Nicole Jordan (18 page)

“Max, please…”

He didn’t need to be asked again. Immediately he rolled over, easing her beneath him. His weight felt wonderful, the strong, virile power of his body making her feel fragile and feminine and sweetly helpless. The heated look on his face took her breath away.

Holding her gaze, he levered his knee between hers and spread her thighs, his member intimately knowing the cradle of her womanhood.

When her eyelids fell shut, he murmured a soft command. “No, look at me. Let me see your eyes.”

Probing her slick folds with his hardness, he tightened his buttocks and slowly began to enter her. When her breath faltered, he halted partway inside her, which only made Caro crave to possess all of him.

Deliberately she raised her hips, urging Max to complete his penetration. With no further encouragement, he pressed deeper, until her hot, moist flesh tightly sheathed him.

He held himself still then, giving her body time to grow accustomed to his penetration. Caro lay still as well while her body adapted to the sweet shock of Max filling her so powerfully.

She could see fire and tenderness in his eyes as she stared up at the dark beauty of his face.

When he finally began to move, he kept his strokes slow and long and deliberately drawn out. His chest chafed her peaked nipples, while his heavy thighs pressed hers wider so that he could penetrate her to the hilt. And shortly the blaze that had so blindly consumed her earlier began to lick at her senses again. The next time he withdrew, her inner muscles instinctively clenched at the wonderful, hard length of him.

She could feel Max shudder against her as he struggled to control his reaction. But he murmured soft encouragement as he showed her how to move, matching each silken thrust to her rasping breaths. His surging rhythm became hers. Soon she was whimpering with the burgeoning pleasure.

His eyes were burning as he bent his head to kiss her. Her lips parted to accept his hot, thrusting tongue, and she returned his kiss fervently, seeking and wanting, overwhelmed by his touch and scent and taste. The fever of his possession, the urgency in his lips, were ecstasy to her.

His mouth never ceased its drugging torment as he drove her to greater heights. Her body pulsed with a craving need so great that she hurt from it. He made her feel delirious with need. Wild, elemental, consumed by heat.

Yet Max’s desire was as great as her own. He delighted in her moans, reveled in her helpless response. His body throbbed with the need to pound hard and deep, and after a time he could no longer hold back.

He rocked against her, the rawness of his male hunger shattering the last pretense of gentleness between them. His voice as tight as his arms, he took her ruthlessly, but Caro clawed at his back, meeting his violence with her own as they strained together.

When she cried out, he captured the sound, kissing her fiercely, his lips drinking her keening moans. Then his back arched as his body spasmed. A fierce sound welled in his throat. His teeth bared in an almost agonized expression, he surged into her one final time.

Climax, savage and blinding, ripped through them both in a white-hot eruption. Their bodies shook with the rapture of it.

In the aftermath, Max collapsed upon her, his breath a raw whisper as he rasped her name. He could hear her heart beating in a frenzied echo of his own, feel her skin dewy from the heat and violence of his possession, her body flushed with erotic warmth.

“You make me feel so wild,” she murmured.

Wild was exactly what he felt when he was inside her, out of control, beyond the reach of reason.

At last finding the strength to ease his weight from her, he bent to kiss her brow beneath her riotous hair, then gathered her against him.

He lay there, marveling at the searing pleasure of their joining. He had felt an explosion of passion he hadn’t felt in years, maybe never. He’d mindlessly lost himself in Caro, in a way he never had with any other woman.

He wanted to lose himself inside her again. He knew he had to temper his demands on her inexperienced body, but already his shaft had started to fill and throb once more. He wanted her now, more fiercely than before.

At the same time, he wanted simply to hold her. To savor this moment—the warmth of her body pressing against his, her glorious hair spilling across his chest.

He tightened his hold, knowing he couldn’t let her go after just this one night.

“I used to dream of this,” he said after a time, his voice still jagged from the relentless ecstasy they had shared.

Beside him, Caro sighed, lost in a thick daze of pleasure. She had dreamed of Max, too. Countless times. But the reality was far better than her dreams.

“When I couldn’t sleep,” he murmured, “I would think of you.” He was playing with a strand of her hair, letting a curl entwine around his fingers. “In my imagination, you would stroke my brow to help me fall asleep.”

Rousing herself from her lovely daze, Caro rose up on one elbow and brushed a lock of raven hair from his forehead.

“Like this?” she asked, smoothing her fingers gently across his brow.

His eyes fell shut and he made a soft sound of assent, something between a sigh and a moan. “Exactly like that.”

Caro gazed down at him, puzzled and admittedly a bit wounded as well. “Max? Do you truly want to sleep just now?”

Giving a low laugh, he opened his eyes. “No, I was trying to be considerate of your inexperience.”

“I am hardier than I look.”

“That you are.”

He drew her down to him but made no move to do anything more sexual—merely pressed his lips against her hair.

“I won’t be satisfied with a single night,” he said finally. “One night won’t be enough for me. Or for you, either, I expect.”

Caro stilled. “I concede you won our competition. I couldn’t resist you after all.”

His fingers tightened on her arm. “This is no contest between us now, Caro. Nothing to do with any game. And I don’t intend to give you up.”

She stirred restlessly against him, assailed by a return of the conflicting emotions that had fought and tangled inside her all evening.

“Can you honestly say you don’t want us to be lovers after tonight?” Max asked in a rough whisper.

She knew what her answer should be. What common sense dictated. But then his warm palm covered her breast, sending a shock of desire coursing through her. At the heated rush of feeling, Caro squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t think when Max was touching her this way, assaulting her senses with his potent male vitality. All she could think of were his magical hands and burning lips and lithe, magnificent body.

“You were an innocent when you gave yourself to me,” he continued softly. “Wouldn’t you like to know more about lovemaking?”

Yes, she would like it very much. Max could teach her. He would show her the kind of passion that she had once only dreamed of. He was a man who enjoyed giving pleasure as much as taking it, and he would see to it that she experienced all the blissful secrets between a man and a woman.

“What are you suggesting?” she asked finally.

“Simply that we enjoy whatever time we have together.”

When she didn’t reply, his thumb caressed her hardened nipple, shooting sparks to all her nerve endings and between her thighs. “Can you deny you want me?”

“No.” Of course she couldn’t deny it. Max
made
her want him.

And tonight, at least, she had done the same to him. The memory of his male body saying so openly and truthfully that he wanted her filled her with a sweet sense of triumph.

Yet Max would leave her again, Caro reminded herself. Once they brought Isabella home safely, he would have no reason to stay on Cyrene.

And he only wanted her body, while she wanted…what?

Longing, as strong and desperate as the need to breathe, rippled through her. She wanted Max, any way she could have him. She wanted his passion, his caresses, for the short remainder of his time on the island.

Yet she would have to protect herself somehow, she knew. He wouldn’t hurt her, not on purpose. The danger would be in becoming too emotionally involved with him. She would have to guard against coming to care for him too deeply. It was imperative that she maintain a certain dispassion, Caro warned herself.

“We will have to keep our relationship purely physical,” she said slowly. “Nothing more intimate.”

His breath was a warm shiver against her neck as his lips nuzzled her skin. “Nothing?”

“No, nothing. That is all I want, Max—an affair based entirely on pleasure.”

“Very well, if that is what you want,” he responded in that same sensual, arousing voice she’d heard whispering endearments and bold persuasions in her ear a short while ago.

She felt his maleness rigid and hot against her thigh, reminding her of his hunger.

Her breath caught in her chest, while all the primal womanly instincts she possessed sprang to life. Perhaps she was foolish, but it thrilled her to be wanted so fiercely by this man.

She knew she should say no to his proposal, but she couldn’t summon the strength. Max had stolen her willpower, one caress at a time.

Just as he was doing now. His teeth tasted the softness of her skin with ravishing delicacy, flooding her raw nerves with a warm bath of sensation. Her newly sensitized body thrummed with desire, feverish for his touch.

Then he rolled over, easing between her thighs.

Caro stared up at him, the moonlight dancing over his beautiful features. She was agonizingly aware of how hard and huge he was against her swollen sex, how sweet the ache of her breasts was inside his gentle grip, how molten his gaze.

“Only physical gratification,” she repeated, reminding herself more than him.

“As you say.”

His eyes were hot and held dark promise as he slid into her. Instantly all fires swept to life, white-hot. Her body shimmered with fierce response.

Releasing a breathless sigh, she arched beneath him, her arms helplessly reaching up to encircle his neck.

He smiled, a slow, sexual smile that burned right through her.

Caro made a soft whimpering sound of need as she raised her lips for his kiss. Max obliged, taking her mouth with an urgency that made her ache.

Throwing away every last sense of caution then, she returned his fervent embrace, surrendering herself to him, to his passion, to the night.

Chapter

Nine

Max left before the dawn. Caro lay in bed for a long while, cherishing the lingering warmth of his passion.

After a second enchanting bout of lovemaking had left them both gasping, she had persuaded Max to close his eyes and stroked his brow until he fell into a healing sleep. Yet as she’d listened to the sound of his deep, even breathing, to his heart beating quietly beneath her cheek, she renewed her vow to keep her emotional distance.

Reminding herself again now, Caro pushed away the bedcovers that still carried Max’s scent and rose to bathe and dress. She couldn’t let herself think about him, for she needed to focus her attention on business.

Normally she met Alex Ryder on Thursday mornings at the castle for a regularly scheduled bout of fencing practice, but she intended to ride over early and catch John Yates at his work—in order to inform him about Danielle Newham.

She wasn’t eager to tell John that the woman who had captured his heart might not be what she seemed. Yet it was her duty to warn him that they had a possible traitor in their midst. Danielle and her brother, Peter, could not be allowed to carry out whatever nefarious acts they had planned.

Dreading her upcoming interview with John, Caro found she had little appetite, so she merely ate some fruit while her riding mount was saddled. Then she struck out south for Olwen Castle.

She had asked Max to meet her there. She thought it best to speak to John alone but to have his former commander available to support her story, in case John either didn’t believe the allegations or had questions.

She encountered Max at the castle stables, for apparently he’d arrived moments before her.

Her pulse leapt the instant she saw him.

“Good morning, Miss Evers,” he said mildly as she slid down from her sidesaddle and surrendered her mount to a groom. His tone was casual, but his eyes were searing in their intensity.

When she met the flare of heat in the blue depths, the hot, sweet memory of the past hours poured through her.

Caro managed a response to his slow smile of greeting, but she feared she sounded too flustered. It was difficult to pretend she hadn’t just spent a magical night in his arms.

“I trust,” Max added as he escorted her from the stables, “that you enjoyed pleasant dreams last night.”

“Quite pleasant.”

“Mine certainly were,” he admitted in a low, husky voice that started a deep throb burning through her body.

As they made their way to the great hall, Caro kept remembering how Max’s lips and hands had felt on her skin, how he felt moving within her. And when his fingers pressed the small of her back to usher her through the huge wooden entrance doors, she shivered at the responsive ache between her thighs.

She had to discipline herself in order to greet John Yates solemnly and ask for a private word with him.

Leaving Max in the great hall to peruse the medieval artifacts there, she accompanied John to his office—a small antechamber off Sir Gawain’s study. As dispassionately as possible Caro told him about Max’s former knowledge of the Newhams, and recounted finding Miss Newham rifling through Sir Gawain’s desk papers the previous night.

John stared down at the floor during the entire recitation. To her surprise, he didn’t offer any protests or disclaimers, or even try to defend his sweetheart as Caro had expected.

When he remained mute, she squeezed his arm in sympathy. “If you find my concerns hard to credit, then you should talk to Mr. Leighton yourself.”

“I believe you.” The anguish in his voice was mirrored in his eyes when he looked up. “She has played me for a fool, hasn’t she?”

Caro let her silence speak for itself.

“I knew it was too good to be true,” John whispered, “that a beautiful woman like Danielle would show such avid interest in a cripple like me.” It was the first time he had ever admitted grief to Caro at the loss of his leg, but she imagined he found this blow even more devastating than his maiming had been.

“I am very sorry, John,” she murmured, feeling inadequate to console him, yet knowing she needed to focus his attention on the future. “We will have to keep a watchful eye on Danielle, though, and try to discover what she is after.”

His jaw clenched. “You are right. And we cannot let her know we suspect her.”

“Agreed. It would be best if we could set a trap for her. She may be trying to thwart one of our missions. If she were to expose any of our members…”

“I know. Their lives could be at stake.” The sheen of wetness in his eyes wrenched at Caro’s heart. “But she is my responsibility. I will deal with her, Caro, I promise you.”

“If you are certain…”

“I am certain. May I be alone now?” he asked, his voice unsteady.

Understanding his desire to deal with his despair in private, Caro kissed his cheek and then quietly left him. Her own sorrow was mixed with a growing anger at the heartless jade who had almost certainly used John Yates to further her own sinister ends.

And this coming on top of an already simmering frustration over Isabella made Caro yearn to strike out at something. It had been nine days since she’d returned to Cyrene and still there was no word of her friend’s whereabouts.

Caro knew her anger must have shown when she found Max, for he raised an eyebrow. “He didn’t take it well?”

“He is heartbroken.”

She glanced around the hall. “Where the devil is Ryder? He was supposed to meet me here for our fencing practice.”

“If you need a partner, I would be happy to oblige.”

Pressing her lips together, Caro gave him a dark look. She would very much like to fence with an opponent so worthy as Max. As a cavalry officer, he would doubtless possess superb swordsmanship, and beating him with foils would be a true challenge. Yet as irritable as she felt, she would hardly be at her best this morning.

“This will be your chance to show me what you can do,” he prodded when she hesitated. “You’ve boasted of your skills often enough.”

“Boasted!” He was trying to provoke her, she suspected. “Very well,” Caro retorted, “but I warn you, I am in no mood to be lenient.”

She led him into the depths of the castle, to a long gallery. The chamber was generously lit from sunlight streaming in the high windows, and equipped with any manner of weapons. She gave Max his choice of foils, which all had buttoned tips.

“I’m surprised you hold your practices here at the castle,” he said as he tested the weight and flexibility of one blade.

“I can hardly pay regular visits to a bachelor’s establishment,” Caro snapped. “Nor do I wish to flaunt my unusual interest in a masculine sport. Here there is no one to censure what I do. All the servants are totally loyal to Sir Gawain.”

Max’s brows narrowed at her sharp tone. “Do you intend to take your frustration out on me?”

She took a calming breath. “No. I know better than to let my emotions rule me when I am facing an opponent.”

“Good, since if you can’t control your temper, you give me an immediate advantage.”

Caro chose a gleaming rapier and made a few experimental slashes of her own before moving to the center of the stone floor. Knowing she needed to shrug off her anger in order to concentrate, she stood patiently waiting while Max stripped off his coat.

“There is the matter of the victor’s prize to discuss before we begin,” he said as he joined her. “If I win, I get to claim a kiss.”

“And if I win?”

“You get to claim a kiss.”

She smiled wryly. “There is hardly any point in competing, then, if we will only wind up kissing each other.”

“Oh, no. I mean to hold my victory over your head when I make love to you.”

She had a sudden vision of his hard body stretched full-length above hers, moving sensuously between her thighs, and her cheeks warmed. Now she
knew
Max was provoking her. Especially when his eyes roved lazily over her, lingering on her breasts before moving down her body.

“You fence encumbered by skirts? Isn’t that rather hazardous?”

His hot gaze burned through the fabric of her gown, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he could fluster her. “It is only practical. Whenever I find myself in a dangerous situation, I am usually wearing skirts, so it is best to practice under the same conditions.”

“They will likely put you at a disadvantage.”

“Are you already making excuses in case you lose, Mr. Leighton?”

He grinned. “Perhaps. I would find it disconcerting to be beaten by a woman.”

“I will try not to embarrass you too severely.”

When he took his place opposite her, Caro raised her foil. An instant later their rapiers came together in a clash of steel, and the match got under way.

From the first engagement Max realized he was facing a formidable opponent. Caro fought with surprising quickness and a determined concentration that immediately forced him to keep alert.

After a swift pass, she lunged deftly and nearly slipped through his guard. When he recovered and claimed the offensive, he had to admire the adroit manner in which she fended off his attack.

There was a brief moment of silence while they circled each other as in a dance.

“I don’t think I would care to meet you on a dueling field,” Max remarked. “You are quite good.”

“So are you.”

“But I learned at Angelo’s
salle
in London, from one of the premier swordsmen in Europe. Who taught you?”

“Ryder, in part. And one of our American friends whom you haven’t met yet—Brandon Deverill.”

Their blades crackled again.

“Do you have any weaknesses?” Max queried.

She parried his next thrust with ease and leapt nimbly aside. “If I did, I would not admit it to you,” she retorted with a taunting smile.

Then she made a quick feint and advanced with agile steps, executing a series of neat slashes as he retreated.

After a few moments, Caro disengaged abruptly, giving Max a dark glare. “You aren’t trying your best, are you?” she demanded.

“Not entirely,” Max conceded. “I admit it goes against all my chivalrous instincts to fight a woman.”

Her eyes turned the gray of storm clouds. “If you intend to continue this match, then stop insulting me by holding back. I don’t want you handing me the victory out of chivalry.”

“I stand corrected,” Max said with all sincerity, raising his foil.

He put all his effort into winning this time, but their battle went on for several long minutes.

Caro was no hobbyist playing at a man’s sport, Max acknowledged. She was a warrior who fought with extreme finesse and a skill that was superior to most men’s. And she fenced the way she made love—with intensity and passion. In fact, her face was lightly flushed and held a sheen of sweat from the exertion, and her breath came in soft pants, as if she was nearing climax….

Max felt himself harden at the image, and his mouth curved in an ironic smile. This was a hell of an inappropriate time to become aroused.

“Something amuses you?” Caro challenged as she executed an expert riposte.

“I just realized,” he drawled, “that you spar as passionately as you make love.”

She faltered at his wicked pronouncement. Off balance, she tripped on the hem of her skirt and fell backward, landing hard on her posterior.

Ruthlessly, Max followed her movement with his foil and brought the buttoned point to her throat. A cool smile of triumph touched his lips as he stood over her.

Breathing raggedly, Caro gave him a look that was both frustrated and sheepish. “That was hardly fair.” Yet an unwilling smile tugged at her mouth.

“It wasn’t fair at all, but it was effective in making you lower your guard. Let that be a lesson, my sweet witch.”

“My lesson was realizing how devious you are—that you will do anything to win. But I will try to be gracious in defeat.”

Max extended a hand and helped her to her feet. “You shouldn’t feel discouraged. There are few men who can prove a match for me. You were a valiant opponent.”

Caro couldn’t help but feel warmed by his praise. She was indeed pleased that she’d held her own with Max till the very end.

“I suppose you are expecting flattery in return,” she replied. “Very well—you are the devil of a swordsman. I have never seen anyone better.”

It was true, Caro thought, eyeing Max as he stood at ease before her. His abilities were exceptional. The strength and skill and agility he displayed were those of a master. He would make an admirable Guardian—

“Now to claim my prize,” Max said, interrupting her thoughts. “Come here, witch.”

“But we aren’t finished yet!” Caro protested.

“No, but I need sustenance if I’m to continue.”

When she moved toward him warily, Max slipped his hand behind her nape, his gaze heating to molten sapphire as it lingered on her mouth.

This was swordplay of the sexual kind, Caro realized. But she could play this game. When he bent to capture her mouth, she returned his kiss ardently, her tongue darting between his lips, luring his into a contest of thrust and parry.

Max made a low sound in his throat, and his kiss turned carnal, possessive, stealing her breath away.