Syntian caught Angeline smiling at him and he tore his gaze away, feeling every moment of her vile attention crawling over him as it had the night before. He drew Lauren closer to his side as though to protect her from the other woman’s wrath.
“To Lauren and Syntian!” Robbie intoned.
“To Lauren and Syntian!” Agnes Black echoed and her sister repeated the toast.
“To Lauren and Syntian!” the Athertons, Lauren’s neighbors, and new friends, chanted.
Henrietta Malone had declined the champagne, but raised her glass of Sprite to the couple. “To Lauren and Syntian!”
Angeline lifted her glass, her gaze steady on Syntian as she commanded him to look at her. As his attention leapt reluctantly to her, she arched one perfectly shaped brow at him. “To Lauren and Syntian,” she said. “May the wind be always at their backs.” She held his gaze as she took a sip of her wine.
He understood her warning and he brought Lauren even closer to him. As his bride looked up at him with love and adoration in her pretty face, he glanced down at her and smiled. “To my lady,” he said softly, entwining his arm with hers in the traditional toast every newly married couple made to one another.
Applause and cheers rang out over the docks. Robbie slapped Delbert on the back then caught the attention of James Brigman, the notary public who had married the couple. “Do you need a ride home, James?”
Brigman nodded, putting his champagne glass down on the sleek teak rail of the ship. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all,” Robbie answered. He bent over and kissed Angeline’s cheek.
“Tonight?” he asked, sweeping his fathomless gaze over her flushed face.
Angeline nodded.
Paegan Hesar, the owner and captain of the Revenant, held both arms out to the older ladies beside him. “May I escort you lovely women to your car?”
Agnes blushed, quickly taking the proffered arm. “It would be our pleasure, wouldn’t it, sister?”
Anna Black was slower to take Hesar’s arms, but when she did, she pressed it intimately against her shriveled bosom. “Indeed, we would.”
“I’ll return in a moment and get us underway, Syn,” Paegan told his age-old acquaintance. His dark eyes roamed over Syntian’s bride with admiration. “If you’re ready, Lauren, I’ll take you where you’ve never been before.”
Lauren smiled. She liked this handsome Norwegian. “I can’t wait,” she answered, looking up at Syntian and wondering why he was frowning at Paegan.
“Have fun, you two lovebirds,” Angeline laughed as she motioned for Delbert to join her.
She locked her gaze with Syntian’s. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
He had to catch himself before he growled at the bitch. Instead, he forced a smile to his lips, acknowledged the good-byes of the Athertons and the Blacks, and graciously accepted a wet kiss from Henrietta Malone’s nearly toothless mouth.
“You take good care of this precious little girl, now, Synti,” Henrietta made him promise.
“I will, Miss Henrietta,” he vowed.
They waved at the people on the quay as Paegan pulled the sleek ship out of its berth and into the sound. They laughed at Robbie’s beep on his Jeep’s horn, answered by Thadeus’ toot on his Fairmont’s, Anna’s blare of her Oldsmobile’s horn, and Delbert’s long, elegant chime on the limo’s.
“Happy?” Syntian asked Lauren as the ship moved out past the buoys for the open seas.
She snuggled against his side, her heart near to bursting with emotion. “Yes.”
Paegan looked away from the wheel and watched as the couple disappeared below decks to the stateroom he had given over to their comfort. He glanced back at the dock, not surprised to find Angeline still standing there, staring after them. He cast his gaze back to the hatchway into which the couple had gone. “I wouldn’t be you for anything, Syntian Cree.” He shivered. “For anything!”
His hands were trembling as he eased her out of the lace and silk wedding gown Agnes and Anna had insisted on buying her. The tiny pearl buttons were proving to be more of a hindrance than he could have imagined, frustrating his already nervous hands and making him groan with hopelessness as he snagged the lacy fabric with his short nails.
“You’d better let me,” said Lauren, turning around to face him as she struggled to undo the last three buttons at her waist. The gown gave way and she drew in a breath, reluctant to pull the sleeves down over her arms. She clutched at the neckline and blushed, avoiding his eyes.
“Lauren,” he sighed, drawing her gaze to his. “I love you. “
Her smile was tremulous as she released her death grip on the fabric and the gown moved off her shoulders. She sucked in her breath as he put his hands on the sleeves and pushed the silk and lace confection from her, letting it slide unhindered to her hips where he tugged it and sent it cascading to the floor.
Lauren was trembling. He stared at her, his heart in his eyes, and she heard the ragged intake of his breath as his gaze wandered to the rapid rise and fall of her chest beneath the silk of her slip. When he reached up to tug at the straps, she started to stop him, but then remembered this man had every right in the world to undress her. He was her husband.
“I don’t know what to do.” He placed a finger against her lips. She watched him shake his head.
“I know,” he assured her. His fingers splayed out over her collarbone and slid under the straps of her slip. Very slowly, he eased them over her shoulders and, with little tugs, slid them down her arms, pushing the slip down with them. “I’ll teach you.”
Lauren swallowed. Her heart, beating as fast as it could within her chest, was filling with love and something she could not name. Her body was quivering at his touch, aching to have his hands caress her. As the slip slid to the floor to pool atop her wedding gown, nothing stood between her and Syntian but a lacy bra and pair of panties and a blue garter belt holding up a pair of real silk stockings that had been a present from Henrietta Malone.
“Only silk, dear,” Henrietta had assured her. “Never nylon.”
He turned her, putting her back to him, and he licked his lips as his fingers went to the hooks of her strapless bra. His palms were sweating and he could see the tremor in his hands as he unhooked the lacy contraption. He saw Lauren’s hands come up to cup the bra to her. He bent his head and placed a gentle kiss at the juncture of her neck and shoulder.
Lauren shivered all the way from her head to her toes as his mouth touched her flesh. She leaned against him, feeling the silk of his shirt against her naked back. His arms came around her, pulling her to him, and she gave herself up to the wonderful feeling that was invading her lower belly.
“I want you,” he whispered against her cheek, fanning the hair at her temple.
Closing her eyes for a moment, gathering her courage, Lauren turned in his arms, glorying in his strength as he loosened his hold on her. When she faced him, she let her hands fall away from the bra and the lacy protection fell away from her.
Syntian looked down to take in the twin perfections that rose and fell with every ragged breath his lady took. He reached out, cupped the soft mounds in his hands, hearing Lauren’s gasp. He eased his thumbs over the stiff peaks, stroking the hard little nubs, smiled at her groan then looked into her face.
“Lauren,” he said, sliding his arms around her and drawing her against him. “My Lauren.”
She held him, aching to know him, aching to have him know her. Her moan of pleasure was breathless as he dipped down and put his arm under her legs and swung her against him.
He carried her to the bed and laid her gently upon it. With fingers that shook, he unhooked the garter and rolled down her stockings, keeping his hot gaze away from the dark triangle beneath the silk panties. Even when he tugged at the panties, drawing them from her hips, he avoided looking at that dewy patch, knowing that if he did, he might well throw himself on her and ravage her as the beast within him desired to do.<
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She watched him tear at his clothing, wanting nothing between him and her. She winced, as the silk was rent and the buttons popped. She smiled shyly as he tugged furiously at the zipper of his trousers then cursed as it snagged. She was amazed when he ripped the zipper apart and thrust the trousers away in a frenzy to join her on the bed. She was only a little shocked when she saw he wore no underwear beneath the Armani trousers.
When at last he was naked, feeling her timid gaze sweeping over him, he stood beside the bed and allowed her to look her fill, to banish any fear of him she had. He was unaware that the thrust of his manhood had already driven a deep wedge of uncertainty and tremulous anxiety through Lauren’s rapidly beating heart.
She held her arms up to him. “Syntian?”
There was nothing between heaven and hell and the Abyss that could have kept him from covering her body with his own.
“Tell me you want me, Lauren,” he whispered as he sank upon her. “Ask me to take you.”
It had been unlike anything she could have imagined. The pleasure was sweeping, exhilarating, all encompassing; but it had not hurt as she had thought it would. At the moment he had started to impale her, he had forced her gaze to his.
“Look at me, Sweeting,” he had ordered and she had become lost in the maze of desire in his eyes.
She remembered nothing of her deflowering, but the passion and the heat and the urgency of his desire as he claimed her. To her dying day, she would relive that moment of ecstasy over and over again, marveling at how wonderful the experience had been.
“I want you to know the joy of my love, Lauren,” Syntian had told her, “not the pain of it.”
He had been so gentle with her, so tender, so caring. His touch had been like a feather against her skin, then a soft weight that had brought about the most wonderful of feelings between her thighs. His teeth had nipped at her nipples, nearly driving her mad with need, and his tongue flicked about her flesh, making her squirm beneath his hands.
“Let me show you what it is to be loved, Lauren,” he had asked of her and set about doing just that.
He had not once made her ashamed of what he was doing or what he showed her to do. Not once did he arouse in her anything but sheer desire and overwhelming longing to know all of him. Not once did he ask of her anything she was not willing to do.
“Some women like this; some don’t,” he had said as he showed her the many ways a woman can love her mate. “If you don’t, we won’t do it again.”
But there had been nothing that she had not enjoyed; no part of her she did not want him to touch and love. Likewise, there had been nothing he showed her of his own body and his own pleasure that she had been reluctant to know and embrace wholeheartedly.
“You don’t have to do this,” he had told her at one point.
“I want to,” she had whispered and her lips had found the core of him, drawing on him, and he had tangled his hand in her hair. She had not minded all that much for she knew she had given him great pleasure, but he had stopped her, quickly stopped her, when the pulse in his manhood had grown heavy and hard.
“Let me” he had said brokenly, drawing her up his body and then rolling with her so that he was atop her, their sweat-drenched bodies slick against one another.
He had nudged her legs apart, settled himself between her thighs, bracing himself on his elbows as he gazed down with a heated expression that scorched Lauren’s soul.
“Are you ready?” His voice had broken with strain and she could feel his arms trembling as he sought to hold himself up.
She had pushed her nakedness against him, all the encouragement and permission he needed, to reach down and position himself at the threshold of her being
“Are you sure?” he had asked, breathing hard.
“Take me, Syntian,” she had answered. “Make me yours.”
He had been so gentle, so careful. The tip of him pressed intimately against her and she had tensed, expecting the pain. It had been then that he stilled, his gaze going into her like molten lava.
“Look at me, Lauren.”
There had been no pain, but there had been a dribble of blood when he had pulled free of her after the most intense experience of sheer pleasure she had ever known in
She had screamed beneath the covering of his mouth over hers when she had climaxed around his rigid staff like an Earthquake. Her fingernails had gouged into his back, her hands feverishly pressing him closer and closer to her sweaty body. Her legs had come up and wrapped about his hips then moved up to clamp him around the waist as she lifted herself against him in an effort to get as close to the source of her need as she could get.
It had been a slight pressure at first, a pleasurable building that spread throughout her lower body. It became an itch, a need to be satisfied, a tickle that made her squirm with abandon against the hardness of him, striving to calm the intense feeling that shot through her, around her, pushing her up into the stratosphere only to drag her spiraling down through a sudden darkness that settled to numbing lassitude.
His hands were clasped to her buttocks, urging her against him as, with a shudder and an inhuman growl of elation, he spent himself deep within her. She felt him leaping inside her, pulsing, his seed driving upward, spurting heavily into her, and she cried out, another small orgasm making her dig her nails into his flesh.
“Syntian!” she had shouted, pressing upward as though trying to blend them into one being.
He grabbed her, turning her over in the wide bed until she was above him, her legs beside his own. He clutched her hips and drove her down on him; lifted her, then slammed her down again.
“Syntian!” she screamed mindlessly, her body on fire with passion.
He felt the inner muscles of her vagina gripping him again, sending tiny little quivers along his shrinking shaft and he lifted her one last time, feeling himself lose his tumescence but knowing the movement had only intensified her reaction.
She collapsed on him, gasping for breath, tangling her fingers in the damp hair on his chest, as she shuddered one final time against him.
“I love you,” he whispered against her sweat-glistened temple. “I love you with all my being, Lauren.”
She sighed, listening as his heartbeat began to slow. She lifted her head and looked at him through the fading light filtering through the half-closed blinds.
“I love you, too.”
“Remember to whom you belong,” came an insinuating voice threading its way evilly through his consciousness.
“What is it?” Lauren asked, seeing his expression change from love to shock.
He shivered, his smile a wavering apology. “Nothing,” he answered. “Nothing at all.”
He pulled Lauren to him, his face once more bleak and hopeless as Angeline’s laughter chilled him.
Chapter Sixteen
Lauren Cree had never been happier. Her eyes glistened with happiness; her face shone with it; her entire being gave off an aura of serenity and peace that had long been denied her. Her walk was buoyant; her laughter was hearty and unrestrained; her confidence grew with every morning’s sunrise. The customers at the bookshop smiled back at her with genuine pleasure and people greeted her on the street and in stores and at the supermarket. Men looked at her as she passed and sighed wistfully, wondering why they had never noticed how pretty Lauren Fowler was. Women watched her with approving smiles and often thought they would like to be more like Lauren. Even the arrogant teenagers had time to wave at her as they shot past in their daddy’s cars.
There seemed to be nothing ugly in Lauren’s world any more. Not even her mother’s refusal to come to the wedding had dampened the gaiety of that afternoon or the pleasure of the two-week honeymoon Mrs. Hellstrom had insisted she take.
“Go,” Angeline had laughed. “Have fun while you can!”
Four months into her marriage had done nothing but make Lauren that much more thankful for the day Syntian Cree had walked into her life. As they walked hand in h
and in Carpenter’s Park, throwing bread crumbs to the ducks in the pond, there seemed to be nothing that could cloud the horizon.
Syntian tossed a quarter of a slice of bread to an especially persistent drake and laughed as the big fellow paddled like crazy to reach the tidbit before the rest of the flock.
“Greedy little bugger,” Syntian called out to him. “Think we ought to give him any more, Sweeting?” When his wife didn’t answer, he glanced her way.
Lauren wasn’t paying attention to the ducks. She was looking behind them at the playground where several children were sliding and swinging. Her wistful expression made Syntian turn to see what was so interesting.
“I used to come here a lot,” Lauren said, grinning at a little boy whose fat legs were pumping furiously in an attempt to keep up with his bigger sister. She looked up at her husband. “I like to watch them play.”
Syntian smiled at her and dusted his hands. He reached down and took her hand in his and they began to walk toward one of the small covered seating areas.
“I always wondered what it would be like to be a mother,” she said on a long sigh as they sat down and watched the children playing.
At first he wasn’t going to answer her, but the look in her eyes, the wanting, tore at his heart strings and he brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “How many children did you want?”
Lauren shrugged. “I never really gave it that much thought.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Two, I think.” She chuckled softly. “Two boys. Thomas and Christopher.”
“No girls?” he inquired, slipping his arm around her.
“No girls,” she said with an emphatic shake of her head. “Girls aren’t any fun.”
Syntian snorted. “Maybe not to you.”
She looked up at him. “Would you like to have a baby?”
He flinched, staring down at her as though she had asked her question in a foreign language. “Baby?” he repeated.
NightWind 1st Book: HellWind Trilogy Page 22