‘I don’t... I want—' Her mind struggled to reassert its ascendancy over the tumultuous revolution of her body, capable only of dealing in the simplest of one-syllable concepts. 'Time...'
His breath was exquisitely damp and hot on her swollen nipple.
'Time?'
The temptation to deny her brief return to sanity was almost overwhelming. The need for that moist, intimate caress was excruciatingly intense. ‘I.. .yes.'
'Time for what?'
‘I—I don’t remember...' Opening her eyes had been a mistake. He filled her vision, rearing over her—big, powerful, starkly aroused, his face raw with disbelief and a smouldering sexual anger. He was wild for her, she realised achingly, tenderly, and in a way that Ryan had never been. She would never compare the two men again.
'Jack—' She touched his cheek and he snapped his head to the side, and bit her finger.
'Ouch!' She jerked back and struggled to sit up. 'That hurt!'
'Let me make it better,' he growled savagely, grabbing her fluttering hand and placing her stinging finger in his mouth. He sucked strongly, rhythmically, and she shivered at the explicitness of the act that was designed to dominate rather than soothe.
'Better?' He let her go and smiled into her glazed purple eyes, a dangerous, feral smile that was still on his lips when he bent and did the same to her peaked nipple, pulling the bodice down so that he had complete access to the rosy ripeness, taking it roughly between his teeth and teasing it with his tongue before drawing it deep into his scalding mouth.
Her hoarse cry of shock and pleasure seemed to appease his desire to punish, for the powerful wet suction settled to a slow, leisurely suckling that was devastatingly effective at re-establishing his supremacy.
She was drenched with blinding delight as he paid equally lavish attention to her other breast and suddenly nothing mattered any more but pleasing him as he was pleasing her, loving and being loved as she had longed to be in her most secret dreams, fiercely and without inhibition, by a man who gloried in the violence of her strongly passionate nature.
But not completely mindlessly. As his fingers wrenched at the concealed zip in the side of her dress, Jack forced her to meet his hotly arrogant gaze.
'Yes?'
She blazed her answer at him. Even to ask was an unendurable delay. 'Yes, oh, yes...'
She raged like a storm in his arms, one that he rode in a triumphant frenzy of desire, tearing off their clothes as his body melted into hers, his groans and wild, erotic urgings spurring her further, faster, deeper towards the heart of the whirlwind that had turbulently engulfed them both. The first convulsive paroxysm of pleasure barely checked his extravagant pace as he pursued her from peak to peak until she cried out in an ecstasy of exhaustion.
He rolled on to his side and pulled her body hard against him until her trembling eased, his skin as slick and moist as the leather beneath them. His breathing was ragged and harsh as he rubbed her tender back with his big hand, but when he finally spoke it wasn’t to utter words of love.
'Sex can be a formidable weapon, chérie, if you can wield it with the proper detachment. You can’t,' he added ruthlessly. 'You never will. You're too easily aroused—No!' He muffled her protest by smothering her mouth with a rough kiss. ‘I don’t mean in the sense of being promiscuous, I mean because your responses are too honest, you're too sensuous a woman to be cold and calculating, too honourable to be comfortable with deception—your feelings and emotions will ultimately always give you away.'
She shuddered with despair at the awful thought and he tilted her head with a firm hand under her chin so that he could see her face.
His voice gentled at her bewildered misery. ‘Is that why you suddenly got cold feet, Beth? Because you were afraid of the intensity of what you were feeling? But now you know that you have nothing to be afraid of with me as your lover. There need be no more barriers between us...'
Elizabeth guiltily avoided his eyes as she pulled out of his softened grasp and scrambled off the couch, hastily pulling on her panties and dress, stuffing her stockings into her small clutch-bag and smoothing out the creases in her skirt, wishing she could as easily straighten out her confused tangle of emotions regarding this man. Her body aching with sweet satiation, she couldn’t regret what had happened, but where did they go from here?
There was nowhere to go. He wasn’t asking for her love and she mustn’t offer it. She wanted him more than she had ever wanted anyone—or anything—before in her whole life. But there were too many strikes against them—not the least that he thought that she was honourable. The compliment made her ill when she thought about how she was abusing his trust, his honour.
He would hate her when he found out and hopefully the weight of his contempt would crush whatever foolish seeds their glorious lovemaking had planted in her heart. She flushed at the uneasy knowledge that in hiding the truth from him she was also trying to hide from herself...
She was so lost in her silent agony that she didn’t notice his curiosity sharpen at her transparently guilty expression and the dreaming sadness with which she attempted to banish the disordered evidence of their lovemaking. Slowly he followed her example, waiting until she was edging for the door before saying abruptly, 'How would you like to spend the day with me again tomorrow?'
His question was so far from what she had expected that Eliza
beth gaped at him. 'Tomorrow?'
'The day following this night,' he clarified limpidly.
'Tomorrow?' She couldn’t believe what he was suggesting. 'But... tomorrow aren’t you having lunch with your grandfather?'
It was said in tones of such riveting casualness that Jack almost laughed, except all of a sudden he was not feeling half as amused as he had a few moments before.
'So I am.' His voice was lightly musing, as if considering the matter.