by Louisa Trent
Danger was close. She felt its hold on her, and try as she might, she couldn't shake it loose. Her throat contracted. Her burning lungs clenched. Danger was as close to her now, as it had been that night ten years ago.
"A storm is moving in," she whispered. "I can feel its chill in the air."
Or was that chill inside her?
So difficult to tell at times. She was cold, so very cold. She shivered, despite her resolve not to, and shrank into the folds of the Persian shawl.
"I am here, Lily. Right here, beside you. I won't leave you."
The distant voice belonged to Doyle. She knew that now, though the usual deep timbre of his vocal cords was reed-thin and muted as if he stood outside a long, dark tunnel and she was trapped on the inside, well beyond reach. Recognizing that there was nothing he could do to help her, she looked toward him, anyway; Doyle had always been her rock in the storm.
Poor man! Lines of tension bracketed both sides of his firm mouth. She had caused that tension, caused those lines. It was only right that she put his mind at ease, to tell him...
What? She had no idea what to tell him.
Her cold fingers were lifted, swallowed up in an enormity of callused warmth. "Hold my hand," he urged. "I won't leave you, not this time. You have nothing to fear."
"Wrong, Doyle. You are so wrong. I have everything to fear. Especially in the rain."
Pulling her hand free from his grasp, she ran barefoot towards the beach, the wet grass slippery between her toes.
Her feet were bare the night Frank died too. She remembered how little wet slivers of bloody grass had stuck to them. She remembered how soggy the sand had felt underfoot, and how quickly the hem of her nightgown grew sticky. And she remembered a smell too, but she never could place it. The smell burned the inside of her nose in a very unpleasant way, choking her, making her eyes smart. That horrid smell interfered with her respiration.
Doyle caught up with her, just as she started to wheeze. She pointed to the Widow's Walk. "I found Frank's body there. On the beach. He lay face down in the sand with the sea washing over him, taking some of the blood away. But I knew that he was dead." She waved a hand before her nose. "What is that horrid chemical aroma? Do you smell it, Doyle? What is it?"
He brought his arms up around her, cradling her cheek under his chin. "I don't know."
He chafed her arms. Her face. Her hands. "Let me take you back inside and get you warm. We could have that brandy you offered," he said, leading her back to the cottage. "Or, I could make you a hot cup of anything."
"Soon. I shall go inside soon."
She would not give into cowardice! Not this time! Not ever again. She must face the past; find the truth. "It's time for me to tell you about that night. All of it. Every dirty, sordid detail."
"Tell me nothing, if the telling makes you ill."
Tears wet her cheeks. "You cannot have it both ways! You cannot insist I remain in my little numb cocoon and then demand the return of the real me. I must relive that night to get that old me back."
She pushed off against his hard chest and walked away, towards the narrow Widow's Walk.
"Frank's head was crushed," she cried back to him. "His skull must have bounced against the rocks when he fell. I pulled him out of the surf. He was so heavy..."
Doyle came after her. "Let me put you to bed. We can discuss all this tomorrow, after you have had a good night's sleep..."
"I never sleep. I don't eat. Breathing is an effort," she revealed, backing away, hands raised to ward Doyle off. "I don't like to be touched. I cannot..."
"You cannot what?" Doyle asked her in a very clear, very clipped way.
"Show ... physical affection toward a man. Even a gentlemanly kiss on the cheek is enough to trigger a violent reaction in me. Save with you. With you, I wish physicality," she said, voice woeful. "Anyway, Charles told me to fix it. To fix me, I presume. As though I was broken. And I suppose I am broken."
A shadow moved across Doyle's eyes. Then he shrugged, like it was of no import that she couldn't bear to be touched. She knew differently. The inability to tolerate the physical aspects of a relationship, of a marriage, would soon toll the death knell of that union.
She raised her eyes to his, said distraughtly, "I have no passion in me any more."
His reply was dry, even droll. "You have plenty of passion. You just had the wrong man."
"The wrong man. Yes," she murmured disjointedly. "The wrong man came into my bedchamber. I was alone and it was raining. He crept up on me and frightened me. I was looking in the mirror and there he was, materialized from out of the darkness."
"Lily, sweetheart, who are you talking about?"
Who, indeed?
"My nightgown was all undone. My chest looked white and pale. I touched my breasts, the same way you did. I remember thinking how cold I felt and damp just as the candles were blown out. And I knew ... I knew ... I was not alone in the room any more. I heard heavy breathing."
"Whose heavy breathing?"
"It was too dark too see. It all happened so fast. I was thrown on the bed face down, held there. My attacker never said a word. Not one single word."
"No!" Doyle roared.
That long-ago night, she thought Doyle was the one hurting her. Now she must speak the loathsome words, confess her most hidden thoughts, give that ultimate betrayal to the man she had professed to love.
Abandoning Doyle in his time of need, leaving him alone to pick up the remains of his shattered life ... those were not her only transgressions, or even her worst sins. Her deadliest sin of all had been committed silently in her heart; it was her loss of faith in Doyle.
"You were angry with me that night for trying to seduce you yet again, and so you left. I thought you had changed your mind. I thought you were coming back to me. I was so happy. I opened my arms--to you. I cried your name. "
Doyle groaned. "No, no, no."
"The hands holding me down on the bed were ... were ... hurtful. Angry hands. I didn't fight back, not right away, because ... because ... I thought you were my attacker, Doyle. I thought you came back to rape me. I am so sorry I thought that horrible thing of you."
Doyle swept her up in his arms and raced for the house; the wet ground trembled under his feet. "No more tonight," he whispered against her cheek.
He carried her inside the cottage, climbed the stairs to her bedchamber with her in his arms, placing her feet gently upon the floor.
"Please--I must say the rest." The crook of his shoulder muffled her insistence. "Upon realizing you were not the one hurting me, I fought back. But it was already too late. If not for the person who entered my bedchamber and pulled my attacker off me, I would have been raped. I--I ran from the house. Out into the rain. I hid in the shed beside the Widow's Walk, until I heard a scream. I came out, saw a body in the water. It was horrible. How could I leave him there? I could not! I knew I must do something and so I ... I stumbled down the rocks after him.
"I was too late. Too late. Much too late. And then you were there, looking at me as though you hated me, and Frank's death still gladdened me! I felt nothing but relief."
"Why would you not? The man deserved to die."
Doyle of the fierce tone and moral superiority; he always knew right from wrong. She was not as sure as he. "You misunderstand! I was relieved, not because it was Frank, but because it wasn't you lying there on the rocks. I didn't know, I still don't know, who was in my bedchamber that night. Who attacked me? Who rescued me? Who was it? Who saved me and killed Frank?"
Fear ticked louder. She was breaking apart and only Doyle might save her now.
She looked up into his face, searching his face for the answer to her question. "Please, Doyle. Just tell me..."
"I didn't return to the cottage until you were already on the beach and Frank was dead. To my everlasting sorrow, I didn't rescue you and I didn't kill Frank. I wish to Christ I had!" he exploded. "All these wasted years I blamed you for what happened that night, wh
en it should have been myself I blamed. For everything. I should have gone after you in Boston. I should have brought you home."
He took a deep breath. "My damnable pride prevented that course of action. I thought you had betrayed me with Frank. I should have known your fierce honor would never have allowed for betrayal. Well, I have no pride anymore. I wanted you when you were eighteen. I want you now."
The ticking inside her head quieted: Doyle's words had diffused her fear...
"I know I have given you no reason to trust me, but would you? Would you trust me, Lily? Would you let me make love to you?"
In an agony of self-perception, Lillian knew how Doyle must see her: a woman obsessed by dark and destructive memories, a woman truly on the edge of madness. And in that realization it suddenly struck her that she was not the only one taking a chance in this: Doyle was taking a chance tonight too.
Why should she not have her heart's desire for once in her life? Why not give into selfishness this one time? Her reputation was already destroyed, her chance of happiness with it--why not take what he offered?
She wished to know this man's desire, to respond to that desire with her body. Her love for Doyle was assigned to the past. They could have no future. But they did have right now, and they could have this...
Removing the Persian shawl, she climbed atop the bed. "Show me I am still capable of passion, Doyle."
He too disrobed, and just as quickly. "I know you have passion within you," he said softly, kneeling on the bed at her feet, his words barely discernable above the fall of rain outside the window. "But I wish..."
Her finger silenced him. "Wish for nothing more, save this," she admonished, opening her legs for him. "Do not turn me away, not this time."
He placed his hand, butterfly-soft, on her rouged labia and she moaned.
He dipped his head to her body's carmine-pigmented center, and she grabbed fistfuls of his unruly black hair. Her spine arching, her breathing gone shallow, then ragged, he hurled her into passion.
He was touching her, kissing her, stroking her, mouthing every part that proclaimed her a woman. When he licked the inside of her thighs, then pierced her core with his tongue, she went liquid as he drank from her. She floated on a sensual dream, her sighs as soft as the rain, bright white lights sparkling against her pupils. Her pulse quickened, wanting, needing, more than another lonely climax; she wanted and needed him inside her.
"Tell me what you feel," he coaxed, lifting his head. "Let me inside you. Your mind as well as your body."
"I don't have the right words..."
"Make them up, if need be."
She told him the only way she knew how. "There is a precipice. The Widow's Walk," she panted, fighting for each breath she took. "The sky is overhead, the rocks are at my back, and the sea crashing is below me, and I feel ... I feel as though I can fly."
"You can," he whispered against the opening to her body. "Let go. Don't be afraid. Let it happen," he growled between the sharp thrusts of his tongue. "I won't lose you. I promise to be right here when you return."
"Together," she pleaded. "Let's fly together! I won't do it without you. Not this time!"
He pulled away.
She thought she had gambled and lost. She thought that he had finally given up on her, that she would remain forever frozen inside herself.
But then he loomed up over her body. "Your breathing, Lily ... it's labored."
"I don't care!"
He nodded, grimly. "If need be, I shall breathe for both of us."
And with that promise given, he slanted his mouth over her mouth, breathing his life into her. The taste of her own sex on his lips, he started to enter her.
She had never told him that she was a virgin without a maidenhead, a woman with a reputation but with no real experience. And though she had desired him since she was seventeen years old, his penetration of her untried body hurt.
He must have suspected her pain, for he stopped.
"Don't you dare pull away from me again," she sobbed.
"Never again," he answered and pushed.
His kiss was hot and fierce, a claiming, as he started to move.
Their joining was tenuous and shallow. He rocked her with his body, slow and easy like the rain. Once. Twice. Three gentle surges and her feet left the ground. Surely she was flying then?
"Doyle!" she cried and soared higher still. She spun out into space, a wanton free fall into nothingness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Just as he said he would, Doyle waited for her.
When she floated back down to earth, she was staring up into his face. Less than a heartbeat later, she was looking down at him.
"I thought a change of perspective was in order," he said with a huge, self-satisfied grin. He kissed her cheek. "You fly with grace, my lady."
"I am shattered. I may never leave this bed again."
"Fine with me, as long as we take flight at least twice a day. I think only of you in this regard, as the activity seems beneficial to your lung capacity," he said smugly, his hands cupping her buttocks, his thumbs stroking downward along the crevice.
She gave a carnal shiver.
He shifted, settling her more comfortably atop him, before kissing her lips. Breaking the contact, he said, "You had never been with a man before. I need you to explain the circumstances behind your lie to me."
She couldn't tell him about the blackmail, but she could tell him some of the truth. "I lost my maidenhead in a riding accident on El Diablo. I took him out again after you told me not to."
"I see. Still, why lead me to believe you were experienced? I presumed you had already slept with Frank..."
"Knowing my grandmother would be away that night, I agreed to receive Frank in my bedchamber. Then it rained and you came to me. I never expected you would, and I never expected Frank would arrive after you left. You see before you a virgin by default, not by virtue."
"Go to bed with me, let me touch you, and then go to Frank? You never would have done that, Lily! It was my fault for not realizing that fact all those years ago. You are mine. Totally mine. What is this all about...?"
To get his mind off the discrepancies in her motivation, a change of subject was in order. She came up on her knees, uncertain, unsure, of what to do, but willing to learn.
At first, her hands moved hesitantly over him. But with reawakened sexual desire came a new boldness; she ran both hands over his legs, abdomen, and chest, finally plucking at his nipples.
He shivered nearly convulsively.
"I like when you do this to me," she said, and suckled him the way he did to her.
"Harder," he moaned. "Leave teeth marks."
She rolled the end of his nipple with her tongue, and then bit the flesh so different from hers.
"So good," he rasped.
She kissed lower. "May I?" she asked, when she came to his penis.
"Christ, please..." he groaned.
The groan surprised her. She had never been sure of herself with Doyle, never confident that their attraction was as strong for him as it was for her. After all, he had always put her off. But with a new womanly wisdom, she saw now what she was unable to see as a girl: he desired her as much as she desired him. Her body pleased him. Penetrating her had pleased him. That he was her first lover pleased him. Very much. And this, touching him, pleased him too.
"Your penis is large." She fingered the circumference of the head.
His sex hardened even more. "Yes."
"Larger than most men?"
"Yes. The pain of accommodation will lesson next time, but there will still be some pain until you become accustomed to intercourse."
She shrugged, not denying the pain, but not willing to stop because of it.
Lillian circled the thick shaft with two eager fingers. "Your testicles are quite large too," she felt the need to comment when she cupped him underneath. "Heavy as well."
"No more investigation for now, Lily. Try to get some rest."
"I am not at all tired." Grinning, she mounted him, thighs open, semen running out of her and puddling on his belly.
He didn't seem to mind the mess.
He was hot. Smooth. Hard. Pulsating under her fingertips.
He groaned again, louder this time, his eyes glittering like black diamonds. His strong hands kneaded her bottom, his big fingers tensing, clenching. His jaw lifted to nuzzle her bobbing nipple. The grating of his teeth, alternating with the coarse rasp of his tongue, was just too much. Wave after wave of lust coursed through her.
Did he know what he did to her?
She looked down into his face and saw that he knew exactly what he was doing to her: Doyle was playing with her. Making her want him. Making her wet. Teasing her so that her body would be prepared for him.
He moistened her cleavage with a line of kisses. "You burn with passion, Lily. How could you ever have thought differently?"
She gave herself over to that passion. Her breasts felt so swollen. So heavy. Tight. She was throbbing, aching for him. She was keeping many secrets from Doyle; her greed for him was not one of them.
She held herself poised above him.
Rolling her hips, tilting her pelvis, she seduced him.
"I think we should wait," he growled.
"Please?" she begged.
He eyed the saturated notch between her legs.
"Are you ready? Open the slit for me. Let me see."
She immediately parted her labia.
"The folds are inflamed," he pronounced.
"But I need..."
"You need to be fucked. I know. Unfortunately, your passage is almost swollen closed."
"Please Doyle?" She licked her lips. Picking up his hand, she placed it at the entrance. "Pretty please?"
He fingered her clitoris. "I knew you would be insatiable." He sighed. "All right. You can have some, but not all of it."
"Thank you, sir." She lowered herself over him, the tendons in her thighs shaking, as she sank onto his thick, engorged shaft.
Her soft folds protested another invasion. Gritting her teeth, she pushed past the pain.