by Kay Hooper
She made a little sound when his lips left hers, and he concentrated fiercely to hold on to his threadbare control. That sound . . . It was a soft, throaty purr of pleasure, and it drove his desire impossibly higher. He braced himself on an elbow beside her, brushing his lips over the warm, satiny skin of her face, her throat, then drifting lower to her breastbone. He slid a hand slowly up over her narrow rib cage and surrounded one swollen breast, his thumb circling the nipple rhythmically as his mouth closed over the other one.
Spencer caught her breath and jerked slightly, his hand and mouth on her breasts affecting her like nothing she’d ever felt before. She had thought she’d reached the absolute limits of what she could bear, but the hot, sweet tension coiled even more tightly inside her, tormenting her, as he caressed her breasts. When his hand moved down her quivering belly and his fingers probed gently between her thighs, she jerked again and moaned. The most exquisitely sensitive nerves in her body throbbed wildly at his touch, and she felt a strange, panicky sensation well up inside her.
“Drew . . . don’t . . . I can’t—”
He lifted his head, burning eyes fixed on her face. His expression was so fierce, so utterly male and primitive that it made her pounding heart skip a beat, and in that flashing instant she realized with utter clarity that Drew was capable of depths of emotion she had never suspected.
“Please,” she whispered, and some part of her knew that it wasn’t just an end to the physical torment she pleaded for, but something far more elusive.
He kissed her hungrily, shifting his weight until he rose above her and between her trembling thighs. His powerful body was so much larger than hers, so much harder and more forceful, and the feverish need in him was a primal male demand that called out commandingly to everything in her that was female. She could have refused him nothing. Her eyes locked with his and the breath caught in her throat as her body slowly accepted him.
It had been a long time for her and he was a big man; she could feel the taut stretching of her flesh and the brief, instinctively shocked feminine awareness of an intruder. But then, in a curious melding she’d never known before, he seemed to become part of her, filling an emptiness she hadn’t been conscious of and making her feel, for the first time in her life, complete.
A single tear slid from the corner of her eye and a shuddering breath left her as he settled fully into the cradle of her thighs. She could feel him pulsing deep inside her, and the hovering tension of desire began winding tightly again. His eyes were burning down at her and his mouth was hard as it covered hers. He was heavy, wonderfully heavy. Then he began moving.
I love you. She didn’t say the words aloud, at least she didn’t think she did, but Spencer heard them echoing in her mind even as her body went totally out of her control. She had few clear memories of that first joining, except for sensations and the certain, dimly shocking realization that her need for him was so overwhelming that nothing else mattered.
She was virtually untaught in the art of giving or receiving pleasure, but with Drew either her instincts or her love for him made knowledge unimportant. Her body knew how to respond to him, and she was incapable of controlling or even tempering her acute desire. Even as he claimed what belonged to him, his own urgent hunger had, in some way, set her free.
She barely heard the sounds she made, or realized how wildly her body writhed beneath his. All she was conscious of was the maddening tension, the frantic straining and striving to reach something just beyond her grasp. She wasn’t aware of crying, of clinging to him desperately and pleading with him in a voice she would never have recognized as her own.
Until, finally, the pressure increased beyond bearing and snapped with a shock that was waves and waves of burning, pulsing ecstasy. The heat washed over her, consumed her, and she held him with all the strength left to her when it consumed him, too.
chapter eight
“ YOU CRIED , ” HE said.
Spencer had felt him lift his head and ease the weight of his upper body onto his elbows, but she’d kept her eyes closed. Her arms were still around his neck, her legs coiled limply with his. She felt utterly drained, almost boneless, and she didn’t know if she could look him in the eye. She’d gone crazy in his arms, and her own lack of control embarrassed her. In fact, it appalled her. That had never happened to her before, and she was half afraid that it was somehow wrong. Even though he hadn’t seemed to notice anything to complain about, and even though it had certainly felt amazingly wonderful—
“Sweetheart, did I hurt you?”
She looked at him then, startled by the question as much as the troubled undertone in his low voice. She hadn’t known his mouth could curve so tenderly or that his eyes could hold such a glow. Her heart turned over with a lurch, and she had to clear her throat before she could say huskily, “No, you didn’t hurt me.”
He brushed a strand of hair back from her temple, his thumb stroking the soft skin there as if he could feel the wetness of her tears. “You cried,” he said again.
That wasn’t all she’d done, Spencer thought. How many times had she pleaded with him? She didn’t remember, but heat rose in her face and her eyes skittered away from his. “I didn’t know I could feel that way.” She had to admit it, if only to ease his concern. “I guess that was why.”
Drew seemed to hesitate, a brief look of indecision on his face, then kissed her gently. “I knew you were having second thoughts when I came back, but I couldn’t wait. I’d waited so long for you already. Even now . . . I don’t want to leave you. Am I too heavy?”
“No.” She focused her gaze on his chin, still unable to meet his eyes except fleetingly. She hadn’t realized that the lamplight was so bright, but it was, and they were lying on top of the covers, naked bodies still entwined. Still joined. So close and starkly intimate. He wasn’t too heavy, she wasn’t physically uncomfortable, but . . . His weight and much greater size held her easily beneath him in an unnervingly primitive way, and with memories of her wild pleas and frantic, passionate sounds becoming more and more vivid in her mind, her embarrassment was intensifying rapidly.
Her wanton behavior was all the more shocking to her because it was so vastly different from the way she’d been with Reece. He’d been obsessed with her during the first short months of their marriage, so much so that he’d been gentle with her and concerned about her pleasure—even if his own had come first. But she had never lost control with Reece, and she’d never felt anything more than mild pleasure in their bed.
With Drew, what she’d felt had been so acute it was a kind of sensual madness, so utterly overwhelming that she’d had no hope of controlling it—or herself. She had given herself to him as if some ancient instinct had demanded it, with passionate intensity and total abandon. One difference, of course, was that she loved Drew as she’d never come close to loving Reece. She belonged to Drew in a way that was basic and primitive, touching all her deepest emotions. But knowledge of that didn’t help ease her anxiety now. She was so vulnerable to him, and her mindless abandonment with him made her feel even more defenseless.
His hands surrounded her face warmly, and he moved subtly against her and inside her. She caught her breath and looked into his eyes helplessly.
They were a little narrowed as he gazed down at her, veiled so that she couldn’t guess what he was thinking. And when he spoke his voice was lower, rougher, something implacable in the words. “You’re trying to hide from me. I won’t let you do that, Spencer. What is it? What’s wrong?”
She didn’t want to answer, but refusing him anything was still beyond her, and she couldn’t look away now because his eyes held her trapped. “I couldn’t . . . control myself,” she whispered.
Drew brushed one thumb across a delicate cheekbone, feeling the heat of embarrassment burning in her skin. He could see it in her smoky eyes as well, along with anxiety and uncertainty. Was that why she seemed so far away from him now despite their physical closeness, because she was worried about the
intensity of her response?
He thought that was it, and it gave him a strong sense of both pleasure and triumph to know that no other man had felt the fire of her passion, but he had no intention of allowing her to try to temper that response in any way. He wanted her to be certain that nothing she felt in his arms, nothing she said or did, could ever be wrong.
He kissed one corner of her trembling lips and then the other, his lower body moving again subtly so that she could feel his renewing desire. “Do you know what you do to me?” he murmured against her soft skin. “You make me so crazy I can’t even think, so hot with need that nothing else matters. I love the way you feel, soft and warm against me, the way your body fits mine so perfectly. I love the passion in you, the wild, sweet way you respond when I touch you.”
Spencer felt his mouth on her throat, the slight vibrations of his words an added caress, and she closed her eyes as dizzying pleasure began welling up inside her. He was moving just enough to make her aware of it, and her breathing quickened as her body responded wildly to the erotic sensations. She felt feverish, and exhaustion was forgotten as her legs lifted to wrap around his hips and her hands wandered restlessly over the taut muscles of his back and shoulders.
He lifted his head to gaze down at her. “Look at me,” he murmured, and when her eyes flickered open dazedly he held them with his own. His voice grew rougher and more strained, the slow, deliberate movements against her combined with the tight heat of her flesh sheathing his so erotically charged that every nerve in his body was screaming with pleasure.
“That night at your house . . . you looked so cool, so distant. Untouchable. It drove me mad. I wanted to see you like this, naked and burning for me.” She made a tiny sound and he kissed her deeply, taking it into his mouth. “I wanted to make you go crazy, just the way I go crazy when my hands are on you. You feel so good, so tight and silky. . . .”
Spencer whimpered a little, her body beginning to move instinctively beneath him. She couldn’t be still, because he was torturing her and she couldn’t bear it. Her short nails dug into his back, the hot, sweet tension coiling, stealing her breath. She couldn’t control herself, just like before, her body writhing, desperate pleas and wordless sounds winging free of her.
He held her securely, his hands stroking her heated flesh as his body seduced hers. His voice encouraged her to let herself feel, to let herself go completely, as he hoarsely muttered bluntly sexual words of passionate need. Until finally Spencer’s restless shifting beneath him became the lithe, graceful undulations of essential female desire, an imperative hunger that could no longer be denied or resisted.
Drew groaned and tangled his fingers in her thick hair, kissing her urgently, and his subtle movements abruptly became deep thrusts as his control shattered. He knew he was going to explode, the pressure building so violently that he was conscious of nothing but the torturing fire of that and the woman who cradled his straining body, urging him on with her own frantic need. He drove into her again and again, barely hearing her soft moans and cries or his own hoarse sounds, the primitive drive toward completion so overwhelming that if he had known release meant death, he wouldn’t—couldn’t—have stopped.
He was deep inside her when the hot, rhythmic contractions of her pleasure caught him in an unbelievably sensual caress, and her gasping cry was trapped in his mouth as he kissed her with an unconscious, ancient possessiveness. She was crying again—he could taste the salt of her tears—and his own release shuddered through him with a force so intense it bordered on agony, leaving him drained.
Spencer didn’t think at all during the following hours. She slept for a while, held warmly in his arms, not even aware when he got them under the covers and turned out the lamp. She woke once in the darkness, his hands and mouth bringing her body vividly alive again, the pleasure so acute that she lost herself in it without even trying to resist. Lost herself in him. And it was still terrifying and exhilarating and something she had no will to withstand. Even if his words and his own intense passion hadn’t reassured her, she couldn’t have held back, couldn’t have tempered her response to him. If she didn’t cry out her love it was only because she was convinced he wouldn’t want it.
IT WAS THE chill of being alone that woke Spencer the second time, and even before she opened her eyes she knew that if he’d left her without a word she wouldn’t be able to bear it. As soon as she opened her eyes she saw him, standing by the window. Moonlight spilled through the panes to show her a stark profile that was too beautiful to belong to a man and yet was utterly masculine. She lay there for a moment watching him, vaguely conscious that her body felt different but far more aware of him than of herself.
His body was in shadow, the darkness hiding his nakedness, and the expression on his face was remote. Knowing him better now, Spencer recognized that remoteness and understood that it was his mask of control. He was disturbed about something, his disquiet strong enough to have driven him from their bed in the cold, lonely hours before dawn.
With a vivid memory of the lover he had been in this bed stamped deeply in her mind and body, Spencer felt a chill touch of fear. Demons of uncertainty snapping at her heels. He’d said he would teach her what it felt like to be in thrall to someone else; now she knew. Had that been his goal all along, to have the satisfaction of knowing that her desire for him was like an addiction, a craving in her blood?
If he wanted to hurt her, there would never be a better time. A few cutting words or merely a cool good-bye, and she’d be devastated. She wanted to close her eyes and pretend she hadn’t awakened, pretend that nothing was wrong. Morning was soon enough, she thought painfully, to face whatever he’d say.
She couldn’t pretend. There had already been too much pretense in her life. Feeling so vulnerable that it was terrifying, she sat up slowly in the bed and wrapped her arms around her upraised knees.
He didn’t turn his head to look at her, but obviously knew she was awake. His voice was soft when he spoke.
“Why, Spencer?”
She waited, not sure what he was questioning.
“Why did you marry him?”
Not an easy question to answer, but at least it wasn’t—yet—good-bye. She drew a breath and held her voice steady. “Because I was afraid.”
He did turn his head then, his eyes sharply probing the dimness of the room. “Afraid of me?” His surprise was obvious, and there was more, something she couldn’t identify.
Spencer managed the ghost of a laugh. “You. Me. So many things. It was nothing you’d done. I was just afraid. I think I knew even then—”
“What?”
She hesitated, but just couldn’t bring herself to say, I knew I was lost even then, knew I belonged to you. Instead, she explained another part of the truth. “I knew that I could never measure up. That I was . . . inadequate.”
“What are you talking about?” He left the window and crossed the room to the bed, sitting down on the edge. When he reached toward the lamp on the nightstand, she spoke quickly.
“We don’t really need the light, do we?”
Drew hesitated, but then allowed his arm to relax. The room wasn’t totally dark, so they were vaguely visible to each other. Blurred features and the colorless dark shine of eyes. “Do we need the dark?” he asked finally, quietly.
She was silent, and after a moment he seemed to accept the tacit reply. “Spencer, why did you think you were inadequate? In what way inadequate?”
“I was pretending.” Her voice was so low it was only a murmur of sound, but perfectly clear and audible in the hushed room. “Pretending that I was someone else. Being . . . assured and confident, and always in control. As if that was the real me, as if I belonged. But I didn’t. It was all a sham. I was just pretending. And there you were, the real thing.”
“Spencer—”
She cut him off, going on in the same soft, deliberate tone, almost without expression. “That first time you came to the house, when I was sixteen, I knew who
you were. I’d heard Dad and other people talk about you. About all the things you’d done—and you were barely out of college. The way they talked, about summer digs and trips to dangerous, exotic places, about your uncanny instincts and how brilliant you were, it made me picture you as something larger than life.
“Then I—I looked up that night and saw you.” Spencer was lost in memories, the night she had first seen him so vivid in her mind that the clarity of the image was almost painful. “You came through the door, and maybe it was the light falling a certain way or—or something, but whatever it was, you seemed to be . . . all gold. Something so bright it made my eyes hurt and stole my breath. People made way for you, as if they knew it, too, as if they knew you were apart from the rest.”
She blinked, looked at him. She was unable to read his expression in the dimness, but was grateful that he said nothing. It gave her the chance to get hold of herself, so that she was able to manage an almost impersonal voice. “Larger than life. Not only that, but you were everything I wanted to be. Elegant. Sophisticated. Confident and assured. Always calm and in control. I had . . . polished up myself, and the gloss fooled just about everybody. But you were the genuine article. Something I could never be.”
Still unmoving, he said in an odd voice, “That was why you ran? Because I made you feel inadequate?”
Spencer was too honest to say yes and let it go at that. “It was partly that. I didn’t know what you saw in me, but I knew I was pretending. I felt like a phony.” A humorless breath of a laugh escaped, and she shrugged a little. “I was afraid. Confused. I didn’t understand you or myself, and both of us scared me. Drew, I was eighteen, and not a very mature eighteen at that, not inside. If I was thinking clearly at all, the only thing I was sure of was that there was . . . too much of you and not enough of me. I was afraid of getting lost. That was the most terrifying thing of all. So I ran.”