JAKrentz - Uneasy Alliance (17 page)

W
ith love came trust. Or maybe it was the other way around. In a distant corner of her mind, Abby wondered which had come first for her. Perhaps they had both arrived together in an inseparable knot that now chained her to Torr Latimer.

But it was impossible to think logically at the moment. Torr's mouth covered hers with consuming power, leaving her no option but to respond. As always when he held her, Abby wanted only to succumb completely to the intoxicating warmth of their lovemaking. She felt his hands on her body, aware that he was loosening her clothing, and her determination to flee disintegrated.

Torr felt her enthralling surrender as he steadily unbuttoned the muted plaid shirt she wore. The softness in her seemed to flow and strain beneath his hands, inviting and challenging and captivating. He had been right, he decided exultantly. Right to force the issue tonight. Right to take her into his arms and show her that neither of them could flee from the magic that flared between them.

"I shouldn't have given you so much time this past week," he murmured as he parted the edges of her shirt and slid his hand inside to find her breasts. "I should have just taken you to bed again and again until you realized how much I need you. Abby, I've tried to teach you to trust me. Tried to do things your way and still protect you. But tonight you were going to run and I couldn't let you do that."

"I thought…" Abby broke off, a soft cry of rising need in her throat. "I thought it would be for the best. Torr, please believe me. I never should have let you get involved."

He growled his displeasure as he leaned over to force the words back into her mouth with his tongue. Hadn't he told her often enough that she'd had no choice when it came to his involvement? With hunger and a desire to silence her protests, Torr explored the dark territory behind her lips. The taste of her there fed his appetite, making him ravenous for the other delicious parts of her.

Beneath his palm he could feel the budding nipple and he vaguely heard his own husky groan of response. She came alive for him in a way that no other woman ever had. Or was it that he came alive for her? With Abby, Torr knew the full measure of himself as a man. The experience was primitive, almost savage in some respects. Perhaps she had been right to fear the possessiveness in him, he acknowledged silently. How could he explain he'd never been totally aware of it himself until he'd met her? He only knew now that he could never let her go.

The warmth of the firelight bathed Abby's skin in gold as Torr pushed back her shirt, baring her breasts completely.

"Abby, honey. You're so soft, so wonderfully soft. How did you ever think I could let you go? I need your softness, sweetheart. I need it more than I've ever needed anything else in my life."

She twined her arms around his neck, offering her throat as her head fell back over his arm. Torr found the hollow where her pulse thrummed and kissed it. She moaned, lifting herself against him and he thought he would go out of his mind.

"Torr, my darling. You make me feel so wild," she breathed against his neck.

He caught her hand and put her fingers on the first button of his shirt. She needed no further urging. As she fumbled to open the garment, Torr found the fastening of her jeans. When he unzipped the denims he was unable to resist plunging his hand down into the moist warmth of her, and when he found it, he knew that he could not be the gallant patient lover he had been last time.

"Abby, honey, I'm going to take you tonight. Make you mine. Do you understand? Afterward you won't have any more doubts. You won't be able to run. I'll have you chained too close to my heart."

She stirred against him as he stripped the jeans down her legs and let them drop to the floor. Her body seemed to be a sensuous trap of golden skin and shadowy heat. It was a trap he longed to spring.

Torr leaned over her, letting his chest crush her breasts as he yanked off his trousers. The hardness of her nipples made him catch his breath and then he was naked beside her. Deliberately he let her feel the waiting fullness of his manhood, testing himself against her thigh.

"When I take you it's like diving into the softest, deepest petals of a flower," he rasped. "I don't know how I've been able to wait so long. And I know I can't wait any longer."

"No," she whispered throatily, denying him nothing. "Neither can I."

He slipped his hand between her thighs, glorying in the silken skin there. Then he was pushing apart her legs, lifting himself to angle her beneath him. She moved obediently to his touch, wrapping him close as he sank down onto her.

When he felt the heated dampness of her body waiting to sheath him, Torr drove into her with a husky groan. He had to take his fill of her or lose his mind. She clung to him, her legs tangling with his, her nails leaving small savage marks in his back.

She wanted him, needed him, he told himself exultantly. No woman could fake this kind of soft, clinging need. And even if it were possible, Abby would disdain such faked passion. For her everything had to be real. She was too vibrant and excitingly alive to play sophisticated games in bed. Knowing that was what gave him hope and roused a fierce determination in him. He would make love to her until she could do nothing but cry out her need of him, and once he had the words he would never let her forget them.

"Tell me," he half snarled against the skin of her breast. "Tell me you want me. Tell me what it's like for you." With controlled, passionate violence he raided her body, unlocking the treasure of crushed petals waiting there. Plunging into them again and again with unpredictable strokes that elicited the soft cries at the back of her throat. Cries he loved to swallow.

"Torr, Torr. I want you. I've never wanted any man the way I want you. Oh, Torr!"

He felt the passionate spasm that coursed through her, tightening her body around his until he was as caught up in the climax as she was. It pulled at him, seeking to drain him. Torr could no more resist the primitive tide than he could have ignored the pull of ocean waves. With a muffled shout of satisfaction he gave himself up to the endless sea of velvet petals, aware that Abby was already drifting blissfully in his arms.

Torr was not going to allow her to drift all the way into sleep, Abby realized vaguely as his tongue flickered over the film of perspiration on her breasts. She came drowsily back to the surface, lifting her lashes to meet his gaze. There was satisfaction in his amber eyes, satisfaction and a challenging question. As she looked up at him he touched her faintly bruised mouth with the tip of one blunt finger.

"You want me, Abby."

"Yes." There didn't seem much point in denying that now.

"You need me."

"Yes."

"I can feel all that when you're here in my arms. You couldn't lie with your body. It isn't possible for you."

"You sound very sure of that."

He moved in the equivalent of a massive shrug. Nothing could have made his agreement more obvious. Abby was torn between a purely feminine desire to slap him for his masculine arrogance and an equally feminine desire to submit to it. He must have read the conflicting thoughts in her eyes because his look softened abruptly and he dipped his head to brush a small kiss against the tip of her nose.

"Don't be angry. I can't help the truth. It exists for both of us. I needed to have you admit it, though, because I think only when you've admitted it aloud will you accept it. And when you've accepted it you can trust me. Really trust me."

"That's important to you?"

"It's vital to me, honey. I nearly went crazy this afternoon watching and waiting for you to get the nerve to run."

"I wasn't going to run," she protested quickly.

"Yes, you were."

"I only thought it best to get away. I don't want you hurt by all this, Torr."

"The only way I can be hurt is if you don't trust me enough to let me help you."

She inhaled deeply, aware of the scent of his damp musky body and of the fragrance of the log fire. She was still lying trapped beneath Torr, her limbs snarled with his. His weight crushed her into the sofa and he made no move to release her.

"I don't want to hurt you, Torr."

"Then you'll have to trust me."

Abby searched his face anxiously. "What about you? Do you trust me? I saw the way you looked at that photo. I know what you must have been thinking…"

"I was thinking that I would like to get my hands on the man who's blackmailing you. And I'll admit that the thoughts were a little violent. But the violence wasn't aimed at you, sweetheart. That's what you have to bring yourself to believe. Trust me, Abby. Please trust me."

"I do," she whispered huskily. "I do."

He sighed and lowered his head to her breast. "I didn't kill her, Abby."

"I know that."

"And I would never hurt you."

"I know that, too. I've known it all along, I suppose."

"I kept dreading the day you found out about my past," he admitted. "I was afraid you'd only compare me with that man who once frightened you."

Abby shook her head. "You're nothing like Flynn Randolph."

"How am I different?" he demanded, letting his fingers trail tantalizingly down her waist to her hip and back.

"A million ways," she replied, smiling above his head. Men. They asked far more personal questions than did women. The firelight flickered on Torr's black hair and it made her smile broaden. "For one thing your hair is a different color. His was brown."

"That's an enormous difference, all right," he complained. "Can't you do any better than that?"

"Well, let's see. You're built a lot differently than he was. You're sort of like a rock. He was tennis-player thin."

"Abby, I'm warning you…"

"I'm trying to reassure you," she protested. "Let me see, what else is different about you? I certainly would never have met him in a class on the art of Japanese flower arrangement. He was into other kinds of hobbies."

"Something nice and macho like race-car driving?" Torr sounded as though he might be growing annoyed. The little game wasn't going the way he wanted it to go.

"No, as a matter of fact, he was into—" Abby shut her mouth with a snap as the memory flashed into her mind. An image of Flynn with his camera, irritated with her because she would not pose in the nude for him. Another image of him in his elaborately equipped darkroom. "Photography," Abby finally got out unemotionally. "Flynn was into photography."

Torr was suddenly very still and tense. There was a dangerous silence while they both absorbed what she had just said, and then he sat up slowly.

"Brown hair, you said?"

Abby licked her lips. "Yes."

"Thin?"

"Yes, oh Torr, surely—"

"And he's into photography?"

"Well, he was when I knew him, but that was two years ago. Why would he…? It makes no sense, Torr. Why would he do something like this? After two years?"

"He knows how you feel about Cynthia?" Torr kept up the questions, pushing himself away from her. He stood up, stalking restlessly over to stand gazing down into the fire.

Abby watched him, acutely aware of the hard muscled maleness of him as he stood in the glow of the flaring firelight. So strong, so thoroughly masculine. She could still feel the heavy imprint of his body on hers.

"He knew," Abby admitted slowly, frowning intently. "But, Torr, it doesn't make any sense. It was all over between Flynn and myself two years ago. He was glad to see the last of me. Claimed he never wanted to see me again. Called me a…a…" Her voice trailed off as she remembered the note on the back of the ugly photograph they had received that morning. "Called me a whore."

"Hell." Torr ran his fingers through his black and silver hair. "Abby, he's not on our list." He swung around, amber eyes shadowed and hawklike. "
Why on earth wasn't he on that list
?"

Abby flinched from the fierce demand in his voice, coiling her legs under her and reaching instinctively for her shirt. "Torr, listen to me. There's no way Flynn could be the blackmailer. It's been two whole years since I saw him. Why on earth would he pop up now to cause trouble?"

"I want to know why he's not on that list I had you put together. He's got brown hair, he's into photography, he knows all your vulnerable points. Lady, did you think I was playing games with that blasted list? I wanted everyone on it who fit the profile. Everyone. Not just your present friends and associates!"

Abby slipped on her shirt and pulled it around her in a tense, protective motion. Her eyes were wide and wary now as she watched the man who only moments before had been making passionate love to her. This was a side of Torr she had never seen before and it was a revelation. From out of nowhere she recalled the newspaper clippings that had described him as a powerful, ruthlessly successful corporate president.

Torr might be standing naked in front of a cozy fire but she didn't need much imagination to picture him dressed in a sleek gray suit and bearing the natural authority of a corporate shark. There was a controlled power in the man that was independent of time, place or clothing.

It also didn't take much imagination to visualize herself in the role of a subordinate who had badly fouled up an important assignment. Resentfully Abby stirred on the couch, darting a glance at her jeans and wondering if she could pull them on from where she sat.