Jennifer Horseman (10 page)

Until in a sudden shower of glass, they fell to the polished wood floor.

She stared at the small balls on the floor. Crossing her arms over herself, she took each side of her dress and pulled it off her shoulders. She stepped out of it. Only slippers, stockings, and a modest corset covering her chemise remained. A barrier between them, she clutched the white cloth of her dress tightly in her hands, the last thing she had in this world.

"Let it drop."

The cloth fell unceremoniously to the floor. She crossed her thin arms over herself. She held her breath as the shame of his gaze washed over her in hot waves. The small clink of his glass set to the table jolted her and her next breath came with a start.

"The rest."

She paused, struggling to comply. With one arm still crossed over herself, she numbly reached a trembling hand to her foot and removed her slipper. This she set carefully to the floor. The other slipper followed, laid neatly alongside, as if extreme care must be given to this small order. She pulled off one stocking, then the other, and holding them together she laid them over her slippers.

A modest corset covered her thin cotton chemise. She reached her hands to the laces. Her hands! She clasped them together, squeezing to stop their trembling. She panicked then, certain the pause would send another knife into the air, and desperately she fumbled to untie the laced bow at the top. One by one the strings unraveled, the garment parted and fell to the floor.

An eternity passed, the silence stretching as she stood there, still trembling with shame. She made no move to take off her chemise, for as far as she knew there was no more immodest state. Her chemise was an extra layer of skin, a thing not removed even for baths. The only thing saving her from outright hysteria was the arresting fact that she had only the barest trace of an idea of what he would do next.

Rape . . . this rutting . . . His hands would come on her person. He would be quick to hurt her. It would be over quickly . . . quickly. ...

She had survived the worst

These fragments of thoughts registered but dimly through her fear. As Garrett stared, the potency of her beauty hit him in force until the full surge of his desire brought him to his feet. The scrape of his chair made her jump. She did not look up. Each footstep sounded loud in her mind, echoing with the pounding of her heart, until he stood in front of her.

She felt the heat of his body—she could feel it—and her fear rose as the silence lengthened. She started to back away, shaking her head.

"Don't take another step."

She closed her eyes and held perfectly still as his hands came to her shoulders. His thumbs slid under the thin straps of the chemise and she gasped as his hands moved with a slow caress down her thin arms, the heat of it sending shivers through her, each inch revealing more of what no one, not even her maid, had ever seen before. With a great gentleness, he slid the material over her bandaged hand, then over the other.

Shame colored her cheeks like cheap rouge as he stared at the beauty before him: the straight, slender shoulders, the generous lift to her full, rounded breasts. He reached his hand to the silken side that narrowed dramatically to a small waist, then along the sensual flair of her hips as his gaze followed the long shapely lines of her thin legs.

She gasped and tensed, her flesh recoiling from the warmth of his touch as if it were coal red fire. She waited for a harsh hand, the shame of her immodest state receding, replaced with the expectancy of pain. Yet the strong bronze hands left her only to return to her head as he drew closer. The now shocking heat of his body frightened her senseless, keeping her still and unmoving as if she were trapped in an iron cage, this when every instinct screamed at her to run.

He brought her head up, and, desperate to discover his motive, she looked up. He towered over her, a good foot taller, his unconventional height as threatening as his knife. Yet the strange light she saw in his gaze confused her as much as his hands, hands that gently combed through her hair, stopping at her shoulders, then returning again. The tender press of his lips to her forehead when she expected a blow from his hand came as a shock, bringing a desperate question into her eyes, a question he answered in a lowered voice, filled with his own agony.

"God's curse, girl, I cannot hurt you," he said in a deep whisper. "I want to but I can't. Your beauty has bewitched me as surely as my panther, Tonali, himself, and I," he touched his lips to her cheeks, drinking the taste of scented water, like roses. "I am bewitched," he finished in a rich timbre much changed with desire. Confused and helpless, she closed her eyes. He touched his lips to the corner of her mouth, which trembled slightly, pausing to measure her response. She withdrew as much as she could, waiting, her eyes darting to and fro beneath closed lids in an overture of confusion.

He still held her chin. His finger lightly circled her lips until they parted with a gasp and she opened her eyes, only to close them again as he lowered his mouth to take hers. She froze, stiffening beneath the sensual press of his lips, but his hands held her head with a gentle but firm restraint, forcing her head back further to accommodate him. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't think to breathe, and she raised her hands to his to stop him, pushing him away, but to no effect. He might not have even known, for the taste of her lips was madness itself.

The kiss deepened as he added pressure, slipping his tongue into the moist recess, drinking to full measure. Then she couldn't think to realize the happy fact she was breathing—and hard—as her head swam dizzily and her mouth was filled with a taste like sunshine and brandy, apples and warmth. A great burst of heat from deep within herself came with a frantic rush of chills, and she felt herself sinking helplessly in arms that were suddenly holding her up.

His entire being greeted the soft pliancy of her slender curves. He broke the kiss to let his lips graze over her flushed cheeks, the satin arch of her neck. Chills erupted from every place his lips touched, until he returned his mouth to hers with a kiss that frightened her to the depth of her soul.

She twisted her mouth from his and took a gasping breath. "Oh no ... please!" came in a breathless rush as a mindless kind of terror seized her. "I can't do this. . . . Stop it, stop—"

Garrett caught the small hands clutching his arms to push him away and brought them behind her back, pulling her soft curves easily against his body. The shock of it stole her breath. Pain rose from the press of his arm over her hair on her back, a pain that registered beneath the hot constriction in her chest as her breasts pressed against him; she could feel the cold sting of his belt buckle on her abdomen. Breathless and desperate and ever so confused, she collapsed all at once and looked up at him, her eyes now wild and mutinous, stirring things within him he had not known until now.

He felt a primitive, carnal force, a need to possess and own, to claim her in a way that existed two worlds or more from any thought of revenge. Yet he could not continue while thinking of what this meant, so the thought vanished the moment he took her mouth beneath his again.

The kiss was long and hard and rapturous, stifling any last thought of struggling. Stifling any last thought. She forgot she was naked, that his belt buckle pressed painfully against her midsection. She forgot to breathe, but as his mouth possessed her the great warmth and heat of him seemed to surge in an attack on her senses, demanding a surrender to his strength and will. A surrender that came with a heated rush of chills as he broke his kiss again.

Tears sprung into her eyes, now bright, misty pools. The caress of her slender shape held against his body, the velvety softness of her mouth, the taste of it, made it ever harder to temper his natural response. Her beauty alone could not account for the full measure of his desire, a desire he had not felt in years, if ever. A desire he neither wanted nor understood . . .

Yet her body kept alternating between a trembling softness and a rigid cold, a maddening battle between mind and body. His free hand slowly massaged her shoulder until her muscles lost the will to resist. A single finger teased the line of her neck as his lips pressed over her closed eyes, her hairline. Her breath came in small shaky gasps. "Your tears never fall," he observed in a whisper. "Why, I wonder?"

She hardly heard this, but the reason was obvious: she had learned that her tears did not matter. Like now. She was helpless, acutely conscious of it as the curve of her ears tingled beneath the pressureless play of his fingertips, until, as if gathering heat, the measure sparked tiny explosions of shivers. A thousand tiny shivers. Every instinct wanted to push him away and wipe the rush of shivers from her skin, yet she was forbidden even that.

"Oh, please," she said, biting her lip hard, confused and afraid, "What do you mean to do by this?"

He did not at first answer as he took her upper lip in his mouth, gently kneading it until she gasped. The rapid thud of her heart dropped to her loins as he kissed her again. The kiss was hot and slow and tantalizing, impossible to resist, as he knew when he felt the soft warmth of her body caress the length of his. A strange amusement came to his eyes as he broke that kiss, but his lips were caressing her forehead, her throat, moving to linger over the lobe of her ear. More shivers rushed from the spot. She drew a shaky, uneven breath as he released one of her hands to lift her chin. "Why, I mean to possess you, love. With or without this pretense of innocence, I mean to possess you." His finger gently pried her lips open and he lowered his head to kiss her deeply again.

Her senses reeled, and against her will she felt that melting warmth rising to greet him. She felt hot and cold and shaky all at once, not understanding at all what was happening to her. She didn't know when or how he did it, but somewhere within the space of this kiss, as her senses soared, then swooned, he had separated himself from her body, if only briefly. Then he reached his arms around her back again, feeling only the slender shape beneath her long loose hair as he pulled her against the full length and measure of his desire.

The shock of his hot, hard staff on her form felt like the sting of a knife and she tore her mouth from his with a startled cry of alarm. "Nooo! No, stop!"

Wild with the fright of it, she wrenched her arms free and, drawing on a strength she did not have, swung her clenched fists hard against him, not knowing what she hit or pushed against, only desperate to get away, to stop him, this madness. "No . . . no, you can't do—"

Garrett watched her small fist pummeling his chest dispassionately until he saw her wrist; her desperation kept her from feeling the pain. He caught her hands, bringing them carefully behind her back. Pain shot up her sore arm, rippling through the cuts on her back, but she cried only as he pulled her back against the long hard length of his body. Fear seized the whole of her and she squirmed madly, inciting what was already a riot.

"Don't fight me. You'll only prolong my pleasure."

As soon as those words penetrated her crazed senses, she collapsed again, only to discover it was absolutely the worst thing to do. The heat of him caused her insides first to summersault, then settle to a strange burning sensation, as if his heat penetrated her very skin and, to her wild alarm, her very loins.

"No . . . please," she looked up to meet his gaze. Helpless tears shimmered in her eyes and she started to beg, plead, drop to her knees if he'd let her, but he pulled her hair back, tilting her head to make the offer of her lips.

Not in the darkest room of her imagination had she ever thought to know a kiss like this. The molding of his mouth to hers, the sweep and taste of his tongue, felt like a savage, primitive power descending over her mind, body, and soul, claiming her as his own. Bright red, orange, and gold suns exploded in her mind, shimmering into the heat sweeping through her. The pounding of her heart became the pounding of her blood, and she thought she would die from h. The kiss did not stop even as he lifted her to his arms and took the two steps to the bed.

He broke the kiss as he laid her upon the soft, high cushion of his bed. Dazed by his kiss, she struggled but briefly before he caught her arms again and held them with one of his own above her head as he came partially over her. Yet he kept his mouth very close to hers, as if he, too, needed a moment to recover, pulling away at last to stare at the beauty of her form.

She held perfectly still then, scared, just scared. She gasped with a small cry as she felt the brush of his hand over her breasts. The palm of his hand circled slowly there. She tensed with a rush of chills. She shook her head, a kind of mindless negation as his hand continued to circle in erotic patterns, sliding over her side to the curve of her hip and thighs, then back again and again in ever deepening strokes.

Chills rushed from between her legs, alternating with the slow explosions he made of her blood. She didn't realize she was whispering no over and over again until his mouth covered hers, only to find her lips pressed to a thin hard line, a small but meaningful act of resistance—her last.

"If pleasure makes it so much worse for you, then I shall see how difficult I can make it." These words were whispered against her ear and brought another rush of tiny shivers. She closed her eyes tightly, as if in pain, and swallowed. She felt his lips lightly press to her forehead and her closed eyes, lingering before returning to her mouth. Countering this last act of rebellion, light as a feather, his tongue slowly circled her lips until they trembled and opened with a surprise gasp.

He caught her mouth in a hard, exploring kiss. For a brief moment she struggled, squirming beneath him, but the brush of their bodies brought another rush between her thighs, a growing heat there, and she stopped struggling altogether, helplessly succumbing to the pounding sweetness of the kiss.

Like a brush with fire, his lips left her mouth to travel to the arch of her throat. She gasped again with this play of his lips, the tiny sparklike shivers he left there, but his lips moved lower still until she felt them on her breast.