Rexanne Becnel (37 page)

“I think—” She took a breath and forced a coolness to her voice. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

It was awful to watch the warmth drain from his eyes as he looked up at her from his perch on the bed. He frowned slightly, as if he did not quite understand what she meant. But as she stood there, still and pale, she saw when he understood. For an excruciatingly long moment he stared at her, as if giving her a chance to change her mind. Then he rolled to a sitting position and put his hands on his knees.

“What if I don’t want to leave?”

Lacie’s heart pounded like thunder at his quietly said words. Although there was no inflection in his voice, no sign of emotion, she knew it was nonetheless there. She braced herself for what was to come, steeling herself to hide her feelings just as he always hid his. Remain aloof, she told herself. Just keep yourself remote. You can cry later, when he’s gone.

“If you won’t leave, then I will,” she finally answered.

Again he only stared at her. Then his eyes narrowed and he stood up. In a sudden panic of what he might do, she began to speak. “You’ve had what you want from me—”

“Not quite,” he interrupted curtly.

“Well, then, you’ve had all you’re going to get.” She raised her head and stared bitterly at him. “You’ve had me, and I’ve had you. We both got what we wanted, so let’s not pretend. If you think last night changed my mind about today’s vote, you’re wrong.”

There was disbelief on his face, disbelief and something that might have been pain. But if it was pain, it was only because he had lost this time, Lacie told herself. He’d thought her surrender to him last night was complete, not only physically, but emotionally as well. He’d thought she would be his now, willing to go along with anything he said. If he seemed hurt, it was only because he was not used to losing, she reasoned.

But she was not prepared for the cutting tone in his voice. “ ‘We both got what we wanted,’ ” he repeated her words sarcastically. His gaze slid over her with a thoroughness that caused her to clutch the sheet tighter. There was appreciation there. But there was a cold assessiveness too, even contempt. “I see that you did get what you wanted, Lacie. But I didn’t, not quite.” Then he moved toward her, unconcerned by his nakedness, as wary as a stalking predator.

“Stay away from me, Dillon! Do you hear me?” Lacie squeaked as her aloof facade began to crumble. “Stay away!”

“Why? You say you know what I wanted from you. And we both know you like it, so why the sudden squeamishness? That
is
all you wanted from me, isn’t it? A hard male body between your legs?”

She cringed at his hateful words, yet she knew she must not deny them. When he grabbed her by the arms and pulled her cruelly against him, she stared up into his furious face. “That
is
all you wanted, isn’t it, Lacie?”

“Yes,” she whispered the lie. “That’s all you wanted from me, and that’s all—that’s all I wanted from you.”

His hands tightened like vises on her arms. For one heart-shattering moment, he stared down into her wide frightened eyes. Then he let go of her as if he’d been burned and took an abrupt step back from her.

Lacie was so weak, so completely drained by the emotional trauma of the scene that she could hardly stand upright. For awful endless seconds they stood like that, near enough to touch, yet on opposite ends of the earth. Then without warning his hand snaked out and ripped the filmy sheet away from her.

She shrank away from him in horror, humiliated by his contemptuous expression as he raked his eyes boldly over her. But there was no place to hide from him, and nowhere to run. He flung the sheet aside and took a menacing step toward her, then another. As he stalked her she backed away, too numb to speak, too anguished even to think straight. She had finally bested him, perhaps even hurt him just a little. Yet she felt no joy in it at all. Not even fear was her foremost emotion. No, as he backed her against the vanity, it was not fear but sorrow that ripped through her. She had made him hate her. It was clear in his face and in his tense posture. She’d finally made him hate her, and she’d never been so miserable in her entire life.

Lacie was trembling uncontrollably when Dillon halted just inches from her. Her eyes were locked on his harsh face, drawn against all reason to the dark opaqueness of his eyes. What she saw there chilled her to the core, for although lust was clear in his hard jade stare, there was no warmth. He wanted her as he might want a fancy trollop. Then he spoke and confirmed what she already knew.

“It appears we’ve come full circle,” he began in a voice that turned her to ice. “From the first I was sure you were a cold-hearted bitch, conniving to steal first from Frederick, and then from me. I was prepared to do anything to prove you were a liar.” He reached out and stroked her cheek lightly with the back of his knuckles, then abruptly let his hand fall. “As time went by, I wasn’t so sure anymore. You kept saying you only wanted to keep the school going for Frederick’s sake, and I actually began to believe you. You weren’t at all what I’d expected, and I—”

He stopped and shook his head slightly. “But that was just part of your act, wasn’t it? You play the lady well, you know. So well that I foolishly offered to marry you—”

“You didn’t want to marry me!” she burst out with a sob. “You didn’t! All you wanted—”

“I wanted my property,” he bit out. “And I wanted you.”

“Well, you can’t have either!” she cried. Blinded by a sudden burst of tears, Lacie tried to lunge past him, but Dillon refused to let her by. With hands of steel he whipped her around, then lowered his head until they were face to face.

“I already have both,” he muttered hoarsely. “And tears won’t help.” Then he jerked her toward the bed and thrust her roughly onto the mattress. “I’ve had you. And I’ll have you again,” he stated as he caught her flailing arms and stilled her struggles by flinging himself down upon her. “And I have the properties,” he muttered as he forced one of his knees between her thighs.

“Don’t do this, Dillon,” she cried as he thwarted her every move to get free.

“Why? Because you’ll vote your shares against me?” He let out a short, harsh chuckle. “It’s too late for that, Lacie. You should have agreed when I offered to buy you out way back in the beginning.” He pulled her arms above her head, holding her immobile beneath him. “Or else accepted my proposal of marriage. But now it’s too late.”

“I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth!” she sobbed, wishing more than anything that it were true.

“You won’t get the chance,” he growled. “Although Reverend Hainkel is going to be awfully disappointed.”

Lacie stared up at him, startled by the name he taunted her with. Reverend Hainkel? What did he mean?

At her look of consternation a black laugh escaped him.

“Oh, yes. My agents found him only yesterday, living in St. Louis with his daughter. And can you believe it?” he mocked her cruelly. “He doesn’t remember ever marrying you to my brother.”

Lacie went very still at his words. At last it was out, she thought with a perverse sense of relief. At last it was over. She closed her eyes against the terrible triumph she saw on Dillon’s face. Yet it was clear that for him, it was not quite over.

“Have you nothing to say? No feeble excuses for what you did?”

Lying beneath him, Lacie felt the angry tension in his body. He had found her out—every single lie—and he had a right to be angry. She could not deny that now. Anything she said in her defense would only sound weak and self-serving. In utter defeat she turned her face to the side and took a shaky breath. “Let me go.”

When he did not move, she took another breath. “Please.”

“Not yet.”

At the odd inflection in his voice Lacie looked up in sudden alarm. The look on his face confirmed her worst fear. “No!” she cried as he slid his hard body down, then back up along hers.

“Yes,” he muttered. “I wanted to marry you, Lacie, but you refused. You thought you’d gain more by turning me away. Well, now you’ve got nothing.” He slid down along her again, and despite her outrage, her skin leaped wherever his hair-roughened body rubbed against her.

“You would have made a troublesome wife,” he taunted her in a hot whisper against her ear. “But you’ve proved quite well that you’ll make a satisfactory mistress.” He tightened his grasp on her wrists when she began to struggle. “You’ve got the mercenary heart of one,” he murmured sarcastically. “And since you have no further options open to you—no job, no money—I suggest you set about earning your keep.”

He could not have struck her a crueler blow, even if he’d actually hit her. She gasped at the pain, so brutally did it pierce her heart. He thought her no better than a
whore. Tears stole from between her tightly clenched eyelids, but she was beyond caring. In vain she tried to twist her hands free, but he only strengthened his hold. Then she felt his free hand roam along her body, and she reacted as if she had been stung.

“No, no!” she pleaded as she tried to arch away from him. But it was no use. He was too strong and too determined, and as he pressed her down beneath him, Lacie knew her struggle was futile.

A part of her did not want to fight him. A part of her rose in willing anticipation as his rough caresses aroused her. He knew what to do, where to touch her and kiss her to bring her to the brink of trembling pleasure. But much more was involved than simply their mutual pleasure. This time he intended to use her in the cruelest, most callow manner. She would be no more than a physical release to him, only a way to vent his lust, and his anger. It was that which she could not accept.

When he sought her mouth, she turned her face desperately away. He held her captive beneath him. From her hands, which he held firmly above her head, to her bare legs and naked torso trapped helplessly beneath his powerful body, she was truly in his power. But she did not have to kiss him.

“Don’t fight me,” he ordered in a hoarse whisper. He began to kiss her cheek, then her ear, then slowly moved down her neck in damp nibbling kisses. Lacie struggled against his heated lips and his searching kisses. She tossed her head back and forth in frustration as his tongue slid in fiery circles along her collarbone.

She wanted him to stop, she told herself. What he was doing was no better than rape. Yet the gasp that caught in her throat when his prickly chin rubbed against one of her nipples was not a gasp of pain, nor even of anger. The emotion that clutched at her chest and tightened in her belly was passion, pure and simple. She wanted to deny it. She wanted to hate him and fight him and—and make him stop.

Yet when his lips moved to caress the aroused crest of her nipple, she could only moan in unwilling surrender. There was nothing right in what he was doing—in what she wanted him to do. But she had neither the strength nor the will to make him stop. When his hand cupped the fullness of her breast, she bit her lip at the intensity of her reaction. Like fire in her veins, heat burned through her, melting her with its searing power. When he moved his kisses back and forth from one breast to the other, circling each aching nipple with his tongue, then sucking at the hardened tips, she writhed in exquisite agony beneath him. She didn’t notice when he released his grasp on her hands. She only knew that his kisses had moved lower to the soft flesh of her belly. Then he slid farther down and parted her thighs with his hands.

Lacie could not protest when he pressed his mouth against the warm mound of her private place. She could not speak or even catch her breath as his thumbs gently parted her and his tongue found the sensitive core of all her desires. Like a flame it burned her, yet in mindless ecstasy she arched against him for more. It was like a wonderful pain, something she feared yet could not get enough of. Back and forth his tongue moved in long wet strokes, evoking the most primitive response from her. Then his lips took over until she was trembling helplessly beneath him. Higher and higher he pushed her, and swifter and hotter she burned, until in a sudden brilliant flash she arched in anguished completion.

Her hands pressed against his sweat-slicked shoulders as she succumbed to the overpowering waves of passion that consumed her. It was too painful and too perfect to bear. Yet Dillon would not let go of her, and when she collapsed weakly against the mattress, he pressed the side of his face fiercely against her belly.

She did not mean to cry. She’d cried too many times before him already, and anyway, her unhappiness meant nothing to him. Yet despite everything, the tears came. Down her cheeks, into her ears and her hair they streaked, until Dillon could not help but notice. He rose onto his elbows, then hesitantly moved up over her.

“Lacie—” He halted and touched her cheek tentatively.

She could not bear it. She could not bear the tenderness in his voice because she knew it was only momentary, only a reaction to the physical desire that gripped him. Unwilling to be tortured that way, she did not hesitate. Her hands circled his neck, and she pulled him heedlessly down upon her.

“Love me,” she whispered against the sob caught in her throat. “Love me,” she demanded, pressing her belly shamelessly against his rigid arousal.

There was a moment of hesitation, a moment when she felt his searching gaze upon her face even though her eyes were tightly closed. Then he moved over her until his proud manhood touched the entrance to her.

“I want you to love me,” she whispered once more, so softly it went almost unheard. Love me in every way there is for a man to love a woman, as I love you, she finished silently.

Then he came into her in one sure stroke, filling her and driving every thought from her but one. He was in her arms, for now he was hers, as much as he ever could be. If this was all she could have, then she must take all he would give.

She met him stroke for stroke. She rose up to his every powerful thrust and opened to him completely. There was a recklessness to their passion this time, a wildness she gladly embraced. Perhaps it was desperation, perhaps only the finality of it all. She did not know that tears still wet her face until he began to kiss her eyes and her cheeks. But not even that could halt the rushing momentum that carried both of them along. Like a wildfire, they burned out of control, scorching along a path that was bound to consume them both. Yet still they plunged madly on until in one violent explosion they reached that zenith of final fulfillment. In long shuddering thrusts he spent himself within her.