “Planning is everything. If you work out what you’re going to do before you do it—”

She gasped as his hands tightened on her.

“Goddammit,” he growled, “listen to me! I haven’t been with a woman in months. I haven’t wanted to be with a woman. Not since I—not since I hurt my leg. And then, there you were and you were all I could think about, and once I had you in my arms, I wanted it to be right, to be perfect, and instead I screwed up, I failed you—”

Lissa rose on her toes and put her mouth against Nick’s.

For an endless moment, he didn’t react. Then he groaned, slid his arm around her and responded to the kiss.

It was like last night all over again. She melted into him. Her mouth, her hands sliding up his chest, her thighs pressed against his, were all that mattered.

After a timeless interval, she flattened her hands against his chest and gave a shaky little laugh.

“So much for planning.”

“Lissa—”

“You didn’t fail me,” she said, silencing him with a light touch of her hand to his lips. “You failed yourself, or some dumb male vision of what being a man is all about.”

Nick gave a quick laugh. “Hell, Duchess, you sound like a shrink.”

“You gave me a rough night, Gentry. I spent half of it worrying that you’d opened up a wound, broken a bone, did who knew what to your leg.”

“What about the other half?” His gaze dropped to her lips like a caress. “Did you spend it imagining what it would have been like if we’d made love?”

“I spent it trying to keep from going into your room and smothering you with a pillow.”

He grinned. “A woman of action.” His grin faded. “Hell. I deserved it.”

“Yes. You did. I would never, ever, not in a billion years give anybody a pity anything.”

“Yeah. I know that. I knew it even when I said it. ” He slipped his hand into her hair, tilted her face to his. “I’m sorry. I say things sometimes… Since the accident, I mean.”

“One of my brothers went through a bad time. Jake was a pilot, but he lost an eye. It was rough.”

He nodded. “Must have been hell.”

“It was. I suspect there are times it still is. And he said and did some stuff right after it happened that he’d never have said or done before he was wounded.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. He was wounded over there.”

“In action,” Nick said.

She looked up at him. His voice had gone flat.

“Yes.”