He moved her hands against him, rubbing them up and down on the hard wall of his chest. “As much as any of us.” He smiled bitterly. “Which isn’t a hell of a lot.” He suddenly released her wrists and started across the room toward the arched doorway. “Come with me.”
She stood there, caught off guard by the abruptness of his movement.
He paused at the archway to look back at her. “A shower,” he said softly. “Second on my agenda. After that we’ll move on to the last and the most pleasurable item.”
“I’ve already had a bath.”
“Pity. I’d have been glad to join you. I’m all for communal bathing, but perhaps it will be even more enjoyable if you can concentrate all your attention on bathing me.” He disappeared through the archway. A minute later she heard the water in the shower running.
She tensed, staring blindly at the arched doorway.
“Cory.”
Damon’s soft enunciation of her name failed to mask the underlying steel of the command.
She moved slowly toward the arched doorway. Damon was standing by the door of the shower stripping off the last of his clothes.
Power. Brawny, muscular thighs, wide shoulders, and buttocks that rippled with tight strength. It had been a long time since she had seen him like this, she thought. She had always loved to see Damon naked. It was arousing just to watch him move, the flexing of his muscles, the animal magnetism and sexuality that was so profound. Her glance moved down his body and her eyes suddenly widened.
Overwhelming.
He smiled mockingly. “You see how considerate I’m being? I could have made you finish undressing me, but I found I was too impatient.”
“Then you can’t expect me to appreciate your consideration.” She jerked her gaze quickly back to his face and took a deep breath, her lungs feeling suddenly starved for air. “Consideration was never one of your strong points.”
His lips tightened. “You never complained. I may have been impatient, but I was never cruel to you.”
No, he had never been cruel and she had enjoyed his impatience. It had made her feel desired, even treasured. “Until now.”
“The circumstances are different now. I have a tendency to return cruelty for cruelty.” He held up his hand and snapped his fingers. “Come over here.”
“Before this is over I’ll probably break those fingers,” she said through her teeth as she walked toward him. “I’m not going to forget this, Damon.”
“Neither am I.” He stood with his legs astride, his stance more challenging than she had ever seen it. “I intend to make sure you make it memorable.” He stepped into the shower stall and the water poured over his shoulders and down his body in gleaming rivulets. “Take off your robe.”
She untied the robe and let it drop to the floor.
He stood looking at her, and she saw the pulse in his temple jump and then accelerate. “It’s been a long time. I thought I remembered but I didn’t.” He held out his hand in silent command to her. “You’re more …”
She stepped beneath the warm spray and he closed the shower door. She felt suddenly caught, captured in intimacy, caged with him. Panic surged through her and she instinctively edged away.
“No.” His hands cupped her shoulders and he drew her against his body. “Stay here.” He widened his legs and drew her into the hollow of his hips.
Her lips parted in a silent gasp. Arousal. Hot, bold, relentless. She knew she was trembling, but she couldn’t seem to stop. His palms slid slowly down her back to the curve of her buttocks. Suddenly he lifted her up and against him. She bit her lower lip to suppress a moan. He was rubbing her against him and she was aware only of sensation, the warm water caressing her flesh, the rough hair on Damon’s chest teasing her nipples, his manhood moving against that most sensitive part of her. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think. His chest was rising and falling as if he were running, and she could feel his excitement as if it were her own. Raw, elemental, primitive. Maybe it was her own, she thought dazedly. In moments like this she had always been conscious of a bonding between them that had frightened her. Sexuality wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was too powerful, too encompassing.
Too frightening.
He lifted her higher, adjusted her upon him, then stopped.
She glanced up at him and her trembling increased.
His face was flushed, heavy, more sensual than she’d ever seen it. His eyes glazed, almost blind with hunger.
“Hold me.” His voice was low, nearly guttural.
Her hands went instinctively to clasp his shoulders.
He drew a deep, harsh breath. “Now … here. Hold me here.” He began to enter her with painstaking slowness, his teeth clenched. “Hold—me—tight.”
Her neck arched back, her lips parting to get more air. It was so slow. Warm, hard, filling her emptiness, but maddeningly, excruciatingly slow. She instinctively flexed, trying to take more.
“That’s right,” he said hoarsely. “Tighter. I want to feel you holding me.”
Her nails dug into his shoulders. She wouldn’t ask him for more. She wouldn’t let him know how much she needed him. She buried her face against his chest, her breath coming sporadically.
“Just a little more.” Damon’s voice was thick. “We … fit. You always feel so sweet around me. It’s like a hot, tight hand.” His hard palm cupping her bottom pressed with sudden force and it was done.
He froze.
The only sound was the spray of running water and the harsh rasp of Damon’s breathing. Cory didn’t feel as if she were breathing at all. Everything was suspended, as she was suspended, in this dark haze of passion.
His hands were moving down her back, down her spine, molding her even closer against him. “Cory …” His tone held a thread of childlike wonder. “Mine. You’re so much mine now. Can’t you feel it?”
She did feel it, she felt possessed, owned, and somewhere beneath it all that curious dangerous bonding.
“Answer me.” Damon’s low voice held an element of bittersweet pain. “Just this once. Tell me you’re mine, Cory.”
Her hands tightened on his shoulders and she pressed her lips together to keep back the words of assent. Assent would be total capitulation, and she must never give him that.
He waited, and when she didn’t speak she could feel the change in him. The stiffening where there had been yielding, the hardness where there had been only exquisite tenderness.
“No?” He laughed harshly. “I don’t know why I expected anything else.” Holding her with one arm, he opened the shower door and stepped out onto the Persian carpet. “Not that it matters. This is what matters.” Then, somehow, they were lying on the carpet and Damon was thrusting, moving with blinding force, stunning passion, tearing her away from everything but this moment, this sensation, this bonding.…
No, not bonding. How had that thought insinuated itself into her consciousness? What she was feeling was only for the moment, nothing lasting. She would still be Cory Brandel, independent of everyone but herself when this sensual madness was over.
Then it was over, ending in a wild forging of splendor.
But the bonding remained, a golden chain glittering in the aftermath.
A chain that must be broken.
She closed her eyes, waiting for him to leave her.
He didn’t move. His arms tightened around her with iron-hard force. “Come back to me, damn you.”
She kept her eyes closed, unconsciously stiffening.
“Oh, no, not tonight. Don’t do that to me tonight.” His kiss was hard and rough on her lips, and then he was moving off her. He stood up and reached down to pull her to her feet. Her eyes opened to see him smile grimly at her. “That’s not the way it’s going to be, Cory.”
He pulled her into the bedroom toward the wide low bed, where he stripped the jade satin sheet down, scattering the white silk pillows on the floor. He pushed her down on the bed’s cushioned surface and turned away.
/> “Where are you going?”
“You’re wet,” he said in a growling tone. “It would be just like you to lie there and catch pneumonia to make me feel guilty.” He disappeared once again into the bathroom.
She sat there, stunned, and abruptly wanted to laugh. It was absolutely absurd for Damon to demonstrate this sudden tenderness after what had gone on before. He had done his damnedest to force her submission. He had made love to her with a stunning force that had almost accomplished his objective. Now he was behaving with the bravado of a little boy who knew he had done wrong and wanted to make amends without admitting his guilt.
He knelt beside her, drying her with a thick white terry towel, keeping his gaze averted from her face. “Did I hurt you?” His voice was only a level above a whisper.
“No.” She gazed at him curiously. “Did you want to?”
“No!” His gaze lifted swiftly to her face. “I’d never—I don’t know. Maybe I did want to hurt you. Maybe I wanted someone else to hurt as much as I—” His shoulders shifted wearily.
As much as he was hurting himself, he was going to say, Cory realized with certainty. He had wanted someone to share his pain and there had been no one there to help him, so he had struck out. What had hurt him so much that he had reacted with such desperation, she wondered. She impulsively reached out and gently touched his hair. It was wet, rumpled, and standing on end. He looked oddly boyish, and she was again reminded of her son, Michael. Damon’s son.
Strange. She had always thought of Michael as her child only, but now the realization hit her with renewed force that it was Damon’s seed that had given her Michael. Together they had created a very special life.
He glanced up at her touch, his expression wary.
His wariness hurt her in a way she didn’t want to analyze. She quickly took her hand away. “You’re wet too. You’d better dry yourself.” She lay down and drew the sheet up around her. “I’m not the only one who could get pneumonia.”
He looked at her in surprise as he absently dabbed at his chest with the towel. “Not that you’d care.” When she didn’t answer, he continued with a touch of defiance, “I suppose you’re angry with me?”
A surprising maternal tenderness surged through her. It was ridiculous to feel like this about the blasted man. He was fully mature, not a child, and this emotion was more dangerous than the passion that had gone before. “Very angry.”
He looked as if she had slapped him. Well, what did the idiot expect, she wondered in exasperation. He had behaved like a wild man, and she was not about to forgive him. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, come to bed and let’s go to sleep.”
“What?”
The words had surprised Cory as much as they had Damon. She had meant to tell him to go, to leave her. Yet the invitation to stay had tumbled out. The impulse undoubtedly had been instigated by that pain and desperation she sensed beneath every action he’d taken. For some reason she didn’t want to think about him being alone with his pain tonight. She turned away from him and furiously plumped up her pillow. “You heard me.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed, and she could feel him looking at her. Then he slowly reclined on the bed, lying on his back. Not touching her. Not speaking. Just lying there.
It was a long time before he spoke, and when he did, the words came haltingly, “Will you answer a question?”
She stiffened. “It depends on the question.”
“Was it really because you thought I wouldn’t be a good father to Michael that you left me?”
She could hurt him. She could punish him for taking Michael and all that had come after. She could do all that with one word.
She couldn’t say the word. “No.” She closed her eyes tightly. “Go to sleep, Damon.”
“I won’t sleep tonight.” He put his arms under his head, gazing up at the ceiling. “Good night, Cory.”
Such a conventional word to end a tempest-torn evening, she thought. She wasn’t at all sure it would be even a semblance of a good night for either of them. Because Damon was lying as stiff and still as if chained and extended on a torturer’s rack, and she knew he had spoken the truth when he had said he would not sleep tonight.
FIVE
CORY MUST HAVE dozed off sometime during the night, because when she opened her eyes it was with a jarring sense of alarm.
“Michael …” She jerked straight up in bed, her gaze flying around the room, searching the darkness. “Michael!”
“Michael’s fine.” It was Damon’s voice from across the room, and she saw him now, standing in front of one of the lattice-shuttered windows gazing out into the darkness through one of the intricately carved openings in the design. “You must have been dreaming.”
She hadn’t been dreaming, she thought hazily. It was when she had awakened that she had felt an overpowering sense of sorrow, an agony of intense emotion. Her maternal instincts had automatically connected it with Michael, but now she realized those waves of sorrow were coming from Damon.
She brushed the hair from her face and sat staring at him. He was dressed once again in the khaki shirt and sand-colored jeans and she could see the outline of his strong buttocks and wide shoulders against the white of the shutters. His spine was rigid, taut with a tension that was almost unbearable. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.” His finger reached out and touched the smooth inner edge of the fretwork opening of one of the palm designs. “You can’t see much through these windows, can you? Just glimpses, only half the view.”
“Maybe that was the idea,” Cory said. “Maybe if the woman who lived here were given the entire picture, she would never have stayed a prisoner.”
“Perhaps.” Damon didn’t turn around. “Or it could be that she was content to see only the small slice she was given. It can be a great comfort not to see more than you want to see.”
He was talking about something more than a mere view from the window, she realized. The undercurrents of pain she had felt before were rising and she was sensitive to them to a degree that startled her. Only with Michael had she had that close linking of emotions.
It didn’t mean anything, she assured herself quickly. It was probably only the aftermath of her acceptance that Damon was just as much a part of Michael as she was. Still, since the link was there, it would do no harm to try to lessen his pain.
“Would you like to talk?” she asked quietly. “Sometimes it helps.”
“Not now. It’s not over yet.” He was silent a moment. “Thank you for not sending me away.”
“Would you have gone?”
“Probably not. I needed to be with you.” He paused. “But it feels better like this.”
“Why don’t you come back to bed?”
“I can’t relax.” He shifted restlessly. “Go back to sleep.”
She gazed at him helplessly for a moment before settling back on the pillows. She turned to face him again, tucking her hand beneath her cheek. She was once again conscious of the tortured tension of his body. She knew she couldn’t go back to sleep again. Not with Damon standing there so silent and alone.
Waiting.
There was a knock on the door shortly after the first pale gray light of dawn pierced the darkness.
“Selim.” Damon turned swiftly away from the window. “He’s the only one who would disturb me here.” He strode quickly across the room and threw open the door.
The light from the hallway silhouetted Selim’s slim figure and Cory quickly sat up and instinctively pulled the sheet up to cover her nudity.
The action was completely unnecessary. Selim didn’t give Cory a glance. His gaze was focused entirely on Damon. “It’s done.”
“When?”
“Three hours ago.” Selim’s voice was low. “Raban sent you a message.”
Damon went still.
“He said to tell you he gives you his love but not his understanding.”
“My God,” Damon whispered. He stood there as if he had been bludgeo
ned, swaying with the agony of the blow.
“Should I send any message to Marain?” Selim asked.
Damon stood there staring blindly at him, not speaking.
Selim nodded. “No message. I didn’t think there would be.” He started to turn away.
“No. Wait.” Damon’s voice was hoarse, his words halting. “Send word that he did … well. Tell him that I’m—” He swallowed, and it was a moment before he could go on. “Pleased.”
Selim gazed at him before turning and vanishing down the hall.
“Damon,” Cory said tentatively.
Damon didn’t look at her. She didn’t think he even heard her.
She tried again. “Is there anything I can do?”
He glanced over his shoulder and she smothered a gasp. His skin was gray, corpselike, and his eyes …
She had never seen such torment.
“No,” he said dully. “It’s already been done.”
He moved jerkily, like a puppet in the hands of a clumsy child, toward the doorway. A moment later he was gone.
He hadn’t bothered to close the door. She wondered if he even realized there was a door there in his haze of pain and despair. Dear heaven, what could have happened to make him look like that?
She pushed the covers aside and swung her legs to the floor. She couldn’t stay here in helpless ignorance. She needed to know. She would get dressed and hunt up Selim and find out what the devil was going on.
But she was very careful not to ask herself why she needed so desperately to know.
She found Selim in the library sitting in the brass-studded-leather visitor’s chair, a glass of brandy in his hand and lines of exhaustion carving deep lines beside his lips.
He looked up as she entered the room, and smiled mirthlessly. “I suppose it would be useless to wish you good morning. This isn’t a good morning for any of us.” He took a swallow of brandy. “And last night was even worse.”
“What’s this all about, Selim?” Cory came forward to stand beside the desk facing him. “I feel as if I’m wandering around in the dark.”