Dark Torment

by Karen Robards

  “Sarah?” It was a husky question.

  “Please—let me go.” Her words were disjointed. Her hands were braced against his shoulders, holding him off as best she could. She had no illusions that she could maintain the slight distance between them if he wanted to force the issue. But, curiously, she did not think he would do that.

  “Has no one ever touched you like this before?” He sounded almost detached—except for the huskiness that deepened his voice to a rasp. As if to underline his question, his hand tightened over her breast, squeezing gently. To her distress, Sarah felt every nerve she possessed quiver and tighten in response.

  “No! What do you take me for?” The question was furious, to hide her rapidly growing urge to close her mouth and let him hold her as he would. She had never dreamed that, by the simple act of covering her breast with his hand, a man could rouse in her such feverish confusion.

  “A lady. A very lovely, innocent lady who is shocked at herself because she enjoys my touch.” The words were very low, a velvety growl that caressed her ears even as his hand caressed her breast. He kneaded the small, silk-covered mound very gently—and then his thumb moved, so slowly, over the sensitive crest. Sarah felt the shock of it clear down to her toes. It was all she could do to repress a gasp. She thanked the Lord for the darkness that hid the sudden mortified crimsoning of her cheeks as she felt her nipple stiffen under his hand. But the darkness could not hide the rise and fall of her chest as her breathing quickened.

  “Don’t be ashamed, Sarah. It’s perfectly natural for you to feel as you do. Let me show you. . . .”

  “Let me go. Please.” Sarah barely managed to get the words out. More than anything in the world she wished she didn’t have to say them. She wanted him to show her what it felt like to be a woman. Oh, how she wanted that! The touch of his mouth and hand had ignited a fire in her that threatened to consume her.

  “If you want me to.” But he leaned closer, his mouth descending again until it was a scant inch from her own. Sarah looked up into his eyes and felt as if she were drowning in their shadowed depths. There was a curious roaring in her ears, and her knees felt as if they could no longer support her weight. His thumb moved across her nipple once more, and then back. She moaned involuntarily, her eyes fluttering shut. She forced them open again, knowing that if she closed them she was lost. . . . But the sheer, overpowering attraction of his face so close to her own made her head spin. She bit down hard on her lower lip, trying to muster her spinning senses, trying to fight him—and herself.

  “Do you want me to let you go, Sarah?” He was whispering in her ear, his breath warm, teasing. His thumb moved again, finding the hardened bud that quivered at his caress. His hand shifted; he caught her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and gently squeezed it. Sarah felt another shaft of fire shoot through her body like a lightning bolt.

  “Yes,” she moaned, forcing the word out. She was swaying in his hold, her head thrown back so that the tumbled masses of her hair cascaded over his arm toward the ground. Her eyelids were fluttering first closed, then open as her body warred with her mind. He started to remove his hand, slowly. She felt the withdrawal of that tingling warmth like a physical pain. Her flesh ached for the return of his touch. . . . “No,” she whispered, surrendering.

  Before she could stop herself, her hand caught his where it hovered just over her breast without touching it, and pressed it wantonly back against her starving flesh. At the indescribable pleasure of that possessing hand, she sucked in her breath. Her eyes closed momentarily; her knees felt weak, and she swayed closer to the solid strength of him. He made no move; even his hand was still on her breast. Her eyes opened again to find that he was watching her, his eyes narrowed. She stared up at him, her own eyes glazed, watching him watch her, knowing that her behavior was utterly shameless but too drunk with passion to care. Tonight she was just a woman like any other woman, and he was just a man. Her woman’s body craved the maleness of him like a thirsty man craved water in the desert. And of its own volition her body was letting him know of her need. Her nipple was pebble-hard against the cupped palm of his hand; she knew he had to feel it, know the eagerness it signaled. He also could not miss the quick, hot indrawing of her breath, or the trembling of her limbs, or the sultry glow of passion that she knew must be suffusing her face, lighting her eyes. . . . He was still watching her, unmoving. With a wordless whimper, her hand left his and, with its fellow, crept around his neck. Blindly she lifted her face toward his, seeking his kiss, her eyes closed. For once she would let her senses, not reason, rule her. For once she would allow herself to be weak and silly and feminine—all the things she usually despised. Gallagher’s arms around her, his mouth on hers, his hand on her body made her a traitor to the self she had always known. It was as if someone totally different inhabited her body—just for tonight.

  “Are you sure, Sarah?” Sarah quivered at the tenderness she thought she heard in his voice. She kept her eyes tightly shut; to open them would be to invite an end to the rapture that held her in thrall. She was no longer a plain, prim old maid, but a woman, desired and desiring—just for tonight.

  She lifted her face to his again in silent assent. He needed no further invitation. His mouth came down on hers again, not roughly but possessively, as though he meant to make it his. She surrendered her lips to him, opened her mouth to him, moaned at the caress of his lips on hers, at the hot wet invasion of his tongue. . . .

  His hand no longer held her breast. Sarah arched her back, missing that delicious pressing warmth, moaning shamelessly as she pleaded without words for its return. She heard the quickened thud of his heart against her, felt the world spin as she was picked up off her feet and lowered to the ground. . . . The dry grass made little scratching sounds against the silk of her dress; it prickled against her bare arms. But she could have been lying on the softest of feather beds, for all the notice she took of her surroundings. All she knew was the devastating heat of Gallagher’s mouth on hers.

  His hand was at her throat. She felt it, vaguely, as it moved down the front of her bodice. The night air caressed her skin in its wake. He was opening her buttons. She should stop him—the thought surfaced again—and for a moment she was on the verge of struggling back into her everyday skin. But then his mouth left hers to trace a burning path down the side of her throat, and she was lost again. In fire and wonder.

  “Gallagher.” She breathed his name into his hair as he bent his head further, his tongue seeking the throbbing hollow of her throat while his hand continued to free her buttons. His head lifted.

  “Dominic,” he corrected once more, his voice a hoarse whisper against her mouth. Sarah parted her lips in eager invitation to the warmth hovering so near. When he did not take her mouth, she strained upward, shamelessly seeking his kiss. “Dominic,” he whispered again, insistently.

  “Dominic,” she said, moaning, and was rewarded by the sweet brand of his kiss.

  His hand was beneath her now, tugging at the ends of her sash. Then it returned to her throat, parting the silk he had so recently unfastened, baring the skin of her shoulders and the fine white muslin of her chemise. Sarah moved then, finally, catching at his hand in a final, obligatory protest. He bent over her, his breath hot and moist against her cheek.

  “Let me take your dress off, Sarah.”

  The soft words coupled with the husky passion that thickened them made her quiver all over. She wanted him to take off her dress. She wet her lips, staring up at him, unable to say the words that would push her irretrievably over the edge. But she let go of his hand. . . . He brushed a quick, soft kiss on her trembling lips, and then his hands returned to their work. Sarah did nothing to hinder him as he pulled the dress off her shoulders and down over her arms. The coolness of the night air against her bare skin was quickly replaced by the scorching heat of his mouth. He pressed tiny kisses along her collar bone and then back across her chest until at last he was kissing just above the prim edge of her chemis
e where the upper slopes of her breasts rose in gentle swells. Soft sobs of pleasure floated in the air around them; Sarah was vaguely surprised to discover that they came from her own throat. Her eyes stayed tightly shut as he knelt to pull her dress completely off. Through her thin petticoat she felt the material slither down her thighs. Then his hands were encircling her slim ankles, lifting her feet. The touch of his fingers on her insteps as he loosened first one and then the other of the ribbon bows that held her shoes made her skin tingle. When he came back to her, it was to press his mouth to one small, high breast through the fine muslin of her chemise. Sarah felt the moist heat of his mouth, felt the rhythmic tugging as he suckled her like a babe through the thin material, and groaned. Then she couldn’t stop. Wanton little cries of delight rippled from her throat of their own volition. Her hands clutched at his black hair; her back arched as she pressed herself to him, on fire with need. When next he pulled the chemise from her shoulders, baring her breasts, she quivered with fear and longing combined, but made no protest. Her hunger for him far outweighed her instinctive fear. Fiercely, shockingly, she wanted him to make her naked, to look at her, and touch her, and love her. . . .

  The night air caressed her pink-tipped flesh, teasing the aching nipples, then was replaced by the blaze of his mouth. Her arms were around his shoulders, her hands in his hair, pressing his head tightly against her breasts as he lay half on, half beside her, his mouth with its lazy suckling driving her wild. She could feel the weight of his chest against her bare rib cage. The coarse linen of his shirt felt slightly abrasive to her skin. She loved the sensation. Through her haze of pleasure she felt his hands moving at her waist. Then he was lifting himself away from her. She moaned, clutching at him, but he put her hands aside. Quickly, efficiently he stripped away her petticoat and tossed it aside. With aching satisfaction she realized that at last she was naked except for the chemise twisted around her middle and the wisps of her stockings. The knowledge made her tremble all over. He saw her convulsive shiver and stroked his hand lightly over her thighs and then her belly, gentling her, soothing her. She only shivered all the more, loving the hot abrasion of his work-hardened hand. Then he slid the chemise over her hips and down her legs, and she was left wearing only her stockings and lacy white garters. He was kneeling near her feet, the shimmering moon high overhead making him look big and dark and faintly unreal as he sucked in his breath, the sound harsh, ragged against the gentle noises of the night, and his eyes scorched over her breasts and belly and thighs. . . . Demon lover, she thought before her eyes fluttered shut. He had come to her out of the shadows of the night, and was no more real. Tonight she could surrender her aching, burning flesh to him, let him love her and take her and make her truly a woman. Just for tonight . . .

  Wordlessly she lifted her arms to him, her eyes still tightly closed. He moved then, answering her silent invitation, his large body covering her much slighter one like a blanket of fire. His mouth took hers, ravenous in its passion, blistering her with its heat. His hands were on her breasts, kneading them, caressing the nipples, which stood quivering beneath his touch. Her arms went around his neck as she answered his kiss with sweet, wild desire. His weight was crushing her into the ground. It should have hurt, but the hard heaviness of him was exactly what her body craved. She felt the rasp of his chest hair against her breasts, felt the abrasion of his hair-roughened legs through the fine cotton of her stockings as one knee nudged her thighs apart so that he could lie between them—and only then did she realize that he was naked too. His skin was fiery hot against her, burning her up, incinerating her—and she loved it. She writhed against him in helpless rapture, her legs instinctively parting even more, her breasts pressing boldly up into the thick mat of hair covering his chest. Her hands clenched in his hair as he seared her throat with his lips.

  His hand was between their bodies, stroking her breasts, then sliding down to the silky skin of her belly and below, stroking the curling thatch of hair briefly before insinuating itself even farther between her thighs. He touched her then where no one had ever touched her, where she was shy to touch herself, even when she bathed. His fingers slid moistly against her, finding all her unimagined pleasure points, trailing fire in their wake and sending quickening spirals of ecstasy like red-hot whirlwinds over her skin. She arched against those fingers, burning, pulsating, spinning away into a netherworld of shooting flames and bursts of black smoke and red sparks glowing like eyes. . . .

  Her head thrashed from side to side, unconscious of the hard ground that pillowed it or the twigs and bits of grass and leaves that tangled in her hair. Her legs were opened wide, slender and pale in their thin white stockings as he lay between them, his thighs burning hers, his hand working its unbelievable magic. Her eyes were closed tightly, her arms locked around the neck of the man who was carrying her away with him. . . . His lips left her throat to take her mouth, and she sighed with ecstasy, drinking in the taste of him. Then his hand that was causing her such exquisite torment left her, to be replaced a scant instant later by a hard, hot shaft that felt enormous and alien and tremendously exciting. . . .

  It found her softness, entered her just a little, then stopped. Sarah moaned and writhed at this wonderful new sensation, quivering from head to toe at this slow invasion that was the culmination of every heated caress that had gone before. When it ceased, when he no longer thrust against her in the way that every nerve and bone and sinew told her that he should, she surged to find him, arching shamelessly in the arms which held her clamped to the inferno that was his body.

  “God.” The word was a ragged prayer, nearly lost in the rustling of the leaves and grass beneath them and in their ragged breathing. But Sarah heard it, heard the blistering passion it conveyed, and arched again, thrusting her hips against his, pleading with her body for him to answer. He did, gasping, thrusting into her with a surging force that made her cry out.

  “Ohhh!” It hurt. There was a sharp stinging between her legs as he filled her, imbedding himself deep inside her. She stiffened, and her eyes flew open. He was not moving now, but lay heavily across her while his breathing sounded like a dying man’s in her ears. For a long moment he lay like that while her hands clutched at his sweat-damp shoulders, and she tried to decide whether to push him away; but then he braced himself up on his arms, lifting his head so that he could look down at her. His face was flushed, his eyes dark with passion. A faint tremor shook those bracing arms.

  “Are you—all right?” It was a husky whisper.

  Sarah stared up into that handsome face, saw the concern mixed with the heady desire in his midnight-blue eyes, felt the effort that he was exerting to hold his need in check. Her hands moved then, of their own volition, to caress and then clutch his shoulders.

  “Yes,” she whispered. She could feel the part of him that still possessed her throbbing and burning inside her, and didn’t know if she was lying or telling the truth. All she knew was that, having come so far, she could not stop. Not now.

  “Ahhh, Sarah.” The words were almost a groan.

  Sarah stared into that dark face and felt something hot and urgent begin to clamor again inside her. Her hands slid from his shoulders over the sweat-dampened pelt of hair on his chest, rubbing over his flat nipples with a kind of sensual delight before suddenly, fiercely digging into the rigid wall of muscle that was his chest.

  “Sweet Jesus!” He stiffened for an instant, his eyes closing, his lips clenching as if in pain. Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he began to move. He lowered himself upon her, his mouth finding hers and taking it with hot, drugging urgency while she clung to him and trembled and quaked.

  The hot, slick strokes that made her his were like nothing she had ever experienced. The pain was gone now, and there was nothing but pleasure, a dark, secret pleasure such as she had never felt before, had never dreamed she could feel. She wanted it to go on and on and on. . . . He was arching over her, his hips moving in and out in a hot, urgent rhythm, and she
was moving with him, her arms and legs clutching him, her hips undulating in an answering rhythm that seemed to drive him wild. His arms were tight around her, crushing her to him in a hold that should have hurt but didn’t because she was beyond feeling it, was beyond feeling anything but the fiery bursting ecstasy that was exploding inside her.

  “Oh, Dominic, oh, oh, oh, Dominic!” The cry and the accompanying stiffening of her body seemed to drive him to a sudden frenzy. He plunged into her fiercely, grinding her into the unyielding ground as he panted and groaned above her and his sweat fused them like red-hot lava. She clung to him, shuddering, as he found his own ecstasy. Finally he groaned, thrusting into her savagely one last time, holding himself inside her as he stiffened and shuddered. Then he too was still.

  For long minutes they lay fused together, unmoving, the ragged tempo of their breathing as it evened and slowed the only sounds they made. Slowly, reluctantly, Sarah became aware again. Aware of the feel of the prickly ground beneath her bare backside, aware of the sound of the wind in the leaves overhead, aware of the cold white face of the moon that stared down at her with such icy disdain. Even more reluctantly, she acknowledged the fact that she was naked, lying sprawled upon the ground with a sweaty, still-panting man lying heavily across her. A naked man who still possessed her body. A convict . . .

  Sarah felt sudden nausea rise in her throat. She lay staring up sightlessly at the star-studded sky, while sick horror began to clutch at her stomach and make her shiver.

  “Dear God.” The words replayed themselves over and over again in her brain in an endless litany of regret. “Oh, dear God, what have I done?”

  X

  “You’re crushing me.” Sarah managed to force out the words a long time later. He still lay sprawled across her, crushing her as she had said, his body hot and wet and abrasive against hers, his breath searing her neck. The part of him that had caused first her pleasure and then her shame still possessed her; she could feel it slowly ebbing between her thighs. His arms were hard around her and his black head was buried in the curve between her shoulder and her neck. She shuddered with distaste.