Ridiculously, she felt heat rise in her cheeks. He was the only man in Creation who could put her to the blush. The strange ache between her legs intensified. She shifted restlessly to ease the feeling then cursed the knowing arch of Erith’s eyebrows.
The ache couldn’t be arousal. She wasn’t capable of arousal. But this was the closest she’d ever come. She wasn’t sure she liked the sensation. It was…uncomfortable, disturbing.
She lurched to her feet to avoid his gaze. The towel parted and dropped into a crumpled heap.
“Oh, no,” she gasped, scrabbling after it.
He surged forward and snatched her hand. His touch was hot as it encircled her wrist and his sandalwood scent made her dizzy with yearning. “Let it go.”
She trembled in his hold, incapable of answering. Chill air brushed over her bare, damp flesh, contrasting sharply with Erith’s heat. She fought the insane urge to cover herself with fluttering hands. He’d seen her before. He’d explored her body. He’d yielded his essence to her rapacious mouth. Yet tonight everything felt as though it started anew. Her pulse set up a frantic race and her lungs refused to release her breath.
With his free hand, he slid his breeches to the ground and kicked them aside. Her heart somersaulted at the sight of his nakedness.
Lord Erith was hard and strong. Like a huge tree. Or a god from an ancient legend. From his broad straight shoulders to his massive hair-roughened chest to his long legs with their firm horseman’s thighs. Even his large feet proclaimed mastery of the ground upon which he stood.
She sucked in a shuddering breath and swallowed to moisten a dry throat. Her gaze inevitably dropped to where his member sprang from the nest of black curls at the base of his flat belly.
“Yes, I want you. I’m not ashamed of how you make me feel.” He paused and slid his hand down so his fingers twined in hers. “The question is what I make you feel.”
Frightened. Nervous. Poised to run. Like a foolish girl instead of a woman in charge of her world.
She tilted her chin, pretending a courage her defenseless heart didn’t feel. She’d long ago learned that counterfeit bravery could save her when real bravery was beyond her. Her voice was terse. “I’m ready.”
A frown darkened his striking face and drew his marked black brows together. “Olivia, you don’t have to defend yourself. I laid down my weapons today. I told you I surrendered, and I meant it. You’re free.”
She didn’t feel free. With every second, attraction enmeshed her more tightly. Would the strands end up trapping her like a lark in the hunter’s net, so she fluttered and fluttered until she failed with exhaustion?
As if he guessed her troubled thoughts, he very gently took her in his arms, bringing her into his body. It was like standing next to a huge stove on a cold winter’s day. Satisfying. Comforting. Except she felt none of these safe emotions. Instead she felt restless and jumpy.
She rested her cheek against his chest, feeling the pleasant tickle of his hair, and curled her arms loosely around his waist. Few men were tall enough for her to lean against with this ease.
Beneath her ear his heartbeat thudded steadily. She felt him take a massive breath. And another. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he began to stroke her bare back. Small circular movements, alluring touches that drew the coiling tension from her muscles.
Gradually the movements widened, deepened, became long sweeping strokes from the slope of her buttocks to her shoulders. His hands were warm and slightly rough, nice. Dreamily, she stood quiescent and let him continue this silent, almost impersonal worship of her naked body.
How long they stood in a communion deeper than any sexual experience she’d ever known she couldn’t say. The rain lashed the windows, the breeze rattled the casements, the fire crackled in the grate. Erith’s breath matched hers. Slow. Deep. His hands roamed across her skin in a tender exploration sweeter than words could express.
In the end it was Olivia who broke the stasis.
By nature she wasn’t a passive woman. While peace might beckon like the promise of heaven, she didn’t belong in this honeyed stillness. Somewhere, her uncertainty had disappeared. Instead she was ready to embrace whatever the night brought.
She shifted closer, firmed her arms around his waist. At her slight movement, new tension entered his muscles. He was so aware of everything about her. His unwavering attention filled her with a heady mixture of nerves and excitement.
He was hard for her. It spoke to the preternatural strength of his will that he controlled his arousal. She wondered how long he’d allow her to set the pace. Erith wasn’t a passive soul either. He reined himself in for her sake but volcanic passion roiled beneath his patience and must soon erupt.
Deliberately, she rubbed against him, her nipples tightening as they brushed his hairy chest. She slid eager hands down to clasp his tight buttocks. She pulled him closer, pressing his member into her belly. He throbbed against her soft flesh, hot, demanding, powerful.
“Kiss me, Erith,” she whispered, lifting her head and staring into his avid eyes.
“If I kiss you, I mightn’t stop,” he returned equally softly.
“Then don’t stop.”
She stretched to touch her mouth to his, copying the glancing kisses he’d given her earlier. Before she broke the contact, his lips moved beneath hers and she tasted his need. In a sudden movement, he swept her across to the bed and tugged her down under him. He poised to take her.
This time he kissed her harder, with less careful finesse.
It wasn’t fair to expect him to keep treating her as if she might shatter. But with his forcefulness, some of her dazed pleasure faded.
He raised his head, his face stark and pale. His jaw jutted with tension and his body vibrated with what it cost to hold himself back. “Olivia, I want you too much.”
He began to withdraw but she grabbed him. His shoulders felt like warm rock under her hands. “Don’t go.”
“You know what will happen.” He angled his hips forward so his penis rubbed against her cleft. Her belly clenched almost painfully as she imagined that heat and power thrusting into her.
“Yes.” She dragged in a shaky breath and curled her fingers into the sinews of his shoulders. “Don’t go.”
“Oh, hell, Olivia,” he groaned, and kissed each breast with fervent tenderness. Her nipples tightened, begging for more. His eyes darkened at her uncontrolled response.
He drew one pebbled peak into his mouth and flicked his tongue across it. An electric sensation made her jerk. She’d never felt anything like this before. Her belly clenched again, harder this time.
He raised his head. “Am I hurting you?
Perhaps there would be a miracle of life in the desert of her body after all. Dear God, let it be so. Her reaction when he kissed her breast was more than she’d ever felt with a man. “No.”
A pleased smile tilted his mouth, full and sensual with arousal, and his eyes sparked with satisfaction. He bent to suckle one breast while his fingers toyed with the crest of the other. She tangled her hands in his thick hair and gave herself up to his unfettered exploration.
Her skin felt strange. Hot and oversensitive. Vibrantly alive. After thirty-one years, how odd to discover she didn’t know her body and its responses at all.
One hand slid down between her legs. “Open for me, Olivia.”
The sound of his voice worked like a spell. Her thighs fell apart to his touch.
“Ah, that’s it,” he sighed into the soft plain of her belly.
Kissing extravagant patterns across her body, he began to stroke her. At first the sensation wasn’t as vivid as when he’d kissed her breasts. He trailed his lips up again and took her nipple in his mouth. This time he wasn’t so gentle. She started when she felt the scrape of teeth.
“Oh!” She tightened her hands in the silkiness of his hair.
He bit down gently at the same time as his hand pressed between her legs. She cried out and arched up toward him. She trembled and
sweat broke out all over her body.
“That’s right,” he murmured into her overheated skin. “Give me more.”
“I’m not a horse, Erith,” she said on a sudden spurt of laughter that ended in a choked gasp as he pressed his hand down again.
He lifted his head and smiled with a knowing triumph that should have piqued her but instead made her shivery and hot. She framed his face between her hands and daringly placed a fervent kiss on his mouth.
He followed her back into the pillows. This time he slanted his open mouth across hers with a man’s passion. His tongue outlined the crease between her lips. His weight pressed her deep into the mattress so she could only breathe in shallow snatches.
She tried to relax into the kiss, but for the first time tonight the old trapped feeling reared up, making her close her eyes and stiffen. Bitterness sharper than a honed razor sliced through her lost, yearning surrender and reminded her of the bleak truth at the center of her life.
She would never respond to a man.
She’d thought Erith too lost in his lust to notice her reaction but he raised his head. The agonized compassion that crossed his face made her want to cry. “Olivia, I forget myself.”
Where was Olivia Raines with her practiced wanton arts? This woman was too raw, too easy to hurt. She didn’t want to be this woman. She wanted to be the unfeeling courtesan. The woman who ruled. This woman couldn’t even rule herself.
“Why do you stay?” she asked almost angrily.
“You know why.”
“Why?” Her voice shook with furious anguish.
“Because I can’t leave.” With sudden ruthlessness, he hitched her knees higher around his hips and plunged forward.
He was large, and she braced for the discomfort she always felt, even with her unguent. But for once her body produced its own dew. He slid into her with perfect smoothness, stretching her with glorious ease that made her heart stutter with astonished wonder.
At last she was Erith’s mistress in fact as well as name.
He groaned from the depths of his chest and buried his head in the curve of her shoulder. Automatically her arms curled around him. His skin was slick with sweat and he shook with the restraint he imposed upon himself.
He wasted his care. Physically she felt nothing more than she ever had. She wasn’t even disappointed, although she knew he would be and that made her heart ache.
His breath rasped in her ear and his damp hair tickled her cheek. He filled her completely. Her interior passage gradually adjusted to his size. He was hot against her. And silent except for the rattle of his breathing. She knew he fought the urge to plunge into her over and over.
If he were another man, she’d launch into her tired routine. Moaning and thrashing as if caught in the throes of endless ecstasy. But Erith would know she lied.
With Erith, she didn’t want to lie.
That was the most frightening admission of all.
She wriggled deeper into the mattress and felt his hardness shift with her. His heart thundered against her chest and his trembling became more violent. Instinctively she rubbed her hands up and down his back. She liked to touch him. Tentatively she explored the straight groove of his spine and the smooth heat of his skin and the hard bands of muscle around his waist. She felt him tense the moment before he moved inside her.
Her fingers tightened to anchor herself as he withdrew then thrust his way back in. And again. And again.
He tried to be gentle. She knew that. She accepted him with a naturalness she’d never felt before. But there was no pleasure. Not even the sparks he’d stirred when he touched her breasts or stroked between her legs.
Still, she angled to allow him greater access and her breath escaped in a broken moan. The sound released something untamed in him. He began to stroke deep inside, fast and hard. She felt as if a wild wind seized her and flung her up into a thundery sky. While she remained strangely unmoved at the tempest’s center.
After what felt like a long time, he stiffened and shuddered. He flung his head back, his face white and set as he finally gave himself up. The tendons of his neck stood out and his nostrils flared to force air into his pumping lungs.
She felt a powerful flow into her dead womb. His climax seemed to last forever. Finally he gave a long, unsteady groan and fell against her. He was still trembling, not with strain now, but with absolute exhaustion.
She slid her arms around his back, cradling him against her bare breasts, not minding if he crushed her. She’d never enjoyed the aftermath before. But she enjoyed it now. Having him undeniably and completely hers offered a poignant pleasure that was new. The smell of sex was familiar but the glow inside her was not.
There was something unbearably moving about him lying utterly spent in her embrace. To know she’d given him full satisfaction, drained him of every drop of life force. She curled her arms more tightly about him in an involuntarily protective gesture.
She’d never felt like this before. As though she’d freely bestowed a gift upon a man.
Long silent minutes passed.
His breathing steadied and his heart no longer pounded like a drum against her breast. She turned her head and placed a soft, lingering kiss on his sweat-dampened dark hair.
Her throat tightened with regret when eventually he withdrew from her body and rolled over to lie at her side. He hadn’t spoken. What could he say? What could she say? She hadn’t responded and he’d know that. But she also hoped he knew his unfettered pleasure had granted her a pleasure beyond any she’d ever found in a man’s arms.
His Adam’s apple jerked as he swallowed. With a gesture that conveyed appalled disgust, he flung one arm across his eyes.
“Damn it all to hell, Olivia. I’d do anything to take back what just happened.”
Chapter 14
“Damn it all to hell?” Olivia repeated in an ominous tone.
Through his pulverizing guilt, Erith felt immediate tension stiffen the body next to his. The body he’d just filled with every ounce of his passion. The body that had remained as unresponsive as stone while he’d thundered into her.
Self-hatred was bitter as bile. What a bloody unmitigated swine he was. He should be shot. After all his self-righteous posturing, he’d taken her and hadn’t waited for her to find pleasure.
He’d broken his word. To himself and to her.
“Olivia…” he managed before she clouted him hard in the side.
“You pig!” She scrambled for the edge of the bed.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” He snatched at her arm. His ribs ached like the Devil from her assault.
“Let me go,” she snarled, trying without success to fling free of his hold.
“Stop it!” He rose on his knees and caught her around the waist. He tried to ignore how her bare breasts heaved with her fury. The peaked nipples were a rich dark brown. He burned to test their sweetness again. Her skin had tasted like warm honey on his lips.
His attention wavered a moment too long.
“Bastard!” she hissed, and punched him in the belly.
The blow winded him and left him choking. He struggled to speak. “Olivia…” He had to stop to get his breath. “Olivia, I know I’m a blackguard, but you really don’t want to kill me.”
“Yes, I do,” she said stubbornly.
Yes, she did.
He saw it in the tense line of her angular jaw and the feral light in her whisky-colored eyes. Those eyes fell to the most vulnerable part of his body, and he realized he couldn’t allow her tantrum to continue. Not if he didn’t want to sing soprano at Covent Garden before she finished.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he muttered, making a more determined effort to control her. She was strong but he was stronger. He only needed seconds to grab her arms and roll her under him, using his weight to keep her writhing body down.
“Let me go, you toad.” She aimed a kick at his nuts. He only just managed to evade the lethal attack. Her naked body was graceful and
lithe as a cobra’s. And as slippery, with a tensile power he found wildly exciting. She bucked against his subduing weight, and his arousal mounted uncontrollably.
God help him, she was right. He was a toad. She wanted to kill him and all he wanted to do was fuck her.
Erith pressed her into the bed and wrenched her hands above her head so she lay completely helpless. And open to him if he was cad enough to take advantage of her position. He desperately tried to ignore the way her bare legs slid against him as she wriggled to escape.
Difficult to believe he’d only just lost himself in a volcanic climax that had left him utterly drained. He was rampant and ready for her again.
Holding her with no intention of taking it further was torture of the vilest sort. Agony. He closed his eyes and prayed for strength. She’d end up killing him before she was finished, with frustration if not with those hard and impressively effective fists.
He couldn’t blame her for her outrage. He’d promised to control himself. Then, in the end, he’d proven himself a rank liar. “I’m sorry I took you—”
“I know you are, whoreson,” she spat, at last lying in gasping stillness. He didn’t fool himself that she’d given up the fight, though. “Well, you won’t have to be sorry again.”
“You didn’t like it.”
“Neither did you. ‘Damn it all to hell,’ I believe was your eloquent response.”
She sucked in a shaking breath that made her enticing breasts rise. He bit back a groan. He wanted her again. Now. If he’d imagined sex would dilute his endless craving for her, every lacerating moment of this quarrel proved him deluded.
Her voice cracked. “How dare you say that after you’ve just been inside me? How dare you?”
Understanding struck him with the force of a bullet. Understanding and regret, virulent enough to overwhelm even his surging lust.
Good God, he was the world’s greatest blockhead. Heaven forgive him. He’d hurt her twice. Once with his abominably selfish swiving. And more deeply with his insensitive reaction. She’d tragically misunderstood him, and he didn’t know if he could make it right.
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