Wild Midnight Page 13

  She felt him go still. “D’Arcy? Is that where you’ve been? In Charleston with D’Arcy?”

  “Get out of my house!” she burst out. “Don’t you know this is ... this is attacking me? You could be arrested for this!” Shaking, she tried to gather her wits, to appeal to any sense of reasonableness in him. “Think what you’re doing! You ... you can’t be totally crazy!”

  He didn’t release her. His hand tightly held her wrist at her shoulder, his body cradling her against his thighs. There was no sound but his quick, even breathing.

  “Crazy as a bat,” she heard him murmur. “I thought you knew.” He paused. “But it doesn’t keep me from making love to you.”

  A faint cool touch of air seemed to play over Rachel’s disordered dress, open in front; over her exposed breasts, over the tingling nerve points of her lips that had felt his kiss, over her face and her throat, where a pulse hammered wildly. She was still clothed but she had never felt so naked, or so vulnerable.

  “Now listen.” That was her voice trying to be sensible. Trying to deny the closeness of him, which trapped her and filled her mind. Rachel closed her eyes. If she could just shut him out.

  “I don’t know what you are trying to do to me.” Her voice sounded thin to her ears, strangely confused. “I am not going to sign any papers. I won’t let you humiliate me. I won’t let you trick me again!”

  “Oh, hell. I’m not asking you to sign any papers,” he said in a fierce tone. “Forget that.” He was moving now, lean muscled body and arms twined around her, forcing her toward the bed. “I can make you want me, honey, you know that.” He stumbled against the suitcase she’d dropped, and she heard him swear softly. “I want to get you out of your clothes. I don’t want to be rough and tear them, but I can’t wait any longer.”

  She tried to control her wild trembling as she fell against the bed. She struggled up again quickly and he pushed her down. “I have to talk to you!” she cried. “We can discuss things calmly. If you will only turn on the light—”

  “We can talk later.” When she tried to slide her feet over the edge of the bed he flung them back. “Stay there. I don’t want to have to chase you, I’m not in the mood.”

  Rachel sprawled back on the bed, hearing the rustling sound of his clothes being pulled off and thrown to the four corners of the bedroom. Then the bed creaked with his weight as he sat down to pull off his boots. She heard the bump of one hitting the floor.

  She pulled herself up into a sitting position, straining her eyes to make out the outline of his shoulders, the skin glistening faintly as he bent to pull off the other boot. “You have no right to come into my house to—ugh!” He had turned quickly to grab her dress at the hemline, dragging it as far as her face. “You can’t” she cried, her voice muffled. He yanked it over her arms and then all the way off.

  “The hell I can’t. I’m not going to stop now, lady. I want you too much.”

  His hands reached for her, and before she could push him away they snaked around her to the catch of her brassiere. He pulled the straps down her arms and peeled it away, then leaned his big body to hers, the bare skin of his chest brushing the sensitive swollen tips of her breasts.

  “You know you want me to make love to you, I don’t know what you’re yelling about. Rachel, Rachel,” he suddenly ground out as his lips abruptly took her tight, hurting nipples and drew them into his mouth.

  As she moaned helplessly, still struggling, his devouring lips dragged across her breasts, pulling at her flesh, nipping softly, tasting her to his ruthless satisfaction.

  “What the hell are you doing to me? Why is it I can’t get enough of you?” She felt the hard, trembling touch of his hands as he spanned her waist carefully and then outlined the soft generous curve of her hips. “I’ll make love to you good, honey.” His tongue licked her feverish skin with tender persuasiveness. “I’ll kiss you all over your beautiful white silky body and be gentle, I promise—just give me a chance. God, I don’t know how I’m going to last as it is.” He slid his fingers into the band of her panties and stripped them down her legs. He grasped her ankle quickly. “Don’t kick me, don’t do anything, be nice, can’t you?”

  “Leave me alone.” Even she could tell her voice didn’t really mean it.

  “I want to put my mouth on you, I want to kiss you and stroke you and be easy with you, I never want to hurt you. I only want to make it good for you when I get inside you. I have to have you, angel, I need to lose myself in you. You’ve been driving me crazy.” His hand moved swiftly up to her shivering inner thigh and softly slipped in between. It pressed against the moist cleft, withdrew slightly and pressed again. “Darling, let me make you ready for me. Let me touch you here—ah, baby, don’t say no to this, because you can’t.” The silky growl was thick now, and urgent. “This is where I want to go, to feel you so tight and hot around me.”

  Her body could not stay still, it writhed out of control beneath his fingers. The sense of him, sleek and golden and beautiful, his husky purring voice filling her mind with erotic words of how much he needed her, made her faint with desire. Her hips arched, and her damp, quivering thighs opened to him. Then his fingers were inside her with a flaming, stroking rush.

  “Please!” She didn’t know what she was pleading for, her head thrown back wildly, her nails biting into the cords of the smooth skin of his forearms. “I don’t want to do this! Oh, please help me.”

  In another moment she would be lost; she teetered on the edge of the precipice now. In a convulsive movement she fought out of his arms and away from him, taking him by surprise. In the next instant she had rolled over on her stomach, reaching for the lamp on the bedside table.

  “Rachel, leave the light alone.” His body rolled over on hers, pinning her to the mattress. He reached for her outstretched hand, iron fingers closing around it. “We don’t need the light, Rachel. Just let it go.”

  On her stomach she hunched her body as much as she could under him, trying to throw him off, making unconscious sensuous contact all along his big naked frame. She felt him abruptly dig his face and mouth into her shoulder and the tangled veil of her hair, his powerful body gone rigid, his arms wound fiercely around her.

  “Rachel, quit it. I want you so bad I don’t think I can take any more of this.”

  She tried to buck him off again. His fingers wound around the back of her neck to hold her.

  “Will you stop it?” The words came out harshly. She felt him trying to relax the long length of his naked body against her as he held her down. Then very deliberately his hair-roughened legs clasped hers, his hips moving against her softly, stroking the velvet-sheathed hardness of his arousal against her yielding bottom.

  “I hate you,” she said in a quavering-voice. He ignored her words, if he even heard them. She felt the warm pressure of his lips at the nape of her neck, his hand scraping the veil of her tangled hair to one side. He completely covered her, pressing her down into the bed. The sense of being powerless was at the same time frightening and sensuously exciting.

  “Sweet Rachel.” Now not only his mouth but his hands caressed her, sliding under her to cup and squeeze her breasts. “You want me as much as I want you,” he murmured. When she moaned, his hips moved rhythmically against her bottom in a promise of what was to come. “The dark is nice, honey, just get a picture in your mind and go with it. Think of me needing you.” The husky voice caressed her. “Ah, God—think of what you’re going to give to me in just a minute. How you’re going to moan for me when you take all of me inside you.”

  “Please let me go.” She was muffled in the pillow, trying to keep those soft, insinuating words from driving her into madness.

  “I want to kiss you, honey.” His hands suddenly rolled her over on her back and he was on one elbow over her, tawny eyes gleaming dimly. “Don’t you want me to kiss you?” His lips brushed hers. Then tantalizingly they withdrew, ran a wet tongue against her left breast and then the right. When she cried out, fingers cl
utching his hair, he growled, “What do you want, angel? Show me.”

  With her eyes tightly closed, Rachel spread her fingers against the back of his head and drew his face down to her. She cried out as he moved with sudden savagery to seize her opened mouth.

  “Say you want me inside you, I want to hear it.” His tongue thrust into her mouth, flicked and then withdrew. “Open your eyes, Rachel, and look at me.”

  Her eyes slid open as he lifted his body over her and settled into the cradle of her thighs.

  “Open your eyes and watch me,” he said hoarsely, “say you want me as I go into you, love.”

  She felt the first thrust of his flesh parting the fiery, aching folds of her body, and gasped. She was terrified to give herself over to him like this, and yet she couldn’t help it; it was like being lowered into leaping flames, resigned to the awful torment of unbearable pleasure. The powerful body pressing down on hers was drenched with perspiration and shuddering. “Say it,” he ground out. “I want you to give yourself to me, baby. Look at me.”

  It was a moment so fiercely, unbelievably erotic she felt like screaming. Deep in the brilliant crystal eyes burning close above her was a savage possessiveness. If she did this now, there was no escape from his power over her; she would lie down, give herself to him willingly any time he wanted her, his captive, a slave to his sensual domination. Because this was what he wanted and nothing less. She could only moan helplessly.

  His arm tightened around her. “Say it for me, darling.”

  “I want you,” she whimpered. She cried out as he stroked into her powerfully, filling her more than she could bear. As she quivered under him, he relented. He thrust firmly again and again into her, rough, caressing words tumbling into her mouth. Then his lips closed down over hers.

  This, too, was a madness.

  As Rachel’s body jolted with his hard demand, his mouth duplicated his total possession of her, his firm smooth tongue thrusting in to fill her completely. The black, pounding desire of his body swept her to the verge of a screaming wildness. She took his weight, his raging need, as his fingers dug into the flesh of her bottom to hold her dragged to him. And then, as he knew she would, she arched and convulsed under him, her eyes tightly clamped together. Brilliant bursting lights, splintering shards of pure sensation ripped through her, exploding into fathomless, electrifying release that made her cry out. Only his matching explosion touched her consciousness. That and his hoarse, bursting cry against her lips.

  After a few darkened moments of oblivion she drifted back, dimly aware that her mouth, her breasts and hips, her entire body was aching. And that the beautiful man who held her was still gasping in the power of something so violent that he could do no more than bury his face against her wet shoulder until it expended itself. The intensity of what they had shared was still with them like the aftershocks of an earthquake. Dazedly, Rachel put her hands to his hair and held him softly, awed by the convulsions of his desire as he poured himself into her.

  Then he lay against her, spent, shuddering. She softly stroked the sweat-slick skin of his shoulders and back, down to the curved hard line of his buttocks, and heard him grunt softly. His fingers tightened around her hand.

  It was another long moment before he rolled very slowly to one side and pulled her to him. Still gasping, he flung one arm over his eyes.

  Slowly, very slowly, her body stopped its trembling. She hadn’t wanted to do this, she hadn’t wanted this desperate, needful intimacy in which his driving body had possessed hers. In the darkness, with a man she still hardly knew, she could have made love with a stranger. But it was no longer that. As she lay in the curve of his arm Rachel realized with something akin to dismay that she loved this man. She couldn’t understand how she could love him, but she did. And her feeling of love was like a warm, golden wave rising inside her. It didn’t make any sense at all; love couldn’t possibly be built on this powerful physical force that swept them together. But it was there.

  His arm tightened around her waist. “Rachel?”

  “Yes.” It was only a warm murmur.

  “I’ll be easier next time. I wanted you pretty badly.”

  She lay turned on her side with her cheek against the expanse of his still-heaving chest, her lips against his skin, tasting his warm, wet saltiness. The dark red veil of her hair was wound around them, binding them together in its tangles. She knew she could not tell him she loved him in this silent darkness, and yet it was all she could do to hold it back. Instead her bemused fingers stroked him, tracing the bunched muscles under the golden skin of his chest that pulled and contracted as he breathed, his stiff nipples surrounded by a few strands of light hair.

  He still lay with his arm over his eyes. The long, dimly delineated shadow of his body didn’t move as he said, “I’ll come by at night, late, about eleven o’clock, and leave before it’s light. You don’t have to worry about anybody seeing me.” When he felt her stir against him he added in the same quiet voice, “Not every night.” There was a silence. “I suppose this isn’t very fair to you, but then it never is for a woman. Nothing’s fair when you come right down to it.”

  “I—” Rachel stopped, not knowing what she wanted to tell him. That he couldn’t have her on those terms? Might as well order the sun not to rise nor the wind to blow; he wouldn’t pay any attention. That she didn’t want him? Ah, but even he knew that wasn’t so.

  He had lowered his arm, and now he put it behind his head, turning slightly so that she knew he was studying her, or as much of the dim shadows of her face as he could see.

  “I’ll make it good for you—better than good. You can see how it is between us, we can’t stop it now. But Rachel—” his voice darkened “—don’t go away from me, in your thoughts, your head, your body, to Charleston, another man, anything. I want you all to myself.”

  His words chilled her. She wasn’t ready yet to face this other side of him.

  Knowing that she hesitated, his arm drew her to him. “Go to sleep. You can think about it later. But you belong to me now. Until we want to call it quits.”

  It was still dark when he woke her, but the air had a predawn feel, damp and fresh and warm.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” she heard him saying softly. His mouth touched hers lightly, then her nose, then her eyelids. She heard him rumble a low laugh when she grimaced, not knowing what it was, and lifted a hand to brush him away. Rachel opened her eyes abruptly.

  The light was almost strong enough for her to see the outline of his face, opal eyes looking at her with a strange expression. “I want you to fix me some coffee.” His legs rubbed against hers, prodding her awake. “I’ve got to get out of here. I have to be working by first light.”

  He pulled her up with him as he sat up, holding her for a long moment to smooth the hair back from her face. “This stuff is tangled around me like a net. I kept dreaming something had caught me. Spiderwebs. Fishing nets. Long red hair.” He touched his lips to the top of her head, one arm around her bare shoulders. “You don’t happen to have a cold beer, do you?” When she gave him a startled look he said mildly, “Just coffee then.”

  He gave her a gentle push out of the bed. When she turned around he had pulled the sheet up to his chest. “Just go out,” he said, “don’t turn on the light. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Fifteen minutes later he had showered and slipped on his jeans and boots. He stood with his lean body propped against the partition that separated the tiny kitchen from the dining area as Rachel boiled a pan of water for instant coffee, his shirt on the back of the kitchen chair. She could not take her eyes from the flat sectioned planes of his muscled belly and tanned, golden skin. The set of his narrow hips joined long legs at a point where a very noticeable bulge in the front of tight-cut faded jeans testified to his masculinity.

  “I love a woman who can make a pot of good, homemade coffee,” he teased her dryly. But he was watching her just as closely.

  “I drink tea.” She was so t
ired now her hand was unsteady. How much sleep had she had? Three or four hours at the most? It was almost five o’clock. “I just happened to have this jar of instant.” Rachel stared down into the glass container where the brown grains were stuck together in a solid mass. “It must be pretty stale.”

  “It’ll do. You have beautiful legs,” he murmured as she handed him the cup. “I’ve been looking at them under that thing you’re wearing.” She stared at him uncomprehendingly, and his golden eyes glinted in amusement. “I keep looking for some little flaw to mar all that perfection. Heavy ankles, knock knees, and there’s nothing.”

  “You’re teasing me,” she said.

  The heavy sexuality that brought them together still hung in the air.

  “You need to be teased,” he said over the rim of the cup. “I’m no damned Quaker.”

  She stared at him. “No, you’re certainly not.” Her body was still tired from his lovemaking, and she wanted to sleep in his arms.

  “I’ll go in a minute,” he said in a low voice.

  Rachel leaned against the kitchen counter, her hands pressed to its plastic top. This was a bad hour; her tired mind nagged at her. And she felt guilty. She said abruptly, “Your cousin, D’Arcy, is in love with you.”

  He was perfectly still. “If she is,” he said finally, “she hasn’t said anything to me about it.”

  But she is, she wanted to yell at him. Why else would D’Arcy go back and forth to Draytonville, talk about nothing else but Beau Tillson? When she turned he was still holding the cup of coffee to his mouth, eyes narrowed.

  “She’s at your house now, waiting for you.” She met those jaguar eyes calmly. “She drove me back from Charleston.”

  “I don’t know a damned thing about it.”

  “But she ... are you—”

  “No.”

  Nothing more than that. From the expression on his face, she knew he spoke the truth. But somehow that made it worse.