Sticks and Stone by Jennifer Dunne Read Free Book Online Page A

celebration, and carried on without me. But I have to be in
London by one o’clock. I can’t miss that.”
    She rolled away from him, then leaned over the edge of the bed to gather some of the covers. “So you won’t be
staying in the area, then?”
      “No. The only
reason I was down here was the wedding.” He reached out and touched her
shoulder, turning her to look at him. “I’d like to see you again, Eileen. We
could meet in Dublin.”
    She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Is it seeing you’ve a mind
to do, or could you as easily keep your eyes closed?”
    He blew out his breath in a disgusted snort. “Yes, I
want to make love to you again. But it’s more than that. Beautiful women throw
themselves at me all the time. I don’t need to import lovers. I want to see you
again because there’s something special about you, something I don’t have the
time to explore right now even though I wish I could. I hoped you might feel
the same way.”
    Now she looked at him, gazing deeply into his eyes as if
she could read his soul. For all he knew, she actually could.
    But he’d told the truth. The sex had been phenomenal.
After all these years of denial, finding a lover who understood and encouraged
his desires was like a dream come true. And to have her be an
intelligent, successful woman on top of that? If there was one thing he
admired more than anything else, it was a person who’d succeeded because of
their own tenacity and competence. God, he couldn’t have asked for a more ideal
woman.
    A chill ghosted over him, and it had nothing to do with
his nakedness. She was exactly what he’d asked for. And the leprechaun had
delivered her.
    Dermot leaped out of the bed. His clothes were in the
bathroom where he’d left them, although the pants had been hung on a peg to
dry.
    “Where’s my jacket?” he asked.
    “You weren’t wearing one. Just your
shirt and shoes. You’re lucky I saw your pants, black as they are.”
    “Damn.” Now that he thought about it, he recalled carrying
the jacket over his arm as he walked through the woods, his blood warmed by the
Irish Whiskey .
      “Are you in such
a hurry to be leaving?”
    “No, it’s not that. I wanted to give you my business
card. It has my office number, and I’d give you my cell phone number, too, so
you can call me no matter where I am. Except the cell phone
was in the pocket of the jacket.”
    She lifted the pants off the peg, and held them out to
him. The wool blend fabric was stiff with dried mud and blood.
    He took the pants and stared at them, momentarily at a
loss. “I can’t wear these.”
    “Then you’ll be walking through the forest naked.”
    Grunting, he stepped into the pants, grimacing as bits
of the forest floor flaked off against his legs. He picked the shirt up off the
floor and shook it out, revealing the full extent of its tatters. He tossed it
onto the floor again. “That’s useless.”
    “You’ll have your jacket to wear again soon enough,” she
reminded him. “I’ll lead you back to the dryad’s clearing.”
    She pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, wrapped her
stained cloak around her shoulders, and led him into the forest. She moved
silently, discouraging any attempts to talk to her, so he just watched her
lithe body swaying beneath her cloak.
    The mere sight of her, even shrouded in that cloak, was
enough to make his blood pulse. There were so many more things he wanted to
explore. Were the backs of her knees ticklish or would
kissing her there leave her dripping with excitement? Would she gasp and
moan in pleasure if he buried his face between her legs and loved her with his
mouth and tongue? Would her breasts bounce and sway with her energetic
movements as she straddled his hips and rode his cock? Now that she knew his
name, would she scream it as she came?
    She stepped into a clearing and swept her arm out to
gesture at the leaf-strewn ground. “This is it.”
    He recognized the wych elm at
once. Eileen’s