What Price Love? (39 page)

He lowered his second boot to the floor.

She dragged in a breath. Folding her arms, eyes spitting green fire, she halted before him, her fine nightgown whispering about her legs. “Why don't you just ask me again, and then I can refuse you,
and then you can leave—”

Pris swallowed a shriek as he grabbed her, as his hands clamped about her waist and he lifted her, tossed her—suddenly she was lying on her back in the middle of her bed, and he was leaning over her.

“No.”

She stared up into his shadowed face. She'd left a single candle burning on the nightstand, but it was screened by his shoulders, leaving his face unlit—mysteriously male, impossible to read. She frowned direfully up at him, valiantly ignoring her thudding heart, her already racing pulse. “No what?”

His concentration shifted to the tiny buttons closing the front of her nightgown. “No, I won't ask you to marry me again—not yet. Not until you won't refuse me.”

The words were even, his tone matter-of-fact, as if he were discussing some business strategy as he steadily slipped buttons free. “And as for leaving you…” He'd unbuttoned the gown to her navel; raising a hand to her shoulder, he pushed the material aside, baring one breast. He studied it; his features set. “That's not going to happen.”

Bending his head, he took the furled nipple between his lips—and she forgot how to breathe. His tongue knowingly swirled, and she gasped and arched beneath him.

Beneath his hard frame, her body came alive, responding to his nearness, to the wicked temptation he was, to the illicit desires he so consummately stirred.

Her own wild desires; she knew that any second they would rise to his call—to his touch, his nearness—and sweep her senses away, leaving her wits struggling to cope, to control…something uncontrollable. She couldn't—shouldn't—let that happen.

Lids at half-mast, she focused on him, and was caught. By the expression on his face as he drew her nightgown down to her waist, baring her other breast, then reverently caressed both ivory mounds with fingertips that burned. His gaze was pure flame; his intent concentration had only one name. Devotion. Selfless worship beyond question.

Her voice shook, weak and breathless as she forced herself to plead, “Just ask me again.”

His dark gaze flicked up to her eyes, then returned to his obses
sion. Sexually pleasing her, pleasuring her. “No.” After a moment, he added, as she gasped and closed her eyes, as she felt him draw her nightgown farther down until it pulled taut across her hips. “That wouldn't be fair.”

Fair?
His hand splayed across her naked stomach, then pressed, and slid lower…

“Fair to whom?” She forced open her lids, forced herself to look at him, but he wasn't looking at her face. He was watching his hand as he slid it beneath the band her nightgown had formed, as his fingers reached for and found her curls, stroked, gently played, then pressed on.

And found her, already swollen and wet for him, heated and welcoming as he stroked, lightly caressed, then he shifted his hand, boldly pressing her thighs wide, and slid one finger into her.

Then and only then did he look at her face.

He stroked, watching her, and evenly replied, “Fair to us. Me and you.” He reached farther; she shuddered and closed her eyes.

Felt him lean nearer, felt his breath washing over one aching nipple. Then his lips touched, closed; he suckled, and she fought to swallow a scream.

She gripped his upper arms tight, hung on as he feasted and fed her rioting senses. As he swept her and them away as she'd known he would. She longed to rail at him, to tell him he was wrong—that there was no
“us,”
no him and her—but he was right.

There was.

No matter how hard she fought to deny it, he knew, and so did she. Knew that in passion they were not just alike, but somehow linked. Bound.

He drew her gown away, replaced it with his hands, his mouth, his passion. Stroked her with flame until she burned. Until desire and need ignited, then he pushed her on until she shattered beneath his hands, until the sun and stars claimed her.

She lay on the rucked coverlet, panting; through half-closed eyes, she watched him as he traced sensual patterns on her flushed skin.

“This…” He spread his hand and traced a wide swath over one breast, through the curve of her waist to the swell of her hip—and watched her body's helpless response. “Is what fascinates me—what
holds me, binds me. Bids me.” His lips quirked, wryly self-deprecating. “Even commands me.”

She blinked.

“Beauty”—turning his hand, he brushed the backs of his fingers across her stomach, and made her breath catch, made her nerves shiver—“is transient, and as we both know, it's no guarantee of anything, now or tomorrow. But this—” Raising his hand, he brushed the underside of her breast, and her shiver became a reality. “Is a promise of incalculable worth.”

His dark gaze rose to meet hers, and there was no veil to screen his meaning, no guile to blur it. This was how he felt—about her, about them. “It's the woman in you I love—the goddess in you I worship. Not the outward trappings, but the female within. That's who I join with, that's who I want to link my life to, who I want to live it with.”

He paused, then, still holding her gaze, he lowered his head and placed a burning kiss just below her navel. “That's who I covet. Who I serve.” His breath washed heat over her skin, sent warmth sinking through her belly. “Who I need. That's the woman who makes me complete.”

His lips touched again, and she closed her eyes against the words that had struck to her heart, to her core; she closed her eyes tighter still against the swirling sensations as he traced a path lower, his mouth branding her sensitive skin. Then his lips whispered over her curls as he spread her thighs, and…

“Oh, God—
Dillon
!” She had to swallow her shriek, had to remember not to scream. Helpless, she moaned instead as he covered her with his mouth, then with his tongue claimed.

One fist to her lips, smothering her moans, she tangled her other hand in his hair, gripped tight, shamelessly clung as he drove her mindless. Beneath the heat and passion, beneath the lash of his intimate ministrations, she writhed and panted.

Heat filled every pore, then overflowed. Passion took its place, burning and consuming every shred of resistance until she surrendered, until she became the goddess he knew her to be, and welcomed him into her temple, until she embraced all he gave, all the passion and desire he brought to her—and gave him hers.

Far beyond sanity, her world shook; reality tilted and quaked.
Then existence itself fragmented, and glory poured through, filling her, buoying her—and yet she was waiting, hovering, yearning.

He left her; she felt empty and lost. She wanted to protest, but couldn't form the words. She cracked open her lids instead, and was reassured.

He was dispensing with his remaining clothes. A naked god, he rejoined her on the rumpled coverlet. Settling between her thighs, he lifted and wound her legs about his hips, caught her heavy-lidded gaze, then thrust smoothly, forcefully into her, and joined them.

Filled her, and linked them.

He lowered his head and found her lips with his. Within seconds, they were rocking deeply, journeying again, rapidly pacing through that achingly familiar landscape, clinging, then desperately striving as the storms of their merged passions raged, raked, and swept them both away.

And the wildness was back, infusing, feeding and driving them, compelling them, whipping them on to ever greater heights, ever higher peaks, until passion itself ruptured, and there was nothing but blinding light, and a heat and fire that sank to the soul.

To their souls, both, welding, fusing, binding them ever more tightly.

In some higher plane of her mind, she saw it, wished she could deny it but knew she could not.

Knew, as she drifted slowly back to earth, her hands gently stroking the long planes of his back, that this was the real truth.

Him and her together.
Us.

 

S
he didn't know what to do with that revelation. Didn't know how, couldn't immediately see how
us,
even now, could come to be. Not with any certainty. Not in the real world—the world beyond her bed, beyond the circle of his arms.

How could she ever be sure? How could she know all that he'd shown her—even that—wasn't simply his too-knowing persuasions?

She'd woken some time ago, her mind sliding back to reality with a disconcerting thud. The room was dark, the candle long since guttered; the house remained shrouded in its nighttime silence, but the pall of darkness beyond her window had started to lighten.

Dillon lay behind her, spooned around her, warm and strong and strangely reassuring.

Also distracting. His arm lay over her waist; one leg was tangled with hers. The unaccustomed rasp of hair-dusted limbs against her soft skin constantly tweaked her senses.

She needed to think—to assess and reassess—to remember all he'd said, all he'd revealed. All she'd come to see and understand.

She needed to know where she stood, whether anything had changed. Whether, as he believed, there was some way forward for
us,
or whether, as she feared, it was all a sham.

Carefully, she edged toward the side of the bed, easing out from under his arm. She was about to slip free when his hand and arm flexed, and he yanked her unceremoniously back against him.

“Where are you going?”

She managed to draw a breath. “I need to think.”

He sighed, his breath stirring the curls over her nape. “You don't. That's our problem—you think too much.”

He shifted, sliding his other arm under and around her, then one big warm palm slid from her shoulder along her side, and down to fondle her bottom. She sucked in a breath and tried to wriggle away, but he splayed his other hand over her stomach and held her in place.

“If you really must think…” He shifted closer; she felt his erection against her bottom. His lips traced the curve of her ear, while his fingers caressed the soft flesh between her thighs. “Then think of this. Who are you running from? Me, or you?”

She bit her lip against a moan, and closed her eyes. She knew exactly who she was running from—who her logical mind was trying to pretend didn't exist. The woman within, the
her
she became in his arms. The
her
she became with him and him alone. The woman inside her he made her see, the wild, reckless, freely passionate female that was all and everything she could be.

The
her
he connected with, and who loved him, so deeply now she knew her heart would shatter if he didn't love her back. Didn't love her with the same mindless passion, the selfsame commitment and devotion.

He lured
her
forth, with shockingly explicit caresses made her flower for him, then he filled her, joined with her, and that wild hoy
den gloried.

Eyes closed, she wished she could close her mind, but she couldn't. Couldn't not see the truth, acknowledge it as it blazed within her.

Her body moved rhythmically with his; it felt as if he were surrounding her, possessing her, but it wasn't that she feared. She feared she couldn't possess him in the same way.

His lips grazed her temple. She caught her breath on a gasp. “I don't…” She paused, then whispered, “I don't understand.”

Truth, at least; she was too deeply caught to be helped by lies.

His possession didn't falter; his lips returned to trace her ear. “Understand this.” His words were gravelly, rough with desire, edged with the growl of unleashed passion. But she heard them, felt them as he thrust repeatedly into her body, as he held her trapped and made her his.

“I didn't offer for your hand because of any moral obligation.”

He shifted fractionally, and thrust deeper into her.

“And regardless of what you thought, you didn't seduce me. I
let
you seduce me—
not
the same thing. Not at all.”

The last words were barely audible, a whisper of sound across her shoulder, followed by a searing kiss.

And the conflagration flared, and took them again, consumed them again, and she went with him gladly, eagerly, the wild goddess within her free.

And his. As he was hers.

At least in that arena. In
that,
she believed.

 

O
ne thing was clear. As he'd warned her, she could forget about running.

In the following days, everywhere she turned, he was there. He was constantly in her thoughts, all but constantly by her side.

Constantly stealing her away to indulge in the wild and wicked, the reckless and illicit; even while surrounded by the very haut of the haut ton he fed her a diet of the thrills and excitement he more than anyone knew she—the wild and reckless hoyden—gloried in.

And with every interlude, every hour that passed, it became harder to deny him—and harder to rebury the hoydenish goddess
and revert to the, if not prim and proper, then at least logical and sensible lady she needed to be.

When, driven to distraction, astride him in Lady Carnegie's gazebo, she pointed out he was corrupting her, he calmly replied that as it was only with him, and he was going to be her husband, it didn't count as corruption. Even through the shadows, she'd seen the expression that had flashed across his face, temporarily hardening his features. Only with him—who was going to be her husband.

Her expression must have changed; before she could say anything, he drew her head to his and kissed her—kept kissing her until desire ignited and cindered her wits.

Enough was enough. It couldn't go on.

She had to do something—make some decision and act.