Shameless (30 page)

His voice did not break. Beth’s heart did instead. She pictured the lean, handsome boy he would have been, imagined the horror he had endured on that terrible day, the horror that had been visited upon the mother and sister he had clearly loved, and felt hot tears well into her eyes.

“Oh, Neil. I am so sorry.” Her voice broke. She snuggled closer, hugging him tightly, her cheek pressed against his chest. “So terribly, terribly sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.” He almost seemed to shrug. The indifference in his voice tore at her heart, because she knew it was assumed, or rather constructed over the course of many years to mask a fathoms-deep well of anguish. “I never think of it anymore, so don’t imagine I’m still grief-stricken, or anything of that nature. The brutal truth is,
it was just one atrocity out of tens of thousands that came out of those years. I would it had not happened, of course, but it did and it can’t be changed, so there’s an end to it.”

“You must have suffered so much,” she whispered, because a sudden lump in her throat kept her from speaking any louder. The welling tears spilled over to run in scalding tracks down her cheeks. “What a hideous, horrible—”

She broke off because she couldn’t continue. The lump in her throat had grown too large.

“Are you
crying
?” His fingers were on her face, sliding over her cheeks, discovering the telltale wetness of her tears for themselves.

“Yes.” Beth gave a defiant sniff, which was meant to serve as punctuation to her uncharacteristic display. Its purpose was ruined when her breath caught on a sob and more tears leaked out despite her best efforts to hold them back. “Oh, the devil take it, I never cry. It’s only—thinking about you there, in the crowd watching—” She broke off, swallowing hard before she could continue. “Well, why wouldn’t I cry? Anyone would. It is just . . . so . . .
sad
.”

“I think,” he said slowly, and there was a note in his voice that Beth had never heard in it before, “this has to be the first time anyone has ever cried for me.”

Beth took a deep breath, trying to rally her defenses, trying not to make an utter cake of herself even though her heart ached for him.

“If that’s true, then that has to be almost the saddest thing of all,” she said, striving for cool composure. But her voice shook on the last words, and she wasn’t quite able to stop more tears from coursing down her cheeks.

He brushed them away. His touch was incredibly gentle.

“Did you know, Madame Roux, that you are really quite a darling?” he whispered.

Then he moved, shifting onto his side, and as she looked up at him with blind questioning his mouth found hers.

H
IS LIPS WERE FIRM,
and warm, and sure, and they felt so right on hers that she responded instantly. Her head fell back onto the steely resilience of his upper arm. Her lips parted under his. His mouth was wet and hot and he tasted faintly of spirits and his unshaven cheeks felt bristly against her smooth skin—and she loved all of it. She kissed him back with an ardor that would have surprised her had she been in any condition to consider it, which she was not. She was lost in the moment, in the upswelling of emotion, in the increasing urgency of the kiss. She kissed him as she had never imagined she would kiss a man, answering the hungry demand of his lips and tongue with fervent caresses of her own, sliding her hands up over his chest to twine her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him with abandon. The folds of the greatcoat parted so that she could feel every blatantly masculine inch of him against her. The solid wall of his chest invited her breasts to swell and tingle as they flattened against it, and they did. The lean, hard cradle of his hips lured her to press close, and she did. His hand
slid beneath the coat to cup her bottom, exploring the taut roundness he found there, squeezing her softness so that she felt the long strength of his fingers clear through the fragile layers of her clothes, then pulling her closer yet until she was pressed so tightly against him that she could feel the shocking contours of that part of him that had grown amazingly large and rigid with wanting her. The electrifying intimacy awoke tremors of passion that set her to shaking in his arms. Deep inside, a series of quick, instinctive contractions began to spiral ever tighter until they became a clamorous throbbing that was like nothing she had ever felt. She clung to him, intoxicated by the unfamiliar sensations, on fire now as she responded to his kisses, to his touch, with a rising hunger of her own.

He licked into her mouth, claimed it, possessed it so thoroughly that she was no longer sure where his mouth left off and hers began. His hand on her bottom rocked her against him until that most secret part of her ached and wept. But instead of reacting to such a gross assault on her person as she would have expected herself to do, instead of protesting or whisking herself out of his arms or responding with anger or fear or any of the myriad emotions she knew she should be feeling, she made a little sound of surprised pleasure into his mouth and tightened her grip on him and kissed him harder, kissed him as if she never wanted to stop, which she didn’t. Knowing it was wicked, knowing it was wrong, she pressed even closer against the hardness of him, moved against it, experimentally, tantalized by its bold promise, wanting to get closer, to deepen the contact, to keep the delicious tremors of excitement that radiated from that place where he pressed most firmly into her, building until—what? She didn’t quite know. All she knew was that the prospect made her dizzy. When his hand slid from her bottom down the length of her thigh and lifted it so that her leg curved atop his in the most wanton position imaginable, she let him do as he would, allowing him to pull her skirts out of the way without protest, even, if she was honest, with a shameful eagerness for what would come next. If she was going to die, which with every minute that passed seemed more and more likely, why
should she not first experience this dark, forbidden thing he would teach her? The very thought of it filled her with longing. That, along with the sheer outrageousness of feeling the smooth cloth of his pantaloons and the long, muscular legs they sheathed intertwining with the soft bare skin of her thighs, made her heart pound and her toes curl. Then one thigh pushed fully between her legs. It lodged possessively against her, on purpose she judged, moving in the most arousing fashion against that secret place at the juncture of her thighs, which, as she wore nothing beneath her petticoats save her chemise, was naked and thus left totally vulnerable to his machinations. The muscular invasion made her squirm against it quite without volition, and the resulting jolt of fire caused her to go all light-headed as her insides liquefied in a burning rush.

Almost mindless with sensation now, kissing him fervently, she moved against him with an instinct she had never realized she possessed. She was barely aware of anything besides the fiery passion he was awakening her to as he turned her onto her back and slid her arms free of the greatcoat, which then acted as a cushion for the unyielding rock beneath them. Clinging to him, answering him kiss for torrid kiss, she realized dimly even as his weight settled on top of her and her thighs spread willingly apart to accommodate his that this was what she had avoided for so long, what she had dreaded, what she had shuddered at the prospect of being forced to endure. If she was going to die, though, she did not want to do so without knowing what this ultimate experience was like. Caught up in the moment, in the danger and the heat of it, in the strange, unimagined but delicious urges that he had roused in her, she surrendered utterly. The now-driving demands of her own body, the physical cravings she had never dreamed existed inside her, the thought that this brief time with him might be all she would ever have, seduced her past the point of reason, and she recognized with a flicker of amazed acceptance that she was his to do with as he would. He kissed her, and she kissed him back. He rocked against her, and she arched and moaned and moved in the most lascivious response. It helped that it was darker even than the darkest midnight, that she couldn’t see that they
were twined so closely that their bodies were almost one, that she was returning his kisses and caresses with an abandon that spoke far more of strumpet than of lady, that her skirts were pushed up around her waist and he was lying between her thighs in the most debauched of positions. But even if it had been broad daylight, even if they had been caught out in the open air with legions of onlookers to gasp and point, she thought she would not have been able to summon the will at that point to call a halt. This hot, urgent quaking, this most unexpected onslaught of the earthiest of passions, was like nothing she had ever in her life expected to feel, and to her own amazement she discovered she was now completely powerless to resist.

When his mouth slid from hers to trace a searing path down the tender cord at the side of her neck, she gave a tiny gasp and clutched at the long, crisp waves of his hair. He was settled firmly between her legs now, rocking fully clothed against her nakedness, and she writhed helplessly at the delicious torment.

“Neil . . . ”

“Mm?” It was a sensuous murmur, uttered as he pressed a necklace of scorching kisses around the base of her throat.

“I—
oh
.” Her mind went fuzzy with shocked pleasure as one of those large, strong hands she had made mental note of before slid inside her bodice to find her breast. He caressed her, so lightly, cupping his palm delicately over her breast as if it were made of spun sugar and would melt, then dipping beneath the soft globe to hold it in place as his thumb brushed her nipple. That brief, barely there contact shot through her like a lightning bolt. She shivered and clutched at his shoulders and tightened her thighs so they pressed beseechingly against either side of his. Her lips parted, but only to breathe erratically as his hand then made itself at home inside her bodice. It felt big and warm and possessive as he thoroughly fondled first one bare breast and then the other. Instinctively she arched against him, offering herself up to him with a voluptuousness she would have said was absolutely not in her character, moving beneath him in silent, urgent entreaty as the insistent quaking deep inside her tightened and
intensified until she could hardly bear it. She wanted—she wanted—she wanted—
more
.

“I love the way you taste.” His mouth slid along her collarbone. His voice was husky and low. “So sweet.”

She realized he was tugging at her bodice, pulling it down farther, pulling it completely out of his way to bare her breasts for his kisses, for his mouth, and barely swallowed a moan.

“I mean to love you, Beth.”

Her heart beat so fast that she thought he must feel its frenzied pounding against his lips as they traced their way up the first gentle swell of her breasts toward her nipple, which was upright and quivering in anticipation. Still fully clothed, he pressed himself solidly against her, down there between her legs, pushing into her harder than before, moving against her in a rhythmic way that left her in no doubt whatsoever of what he intended. She caught her breath in a part-frightened, part-bedazzled gasp as she regained enough reason to understand what he was telling her, what he meant to do to her next unless she forbade him.
You should tell him to stop,
she thought, but she didn’t, not by word or gesture, because the truth was, she didn’t want him to stop. She wanted him to love her, wanted him to keep doing what he was doing until the fever pitch to which he had roused her broke at last.

“I—know.” She whispered her acquiescence. The hot, honeyed, melting feeling she was experiencing was more potent than any libation could ever be. She was intoxicated with need now, burning up with it, her body no longer her own to command, her mind clouded past the point of reason by the wondrous things he was making her feel. The sad truth was, in the state she was in he could do what he would with her, anything at all, and she would rejoice in the doing. Regrets, which she knew there would be as certainly as she knew there were fish in the sea, were something she would deal with later. If, that is, she survived, and they got out of this terrifying prison, and there was any reason to feel regret about anything.

But she would not think about that. For now there was only him,
and the blazing desire he had so unexpectedly ignited inside her. She would lie with him because she simply did not have the strength to draw back, because her quaking, burning body would not allow her to do anything else, because she hungered for his full possession in a way she had never imagined she could hunger for anything, and, if needed, she would count the cost later.

Then his mouth found her breast, and any lucidity that had remained to her, any hope of cold, sober caution winning out was lost. He kissed her nipple, caressed it with the scalding heat of his tongue, then drew it into his mouth with a carnality that made her cry out and arch against him and hold his head to her breast like the loosest of women.

He favored both breasts with his attention, then finally lifted his head.