by Diana Palmer
Her heart ran wild. Just to hear him admit it in that deep, slow voice was enough to increase her pulse rate. She watched his face come closer, his eyes fall to her soft mouth. Her breath caught; being close to him was exquisitely sweet.
He saw the expression on her face and it aroused him unbearably to know how much pleasure she felt when he came close. His heart felt like a drum inside him as he brushed his hard mouth across her soft one.
“Kate,” he groaned when he felt her immediate response. He drew her gently against him and his mouth opened.
She let him kiss her, drowning in the sweetness of being near him, being wanted by him. If this was all he could ever give her, it would be almost enough.
She moaned softly at the gentle penetration of his tongue inside the sweet darkness of her mouth, at the achingly tender caress of his fingers just under her arms as they moved with delicate precision toward her breasts.
Without any sense of self-preservation, she drew back to give him total access to her body.
“This is so sweet with you,” he whispered huskily against her mouth as his thumbs found just the outer edges of her breasts and began to trace the swell. His mouth nuzzled hers, and he felt like flying, his powerful body vibrating with a totally new kind of pleasure.
Kate couldn’t speak at all. His hands were arousing her to a fever of passion. She wanted him to touch her. She looked up at him, adoring him with her eyes as his mouth taunted hers.
He smiled tenderly at her open hunger. It amazed him that she could still welcome him after the way he’d treated her. Love, he thought dazedly, must be a powerful thing, to forgive so much. He wanted to give her pleasure, whether he felt it or not. He wanted to adore her with his hands, his mouth, to know the sweetness of her body in satiation.
She tried to lift her arms around his neck and grimaced when the left one wouldn’t move up without pain.
“Don’t do that,” he whispered, smoothing the aching muscles under her left arm. “You’re not well enough to use that arm, even to hold me with it.”
She was burning for him, aching. “Jacob,” she breathed adoringly.
He brushed his mouth over her closed eyes. “I’ll hold you,” he whispered back, “but not too close. I don’t want to hurt that rib.”
One lean arm slid behind her, gently supporting her, and he looked down at the caftan as he slowly drew his thumb onto her breast and saw the peak clearly outlined under the silky fabric.
Kate could hardly breathe. That light, teasing touch was madly exciting. She rested her cheek against his broad shoulder, watching the play of emotion on his dark face as he touched her.
“I never gave a damn about this kind of love play before,” he whispered. “My God, it’s exciting.”
She touched the lean fingers that were caressing her, fascinated by the pleasure they gave, her own hand trembling on them. “Yes.”
His dark eyes lifted to search hers, sharing a new kind of intimacy with her. “Still afraid of me?” he whispered.
“Not…like this,” she said shyly.
The tips of his fingers drew across the taut nipple and her breath caught. He watched her eyes, swelling with pride at the way she was reacting to such very light lovemaking. “Do you like it?”
Her body was trembling. “Yes.”
As her coworkers had said, she was painfully honest, even when it must have bruised her pride. “I like it, too,” he breathed. “I haven’t touched a woman, in any way, since that night with you.”
She found it difficult to talk at all. “Haven’t…you?”
“I dream about you,” he whispered, easing his mouth down against hers. “Night after lonely night, I dream about what you gave me….”
The words dissolved into an aching groan as he kissed her, and even that was different. There was tenderness in him now, along with an almost tangible desire.
She accepted his mouth as gently as she accepted the hand that slowly, surely, covered her breast. She made a soft sound under his mouth at the tiny consummation after the agony of longing his fingers had caused. Her own hand held his there, caressed it softly, savored the deep, aching pleasure of his touch on her body.
“Making love to you…gives me such pleasure,” he whispered against her lips. His mouth opened, brushing lazily, softly over her own, deeply arousing. His knees felt weak, his body felt lighter than air, as if he could fly. His free hand slid into her thick hair, savoring its silkiness while his other hand grew gently insistent, his fingers tracing the hard peak, feeling her own fingers touching, coaxing.
“Jacob,” she moaned. She caught his hand in hers, and he stopped, letting her lift it away.
“All right,” he whispered. “I’ll stop.”
“No.” Shyly, she drew his hand back to her body.
His body went rigid. He looked at her with an explosive kind of protectiveness surging inside him.
“No, sweetheart,” he whispered tenderly. “No, not now.”
She blushed, averting her face. She’d offered herself to him, and he’d rejected her just like he had before…
He tilted her chin up and made her look at him. “I want you,” he said softly. “Right now there’s nothing in the world I want more than to lie you down on that sofa and strip you and draw you under my body in passion.” He shuddered at his own description, then drew himself up short. “But you’ve got a busted rib, little Kate, and for all that tenderness we just shared, I don’t feel like being a gentle lover right now.” He bent, crushing his mouth roughly against hers. “I feel like that, Kate,” he breathed as his teeth nipped softly at her full lower lip. “I want to throw you down and ravish you…!”
Her breath caught. She clutched at his hard arms; the hunger for him was so strong.
“Yes, you want that, too, don’t you?” he asked huskily, watching her face. “Even after last time….”
“I came so close last time,” she whispered, shaking. “So close, and I could almost touch the sun, and then it was over.”
He seemed to stop breathing. He’d thought that she hated sex because of what he’d done to her; she’d even said that it was horrible… Of course, if she’d thought so, she wouldn’t be letting him touch her now.
He framed her face in his hands. “Say that again,” he whispered.
She felt shy and embarrassed all at once. “You heard me,” she faltered.
“I hope I did,” he breathed fervently, probing her eyes. “My God, you can’t imagine how it hurt my pride when you said it was ‘horrible….’”
Her lips fell open. She hadn’t even considered his point of view. Her face colored, but she didn’t lower her eyes. “Oh, Jacob, no…I didn’t mean…I felt empty. All that hunger, and I felt that there should have been something more, and there wasn’t. It was kind of like a sneeze that backs up…” She smiled self-consciously and then she did lower her eyes. “I wanted to explain, but it was so difficult. I didn’t understand what was happening to me.”
“Oh, my God,” he whispered. He drew her against him, protective, his hands holding her head, cradling it to his chest. He closed his eyes. “So that was it.” He nuzzled his face against her soft hair. “I should have known, but when I realized how innocent you were, I wasn’t surprised that it might have seemed horrible. A man in the throes of passion isn’t the best kind of partner for a virgin.”
“You wouldn’t have been that way if I hadn’t pushed you,” she admitted. “I’d read all those things I did in a big, sexy novel, and when the heroine did it, the hero was rather reserved and slow…”
He actually laughed. “No wonder they call it fiction,” he mused.
“I didn’t want you to stop,” she whispered. “I knew if you thought I was a virgin, you’d go away and I’d never see you again.”
“You’d have seen me again, all right. Or didn’t you realize that I was just as attracted to you as you were to me?”
“Not at the time,” she replied. She sighed, content to stand forever in his ge
ntle embrace.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m happy.”
He realized with a start that he was, too. Happiness wasn’t something he normally contemplated. He enjoyed life well enough; he liked his work. But happiness… He looked down at the dark head so trusting against his broad chest and felt flooded with contentment. She made him feel protective and tender and ablaze with passion. An odd mixture to be aroused by a little virgin.
That amused him, and he chuckled softly. “I’m tired,” he said. He kissed her hair. “And you should be, even if you aren’t. I’m going to carry you back to bed, and then I’m going to turn in, too. The book work can wait. It’s been a damned long day.”
She felt vague disappointment. It had been so sweet to stand in his embrace. “You don’t have to carry me….” she began.
He lifted her gently, smiling at her. “Yes, I do. I like carrying you. It makes me feel manly and strong and macho and all those other descriptive words that men aren’t supposed to feel in our enlightened society.”
He started off down the hall and she laughed gently, sighing. “I like being carried,” she admitted. “It makes me feel feminine and protected and vulnerable and all those other descriptive words that women aren’t supposed to feel when they’re liberated.”
“I guess you and I are throwbacks to another age, Kate.”
“I expect so.” She closed her eyes, savoring the strength of his arms, the masculine scent of him as he carried her down the long hall into her room, and laid her on the bed.
He bent over her, his hair slightly mussed, his shirt open at the throat, his body powerful in that arched position, his dark eyes glittering down at her. “Lucky girl,” he murmured wickedly, “to have a broken rib at such a convenient time.”
She smiled up at him. As protective as he’d suddenly become, she didn’t think it likely that he’d take advantage of her. “Thank you for bringing me back here,” she murmured. “I hope you sleep well.”
He bent and brushed his mouth over her forehead carelessly. “If you wake up frightened, come find me. I’ll take you in with me for the rest of the night.”
“Oh, you couldn’t…!”
“No one would know, Kate,” he said quietly. “Hank sleeps until eight, and Janet doesn’t do the bedrooms until noon. I’d make sure you were in your own bed before I got ready to leave. And nothing would happen, despite the way I’ve teased you tonight,” he added firmly. “I’ve made one big mistake with you. I’m not going to compound it by adding another seduction to the list.”
And how was she supposed to interpret that, she wondered as he turned out the light, smiled at her, wished her good-night and shut the door.
She closed her eyes with a sigh and found that she was, after all, pretty sleepy. But somewhere in the middle of the night, machine guns started firing all around her and she screamed, sitting straight up in the darkness with terror choking her.
Chapter 9
The door opened seconds later, and the light went on. Jacob was beside her in an instant. Apparently he’d been to bed, because he was wearing navy-blue pajama bottoms and nothing else. His broad chest was sensuously bare, as she’d rarely seen it, rippling with darkly tanned muscle and thick hair that ran in a wedge down past his pajama trousers.
“Nightmare?” he asked gently, studying her pale, tearstained face.
“Yes. The gun…” She put her face in her hands. “Oh, Jacob, will they never stop?”
“One day, I expect. Come on.”
He moved the covers aside and lifted her gently against his broad, hair-matted chest. She curled close, loving the spicy smell of his body, delighting in the feel of the thick hair under her cheek and her free hand.
“Don’t do too much of that,” he murmured with black humor as he turned out her light and closed the door on his way back to his own room with her.
“Hmm?” she asked drowsily.
“Stroking my chest with that little hand,” he whispered at her ear. “It arouses me.”
“Oh.” She stilled her fingers with a small laugh at her own ignorance. “Sorry.”
“Yes. So am I.” He carried her into his dark room and kicked the door shut behind them. “Hold on. Every time I get up in the night, the bed moves from where I left it.”
She smiled at the admission, and sighed gently when he put her down on the sheets, which were still warm from his body. A second later he slid into the bed beside her.
“Come here,” he murmured, drawing her head against his shoulder. “Just lie still and don’t play with my chest, and everything will be fine.”
“I’ve never slept with anyone before,” she confessed drowsily.
“You slept with me,” he reminded her.
“We didn’t sleep.”
He sighed heavily. “No, we didn’t.” He brushed his lips against her forehead. “Is it getting easier, that blight on your spotless conscience?” he asked gently.
“A little.”
“Would it get easier,” he asked, his voice deepening, “if we married?”
She wasn’t sure she’d heard him at all. She stiffened a little in the darkness, aware of his warmth and strength and quick breathing beside her.
“Think about it, Kate,” he said. “You might get used to the idea.”
“I won’t let you marry me out of guilt, Jacob,” she said finally. “Marriage seems to be hard enough even when people love each other. And we don’t,” she added, forcing herself to tell the lie.
He knew it was a lie, of course. He smiled in the darkness, and touched her face. “Suppose I told you that I loved you,” he asked, thinking how comfortable the words felt, even though he didn’t quite mean them.
“Suppose you told me that Warlance was in Tibet,” she said. She closed her eyes, wishing with all her heart that he could say those exquisite words and mean them.
“Aren’t you tired of living alone?” he asked, changing tactics. “We could live together—like friends, if that’s how you want it.”
It would solve all her problems and create more at the same time. She didn’t know how she could live with him and face the day-to-day anguish of hiding her true feelings while she got used to his indifference.
“No, Jacob,” she said. “It wouldn’t work. But thank you.”
That caught him on the raw. He was trying to do the right thing, to ease her conscience, to take care of her, to make up for what he’d done. And she was throwing the offer back at him.
“Listen, honey, there are plenty of women who’d give their eyeteeth to marry me, even just for my money,” he said curtly.
“So marry one of them,” she replied, forcing her tone to be light and careless.
“Most women don’t want a platonic marriage.”
“Other women wouldn’t, I expect,” she faltered.
“I don’t want other women,” he said coldly, and then felt himself go rigid with the knowledge that it was the truth. He didn’t want to look at anyone except Kate, much less go to bed with anyone else. “If I can’t have you, I’ll go without.”
In the darkness, her own heartbeat sounded very loud. She stared at the dark ceiling. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. Maybe I’ve got a guilty conscience. I don’t go around seducing virgins. I hurt you, and remembering it hurts me. Maybe I’ve got a hang-up.”
“You’ll get over it.”
“Will you?” he asked. He rolled over, looking down at her in the faint glow from the outside security lights. “Will you forget that night, as long as you live?”
“Well, no, but…”
“Will you ever want another man to make love to you?” he persisted.
“No.” It sounded blunt, but it was the way she felt. “No, I couldn’t let any other man touch me. Only you… that way.”
His body burned with pride. Even though he’d hurt her, she hadn’t stopped wanting him. She loved his touch, and he knew it, and it made him feel like a giant.
“Only me.” He brushed his mouth over her closed eyes, and his hand smoothed down over her caftan, quickening her breathing as he touched her breasts and found their tips already hard and welcoming. “Someday, I’ll take you right up to the sun in my arms, Kate.”
“Ja…cob,” she bit off.
He found the buttons under her arm, and unfastened them, enough to allow the slow, gentle intrusion of his hand onto bare flesh.
“Oh, God, you’re soft, Kate,” he breathed, sliding his fingers tenderly over her bare breasts. “Soft and exquisitely silky. Baby, you’re so sweet to touch.”
She moaned helplessly as her body turned to flame. Her good arm lifted. She found the buttons on the shoulder and fumbled them open and pulled the fabric completely aside.
“Yes,” he whispered, feeling her hunger reflected in his own body. “Yes, I want it, too.”
He moved her into the thin strip of light that filtered in through the window. “I want to see this sweet body,” he said huskily. “I want to get drunk on the sight of you.”
Her body trembled as she saw his eyes, felt his hands blatantly caressing her. His gaze went to her body, and she saw him smile at the wild reaction he coaxed from her as he teased the tips of her breasts.
“Lie still,” he whispered, bending. “I don’t want to hurt you. No, honey, don’t start arching up toward my mouth. I’ll give you what you want without any coaxing.”
He kissed the swollen softness with tender lips, sliding his hands under her to support her, lift her. He heard her sharp, gasping little moans, and had to fight not to deepen the drugging intimacy. But he knew how delicate she still was. He couldn’t have her, not yet. But he could make love to her in this exquisitely tender way. He could have those sweet little cries she’d never given to another man; he could touch her as no other hands ever had, or would.
It made him drunk with pleasure. In his passion, he nipped her, and she caught his head and made a frightened sound.
He lifted his chin to look at her, smiling down. “Men get carried away, remember?” he whispered. “You’re silky and sweet under my mouth, and when I think about how virginal you are, I feel savagely male.”