“Played rougher than you liked, did they?” he bit out. Lisa gasped, flinching as if he had struck her. He couldn’t seriously believe that she had wanted what had happened, could he? Her eyes searched his face, looking in vain for some sign of softening.
“If you wanted it that badly, honey, all you had to do was let me know. We could have worked something out,” he added, drawling.
As the import of that statement sunk in, a white-hot burst of rage lent sudden strength to Lisa’s limbs. Gasping, abruptly sitting upright, her mouth contorting with fury, Lisa clenched her fist and swung it at him with instinctive violence. The blow connected squarely with the bridge of his nose, snapping his head back.
“Goddammit!” he yelped, his eyes widening with surprise and then narrowing with anger and pain. His hand came up to gingerly test his nose. “You little bitch, I ought to beat hell out of you for that!”
He glared at her; Lisa glared back just as angrily.
“Why don’t you?” she dared him with breathless fury, too angry to consider the possible consequences. “You’re big enough! So come on, bully, hit me! After all, you’ve done it before!”
She was so angry that she was shaking with it, too angry to take full heed of the fact that he could break her into little pieces with one hand if he chose—and at the moment he looked to be in the mood to do it.
“Don’t tempt me,” he snorted, some of the taut whiteness fading from around his mouth as he surveyed the picture she made, sprawled naked in the grass, her blond hair in wild disarray and her green eyes flashing defiance. His eyes darkened as they took in the silky texture of her skin, tawny pale against the golden-brown grass. Then he smiled tauntingly.
“You look right at home, naked.” His words were as insulting as the look he passed over her. Lisa stuttered over a string of foul names for him, none of which quite made it out of her mouth.
“They attacked me, you pig! They were trying to rape me!” she finally managed to spit at him. Bloodlust shone from her eyes; she ached to kill him.
“Is that so?” That drawling voice was like gasoline to the already blazing fire of her anger. “Then tell me something, honey: if you’re so innocent in all of this, what the hell were you doing out here in the first place? You’re supposed to be confined to your tent, if I remember correctly. And where are your clothes? I don’t see them lying around anywhere, looking as if they were torn from your struggling body! All the evidence backs up what Lutz and Brady said: you led them on. Granted, they may have gotten a little carried away, but the way I see it, that’s more your fault than theirs!”
“You bastard!”
Lisa sprang to her feet, her fists clenching at her sides. Sam rose just as quickly; this time he was expecting her violence. As she lunged at him, he feinted, catching her by her hands, pulling her off balance. Then his shoulder made bruising contact with her soft stomach. Before she knew what was happening, he was hoisting her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Her head dangled helplessly, and her hair tangled down past his hips. Lisa struggled furiously, cursing as foully as she knew how, pounding his muscled back with her fists. The soft, taunting sound of his laughter flayed her like a many-thonged whip as he strode off with her.
“Last time you should have told me you like it rough. I would have obliged,” he remarked conversationally to her bare, heaving backside.
Outraged, Lisa sank her sharp little teeth into his back, feeling them sink through the heavy cotton of his shirt and into his flesh with intense satisfaction. Sam yelped, then whacked her bottom so hard that she screamed.
“Behave,” he said, the laughter suddenly, ominously absent from his voice. “Or I’ll make you damned sorry.”
The grimness of his tone convinced her as no amount of threats would have done that he meant what he said. Lisa was so furious that she could have chewed nails in half without a blink, but she had just enough sense left to know when to quit while she was ahead. Seething, she lay limply across his shoulder until a familiar landmark jolted her with the realization that they were almost there. God, he couldn’t mean to walk through camp with her hanging naked over his shoulder—could he?
“Put me down!” she ordered imperiously. He continued to stride on as if he hadn’t heard.
“Sam, put me down!” They had rounded the bend that brought them within sight of the camp.
“What’s the matter? You were ready enough to let Lutz and Brady—and me—see you naked. Don’t tell me a larger audience turns you off!”
“Dammit, they tried to rape me!” she cried, frustrated at his stubborn disbelief and furious at the same time.
“Oh, sure—just like I did that night in your tent, right?” Sam jeered, his voice biting. “Honey, you forget that I’ve seen you in action!”
His long legs continued to eat up the distance to the camp as he spoke. Lisa wriggled frantically, trying to throw herself to the ground, and was rewarded by another sharp slap on her rear.
“Sam, I swear I’m telling the truth!” she wailed in a last, desperate effort to convince him. Then it was too late. He was carrying her through the camp, apparently oblivious to the hoots and catcalls of the gathered men. Lisa shut her eyes tightly, feeling humiliation wash over her entire body in a crimson wave. Then he stopped, and she looked up to find that instead of returning her to her own tent, he had brought her to his, for what purpose she didn’t care to guess. He shouldered his way inside, dumped her unceremoniously on the floor, and turned to secure the tent flap, all without a word. As she struggled into a sitting position, face flushed and silver-blond hair curling wildly around her nakedness, Sam finished the task and swung back to stare down at her. Lisa quivered as she met the unrelenting diamond brilliance of his blue eyes.
“So they tried to rape you, huh?” he said gratingly. “You didn’t want what happened out there at all! Honey, the only way you’re going to convince me of that is to prove it to me!”
III
THOSE blue eyes fixed her like impaling shards of glass. Lisa’s own eyes widened to huge emerald pools as, without a word, Sam began to unbutton his shirt. When at last he shrugged free of it and tossed it aside, Lisa’s gaze traveled with a mixture of admiration and apprehension over the wide, bronzed shoulders and the flexing muscles of his arms and black-furred chest. A heavy leather holster strap crisscrossed his chest to hold a gleaming blue-black gun nestled just to the front of his left armpit. He unbuckled the strap, removing the whole deadly contraption and laying it carefully on the makeshift table. Then his hands moved to the buckle of his belt; he unfastened it with studied casualness. His eyes never left Lisa’s mesmerized face as his fingers searched for and found the zipper of his pants.
Suddenly Lisa’s shocked brain regained its ability to function. Move! it screamed, and she did, her mouth dry as she contemplated the test he clearly intended to administer. Hastily she scrambled to her feet, her hands shaking as she dragged the blanket from the cot and wrapped it securely around herself, tucking the ends into the hollow between her breasts. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow this to go any further; not like this, as an experiment into the state of her sexual readiness, for God’s sake! If she allowed it to happen, his taking of her body would be nothing but a barbaric act of domination, the age-old mastery of the female by the larger and stronger male. Why was she so horribly tempted?
Lisa bit her lower lip as she looked at Sam again and saw that he was now completely naked. Her hands came up to clutch the joined ends of the blanket covering her as he returned her look blandly, his mouth twisted into the merest suggestion of a sardonic smile. Of their own accord her eyes ran swiftly over his body, touching on the broad shoulders and widen muscled chest before following the beckoning trail of thick black hair downward past narrow hips and across a flat belly to long, powerfullooking legs. His upper body was deeply tanned, she saw with a curious little shiver, and so were the lower two-thirds of his legs. Which left quite a lot of pale skin in between . . . All at once Lisa realized
what she was doing. Horrified, she jerked her eyes away from him. Her face crimsoned.
“It’s a little late to play at being shy,” Sam taunted softly.
Lisa’s eyes flew to his face. It was hard, implacable. Her eyes flickered away again. To tell the truth, she was shy, she thought unhappily. Jeff had had a thing about privacy, and the few times they had actually made love he had insisted on complete darkness. Lisa had never really gotten a good look at him without his clothes. Her knowledge of the appearance of the male body was pretty much limited to some sexy pictures she had seen once in a women’s magazine she had taken unknowingly from a drugstore shelf. As she had flipped through the pages with idle curiosity, her shocked, fascinated gaze had been riveted by a layout of a bronzed, hairy, nude male. Almost instantly she had slammed the magazine shut, replacing it on the shelf with a guilty look around, hoping no one had seen her. But for months afterward her mind had returned at odd moments to re-create the disturbing image. . . . The embarrassing, unbelievable fact of the matter was that she had never really seen a naked man. Certainly not a man as blatantly, boldly naked as this one was, standing so casually before her with the increasing gloom of the tent’s interior doing nothing to disguise his flagrant masculinity. He looked so tall, so strong, so very male, with his corded muscles and look of limitless strength, that Lisa was suddenly more aware of herself as a woman than she had ever been before in her life. And at the moment, his body was telling her in a way that was impossible to mistake that he wanted her. . . .
“Come here, Lisa.” The words were quiet. Sam’s eyes glittered brightly blue as she looked up to meet them. Lisa swallowed, realizing with some distant part of her brain as she did so that her throat was beginning to ache quite badly. Then she took an instinctive step backward.
“You know you want to.” There was a wealth of meaning in Sam’s voice. Lisa mutely shook her head, backing another few paces. Her eyes never left his face. At her movement, his black-shadowed jaw clenched, and his mouth, beneath its faint smile, grew hard. Those blue eyes, as they watched her, seemed to freeze over.
“If you put me to the trouble of fetching you, you’ll regret it.” The threat was silky smooth, but it was unmistakably a threat. The smile had faded. Lisa felt the rhythm of her heartbeat increase as she faced the unwelcome fact that he could indeed make her regret it. With a sensation too complex to define, she realized that she was completely at his mercy.
“Look, this is silly. Either way, it’s not going to prove a thing,” she said jerkily, hoping to distract him from his purpose. She was very much afraid that if he touched her, she wouldn’t be able to resist. . . .
“I said come here!” There was no question that he meant it, and meant her to obey. Still, Lisa tried once more.
“If you would . . .”
“Come here, damn you!”
Lisa looked at him mutinously. His blue eyes were as cold and glittery as glaciers. A muscle twitched warningly in his jaw. She realized that she had pushed him as far as he would be pushed; to defy him further could be hazardous.
“Oh, all right,” she muttered ungraciously. Her head was high as she moved toward him. She didn’t stop until she was close enough so that he could reach out and touch her.
“Now, would you please . . .” Listen to reason was what she meant to say. She found herself addressing her words to the pulse beating with heavy insistence at the base of his brown throat, because she was suddenly, ridiculously unable to look either higher or lower. Ruthlessly he cut her off.
“Drop the blanket.”
This brought Lisa’s eyes up to his in a hurry. To her dismay, she saw that they were frozen, a diamond-hard layer of ice lit at the backs by a leaping blue fire.
“N-no.” Lisa, taken aback, uttered the negative instinctively. Then, as his eyes narrowed, she realized that she would have done better to be a shade more diplomatic in her reply. Still, she could not, would not, do as he said. It was time that she called a halt to this nonsense. He must be made to understand that she was not some little nobody whom he could order about and treat as he willed. Her green eyes met his bravely as she planned what she would say to make her position clear to him. Her hands clutched the blanket for dear life.
“Drop the blanket!”
The command cracked gunshot sharp. Startled, Lisa jumped about a foot in the air. Her hands nervelessly released their death grip on the blanket. It crumpled into an untidy heap at her feet. Stunned speechless by her unplanned capitulation, Lisa gaped down at her body. Her eyes then flew to Sam’s face. She was made scaldingly aware of her nakedness and the effect it was having on the man studying her by the sudden flare of undisguised lust in the eyes that ran comprehensively over her. As Sam’s gaze roamed with devastating thoroughness over every exposed inch of her skin, Lisa felt hot color creep into her cheeks. It was stupid and childish to feel so embarrassed, she knew. After all, the man had, by whatever quirk of fate, been her lover once already, and earlier this afternoon he had certainly seen all of her that there was to see. But she couldn’t help it. This—this hard assessment of her body made her want to crawl into the nearest hole and hide. Still, she was damned if she would cower before him like some Victorian maiden. Squaring her shoulders, she faced him proudly, challenge showing in her eyes.
“You are totally wrong in what you’re thinking, you know,” she said with what she felt was creditable composure. “Believe it or not, I certainly did not entice those—those animals to attack me. I was simply taking a bath in the creek. . . .”
Her voice trailed off, her bruised throat suddenly dry, when it became obvious that he wasn’t listening. His eyes were fixed hungrily on the golden globes of her breasts. Even as she broke off he was lifting a hand to trail his fingertips over the soft curves.
“Beautiful,” he murmured huskily. At his touch Lisa’s turncoat body betrayed her, her small, strawberry-pink nipples standing up like soldiers suddenly called to attention. Taking a deep shaky breath, she struggled to go on with what she had been saying.
“They were trying to rape me,” she got out distinctly, then reason fled as he cupped her breasts in his callused palms, running his thumbs lightly over the nipples. Lisa felt what was almost a physical pain deep in her belly. Her hands came up of their own accord to close around his strong wrists, attempting to still his maddening caresses. As she touched him he looked up in time to see her moisten her lower lip with the delicate pink tip of her tongue. He watched the tiny movement as if fascinated.
The passion that suddenly blazed in his eyes shook Lisa to the core. She closed her eyes in mute defense, then realized an instant later that she had made a tactical error. But by then it was too late. His mouth was on hers, hard and hot and compelling, kissing her with a fierceness that stopped her breath. Momentarily Lisa tried to resist, mentally scrambling for all the reasons why she should. It was worse than useless. Because, on the heels of more recent, shaming memories followed another one—the memory of a hard, thrusting body driving her wild. . . .
She was lost. She knew it even before her lips parted helplessly beneath his, before her mouth opened to admit the conquering warrior that was his tongue. As his arms closed around her waist to pull her against his nakedness, her own arms slid convulsively around his neck, clinging to him, her fingers ruffling through the thick black hair at the nape of his neck. She returned the kiss wildly, on fire for him, loving the feel of his body hair rasping against her soft breasts and stomach and thighs, loving the steely muscles of his back and shoulders as her hands ran over them with blind urgency, loving the taste of his mouth, the drugging heat and man-smell of his body. He bent her ruthlessly back against his arm as he kissed her, his big male body in complete control of her smaller female one. And she loved it. The knowledge was utterly shaming, totally unbelievable, but true.
His hands were moving on her skin, handling her with a rough expertise that left Lisa gasping. He stroked her breasts, his touch feather light, lingering over each quivering ni
pple until it throbbed and pleaded for his touch. Then his hands moved lower, caressing her slim waist and flat stomach as if he had all the time in the world. Finally his fingers crept lower still to find the soft mound of hair between her thighs. He laid his hand flat against what was rapidly becoming the pulsating center of her being. Lisa stiffened instinctively. Sam paid no attention to her sudden stillness; his fingers began to explore, and gradually Lisa relaxed. What he was doing to her felt so good, so right, that she was soon melting in his arms, leaning heavily against him as his big body supported her weight, letting him do with her what he would. Her eyes were tightly shut. She didn’t even hear the soft moaning sound rising from deep within her throat.
“Want me?” she heard him growl. Lisa had moved beyond reason, beyond shame, conscious only of the aching need he was deliberately arousing. Jerkily she nodded without opening her eyes.
“Say it,” he ordered softly. Lisa hesitated, held back by some last dim flicker of pride. Then he lowered his mouth to nuzzle gently at one soft breast.
“Yes, oh yes . . .” She gasped.
“Yes, what?” His voice was a hoarse whisper. “Yes. you want me, or . . .”
His mouth suckled seductively at her breast. Lisa felt heat spiral crazily inside her. Her hands came up to clutch at his head, holding it in place. Her one fear was that he would stop.
“Yes, I want you.” She surrendered without a struggle. She did want him, she thought hazily, so much. . . .
Sam swung her up in his arms, holding her cradled against his chest. Lisa clung to him feverishly as he carried her the few paces to the cot. Her head was thrown back against his shoulder, her delicately flushed face tilted up to his. Her eyes were closed so that her lashes formed feathery dark crescents against her cheeks. Desire for him was melting her bones; her heart was pounding so fiercely that she thought she might die of it. Her whole body burned in anticipation.
To Love a Man Page 5