“I think you’re drunk.” He looked reckless, wild. Dangerously compelling with that strange, inhuman beauty of his, like a glorious pagan, ready to rape and plunder.
He smiled, and the sensual, sulky curve of his mouth was self-deprecating, barely civil. “I always knew you were a clever girl. Care to tell me what I’m thinking now?” He crudely ran a hand over the front of his trousers, bringing her gaze to the rigid length pressing against the buttons. “I see you’ve figured it out. Good girl.” He started toward her from the shadows, the wolf stirring from his lair.
Self-preservation made Bliss retreat until she’d backed up against a post, immobile as Caine approached. Moonlight glimmered through the open door, creating sinister shapes on his face. The menacing line of his mouth conveyed that nothing short of divine intervention would save her from his wrath.
“I won’t allow you to hurt me,” she told him in a shaky voice, thrusting out her hand to ward him off, as though a speck of sand could hold back a raging tide.
“It’s not hurt I plan to inflict, my love. On the contrary. You will finally know the true meaning of your name.”
Bliss shivered and maneuvered around the post as he continued to advance. “I understand how you’re feeling. But I had nothing to do with what happened. You didn’t have to give up Khan.”
His jaw set hard. “And I told you what would happen if you came to me again with false offers of kindness.” He paused, deliberately, and for effect. “You do remember what I said, don’t you?”
Bliss remembered, and her trembling increased as she mentally replayed his coarse words: I’ll screw you, your ladyship…I’ll give you all the gratitude your tight little body can take.
Her heart began to pound until her ears were full with the sound, a faint dizziness skimming the edge of her vision, threatening to engulf her.
“I didn’t come here to offer kindness. I came here to say goodbye.”
That stopped him. “Goodbye?” Something flared in his eyes, something that seemed almost like despair. Then it was gone. “Well, I guess I’d better hurry then.”
He shrugged out of his shirt, muscles rippling and flexing as he divested himself of the garment, tossing it heedlessly to the ground, his skin taut and smooth, but incredibly powerful…incredibly provocative.
And infinitely dangerous to her senses.
“Caine, listen to me. Please. I wanted to tell you more than just goodbye.”
“How kind of you,” he mocked in a dark drawl, slowly circling her, a ravenous predator who knew its prey was trapped and helpless.
“I don’t want to see you give up Khan.”
“Moot point, my lady.” His tone was softly savage. “The deed is done. Let’s move on to other, more pressing matters, shall we?”
“You were right,” she said, her breath coming in shallow bursts as she kept just out of his reach. “I owe you a stud fee. I want to pay you.”
A muscle worked in his jaw, his eyes glinting with renewed fire, the likes of which she hadn’t seen since that first day he had come upon her in the stables. “You want to pay me now, do you? And which stud service would that be for? Mine, or my horse?”
“You know which.”
“I’m not sure I do. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t want your damn money.” His eyes smoldered like a wildfire. “I’m not here to assuage your sense of pity.”
“It’s not me who is doing the pitying. It’s you!” Her anger at his foolish pride and arrogant refusal to see the truth made her want to scream. “You’re father’s gone, Caine, and no amount of wishing you had done things differently is going to change that.”
His jaw clenched, telling her she was pushing him too far, but she didn’t care. Someone had to tell him, someone had to care enough.
“Let it go,” she pleaded, desperate for him to listen. “This house, this land, it’s not all there is. You’ve got so much to offer. You’re not just Olivia’s lover, or any other woman’s lover. You think you’ve failed, but you haven’t.” Bliss didn’t realize she was crying until a salty tear touched her lips. “Please. Just take my money. Tell Olivia you made a mistake and get Khan back. It’s not too late.”
He stood looking at her, his eyes hard and implacable. “It is too late. For all of us.”
Deep down, Bliss knew he was right. The minute she had set eyes on him her fate had been sealed, her life careening headlong down a path of certain destruction.
“Don’t,” she whispered, shaking her head as he moved in, leaving her only a single instinct, to run, to get as far away from the threat as she could.
With a sob breaking from her lips, she hoisted her skirts and fled into the darkness.
Fourteen
A pleasure so exquisite as almost to amount to pain.
Leigh Hunt
“Bliss!” Caine’s voice was anguished, the sound tearing at her soul. Yet she kept running, stumbling, blindly seeking some sanctuary in the blackness around her.
She could hear his footsteps pounding behind her. She knew she could never outrun him, yet she kept going, falling to her knees, scraping her palms, pushing upright, hearing the distant roar of the waves pounding against the rocks, closer, closer…
Then the air was forced from her lungs as an iron-hewn arm clamped around her waist, lifting her off the ground, her feet swinging wildly, her arms flailing, Caine’s chest a hot, hard, unrelenting wall against her back, before she was jerked around in his embrace to face him. He looked fierce and powerful and catastrophic, his mouth swooping down to silence any protests.
May God forgive her, but she wanted him. Their mutual panting blurred with the sound of the ocean’s mounting fury as he pressed her down on top of a flat boulder, still warm from the day’s sun.
“God,” he growled, nudging her head back and teasing the flesh on her neck, “don’t deny me, Bliss. Please…I need you.”
Bliss shook her head wildly, fighting a battle she had lost the moment he touched her. She could not relinquish herself, give in as scores of women had before her, women who had possessed him.
As Olivia did night after night.
An aching sound rose in her throat. “Don’t!” She pushed against his chest, rock solid and unmovable, and hot and hard and masculine. She wanted to feel every inch of him, absorb the full, searing length of his body, reach down and smooth her hands over the bulge rocking intimately against her. “I won’t be one of your women, damn you! Stop. Please, stop.”
He gripped her shoulders, shaking her lightly, their warm breath mingling as he stared down at her, his stormy eyes blazing with desire and self-loathing.
“You’re the only woman I want,” he growled. “Damn you for doing this to me. For making me need you so much.”
“I’m leaving. I told you.”
“No.” He refused to listen to her.
He bore down against her, his mouth ravaging her neck, one hand undoing the buttons at her bodice while the other hand moved with frantic urgency under her dress, the contact of his hot palm against her skin erotic and maddening.
She writhed against him, opening her legs wider to accommodate his massive size, a voluptuous pressure pinning her, heat against heat.
“Don’t leave me, Bliss. Don’t leave me,” he repeated over and over again as his mouth made her body burn up in flames.
A gasp of pleasure burst from her lips as he sipped at her nipple and then drew the tight point into his mouth, suckling, laving, tormenting the sensitive peak while the hand between her legs tore at her pantalets, leaving her bare and vulnerable and on fire as he slipped a large, callused finger between her slick folds, finding the ripe tip of her sex.
Broken moans welled up in her throat, the sound equal to the husky groans coming from Caine as his lips moved feverishly between her breasts, tugging, nipping, teasing until her nipples were two lush points of pleasure, distended, begging for his touch as he massaged the sensitive nub between her nether lips, his fingers saturated with her wet heat.
She gripped his hair as he lifted her hips to his mouth and took her in the most carnal way a man could take a woman, suckling the tiny bud as he had her nipples, his tongue working magic she had never thought imaginable, playing wildly, exploring the entire length of her, slipping inside her like a hot flame, in and out, bringing her to the brink and holding her there, torturing her with his seductive mastery until she begged him to enter her. She wanted him inside, to be impaled, to be his, if only for tonight.
“Bliss…” he groaned as he slid up her body, his hardness pressing intimately against the sweet spot that throbbed for him.
She captured his gaze and held him there while her trembling fingers slid down his chest to the buttons on his trousers. She wanted to feel him, to hold all that hot, hard power in her hands, to caress him as he had caressed her.
“Bliss,” he tried again, his voice ragged, pained. “I’m on the edge.”
Such a confession from this man made her feel her own power, as though, at least in this moment, she held him in thrall. He was hers.
The last button came undone. Then the full, silky length of him was in her hands, burning her as she explored him—the thick ridge, the throbbing vein, down to the tight sacs she cupped in her hand. His harsh intake of breath told her she was giving him pleasure, increasing her confidence as she massaged him.
He pumped against her questing fingers, his eyes shut tight. A dark, sensual growl tumbled from his lips, the sound breaking over her like an erotic tide, making her bolder. Her finger toyed with the satiny tip, spreading the single pearl of moisture on the crest.
His eyes snapped open then, tearing the breath from her lungs at the heat and passion centered there. “Fight me,” he said hoarsely, the words an ardent plea for salvation. “Don’t let me do this.”
Bliss arched up against him, pressing his erection against her wet valley and sliding slowly, so very slowly along his shaft, a tantalizing, brazen invitation. “I want you.”
“Why?”
Because she knew in her heart this was right. No other man made her feel so much like a woman. No other man made her feel the power of every instinct inside her.
No other man was worth her virginity.
“Because it’s my choice…and I choose you. I don’t expect declarations of love or vows of fidelity. All I ask is that when you are with me, you are mine and mine alone. I don’t want you thinking about any other woman, Caine. Only me.”
“There is no other woman. No one exists but you.” He braced his hands on either side of her head, his chest a massive slab of heat and muscle above her as his head descended, his lips brushing over hers in a heartbreaking kiss. “Help me…please.”
“I will,” she promised in a whisper.
He closed his eyes, looking anguished, torn between the devils of desire and denial. “Is it me you want? Or this?” He increased the friction against her.
“It’s you.” She threaded her fingers through his hair. “I want you inside me. You to be the first.” He groaned and dropped his head, his soft hair like the brush of a feather across her skin. She captured his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her. “I don’t know what you did to me. You rip apart everything I believe in, yet I can’t stop thinking about you, aching for you.”
“God…” He pressed his forehead against hers, still sliding against her, the tip of his shaft scoring her taut nub with each stroke, his hands gripping hungrily at her hips, igniting a searing tumult of desire, his breath rough beside her ear. “I’ve thought about this…about being inside you, how you would feel. Jesus, I want to hate you. Why can’t I hate you?”
“What have I done?” The question came out a raw, broken plea, a need to understand what inner turmoil tore him apart. “Tell me, Caine. Is it Olivia?”
His head jerked up, a savage light reflected in his eyes. “Don’t speak her name. Not now; it’s just the two of us. No matter what happens, remember that I tried to deny you. God, I tried, but I can’t.” He groaned, his shoulders trembling. “I can’t.”
“Then don’t,” she breathed, pulling his head down and kissing him the way she had wanted to kiss him all night, all day. Always, it seemed.
The mating of their mouths was carnal, wet, his tongue plunging into hers as he rocked harder against her, faster, his fingers barely teasing the sensitive tips of her nipples, an erotic whisper of sensation giving nothing but pleasure, drawing her down into a hot, dark labyrinth of sexual hunger where he was her only salvation.
He wrapped an arm beneath her back, lifting her up to kiss her nipple, that simple touch pushing her over the edge. Her body convulsed, breaking into a million pieces, as though she had been thrust down upon a rocky shoal.
“Yes…” He laved the tight bud, giving her no reprieve from the tumult he had created inside her, slipping his longest finger deep into her, testing her readiness, a pained expression on his face as he tried to hold himself in check until she lifted up against his hand and the dam on his control burst.
Gripping her wrists in one hand, he raised them above her head. “You’re mine,” he growled. As the pulses still rippled hot, scalding pleasure through her veins, Caine entered her in one swift, rending stroke, the penetration so deep it burned, pain and pleasure, heat and dark fire.
Bliss cried out, her nails digging into his back as he pushed further. He was so big, too big. “Caine—”
“Ssh. I’ll make better, I promise.” He rocked slowly at first, in and out, giving her a little more each time, a sweet pressure culminating where they were joined as he filled her, high and tight, lifting her with each powerful thrust.
Bliss kissed the curve of his neck, tasted the salt on his skin, savored his scent, and the heady musk of their lovemaking. Instinctively she lifted her legs around his flanks and tipped her pelvis up, increasing the pleasure that thrummed between their heated bodies.
Oh, God, he was hers, all of him, inside her, hot and hard and deep. And she felt insatiable. On fire. He had awakened something in her, something she desperately needed.
Something she feared no man would ever bring to life again.
And all the while, he looked into her eyes as he made love to her. He refused to let her turn away, to deny him even an ounce of what she was feeling—unbridled passion and an emotion so intense, it swamped her every sense.
He leaned forward and wet her nipple, blowing his warm breath across the puckered, aching tip and whispering, “Give me what you’ve given to no other man.”
She did, shattering once more, all the pleasure and pressure spearing down to the core of her. Her muscles tightened, squeezing his shaft, drawing his long, hard length inside her, deep and deeper still. His hands gripped her hips as he pounded against her, a guttural groan tearing from his throat as he finally found his own release.
Bliss drifted down to earth in a haze of satiation. Cool night air skittered across her body as she lay there, boneless, replete, staring up at the indigo sky.
An overwhelming sense of happiness mingled with bittersweet despair. What had just happened between them was explosive, incredible—yet nothing had changed. She could not be with him like this, with another woman’s specter dancing between them.
She wanted more, a commitment she knew he would never be able to give, and the realization that she desired something stable and genuine from Caine shook her to the core. She had never believed any man would mean this much to her.
She sat up, wincing at the ache between her thighs. Caine was leaning back against the boulder, his gaze focused somewhere in the distance, once more lost to the roar of the ocean, a tormented Odysseus searching the world for his home.
He was so achingly beautiful, his body limned by moonlight; his entire aspect silent, still, stripped of its usual harshness. He appeared defeated, and so impenetrable it seemed as though he was no more than an extension of the stone behind him.
“Caine…”
“Don’t say it.”
“What happened—”
“Was a mistake,” he injected in an emotionless tone. “I told you I was no good. I told you to tell me no. Don’t blame me now because you regret what happened.”
“I don’t regret it. Not a minute.” She should. Perhaps eventually she would, but not now.
Now she understood the true meaning of being a woman, what it was like to be free. She had been missing the most essential element: the power of her own body. All the books in the world could not have given her what Caine had given her tonight.
She slid off the rock and went to stand in front of him. He gazed over her shoulder, and when she shifted into his line of vision, he focused over her other shoulder.
She laid her hand on his arm. “Look at me. Please.”
Reluctantly, he did as she asked, but Bliss couldn’t see his eyes, just the stubborn jut of his jaw, the tension in his neck, the barely contained aura of a man on the verge of anarchy.
“I didn’t use any protection,” he said into the ensuing silence.
“I know.”
“Don’t you understand? You could be carrying my child.” His laugh was harsh as he dragged a hand through his hair. “Christ, what have you done to me? I’ve never been careless. You’ve muddled my mind.”
“I wanted it as much as you. I’m to blame, as well. But it was my first time; certainly nothing could come of it. I really don’t think—”
“That’s right,” he cut her off brutally. “You don’t think. You’re like poison. And you’re killing me.” His voice seemed to hold a lifetime of condemnation. “God, you’re killing me.”
For a haunting second, he stared at her as though she was a stranger and he had lost his way, a displaced, uncertain traveler who had ended up somewhere he had not intended. She wanted to reach out to him, to ease the fierce line of his jaw, smooth away the harshness around his mouth, but the moment evaporated.
“You’re so smart and yet so bloody damn naïve,” he said in a rough voice. “Go home. Run as far and fast as you can—and leave me the hell alone.”
He pushed away from the boulder, brushing her aside as he walked toward the cliffs…almost as if he would walk right off.
The Pleasure Seekers Page 15