Dark Torment (26 page)

“Make up your mind, Sarah. Me or the others.” His arm
dropped away from her waist as he spoke, and he stepped back, leaving her to
decide.

There was really no choice, as Sarah had known from the beginning.
Lifting her chin in a characteristic prideful gesture, Sarah opened her eyes,
dropped her hands to her sides, and turned to face him. He was naked. She
swallowed, unable to look away. Her eyes ran once, involuntarily, over his body
before snapping up to his face. But even that brief glimpse left burned in her
mind the image of broad, bronzed shoulders, a wide, hair-roughened chest,
taut-muscled belly and hips, and long, hard-looking legs. . . . About what
protruded obscenely between those legs, huge and alert in a nest of curling
black hair, she refused to allow herself to think. Or remember.

“So I’m to decide between rape in the plural or the
singular?” she gritted, hating him. “You know you leave me no
choice: I choose you.”

“I thought you would.” He was grinning, his arms
crossing over his chest as he stepped back a pace, his head cocking to one side
as he ran his eyes with slow purpose over her body. “Take off your
clothes, Sarah.”

Still she hesitated. Then, knowing that there was no help for it,
she clenched her teeth so hard that her jaw ached and slowly lifted her arms to
the string around her throat, which attached to the hat. She removed the hat
carefully, turning to hang it on a branch. When that was done she bent to
remove her makeshift shoes. Then, with her back to Dominic, moving as slowly as
she dared, she began to lift the hem of the poncho.

“Oh no you don’t. Turn around, Sarah. I want to see
you.”

“I must have been out of my mind that day on the
ship,” she said bitterly. But if she had hoped to jolt him out of his
mocking enjoyment of his revenge, she failed. His expression remained
unchanging as she turned back to face him.

There was no way out. Sarah lifted the poncho over her head,
wishing that she could hide forever under its stifling folds. But she could
not. It was off, and when she had finished securing it to a branch there was
only her thin nightrail left between her body and his eyes.

She hesitated. To deliberately take off her clothes in front of a
man . . . She shuddered at the degradation of it. No matter that he had seen
her naked once before. That night had been a time apart, something unreal,
which she had blocked out of her mind. Until now. Now the shaming memories were
pressing on her, unbidden.

“That, too.” His voice was low as he indicated her
nightrail. Sarah looked at him silently for a long moment. Then, doing her best
not to think of anything at all, she caught the hem of her nightrail and pulled
it over head. When it was off, she didn’t bother to hang it with the rest
of her clothes but instead let it flutter to land in a crumpled heap on the
dark ground. It was too late now to play for time.

She felt his eyes on her. Her every instinct screamed at her to
cringe, to cover herself, to hide as much of her body from him as she could.
But she fought the impulse. She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing
how truly successful was his revenge. Naked, she faced him, her head thrown
proudly back so that her hair tumbled down her back to her hips, disdaining
even to try to hide behind its tangled thickness. Her hands were uncurled at
her sides, making no attempt to shield her body. But, for all her bravado,
Sarah could not look at him. She was too ashamed. Instead, her eyes focused on
the shadowy forms of a pair of kookaburras nestled for the night high in the
branches of a gum not far away. The birds reminded her poignantly of the woods
at Lowella. Would she ever see them again? She swallowed, forcing her eyes to
shift downward to a rustling thicket of gorse. The sound of the dry branches
rubbing together was oddly soothing. Sarah concentrated on that, refusing to
allow herself to face the fact that she was naked, not three feet away from a
naked man who would undoubtedly soon lay his hands on her, possess her body,
and in doing so degrade her abysmally even as he wrung from her cries of
shameful delight, while the wind played with her hair and trailed teasing
fingers over skin dappled with goosebumps despite the heat. Overhead the moon
was silent witness to her humiliation, a thin crescent illuminating her with
its iridescent glimmer. Until—she felt it distinctly—the cool
moonlight was replaced by the heat of his eyes.

“Look at me, Sarah.” His voice was husky.

Shivering, Sarah fought the impulse to close her eyes in a
childlike hope that when she opened them again she would be back safe in her
own bed and this would all have been a fantastic nightmare. But it was real,
she knew, and she also knew that she had no choice but to do as he told her. He
had the means to compel her without compelling her at all. . . . She looked at
him. His eyes were moving down her body, touching on her small, high breasts
with their rosy tips hardening now against her will, her slim waist, the
delicate curve of her hips. His eyes slid down the length of her legs, making
no effort to hide the desire in their depths. Then, suddenly, they met hers.

“Come here, Sarah,” The words were a hoarse whisper.
Sarah stared at him, her eyes unconsciously pleading. His expression was
implacable.

“Sarah.”

Jerkily she moved forward, until she was so close she could feel
the heat of his body. She was shivering, her teeth tightly clenched, wanting to
flee and never stop but knowing that he would catch her if she did.

“Put your arms around my neck.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Sarah did as she was told. His skin was
burning hot against the smoothness of her arms. Her hands, locking behind his
neck, could not help but be aware of the strength of him, under control now but
soon to be unleashed. The already sensitized tips of her breasts brushed the
curling mat on his chest. An electric tingle ran through her body. Mortified,
her eyes flew to his to find that he was looking down at her, his eyes darkened
to a midnight blue as impenetrable as the night sky. She was sore afraid that
he knew what she was feeling, what she could not help but feel.

“Close your eyes, Sarah.”

His head was bending, his beautiful mouth descending toward hers.
Sarah could not stop herself from remembering his kisses. They had set her on
fire. . . . She shut her eyes and waited, trembling, for the touch of his lips.
In her heart of hearts, she knew that she wanted him to kiss her, to hold her,
caress her, love her—and she could hardly bear the knowledge. She
shivered with shame and fear and desire combined as his arms slid around her,
under her shoulders and hips. He was lifting her, carrying her. . . .

Sarah’s head was flung back against his shoulder, her thick
hair acting as a cushion between his hard muscles and her skull before
cascading over his arm toward the ground. Her eyes were shut, her mouth soft
and trembling, waiting. Her body was supine in his arms. It was useless to
struggle, she told herself, rationalizing her quivery acquiescence. He was
carrying her away with him, to lay her down in the prickly grass as he had once
before and take his pleasure of her body. And she could not stop him. Did not
want to stop him.

Sarah heard a faint splash of water. She frowned, trying to place
the sound. She couldn’t. Her eyes opened, first to touch on his
face—an odd smile flickered around his mouth—and then to look down.
He was wading into the creek; the water was already up to his knees. Feeling
befuddled, Sarah looked down at the moon’s reflection in the dark,
sluggishly moving surface of the water. Why was he crossing the creek? She
looked back to his face. He was watching her, his eyes narrowed.

“What are you doing?” Her voice was faint, almost
breathless. She felt as if she had been a long, long way away and was
struggling to come back.

His mouth tilted up at one corner. Sarah could clearly see the
white gleam of his teeth through his parted lips.

“Giving you a bath,
Miss
Sarah,” he said,
grinning openly now. Before she could do more than gape at him, his arms were
dropping away from her body and she was falling. . . . Sarah hit the water with
a splash and sank like a stone. It couldn’t have been more than an
instant before her behind made bruising contact with the pebbled creek bottom.
She surfaced, spluttering and coughing as her lungs tried to rid themselves of
the water she had inadvertently swallowed.

“Why, you . . . you . . . !” She clawed at the wet
mass of her hair, trying to pull it away from her eyes so that she could see
him. At last she succeeded, to find that he was standing over her, unabashedly
naked, his head thrown back as he laughed uproariously.

“You filthy, no-good
swine!
” Sarah choked,
spluttering.

Dominic thought that if looks could kill he would drop dead on the
spot. Her great golden eyes, their thick tawny lashes darkened into spiky
clumps by the water that beaded them and ran down her face, were fixed on his
with a feral stare. Her mouth—that soft mouth that he had had to fight
the desire to kiss—was working furiously. With that thick mane of
gold-shot hair tumbling wetly over her shoulders and her small nostrils flared
with rage, she looked like a lioness that had received a dunking and
didn’t like it—and was getting ready to let everybody know her
displeasure. Words like
swine
and
beast
fell from her mouth,
intended, he was sure, to hurt him. Dominic couldn’t help it—he
started laughing again. The image of the prim, proper
Miss
Sarah,
naked, soaking wet, and furious but not knowing the right words to express her
outrage, tickled him.

“Remind me to teach you some swear words,” he said,
chuckling, as he sat down in the creek; when his long legs were stretched out
along the rocky bottom, the water came halfway up his chest.

“Of course you would know them all!” she spat in
reply. He was perhaps three feet away from her. Her eyes, with their savage
brilliance, never left his face. “You just wait until I get home again!
I’ll have them chase you down like a dog! I . . .”

“Unwise to threaten a man when you’re in his
power,” Dominic observed mildly, scooping up a handful of sand from the
bottom of the creek and proceeding to scrub lazily at his chest.

“I’ll threaten you anytime I like! And carry through
on it, too, you . . . !” Sarah yelled.

Dominic watched her, delighted at the reaction he had provoked.
Prim, proper
Miss
Sarah had vanished again with a vengeance, to be
replaced this time by a shrill-voiced virago who intrigued him as much as did
her predecessors. To think that each personality—the convention-bound
spinster, the courageous young lady, the charming dancer, the passionate lover,
and now the shrew—was a different aspect of the same woman was
fascinating. Dominic knew just what it was that was making her so mad—she
had thought he would make love to her again, and, while she had professed not
to want it, she was now, in the irrational way of women, furious that he had
not—and he could not resist teasing her a little more. Sarah enraged was
delicious.

“What are you so mad about?” he questioned, lifting a
bewildered eyebrow at her. In response, she scooped up a handful of water and
threw it at him, looking as if she wished it were something with a good deal
more heft.

“You deliberately humiliated me, you beast!” she
hissed, lips drawn back from her teeth in a way that made her look ferocious.
At her choice of insults, Dominic snorted with hilarity. Seeing
Miss
Sarah
turn into a proper spitfire—though one with very ladylike language even
when she was beside herself with rage—was enormously entertaining.
“Scumbag! Don’t you dare to laugh at me!”

“Sc-scumbag?” Dominic repeated unsteadily, collapsing
back in the water with the force of his laughter. “My God, Sarah, where
did you ever hear a word like that?”

Her only reply was a howl of rage. Then she launched herself at
him, her fingers curved into claws that went for his eyes, her pearly little
teeth snapping at his throat, her knees aiming for his groin. Dominic, caught
by surprise, barely managed to fend her off. His hands closed around her wrists
before her nails could make contact with his face, but, hampered by the water,
his legs were slower to react. Her knee missed its primary target—thank
the Lord—but got close enough to cause him considerable pain.

“Stop that!” he said, annoyed, wrapping one leg around
hers to still them and holding her, hands pinioned by one of his, tight against
his chest so that she could barely move.

“Let me go, you . . .” She seemed to have run out of
words, so Dominic helpfully supplied one. A very filthy one. Her eyes snapped
up to his. She stared at him, shocked and—momentarily at
least—silenced.

“That’s disgusting,” she said.

“But effective,” he replied.

Dominic was growing all too aware of the warmth and softness and
curves of her woman’s body pressed so close against him. Despite himself,
he could not control the rising evidence of the effect she was having on him.
He rolled so that he was sitting up with her half-lying across one thigh, still
safely imprisoned against him but out of the way, he hoped, of that physical
sign that he could not for the life of him control. She shifted against him,
her silky thigh brushing his much harder one. The sudden passion that shot
through his groin made him grit his teeth to keep from groaning.

“You would know words like that,” she said, scathing,
the force of her fury apparently having been cooled by the filthy word that he
had picked up in the stables of the big house where he had grown up. She
wriggled, trying to pull away. “Let me go.”

Dominic could feel the firmness of her small breasts brushing
against his chest and the resilient roundness of her bottom rubbing against his
thigh. Another fierce stab of desire pierced him. He was conscious of a sudden,
almost irresistible urge to kiss her, make love to her, possess her body here,
in the stream. . . . She would make only token protests, he knew. But to do so
would make things too easy for her. She could hate him if he took her body that
way, and her hatred would wipe out any remorse she might feel for having
betrayed him before. If he ever made love to her again—and he was honest
enough to admit that that “if” was more window dressing than
reality—it would be only when she had finally admitted that she wanted it
as much as he did, when she begged him; the next time there would be no
question that she did not know exactly what she was doing. He would rub her
nose in her desire before he gave her what she wanted. And sooner or later she
would admit to wanting him—he meant to see to that.