Mackenzie's Pleasure (13 page)

His big, hard hands stroked soothingly up and down her back. "Are you okay?" he

murmured, and there was something infinitely male and intimate in his deep voice, an

undertone of satisfaction and possessiveness,

Barrie gulped back the tears, forcing herself to coherency. "Yes," she said in a thin,

waterlogged tone. "I didn't know it would hurt so much. Or feel so good," she added,

because she was crying for both reasons. Odd, that she should have been as unprepared for the

pleasure as she had been for the pain. She felt overwhelmed, unbalanced. Had she truly been so

foolish as to think she could perform such an intimate act and remain untouched emotionally?

If she had been capable of that kind of mental distance she wouldn't have remained a virgin

until now. She would have found a way around her father's obsessive protectiveness if she

had wanted to, if any man had ever elicited one-tenth the response in her this warrior had

aroused within two minutes of their meeting. If her rescuer had been any other man, she

wouldn't have asked such an intimate favor of him.

Their lovemaking had forged a link between them, a bond of the flesh that was far

stronger and went far deeper than she'd imagined. Despite her chastity, had she believed

the modern, permissive notion that making love could have no more lasting meaning than

simple fun, like riding a roller coaster? Maybe, for some people,
sex
could be as trivial as a

carnival ride, but she would never again think of lovemaking as anything that shallow.

True love-making was deep and elemental, and she knew she would never be the same. She

hadn't been from the moment he had given her his shirt and she had fallen in love with him.

Without even seeing his face, she had fallen in love with the essence of the man, his

strength and decency. It wouldn't have mattered if, when morning came, his features had been

ugly or twisted with scars. In the darkness of that barren room, and the darkness of her heart,

she had already seen beneath whatever lay on the surface, and she had loved him. It was that

simple, and that difficult.

Just because she felt that way didn't mean he did. Barrie knew what a psychologist

would say. It was the white-knight syndrome, the projection of larger-than-life characteristics

onto a person because of the circumstances. Patients fell in love with their doctors and nurses all

the time. Zane had simply been doing his job in rescuing her, white to her it had meant her life,

because she hadn't for a moment supposed that her captors would let her live. She owed him her

life, would have been grateful to him for the rest of that life—but she didn't think she would

have loved just any man who had crawled through that window. She loved
Zane.

She lay silently on him, her head nestled against his throat, their bodies still linked.

She could feel the strong rhythm of his heartbeat thudding against her breasts, could feel his

chest expand with each breath. His hot, musky scent excited her more than the most

expensive cologne. She felt more at home here, lying with him on a blanket in the midst of a

shattered building, than she ever had in the most luxurious and protected environment.

She knew none of the details of his life. She didn't know how old he was, where he

was from, what he liked to eat or read or what programs he watched on television. She didn't

know if he'd ever been married.

Married.
My God, she hadn't even asked. She felt suddenly sick to her stomach. If he

was married, then he wouldn't be the man she had thought he was, and she had just made the

biggest mistake of her life.

But neither would the fault be entirely his. She had begged him, and he had given her

more than one chance to change her mind. She didn't think she could bear it if he'd made

love to her out of pity.

She drew a deep breath, knowing she had to ask. Ignorance might be bliss, but she

couldn't allow herself that comfort. If she had done something so monumentally wrong, she

wanted to know.

"Are you married?" she blurted.

He didn't even tense but lay utterly relaxed beneath her. One hand slid up her back and

curled itself around her neck. "No," he said in that low voice of his. "You can take your

claws out of me now." The words were lazily amused.

She realized she was digging her fingernails into his chest and hastily relaxed her fingers.

Distressed, she said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you."

"There's pain, and there's pain," he said comfortably. "Bullets and knives hurt like hell.

In comparison, a little she-cat's scratching doesn't do much damage."

"She-cat?"
Barrie didn't know if she should be affronted or amused. After a brief

struggle, amusement won. None of her friends or associates would ever have described her in

such terms. She'd heard herself described as ladylike, calm, circumspect, conscientious, but

certainly never as a she-cat.

"Mmm." The sound was almost like a purr in his throat. His hard fingers lazily

massaged her neck, while his other hand slipped down her back to burrow under the shirt and

curl possessively over her bottom. His palm burned her flesh like a brand. "Dainty. And

you like being stroked."

She couldn't deny that, not when he was the one doing the stroking. The feel of his

hand on her bottom was startlingly erotic. She couldn't help wiggling a little, and then gasped as

she felt the surge of his flesh inside her. His breath caught, too, and his fingers dug into the cleft of

her buttocks.

"I need to ask you a couple of questions," he said, and his voice sounded strained.

Barrie closed her eyes, once again feeling the warm loosening deep inside that

signaled the return of desire. That had been a remarkable sensation, when his sex had

expanded inside her, both lengthening and getting thicker. Oh, dear. She wanted to do it again, but

she didn't think she had the strength. "What?" she murmured, distracted by what was

happening between her legs.

"Did you get rid of the ghosts?"

Ghosts. He meant her lingering horror at the way those men had touched her. She

thought about it and realized, with some surprise, that she had. She was still angry at the way she'd

been treated, and she would dearly love to have Zane's pistol in her hands and those men in her

sights, even though she'd never held a pistol before in her life. But the wounded, feminine part

of her had triumphed by finding pleasure in making love with Zane, and in doing so she had

healed herself. Pleasure... somehow the word fell far short of what she had experienced. Even

ecstasy didn't quite describe the intensity, the sensation of imploding, melting, becoming

utterly lost in her physical self.

"Yes," she whispered. "The ghosts are gone."

"Okay." His voice still sounded strained. "Second question. Will that damn shirt have

to be surgically removed?"

She was startled into sitting upright. The action drove him deeper inside her and

wrenched a sharp gasp from her, a groan from him. Panting, she stared at him. They had just

made love—were, in fact,
still
making love—but the shirt she wore was what had kept her

from going to pieces when he'd first found her, had given her the nerve to run barefoot down

dark alleys, had become the symbol of a lot more than just modesty. Maybe she wasn't as

recovered as she'd thought. The kidnappers had stripped her, forced her to be naked in front of

them, and when Zane had first entered the room and seen her that way, she had been mortified.

She didn't know if she could be naked with him now, if she could let him see the body that

had been pinched and bruised by other men.

His crystal clear gaze was calm, patient. Again he understood. He knew what he was

asking of her. He could have left things as they were, but he wanted more. He wanted her

trust, her openness, with no dark secrets between them.

He wanted them to become lovers.

The realization was sharp, almost painful. They had loved each other physically, but

with restraint like a wall between them. He had done what she had asked of him, had held

himself back until the last moment, when his climax had shattered his control. Now he was

asking something of her, asking her to give as he had given.

Almost desperately she clutched the front of the shirt. "I—they left marks on me."

"I've seen bruises before." He reached up and gently touched her cheek. "You have one

right here, as a matter of fact."

Instinctively she reached up to the cheek he'd touched, feeling the tenderness. As soon

as she released the front of the shirt, he moved his hands to the buttons and slowly began

unfastening them, giving her time to protest. She bit her lip, fighting the urge to grab the

widening edges of the cloth and hold them together.

When the garment was open all the way down, he slid his hands inside and cupped her

breasts, his palms hot as they covered the cool mounds. Her nipples tingled as they hardened,

reaching out for the contact. "The bruises shame
them,"
he murmured. "Not you."

She closed her eyes as she sat astride him, feeling him hard and hot inside her, his

hands just as hard and hot on her breasts. She didn't protest when his hands left her breasts,

left them feeling oddly tight and aching, while he pushed the black shirt off her shoulders. The

fabric puddled around her arms, and he lifted each in turn, slipping them free.

She was naked. The warm air brushed against her bare skin with the lightest of

touches, and then she felt his fingertips doing the same, trailing so gently over each of the

dark marks on her shoulders, her arms and breasts, her stomach, that she barely felt him.

"Lean down," he said.

Slowly she obeyed, guided by his hands, down, down— and he lifted his head, meeting

her mouth with his.

Their first kiss... and they'd already made love. Bar-rie was shocked at how she could

have been so foolish as to forgo the pleasure of his kisses. His lips were firm, warm, hungry.

She sank against him with a little sound of mingled surprise and delight humming in her throat.

Her breasts flattened against him, the crisp hair on his chest rasping her ultrasensitive nipples,

another joy she had unknowingly skipped.

Oh, this was delicious. His tongue probed for entrance, and she immediately gave it.

Several minutes later he let his head drop to the blanket. He was panting slightly, his

eyes heavy-lidded. "I have another question."

"What?" She didn't want to give up the delights of his mouth. She'd never enjoyed

kissing so much before, but he was diabolically good at it. She followed him down,

nipping at his lower Up, depositing hot little kisses.

He chuckled beneath her mouth. The deep, rusty sound charmed her. She sensed that

his laughter was even rarer than his smiles, therefore doubly precious.

"Will you let me be on top this time?"

The question surprised her into laughter. She stifled it as best she could, burying her

head against his neck, but her body shook with giggles. He slipped out of her, making her

laugh even harder. She was still laughing when he wrapped one strong arm around her and rolled,

lifting her so they didn't roll off the blanket, efficiently tucking her beneath him and settling

between her legs. Her laughter caught on a gasp as he surged heavily into her.

Her senses swam as she was bombarded by new feelings, when she had already

experienced so much. She'd known he was a big man, but lying beneath him sharply

brought home the difference in their sizes. Though he propped his weight on his forearms

to keep from crushing her, she still felt the heaviness of that iron-muscled body. His

shoulders were so broad that he dwarfed her, wrapped around her, shielded her. When she

had been on top, she had controlled the depth of his penetration. The control was his now, her

thighs spread wide by his hips. He felt bigger, harder than he had before.

He waited a moment to see how she would accept the vulnerability of her position.

But she didn't feel vulnerable, she realized. She felt utterly secure, buffered by his strength.

Tremulously she smiled at him and lifted her arms to wind them around his neck.

He smiled in return. And then Zane Mackenzie made love to her.

There seemed to be scarcely a moment for the test of the day when they weren't

making love, resting from making love or about to make love. The sounds of the waterfront

surrounded them, the low bellow of ships, truck horns, the sounds of chains and cranes, but

inside that small, dim room there seemed to be nothing else in the world but each other. Barrie lost

herself in the force of his unbridled sensuality and discovered within herself a passion that

matched his. The need to be quiet only added to the intensity.

He kissed the bruises on her breasts and sucked her nipples until they throbbed with