“Is this going to take a long time?” she asked, allowing a trace of asperity to creep into her voice.
“Were you in a particular hurry?” His voice was lazy.
She thought of Lemur, somewhere in the house. What if he decided to come and find her again? What if he decided to leave in the middle of the night? She needed to get on with this unpleasant task so she could return safely to her room.
“I just thought we should get it over with.”
“Rather like a trip to the tooth-drawer?” he mocked, and his long thumbs were soothing the sides of her face.
“It isn’t supposed to take that long,” she said stubbornly, trying to ignore the insidious effect his hands were having on her. Trying to ignore the feel of him, cradled against her. He was far readier than her husband had ever been; she had enough experience to know that much.
“It can take as long as we want,” he said, kissing one eyelid and then the other. “We can do it fast and hard”—and he punctuated his words with a brief thrust of his hips against hers—”or we can take our time. There’s much to be said for both ways.”
“I’d rather you did it quickly,” she said in a stony voice.
“Would you, now?” he said, not bothering to climb off her. “But then, I like taking my time. There’s more pleasure that way. For me. And particularly for you.”
She couldn’t hide her look of contemptuous disbelief. “Don’t worry about me,” she said tartly. “I’m not expecting to enjoy it.”
He dropped his head down on her shoulder, and she could feel a faint tremor ripple through his body. She realized he was laughing at her. “I see,” he said gravely. “Are you certain you want to do it?”
“You’ve asked me that before. If you aren’t interested …”
Once more he bumped his hips against her, leaving her in no doubt as to his interest. “Would you mind terribly if you did enjoy it?” he inquired politely. “Just a little bit?”
“I suppose not,” she said ungraciously. “But could we just do it and stop talking about it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Well?”
“Well?” he countered again, that unholy amusement in his silver eyes.
“Well,” she said fiercely, “climb off me and I’ll take off my clothes and turn over.”
All amusement fled. “Why?”
She was rapidly losing her patience. “Because that’s the way it’s done, isn’t it? I thought you had experience in these matters.”
“Apparently more than you,” he said. “Is that the way Lemur did it?”
She didn’t want to meet his searching gaze. “I thought we were going to stop talking about it.”
He was silent for a moment. “More and more reason to send you back to your room,” he said, half to himself.
Sudden panic swept through her. “You aren’t going to, are you?”
“And deprive you of your revenge? That would be extremely unkind of me, wouldn’t it?”
“Extremely unkind,” she agreed in a whisper.
“To answer your previous question,” he said, “that is the way it is done on occasion, when one wants a change of pace. I prefer it this way. Where I can watch you when you climax.”
She blinked. “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know. But you will, fair Juliette. You will.” He’d been bracing himself above her, his hips resting lightly against hers, but now he settled down against her, his hands coming up to cover her bare breasts. “We’ll do it, as you requested, and we won’t talk about it. Unless you change your mind.”
His hands were hard against the softness of her breasts, hot against the coolness of her flesh, and she squirmed, wanting to push his hands away. “Can I?”
“Yes,” he said.
She put her hands over his. And then she let them drop onto the mattress, steeling herself. “I won’t change my mind,” she said.
“You know, my love,” he murmured, brushing his lips against hers temptingly, “you would have made a very nice early Christian martyr. You wear that long-suffering look so well.” He increased the pressure against her mouth, just slightly, and she felt the damp, questing tip of his tongue. She opened her mouth, more by instinct than by volition, and he deepened the kiss, slanting his lips across hers, pushing his tongue past her teeth to taste the darkness of her mouth.
Her first instinct was to fight. And then she remembered she’d liked his kisses, even as they’d frightened her. She tilted her head back, closing her eyes, and let him kiss her, telling herself that at least it might hurry things along a bit.
She tried to concentrate on the sound of the surf outside the window, the feel of the damp night air. She tried to concentrate on the feel of the linen sheet beneath her fingers, the softness of the mattress. But her hands had left the mattress, sliding up under Phelan’s loose shirt to touch his back, and she found she couldn’t concentrate on anything but what he was doing to her mouth.
His back was smooth, muscled beneath her fingertips, and she could feel the tension beneath his heated skin. She slid her hands down, to the waistband of his breeches, then up again, to the width of his back. She liked the feel of him.
He groaned, deep in the back of his throat, and rolled to one side, taking her with him. He released her mouth, and she took in great gulping breaths of air, not even realizing she’d been holding her breath. And then she sucked it in again as his mouth traveled down her throat, to taste the heavy beat of her pulse at the base of her neck.
Her nipples were hardening beneath his deft hands, and the heat flowed down between her thighs. She tried to clamp them together, but he put his knee between her legs, pushing against the pulsing core of her, and she felt an odd little thrill of something she told herself was fear but felt a great deal more like desire.
His hands moved away from her breasts, and her shock of disappointment was followed by an even greater shock as his mouth followed, covering her breast, sucking it hotly, while he pushed the shirt from her shoulders and down her arms. She thought vaguely that she should protest, that she shouldn’t be lying there in only the tight breeches, but she didn’t know quite what she could say. Particularly when the sensation was so astonishingly delightful.
He moved his mouth between her breasts, tasting, nibbling, sliding down her rib cage. “You went swimming today,” he murmured against her skin. “You taste like the sea.”
She wanted to say something pragmatic, but his lips were having the most debilitating effect on her. Particularly when he moved down, leaning over her, and put his mouth between her legs, against the rough black material of her breeches.
She could feel the heat of his breath through her clothing, and she arched against him as his hands cupped her hips. He bit her gently through the layers of clothing, and an astonishing heat and dampness seemed to flow from her.
Her breath was coming rapidly now, and she closed her eyes in the darkness. Only to open them again when he moved back up to take her hand and place it against the solid ridge of flesh at the front of his breeches.
“No,” she said.
“No?” He didn’t release her hand, simply rubbed his hand over hers, pressing it against him. “You’ve changed your mind?” There was a thread of desperate tension in his cool voice, but no rage.
She shook her head. “I haven’t changed my mind,” she said. “But it’s not going to work.”
“Why not?”
She wasn’t about to tell him, and have him laugh at her. He was the experienced one; if he didn’t know, then she wasn’t about to tell him.
He, however, wasn’t about to let her keep silent. He moved up her body, kissing her lightly as he traveled. “Why not?” he asked again, kissing her mouth, and his hand moved between her legs where his mouth had been.
She wasn’t sure if the dampness had come from his mouth or from her. The very thought was disturbing, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was stroking her, gently, tracing rand
om, almost idle patterns with almost no pressure, and she told herself she didn’t need to worry.
“Why not?” he asked, increasing the pressure of his hand on her, increasing the pressure of her hand on him.
“Because you’re … much too big,” she said finally, knowing she was blushing furiously.
He did laugh, damn it, a soft, coaxing sound. “It’s always worked before.”
“Then there must be something wrong with me,” she said stiffly, “because Lemur is much smaller, and yet he couldn’t … I mean, he had great difficulty …” The words trailed off beneath Phelan’s suddenly intent gaze.
“You need to finish your sentence,” he said calmly. “Did Lemur have great difficulty, or couldn’t he?”
She knew what would happen if she told him the truth. For all he mocked his honor, he would never take her, knowing she was still technically a virgin.
And she wanted it. Not for some hazy notion of revenge. That excuse had faded into the night, leaving only the truth that she hadn’t wanted to face. She wanted him, his body, taking hers. Before she had to leave forever.
She did the only thing she could think of. She let her fingers curl around him, caressing him. And she put her mouth against his, touching his lips with her tongue.
She was astonished at his reaction. With a low groan of desire, he pulled her against him, trapping her hand between their bodies as he kissed her back. And suddenly she wanted to get closer still, to sink into his very skin, to merge with him. She kissed him, her tongue meeting his quite shamelessly, and she writhed beneath him, wanting things she didn’t begin to understand.
He reached down and stripped the breeches off her, clumsily. And then he unfastened his own, freeing himself, and she tried to pull away from him, suddenly shy.
“Don’t stop now,” he groaned. “You were just developing an appreciation for the sport.”
“Sport?” she echoed in outrage. “You call this—” His mouth silenced her, with a deep, thrusting kiss that wiped her protest out of her mind. And he put her hand back, over his throbbing male flesh no longer shielded by his clothing, keeping it there, until her initial panic began to fade and an odd, sensual curiosity took over.
He was smooth, silken, and damp. She told herself she should be disgusted, but her fingers slid, fascinated, around the width of him, circling him, measuring him, delighting in his strangled groan of reaction.
His hand moved between her legs, and she stilled, waiting for the pain. There was none. His long fingers parted her, stroking her, and she felt an unfamiliar burgeoning warmth, one she could neither control nor deny. She arched her hips against his hand, and she heard his low murmur of approval as he deepened the pressure, sliding into the unexplained dampness of her, arousing her when she was certain nothing could.
She could feel the tendrils of delight build, spiraling upward. She knew it wouldn’t last, that it would turn to pain and fear, but it was already so much more than she’d ever dreamed that she wasn’t willing to settle for less.
“Promise me,” she said, and her voice was a gasping thread of sound.
He didn’t halt the insidiously delightful movement of his fingers; instead, he slid even deeper into her, and she could barely control her moan of pleasure.
“Anything,” he said.
She forced her eyes to open, to look deep into his in the moonlit room. The silver gray had darkened to a midnight black, and the passionate wildness in his expression should have frightened her. Instead, it simply deepened her pleasure and her resolve.
“Don’t stop,” she said. “Even if I beg you, don’t let me stop you.”
His stillness was unnerving. “I can’t …” he began.
“Don’t stop,” she said again. “Promise me. Even if I grow frightened, uneasy, even if I beg, you have to do it. I know what I want.”
“And what do you want? Revenge?”
It had been as good an excuse as any. But now wasn’t the time for excuses. “No,” she said. “I want you.”
He cursed then, her words unleashing the last of his self-restraint. He pushed her back against the bed, holding her shoulders down against the soft mattress as he knelt between her legs. She could feel him against her, heat and hardness against her, and she shivered in sudden, undeniable longing as he hesitated.
“Promise me,” she whispered again. “Don’t stop.”
“I promise.” The words were muffled as he pushed against her, sliding into her heated dampness with a sure, hard thrust. Only to come up against the evidence of her virginity.
He was rigid in her arms, impaling her, but not quite. “Open your eyes, damn it,” he said in a fierce voice.
She didn’t want to, but she had no choice except to comply. She looked up into his eyes, waiting.
“You’re a virgin,” he said in a low, bitter voice.
“Yes.”
“He never touched you.”
“He tried. He couldn’t.” She wanted to cry. Emotions were rocketing through her body, feelings she couldn’t even begin to define. She was certain he was going to pull away from her, leave her. “Phelan,” she said in an imploring voice.
“I thought I told you I don’t need a virgin sacrifice,” he said, and his wintry voice was at odds with the heat of his body.
“You promised me,” she said furiously, clutching him. “You said you wouldn’t stop, even if I begged.”
He just looked at her for a long moment. “I’m not going to stop,” he said. “You’re mine. The bonds of marriage are worthless, they’re a sham. I’m the one who makes you come alive, and you belong to me.” His voice was fierce and possessive, and she gloried in it. “And I intend to take you.” And before she realized what he was doing, he’d thrust deep inside her, breaking past her maidenhead to rest at the very entrance to her womb.
She let out a small shriek, more of surprise than of pain, and he quickly covered her mouth with his. They stayed motionless for a moment as her body grew accustomed to his, and then he began to move, rocking against her, pulling away and then pushing back in, filling her ever more deeply. He reached down and caught her legs, wrapping them around his hips, and she dug her fingers into his shoulders, holding on, telling herself she was doing this for him, for the sheer, once-in-a-lifetime pleasure of belonging, when her body began to tremble once more beneath his embrace.
Something was building inside her, a panic, a confusion, a longing she couldn’t begin to understand. She clung more tightly, her fingers scraping against his sweat-damp flesh, and each time he surged against her she raised her hips to meet him. She wanted more, she wanted something she had never had, and she couldn’t even find the words to ask for it.
She didn’t need to. He slid his hand between their bodies and touched her. He clapped his hand over her mouth just as she screamed, and her body convulsed around his, in a shimmer of magic and madness. It took forever for the moment to pass, an endless, velvet eternity. When she could finally open her eyes, she saw him looking down at her, his body still rigid in hers.
“That’s what you meant when you said you wanted to see me climax,” she said in a raw whisper.
“Yes.” And he surged against her, deeply, each thrust sending new shivers of delight through her flesh. She wanted to beg him to stop, to tell him she couldn’t stand any more, but the pace of his thrusts increased, and she found herself warming, melting once more beneath him, and she wrapped her arms tightly around him, trying to draw him in deeper, deeper, as his body pushed her against the bed, his hands clenched around her shoulders, and suddenly he went rigid in her arms, a strangled cry on his lips, as he flooded her with his seed.
She took it all, folding him against her, clinging to him with a fierceness that knew no boundaries. For these few short hours he was hers, hers alone, and she was his. All too soon she would leave, for his sake as much as for hers, and she’d become nothing more than a curious memory. For now, she had a small, brief glimpse of eternity.
Because she’
d heard the word, his strangled gasp as he’d given himself to her completely. And that word had been “love.”
She was damp and sticky when she slid from the bed. There was blood on the white linen sheets, indisputable proof of her virginity, and she felt sore and stretched between her legs. She looked down at the man sleeping there so peacefully in the predawn light, and she felt her heart break.
Damn him. Why had he gone and broken past her defenses, into her heart? She hadn’t even recognized his insidious effect on her, except to know that he infuriated her as much as his touch had aroused her. She should have known better than to come to his bed. If she hadn’t, she might have continued her life in happy ignorance of what she was missing, and never thought of Phelan Romney again.
No, she couldn’t convince herself of that. Perhaps she would have thought of him with distant affection and lingering regret.
No, not that either. She’d fallen in love with the man, and she knew exactly when. Not when he’d taken her body and shown her the wondrous things humans were capable of, in stark contrast to the pain and bestiality of Lemur’s attentions.
Not when he’d kissed her in the rain-soaked garden, or even when he’d rescued her from Neville Pinworth on a whim, though all those things added to it.
It was when she’d glanced at his sketchbook and seen that drawing of herself asleep on the beach. The sullen, vulnerable woman-child, with defiance, an unlikely beauty, and a stern vulnerability she’d never admit to. When she saw how well he knew her, and still had made her beautiful, she’d known she could love him.
She pulled on her clothes, promising herself a thorough wash when she reached her room. No longer did she want to fling her revenge in Mark-David Lemur’s face. If he was ever able to finally take her, he’d find out for himself that someone had been there first. And she had no intention of telling him who.
But first she had one stop to make. She was going to go by way of Phelan’s study, find his sketchbook, and take that drawing with her.