Mallory Rush - [Outlawsand Heroes 02] (17 page)

"Tell me that in a year and I'll believe you."

"I will. Time will prove I speak the truth. And time will prove whether or not you can return the love I freely give to you. Tell me, do you feel some, even a little, now?"

Did she? Heaven help her, but she did. All the more reason to make him understand the distance she was compelled to keep. "I'm crazy about you, Noble," she confessed. "But I don't want to let myself love you the way you think you love me. I can't afford it. Not yet. Not until you—"

"Meet other women of your time?" he supplied. "Back to that, are we? Bloody hell, woman. Not only do you underestimate me, you underestimate yourself!"

"I'd rather underestimate us both than end up in love with you only for you to figure out what you're really feeling is something a lot less." Before he could refute her, Lori touched his hand. "Look, you need me to help you get through a painful transition. And I need you for the same reason. Please, Noble, why don't we just agree to leave love out of the equation? That way you won't feel guilty if you decide to leave and I won't be hanging my hopes on a shooting star sure to burn out when it hits ground."

Noble suppressed a disdainful retort.
Leave love out of the equation, eh?
For not having known Lori long, he seemed to know her better than she knew herself. She wasn't capable of shutting off her emotions while coupling. He would refrain, however, from righting her misguided reasoning. Especially since it abetted his cause.

"Very well," he agreed. With satisfaction he noted her slight frown at his seemingly easy capitulation. He twirled a fingertip in his glass and traced a wet path from her throat to the scooped neckline of her blouse. Dipping inside, he leisurely flicked a nipple. At her soft: gasp, he withdrew. "Very well," he repeated. "If it is a lover you want, a lover I shall be. A demanding one, Lori."

She wet her lips, a nervous little gesture. "I—uh, I'll go put on my nightgown. While I do, you can—"

"Watch. You are sorely mistaken if you think to relegate me to cleaning the table or pacing the floor while you do battle with the decision you've made."

She stood with stoic resolve. Noble admired her courage even as he shook his head at her resigned sigh. "Okay. Let's forget the dishes and—"

"And be done with it?" He blocked her way when she took a halting step toward the stairs. Staying her with a firm grip, he felt her slight shake. Lord, he thought, if Lori only knew how painfully revealing his own disrobing would be, she'd surely realize her anxiety had nothing on his.

He spoke to himself, as much as to her. "To take off one's clothes, Lori, is to bare your body but not necessarily your soul. No one can see or touch that part of another unless it is given freely, with trust. I trust you as I have few others, and will gladly bare myself, body and soul, for your view. However, I need at least some small measure of the same from you." Searching her troubled, yearning gaze, he felt an incisive empathy with Lori, as if he were in her skin, not his.

It had been like this since he first awoke, but the more time that passed, the more his sense of connection with her intensified as her unguarded revelations surfaced in his memory. How well he understood Lori. Even her present reluctance, her need to be loved by him and her fear to believe it was true. Somehow he had to break past her defenses and win her trust. But... how?

As he thought his gaze veered to the table and the second loaf of bread, untouched, covered by a towel. Lori was like the waiting loaf, its steam held in by external forces. And he was the knife capable of cleaving her defenses if she would but lend her hand to the cause.

"Lori," he said, breaking the charged silence, "what do you say to my need for more than just sex? Surely you realize it won't be good for either of us unless intimacy is part of what we share."

Noble was right. Lori knew he was absolutely right. Without intimacy, she'd feel cheap and empty. But once she lowered her guard, the stakes would go up, way up, and she had to decide if the risk was worth the consequences she might have to suffer later.
Might. Later.
Those were the key words that sealed her decision.

"All right, then," she acquiesced. "We'll take it as it comes, see what happens. But, Noble, I've gotta tell you, I'm really scared about this."

"I know you are, Lori. I know." His soothing voice held a silken edge of mystique that stole her breath and tantalized her imagination. "How very brave you are," he continued while turning her toward the table. His chest to her spine, his lips to her nape, he leaned in and led her hands to the cloth-covered bread. "So very brave to confront your fears and come with me to a place only the two of us can go."

"Where... where are we going?"

"On a journey. A journey of the senses. Close your eyes," he gently commanded.

Lori could feel her heart hammer, her belly clutch in anticipation of the sensual unknown, as she shut her eyes. "Why?" she asked.

"Quite simply, I want you to look within as we explore a world of our making—a very intimate realm where trust is earned and forged. Come with me, Lori," he murmured, guiding her unsteady hands to uncover the bread, then lightly stroke its warm, crusty surface.

It felt good, so good and reassuring. Instinctively, she sought the source of its heat, and sank her fingertips deep into the loaf. The steam seeped beneath and around her nails, and she indulged in the sensory delight.

"Do you like the feel of my bread?"

"I do. It's like holding hearth and home in my hands."

"And such is the way I feel when I hold you." His arms came around her waist, and in his embrace she felt a wondrous, lifting thrill. The strength of his chest pressed to her back, his arousal firm against her, quickening her own desire. And the bread's giving texture, wrapped around her fingers, felt wonderful, like a moist cloth to a fever.

There was a fever inside her, rising high and fast in her blood. Noble. Noble was the fever. He was in her system and all she could do was pray he didn't break her.

But for now she was safe, safe in his whispered promise: "No need to fear the next leg of our journey, I'm here and holding fast to you, love." There was a sweet restraint in his touch as he glided his palms from her knees to her thighs, too slowly raising her skirt and bathing her neck with leisurely kisses. By the time he hiked the skirt over her hips and stroked her buttocks until she moaned soft and long, her need for more, so much more, was dire.

"My hose," she panted. "Noble, please, take them down."

"Far be it from me to refuse you a second time," he assured her with a low, seductive chuckle. His thumbs hooked into the elastic, and she could hardly bear the suspense as the blunt edge of his nails skated down her legs. They were trembling, unsteady, when he reached her knees. There, he stopped. Before she could demand that he finish, he placed a demand of his own.

His hand covered one of hers, leading it away from the security she clutched. He placed her palm over the knife's hilt.

"You know what I want you to do," he whispered, his breath moist, hot on her nape. At her halting nod, he let go. "Courage, Lori. You've come so for, don't falter now. Freedom, release, they're within your grasp.
Trust me."

Disbelieving of what she was doing even as she did it, Lori drew the knife down and put its blade to the panty hose stretched taut between her knees. Her hand shook as she sliced awkwardly at the elastic band.

"Help me?" she whispered.

"I would be honored, my love," came his hoarse reply.

Lori felt the rip as surely as the rending of her frail defenses. Noble slid the spliced panty hose down, taking them off until nylon and shoes and defenses lay at her feet.

She kicked all three aside and was rewarded with his approving groan, a lingering kiss to each bare-bottomed cheek. Rising, he stroked her belly with a sweeping caress. And then she endured a delicious agony, the feel of him fretting her most private hair, the teasing graze of his fingertip to the peak of her gender's pulse.

"Make love to me," she pleaded, then demanded, "make love to me, Noble. Now.
Now."

"All in good time," he said with a maddening calm while he drove her nearly insane with the slide of his palms between her legs. She eagerly opened them and he bent his knees to the backs of hers, fit himself to her everywhere except for where she was desperate to be joined together, tight as a fist gloved in wet velvet.

She thrust back, urged him on with a frantic push of her hips. "For the love of God, what are you waiting for?" she all but shrieked. He stilled her with a firm clamp.

"Patience, Lori," he soothed her. "One should never rush what's meant to be savored." His hand wound into her hair and she felt the tug prickle her scalp and tingle her womb. He pressed her down until her cheek rested on the linen tablecloth and the earthy aroma of yeast invaded her senses.

She smelled the bread made by his hands, smelled the clean scent of his skin riding hers, and weaving around and through them both was the smell of musk, pulsing on waves of a dizzying, sexual heat.

Where was this place Noble had taken them? She vaguely wondered. The answer came swiftly. This place, this intoxicating, mind-bending place, was where the unknown became the known and more than bodies were bared. It was a place of intimacy as she had never perceived it before, racing on a current of the deepest reaches of desire, buried in the far corners of her mind. Hidden, until Noble had taken her where she'd never dreamed to go...

His realm. He ruled here with ease and dark grace. His passion controlled while he unleashed her own, so completely and profoundly that she didn't hesitate to obey him. "The butter, Lori. Hand me the butter," he commanded.

She passed him the semi-firm stick. He skated tiny figure eights over her nerve ends until she pounded the table and begged for him to stop, only to plead for the butter's return when he did.

She heard the butter thud onto the table, felt his grip on her arms just before he abruptly turned her to face him. Her eyes flew open and she struggled to focus on his looming face, his breath coming harsh and fast while her own was nowhere to be found.

"What—what are you doing?" she gasped out.

"The better question is, what are you allowing me to do?"

"I... I don't know."

"But of course you do. Think, Lori.
Think."

She struggled for coherence. "Whatever you want," she managed to say. "I'm letting you do whatever you want."

"Exactly. But why? Tell me why," he demanded.

"Be-because..." Why
had
she let him do what he'd done? And with her eager assistance, no less. It was crazy, made no sense. But then came a flash of insight and it made all the sense in the world. She had the answer and she knew it was the answer he wanted. Swallowing hard, she whispered, "because I trust you."

"Very good." The approving nod of his head made her realize she had just been taught a lesson by a master logician whose methods had left an indelible impression. In her head, in her heart. And it sure as heck didn't end there.

"Okay, Noble, you made your point," she conceded, past ready to pick up where they'd left off.

"Then you realize what I need from you, what you need from me, can't possibly be relegated to a bed?"

"Yes!" She threw up her hands in exasperation and her grinding frustration rose to a dangerous level when he softly chuckled.

"In that case..." Noble kissed her soundly then swept her into his arms and took the stairs, two at a time. "Off to bed with us."

Chapter 13

The scent of vanilla snaked through the air, rising from a dozen flickering candles. They lent his quarters, the bedroom of his request, a soft illumination, a perfect complement to the vision Noble beheld. He thought Lori ravishing as she undressed, quaintly shy, unquestionably eager, ravishing in her proud nakedness as she slipped into an exotic gossamer gown.

She was soft and lovely, such a stark contrast to the hard jolt seizing his groin. But even harder was the fisting in his gut now that the moment of his own body's display was at hand. Perhaps the candles would make the sight less jarring, he told himself, knowing full well it wouldn't.

"Do you like the gown?" she asked, the transparent silk floating around her like a whisper as she came to him, laid her palms on his chest.