Dangerous to Love (24 page)

“I won’t let you go,” he said, “so don’t ask me to.”

“I .  .  .” She stared at him helplessly as she groped for words.

Whatever she was going to say, he didn’t want to hear it. He couldn’t stop now, wouldn’t stop now. She’d kept him at bay for too long. He wasn’t thinking only of the week she had spent under his roof as his wife. His frustration went further back than that, to the morning after he had first taken her, when he’d awakened in anticipation of only God knew what to find a virago in his bed.

From that day to this, he’d burned for her. He’d never denied it. And whatever scruples or curbs had held him in check no longer seemed to be there. The attack on his life, the chase, his fear for her safety, the violence of his emotions when she had turned on him—all these things had loosed the fragile controls of whatever it was that kept him civilized. Something dark and primitive moved in him, something that in his saner moments would have appalled him. He didn’t want to hurt her. He wasn’t going to force her against her will. What he was experiencing went deeper than lust to possess her woman’s body. He wanted everything from her, and he couldn’t explain what he meant, not even to himself.

“Julian, I—”

“No!” he said fiercely, cutting off her words. When he pressed down on her, Serena was driven back against the soft bed of hay. Her cry of alarm was caught by his lips and washed back into her throat. As his hold tightened, and his kiss consumed her, she clenched and unclenched her hands around the powerful corded muscles of his
arms, trying to steady herself. It was some time before it was borne in on Julian that she wasn’t righting him and that his ardent attempts to kiss her into submission were unnecessary. Surrender. He could taste it on her lips, feel it in the soft and supple fit of her body against his.

When he released her mouth, he caught her to him, supporting her with one arm around her shoulders, and he buried his face in her hair. “I can’t let you go,” he said, repeating what he had told her earlier, only this time pleading with her. “If I can’t have you now, I think I shall go insane. Serena, be generous, give in to me?”

As his words washed over her, her limbs gradually went lax. He wasn’t the only one who would go insane. The events of that night had taken their toll on her too. She couldn’t find the strength to fight him, didn’t want to fight him. Something else was at work in her now, not passion, not desire, but some deep well of emotion that responded to everything that was masculine in his nature.
Julian,
she thought, half despairing, half in awe,
only Julian.

He drew her closer, gathering her into the shelter of his body. “Don’t say anything. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to think. I want .  .  . I must .  .  . don’t fight me. Please, don’t fight me.”

She didn’t assist him when he removed her cloak, but neither did she resist him. He quickly dispensed with the rest of her garments, then began on his own. His hands were shaking.

Outside, the storm waxed wild and furious, as though a great battle raged around them. Lightning, thunderclaps, the hiss of the rain—Serena closed her eyes as the fury of the storm found an answering beat in the throb of her own body. Then she was aware only of Julian as he rose above her.

He was the only storm that counted—hadn’t she always
known it? Dangerous. Reckless. Wild. Only a fool would try to hold back the elements. The thought made her tremble, not in fear, but in excitement and anticipation. Her hands ran up his shoulders, locking behind his neck. He made a small sound, part pain, part protest. Raising her head, she crushed her mouth to his. His whole body jolted.

This is what he’d wanted from her, not submission, not acceptance, but passion as unbridled and desperate as his own. Beneath his hands, her body trembled. Her skin was hot and damp. His head swam with the scent of her, wild poppies and something dark and sensual that was uniquely her own. Lifting her to him, he began an intimate exploration with lips and tongue, claiming possession of what belonged to him. No one else had ever touched her like this. No one else ever would. She was his and his alone.

Her body was like molten wax. Her skin was on fire. She was drowning in sensation. Whatever he asked of her, she gave him without reserve. Modesty and shame no longer applied. Her movements became more rhythmic, more instinctive as she arched and writhed, enticing him to abandon his control.

Her small sobs of helpless need made him wild to take her. Savage. Potent. Primitive. It had never been like this before. He was a man of experience. He’d thought he had known everything there was to know about passion and pleasure. She was the first woman, the very first woman who had ever aroused him not merely to passion and a pleasuring of the senses, but to brand her irrevocably with the mark of his possession. When this was over, she would know to whom she belonged.

When his fingers slipped inside her and he felt the slickness of her tight sheath, he closed his eyes against the violent surge of lust that leapt in his blood. Though she
was ready for him, he would hurt her if he took her the way he wanted to. He was too big, too strong.

“Easy,” he said. He stilled her movements with the press of his weight.

She didn’t want his restraint. She wanted his power and virility. Poised on ripple after ripple of suspended pleasure, she gasped his name, not once but several times. Pleading, begging with him, her voice throbbing with the force of her passion, she drove him to flash point.

Beyond reason, beyond thought, he thrust into her. Gasping, they both stilled. Arms bulging with strain, he slowly raised himself higher, relentlessly embedding himself deep in her body. His voice was low and harsh when he told her what he wanted from her. When she locked her limbs around him, he shook with the effort to tame the savage in him. She moved, and his control disintegrated. Rearing back, he plunged into her, taking her in hard violent thrusts, riding her in a frenzy of motion, emptying himself in a flood of pleasure.

She clung to him helplessly, glorying in the wildness in him. She wanted this, wanted him like this. She held the thought in that part of her brain that was still capable of reason, then she abandoned herself to the storm in all its primitive splendor.

   When she awakened, she had an appalling sense of déjà vu. She opened her eyes slowly. From a few inches away, Julian’s eyes glittered back at her. Inhaling sharply, she pulled herself up. She turned abruptly to look at the window. Though the storm had abated, it was still a long way from dawn.

She brushed back tangles of hair that fell across her face. The movement made her aware that she was naked. Pulling her knees up, she hugged them to her, covering her nakedness as best she might. Finally, steeling herself
to look down at him, she said uneasily, “What is this place?”

Julian had been waiting for this moment to arrive, and had made up his mind that there would be no repetition of the first time she had awakened in his bed. At that time, he had been made to feel the villain of the piece and Serena, naturally, had made herself out to be his victim. This time he was not going to allow her to put him in the wrong.

“I thought that would be obvious. It’s a disused barn that stands on my property.” When she frowned, he nodded. “Yes, we are on my estate. Last night in the dark we came full circle, you see.”

At the mention of last night, she made a movement to rise, but Julian was ready for her. His arm circled her waist, preventing her escape.

“You, Flynn, Lord Alistair,” she railed, struggling in earnest to free herself, “you are all in this together.”

He hauled himself up. “Last night, you didn’t want to talk,” he said, “and neither did I. There are things between us, I know, that must be settled, but not now, not at this precise moment. We shall talk later, a long time later. Give me one day, Serena, that’s all I ask, one day before we allow the past to catch up with us. What difference can one day make? Will it change the attack on me that took place last night? Will it change the fact that our Fleet marriage is now a real one? You know it won’t. What have we to lose by taking one day for ourselves?”

His voice was very low, very earnest, and very soothing. She couldn’t think when his hands were brushing over her bare arms, sensitizing her skin. “But .  .  .” She mustn’t give in to him. She had to find out what was happening with the escape route.

“We can’t leave just yet, even if we wanted to. Our garments are soaked through. Besides, it will be hours
before dawn. We can’t traipse around the countryside in the dead of night.”

He could sense her indecision. His lips took the place of his fingers, and warm, wet kisses dewed her throat, the slope of her shoulders, the rise of one breast. “Say yes, Serena,” he said softly, “say yes to me. Say yes.”

He tipped up her chin and breathed the word into her mouth, his lips moving on hers as though he were teaching a child to speak. “Yes,” he said. “It’s not hard to say. What is it, love? Why won’t you give in to me? Didn’t you find pleasure in my arms last night?”

“Last night,” she began, meaning to say something of great import. The thought she wanted to hold slipped away from her as his words painted pictures inside her head. Last night in his arms, she’d found more pleasure than she’d ever dreamed of.

His tongue slipped between her lips and ran over the edges of her teeth. “Yes,” he said. “I want to hear you say it.”

“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes. “Yes.”

He shook her awake. “Why? Why did you say yes to me?”

“Because .  .  . because you make me feel things I don’t want to feel.”

He smiled enigmatically. “Do I, love?” He took one of her arms and draped it around his neck. He waited a moment. When she did not pull away from him, he let out a careful breath. “You have the same effect on me.” But not this time, he cautioned himself. This time he was determined to restrain himself until she had conceded a few points. Major points.

The air froze in her lungs as he took the weight of one breast into his cupped palm. Everything in her melted with need.

“Julian,” she got out on a shivery sigh. “Please.”

He searched her face, absorbing the change in her. Her eyes were unfocused, her lips were parted. He could hear the little hiatus in her breathing as she strove to regulate it. As ever with Serena, when she could not quite grasp something, her brows were knit in a faint frown.

With infinite care, he squeezed one swollen nipple between thumb and forefinger. She gasped and brought her other arm up, draping it around his neck as her head lolled on his shoulder.

“This is awkward,” he said. “Here, let me make you comfortable.” He was very careful to keep her distracted with one hand caressing her breasts while he used his other hand to hint her into position. “That’s better,” he said. His back was propped against the wall of the barn. Her thighs were spread on either side of his flanks. Nothing protected her from the avid jut of his sex. It was some minutes before he was able to find his voice.

“Explain something to me,” he said. “Why do you always fight me before you surrender, yes, and afterward too?”

He knew at once that he had said a bad word. Her head jerked back and her eyes widened then slowly narrowed as she tried to focus on him. “Surrender?” she said.
“Surrender?”

He was nothing if he was not devious. He thought he had a right to be. She had put him through hell. As she made to get off him, he slid one finger inside the folds of her femininity, parting her, but not entering her deeply. Her hands convulsed around his neck and she reared up on her knees, head flung back.

“Julian,” she gasped. “Ah .  .  . Julian.”

He didn’t stop what he was doing. “Yes, love, ’surrender.’ I like it when you give in to me. Don’t you like it when I give in to you?”

She sounded as though she were in agony. “And I detest .  .  . ah .  .  .. Julian .  .  . don’t.”

He laughed softly. “You were saying? You detest?”

“I detest men who .  .  .” She went boneless and melted against him.

“Who .  .  . ? I really want to know.”

He wasn’t paying close attention to the conversation, such as it was. Triumph was rampant, making his blood sing. This wasn’t the sweet and easy Victoria who was on fire for him. This was Serena, his haughty, prim-as-a-Puritan little prude who could cut a man down to size with one of her cool stares. And this time, he hadn’t fallen on her with all the impetuosity of a rampaging bull. He was taking her slowly, building the hunger in her, in his determination to prove to himself if not to her that she was anything but indifferent to him.

He moved her slightly, so that he had access to her breasts. With tongue and teeth, he toyed with her nipples. His fingers were drenched with her woman’s essence. He couldn’t go on like this for much longer. He was ready to explode.

He pulled back to study her. Her skin was slick where his mouth had touched her. Her glorious blond hair fell in a veil around her face. Her limbs were sleek, and beautifully proportioned. Her full breasts were rising and falling as she labored to draw breath into her lungs. He had reduced her to a caldron of seething need. Good. It was about time that she experienced a little of what he had been made to suffer.

Her eyes opened and stared deeply into his. “.  .  . men who try to master me,” she said.

“What?” He’d forgotten what they were talking about.

So had she, but the words came automatically. “I detest men who try to master me.”

Her words reminded him that there was a purpose to
seducing her. Though talking was the last thing he wanted now, he fought the beast in him and managed to anchor his hands safely to her shoulders, urging her down on her haunches so that they were eye to eye. When she came to herself, he said sincerely though not quite truthfully, “I have never wanted to master you. As though I could! As though you would let me! That is not surrender.”

“No?”

“No. Surrender is admitting that you want
this”
—his hands swept over her from breast to thigh—”as much as I do. You were made for this, made for me. You surrender to me. I surrender to you. In the act of love between a man and a woman, anything less is ugly and unacceptable.”