Rake Beyond Redemption (8 page)

‘No, we could not.’ Marie-Claude placed her hand in his. It closed strongly round her fingers and drew her close. And when he opened his arms, Marie-Claude simply stepped into them.

Zan could feel the tremor of nerves ripple through her body as his arms closed around her. He would be gentle, would not frighten her, so he drew her softly against him and bent his mouth to hers. Whisper soft, as light as a breath. Beautiful she was, ethereal in the moon’s beams. No time for second thinking, but he controlled the urging of his loins. He would take her hand in his and
walk with her in this magical light, nothing more. Yet her body fit against his, soft curves against hard muscle. Her lips were meant to be kissed, savoured, caressed.

Ravished!

The heat built before he was aware with the kick of a rogue wave. His arms tightened, his mouth took and took until he groaned with pleasure as her lips parted beneath his. Too much, too fast. Breathless, he raised his head, prepared to step back, only to see the blur of blind desire in her face.

‘Marie…’ He pressed his lips on her brow.

When she raised a hand to touch his cheek, when her lips curved in shy delight, he was undone. He swooped to crush his mouth to hers.

How wild he was. Uncontrolled raw passion raced through him, lighting an answering flame in her own blood. The power of him, his hands, his lean body, made her want. Need. His desire for her was clear in the hard thrust of his thighs against hers. This was no light flirtation. He was hunting and she was the quarry. And Marie-Claude gloried in it. To be wanted. To be wanted by this man who made her feel cherished and loved and desired.

Her breathing became shallow as his mouth roamed to slide along her jaw in open-mouthed kisses. Then her throat, with the caress of tongue and the nip of teeth.

‘I think you have bewitched me,’ she murmured, dropping her head back as he pursued a path to the dip of her collarbone. Her pulse leapt and quivered.

‘You have bound me in silver chains this night.’

Then he lifted his head, grasped her waist and lifted her to spin her around.

‘Will you come with me, Marie-Claude?’

She tilted her chin. ‘My conscience says no.’

‘To hell with conscience. Damnation, Marie!’ A little spurt of temper that both surprised and excited her. ‘Can you not feel it? My heart beats for you. It has since the moment I set eyes on you. You have trapped me.’

‘As you have trapped me.’ She kissed the temper away. ‘You are not the only one to suffer from this. Where will you take me?’

‘Somewhere—not far—out of the wind and away from prying eyes. I should warn you. I want you—and I’ll take you. I’ve no right to ask it of you. Certainly I’ve no right to demand it. But you should know—’

She put her fingers against his lips. ‘You have every right if I agree, if I allow it.’

‘And do you?’

‘I do.’

His ravenous gaze raked her. ‘Tell me to stop now—if that’s your wish.’

‘And you will. I know it.’ She had no fear of him, however compromised his control might appear.

‘I’ll leave you here—if you wish it.’

‘No. Make love to me, Zan.’

Walking backwards, luring her on, he drew her down into a shallow dip in the cliffs where the grass was nibbled short by the sheep, firm and springy beneath their feet. Thinking that she might be spurred into flight if she allowed stern thought to replace the dazzle of moonbeams in her brain, he kept his hold firm, but she followed his leading readily enough. The expanse of sky above their heads, the bright vista of stars enfolded them as the light wind caressed, warm as a breath. All that mattered was that she was here, she had come to him. And now she stepped forwards into
his arms, eyes alight, lips smiling. He could not resist her. Moving close to obliterate any space between them, his lips cruised over her face, lingering on her eyelids, the impossibly alluring hollow at her temple, drawn irresistibly to her lips that opened beneath his and welcomed him. When his tongue savoured the sweetness of hers, she sighed against him. Then he continued, holding her close, applying open-mouthed kisses along the fine length of her throat to the fragile bones of her shoulders, to where the pulse beat hard against him.

His own pulse leapt in fast response. Desire raged through him, hot and urgent, taking him off guard, so that his hands clenched hard on her arms, too hard. He raised his head, forcing himself to relax his grip. Without doubt she challenged his control, but her eyes were wide and trusting on his.

‘Zan…’ she murmured, raising a hand to touch his lips.

‘Do you really want this?’ he asked, catching her restless fingers and biting gently.

‘Can you ask?’

All the invitation he needed; he released her to loosen the ribbons of her robe, waited for her to deny him the intimacy—which she didn’t—then parted the delicate material to slide it down to catch at her elbows.

If he had lost his breath before, this moment was shattering. It was as if she were meant to stand like this, moon-kissed, desirable. A sea goddess, a nymph, or the mermaid he called her, bathed in light that made her skin glow and demand that he touch her. Zan simply stood and looked, making no apology for it. She was so beautiful. The light from sky and sea illuminated her skin, gleaming along the curves, casting enticing shadows beneath her
breasts. He stroked his fingers down over the tantalising swell, the hardness of her nipple, until she gasped.

Zan dropped his hand, conscious that her cheeks were now flushed, her expression just a little anxious.

‘Forgive me…’

‘No.’ She stepped closer and when she raised her hands he allowed her to unfasten the ties of his shirt and push it aside. He allowed her to touch and discover as she wished. His blood heated. His body tightened, his erection hardened in demand. She wanted him as much as he wanted her.

‘Will you give yourself to me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you afraid?’

‘Yes…’ A reluctant confession.

‘There’s no need to be.’

Casting his shirt on the grass, Zan took her hands and lowered her and proceeded to kneel beside her, sliding his fingers beneath the fine silk of her night attire, opening it as if to display a miraculous gift. For him and him alone. Then he set himself to woo and pleasure them both, the pressure of his lips a prelude to the stroke of his fingers, touching, discovering, driving her and himself to an urgency of need. His command over his senses was iron-hard. Always gentle, always slow, an insistent awakening, determined to let her become familiar with this intimacy before allowing his own needs to surface. A difficult promise to keep, as her nipples hardened against this palms, as her breath shortened. His control, he discovered, was not infinite.

Marie-Claude found herself blinded by the desire that swept through her so fast she could not contain it. Her knowledge of these intimacies was so limited, so
distant, but she felt no uncertainties in Zan’s embrace. He would treat her with care. How could she know that, when she had known him for so little a time? But she did. She spread her palms, her fingers, against his chest, marvelling at the firm smoothness of muscle underlying skin. Like rocks, smooth and hard and dangerous, beneath fast-flowing water. She sighed in impossible pleasure, her horizon filled to the brim with his glamour as his dark hair trailed across her breast. She gasped as his teeth closed over a nipple.

He bit gently, then soothed with his tongue. All thought vanished, her mind submerged in a sea of longing. This was enchantment and she gave herself up to the enticement of his clever hands.

Zan continued, unhurried, waiting for her response, skimming his fingers over her belly, the sensuous curve of her hip. Tantalisingly, tormenting, over the satin skin of her inner thigh to the throbbing heart of her.

Her breath caught in her throat on a little gasp.

And his heart lunged from its heavy beat into a gallop. He could wait no longer. It took only a heartbeat to disrobe her entirely. Longer to divest himself of boots and breeches. Sitting with his back turned to her as he hauled off the leather, he felt the brush of her fingers along the length of her spine, and shuddered. In a state of blatant arousal that he could not hide, he rolled and pinned her, yet holding his weight from her on his forearms, he wound his hands into her hair so that she must look at him. And she did, with no reticence. It drove hard like an arrow through his gut.

‘You were meant for a night of loving such as this. You were meant to be for me.’ He kissed her mouth, filling himself with her sweetness. ‘I’ll not hurt you.’

‘I know.’

Her arms tangled round him to draw him down as she offered her lips to the relentless passion in his. Real and solid, he took her over, her will, her mind, her body. Cool, smooth, he was all male. He was all she wanted. Marie-Claude opened her thighs to receive him.

‘Marie-Claude…You have the skill of a siren.’

Helpless to resist, Zan sank into her, deep and full, enclosed in hot silk. With a steady pace in mind, he thrust and withdrew. Thrust slowly again. But she arched her body against him, taking him deeper, and he was lost. A slow loving was no longer a choice he could make. Hunger roared in him and he plunged until she enclosed him entirely. Allowing that same hunger to rule, he swooped and plundered, driving them both to a frenzy of wanting, sweat-streaked, struggling to catch their breath at the onslaught of desire.

Zan filled her. Marie-Claude gloried in his body, in her own, in the way they fit so perfectly and moved together, strained against each other in thoughtless delight. This was right. He was hers. Sighing as he took her, powerful thrust after powerful thrust, owning her. When he moved within her, setting fire to her, giving her no peace, she mirrored his rhythm, trembling beneath him as his flesh moved against hers, stroking every nerve until she could not bear it.

How could pleasure approach so close to exquisite agony?

Quivering, her whole body alight, Marie-Claude felt herself dragged to some inexplicable destination. She was overwhelmed by it and for a moment fought against it, but he was with her. Zan would keep her safe. Her whole world was centred there, in him, and her heart
pounded in unison with his. His mouth captured hers, his tongue forceful to part her lips and savour the soft flesh. The power of his thighs became more insistent, irresistible, shattering her senses. All Marie-Claude could do was to hold on, to hold tight, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her nails scoring his flesh.

Lured by her heat and softness, Zan felt the need build to drive home. He held back as long as he could, until he must respond to the tensing of her muscles around him. Until body overcame mind, like the rush of the tide to sweep all before it. With a groan of despair, of inexpressible pleasure, he clung to the edge as the water sucked and clawed.

Then fell in, drawn below the surface of dark-edged satisfaction.

She drowned too in a glittering explosion of sensations.

Slowly Marie-Claude opened her eyes to find Zan looking at her. Their eyes locked, held, as if neither wished to be released from what had just been between them.

‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispered, finally breaking the spell, stretching luxuriously.

Zan kissed her lips, her hair, in a chaste little salute. ‘What can you not believe?’

‘That you have given me such happiness. I feel as diamond-bright as those stars shining down on us. I feel as if they have got into my blood, to sparkle there.’

‘Very poetic, Madame Mermaid. Then if you feel at one with the stars, I am well repaid for my efforts.’

Was that a touch of cynicism? Momentarily unsettled, Marie-Claude reached up her hand as if to smooth his hair from his forehead.

Abruptly Zan drew back, released her. Sat up and pushed himself to his feet in one strong movement. Surprised
by his sudden change of mood, Marie-Claude could do nothing but allow him to lift her, to help her don her robe with brisk attention, before putting his own clothes to rights.

‘You are very skilled, I see,’ she remarked with a soft laugh, clinging to their previous intimacy against the little distance he had built between them, as he tied her silk ribbons into more than passable bows.

‘I have to admit to having some knowledge of feminine attire. Does it bother you?’

‘No.’

‘It needn’t.’

‘I have never dreamed of anything like that!’ She closed her fingers around his wrists in the softest of bracelets. ‘You made me feel beautiful and desired and alive as a woman. What more could any woman ask but to be loved in the moonlight on a night such as this…’
And by a man she finds irresistible
, she added in her mind.

‘You have cast an enchantment, Marie.’ His voice had gentled again, and Zan pressed his lips to her brow. ‘But now it’s beyond late and I must take you home.’

Linking his fingers in hers, he drew her with him. Silently they retraced their steps to the edge of the lawns, where he turned her against his arm so that he could see her face.

‘Goodnight, my glorious girl.’

He could not resist. A kiss that began exactly as he intended, a gentle, reflective farewell. A light touch of lips against lips. And it took him by surprise. The flood of desire. The blow to his gut like a punch from an iron fist. He wanted her all over again as if he had not just buried himself in her, satiating his needs. Those same
needs rose like to shining fish to the surface of the sea, to rack him again.

Marie-Claude clung to him, poured all she had into the kiss, and found her emotions whirled into disarray once more.

‘Go in.’ His voice was low and rough, again surprising her. Startling her when he thrust her away. ‘Go in before I take you again…’

She did not quite understand, but reached to touch his mouth with her fingers. ‘Goodnight, Zan.’

‘Sleep well, Marie.’

‘I will.’

‘No bad dreams. No regrets.’ The twist of his lips against her hand was wry.

‘I will dream of you.’

As she turned from him she thought she saw a hint of bitterness trace its path across his face, or perhaps it was a mere shadow as a cloud drifted across the face of the moon. She could not bear that he might already be regretting what he had done.