Dark Torment (16 page)

His hand no longer held her breast. Sarah arched her back, missing
that delicious pressing warmth, moaning shamelessly as she pleaded without
words for its return. She heard the quickened thud of his heart against her,
felt the world spin as she was picked up off her feet and lowered to the
ground. . . . The dry grass made little scratching sounds against the silk of
her dress; it prickled against her bare arms. But she could have been lying on
the softest of feather beds, for all the notice she took of her surroundings.
All she knew was the devastating heat of Gallagher’s mouth on hers.

His hand was at her throat. She felt it, vaguely, as it moved down
the front of her bodice. The night air caressed her skin in its wake. He was
opening her buttons. She should stop him—the thought surfaced
again—and for a moment she was on the verge of struggling back into her
everyday skin. But then his mouth left hers to trace a burning path down the
side of her throat, and she was lost again. In fire and wonder.

“Gallagher.” She breathed his name into his hair as he
bent his head further, his tongue seeking the throbbing hollow of her throat
while his hand continued to free her buttons. His head lifted.

“Dominic,” he corrected once more, his voice a hoarse
whisper against her mouth. Sarah parted her lips in eager invitation to the
warmth hovering so near. When he did not take her mouth, she strained upward,
shamelessly seeking his kiss. “Dominic,” he whispered again,
insistently.

“Dominic,” she said, moaning, and was rewarded by the
sweet brand of his kiss.

His hand was beneath her now, tugging at the ends of her sash.
Then it returned to her throat, parting the silk he had so recently unfastened,
baring the skin of her shoulders and the fine white muslin of her chemise.
Sarah moved then, finally, catching at his hand in a final, obligatory protest.
He bent over her, his breath hot and moist against her cheek.

“Let me take your dress off, Sarah.”

The soft words coupled with the husky passion that thickened them
made her quiver all over. She
wanted
him to take off her dress. She
wet her lips, staring up at him, unable to say the words that would push her
irretrievably over the edge. But she let go of his hand. . . . He brushed a
quick, soft kiss on her trembling lips, and then his hands returned to their
work. Sarah did nothing to hinder him as he pulled the dress off her shoulders
and down over her arms. The coolness of the night air against her bare skin was
quickly replaced by the scorching heat of his mouth. He pressed tiny kisses
along her collar bone and then back across her chest until at last he was
kissing just above the prim edge of her chemise where the upper slopes of her
breasts rose in gentle swells. Soft sobs of pleasure floated in the air around
them; Sarah was vaguely surprised to discover that they came from her own
throat. Her eyes stayed tightly shut as he knelt to pull her dress completely
off. Through her thin petticoat she felt the material slither down her thighs.
Then his hands were encircling her slim ankles, lifting her feet. The touch of
his fingers on her insteps as he loosened first one and then the other of the
ribbon bows that held her shoes made her skin tingle. When he came back to her,
it was to press his mouth to one small, high breast through the fine muslin of
her chemise. Sarah felt the moist heat of his mouth, felt the rhythmic tugging
as he suckled her like a babe through the thin material, and groaned. Then she
couldn’t stop. Wanton little cries of delight rippled from her throat of
their own volition. Her hands clutched at his black hair; her back arched as
she pressed herself to him, on fire with need. When next he pulled the chemise
from her shoulders, baring her breasts, she quivered with fear and longing
combined, but made no protest. Her hunger for him far outweighed her
instinctive fear. Fiercely, shockingly, she
wanted
him to make her
naked, to look at her, and touch her, and love her. . . .

The night air caressed her pink-tipped flesh, teasing the aching
nipples, then was replaced by the blaze of his mouth. Her arms were around his
shoulders, her hands in his hair, pressing his head tightly against her breasts
as he lay half on, half beside her, his mouth with its lazy suckling driving
her wild. She could feel the weight of his chest against her bare rib cage. The
coarse linen of his shirt felt slightly abrasive to her skin. She loved the
sensation. Through her haze of pleasure she felt his hands moving at her waist.
Then he was lifting himself away from her. She moaned, clutching at him, but he
put her hands aside. Quickly, efficiently he stripped away her petticoat and
tossed it aside. With aching satisfaction she realized that at last she was
naked except for the chemise twisted around her middle and the wisps of her
stockings. The knowledge made her tremble all over. He saw her convulsive
shiver and stroked his hand lightly over her thighs and then her belly,
gentling her, soothing her. She only shivered all the more, loving the hot
abrasion of his work-hardened hand. Then he slid the chemise over her hips and
down her legs, and she was left wearing only her stockings and lacy white
garters. He was kneeling near her feet, the shimmering moon high overhead
making him look big and dark and faintly unreal as he sucked in his breath, the
sound harsh, ragged against the gentle noises of the night, and his eyes
scorched over her breasts and belly and thighs. . . . Demon lover, she thought
before her eyes fluttered shut. He had come to her out of the shadows of the
night, and was no more real. Tonight she could surrender her aching, burning
flesh to him, let him love her and take her and make her truly a woman. Just
for tonight . . .

Wordlessly she lifted her arms to him, her eyes still tightly
closed. He moved then, answering her silent invitation, his large body covering
her much slighter one like a blanket of fire. His mouth took hers, ravenous in
its passion, blistering her with its heat. His hands were on her breasts,
kneading them, caressing the nipples, which stood quivering beneath his touch.
Her arms went around his neck as she answered his kiss with sweet, wild desire.
His weight was crushing her into the ground. It should have hurt, but the hard
heaviness of him was exactly what her body craved. She felt the rasp of his
chest hair against her breasts, felt the abrasion of his hair-roughened legs
through the fine cotton of her stockings as one knee nudged her thighs apart so
that he could lie between them—and only then did she realize that he was
naked too. His skin was fiery hot against her, burning her up, incinerating
her—and she loved it. She writhed against him in helpless rapture, her
legs instinctively parting even more, her breasts pressing boldly up into the
thick mat of hair covering his chest. Her hands clenched in his hair as he
seared her throat with his lips.

His hand was between their bodies, stroking her breasts, then
sliding down to the silky skin of her belly and below, stroking the curling
thatch of hair briefly before insinuating itself even farther between her
thighs. He touched her then where no one had ever touched her, where she was
shy to touch herself, even when she bathed. His fingers slid moistly against
her, finding all her unimagined pleasure points, trailing fire in their wake
and sending quickening spirals of ecstasy like red-hot whirlwinds over her
skin. She arched against those fingers, burning, pulsating, spinning away into
a netherworld of shooting flames and bursts of black smoke and red sparks
glowing like eyes. . . .

Her head thrashed from side to side, unconscious of the hard
ground that pillowed it or the twigs and bits of grass and leaves that tangled
in her hair. Her legs were opened wide, slender and pale in their thin white
stockings as he lay between them, his thighs burning hers, his hand working its
unbelievable magic. Her eyes were closed tightly, her arms locked around the
neck of the man who was carrying her away with him. . . . His lips left her
throat to take her mouth, and she sighed with ecstasy, drinking in the taste of
him. Then his hand that was causing her such exquisite torment left her, to be
replaced a scant instant later by a hard, hot shaft that felt enormous and
alien and tremendously exciting. . . .

It found her softness, entered her just a little, then stopped.
Sarah moaned and writhed at this wonderful new sensation, quivering from head
to toe at this slow invasion that was the culmination of every heated caress
that had gone before. When it ceased, when he no longer thrust against her in
the way that every nerve and bone and sinew told her that he should, she surged
to find him, arching shamelessly in the arms which held her clamped to the
inferno that was his body.

“God.” The word was a ragged prayer, nearly lost in
the rustling of the leaves and grass beneath them and in their ragged
breathing. But Sarah heard it, heard the blistering passion it conveyed, and
arched again, thrusting her hips against his, pleading with her body for him to
answer. He did, gasping, thrusting into her with a surging force that made her
cry out.

“Ohhh!”
It hurt. There was a sharp stinging
between her legs as he filled her, imbedding himself deep inside her. She
stiffened, and her eyes flew open. He was not moving now, but lay heavily
across her while his breathing sounded like a dying man’s in her ears.
For a long moment he lay like that while her hands clutched at his sweat-damp
shoulders, and she tried to decide whether to push him away; but then he braced
himself up on his arms, lifting his head so that he could look down at her. His
face was flushed, his eyes dark with passion. A faint tremor shook those
bracing arms.

“Are you—all right?” It was a husky whisper.

Sarah stared up into that handsome face, saw the concern mixed
with the heady desire in his midnight-blue eyes, felt the effort that he was
exerting to hold his need in check. Her hands moved then, of their own
volition, to caress and then clutch his shoulders.

“Yes,” she whispered. She could feel the part of him
that still possessed her throbbing and burning inside her, and didn’t
know if she was lying or telling the truth. All she knew was that, having come
so far, she could not stop. Not now.

“Ahhh, Sarah.” The words were almost a groan.

Sarah stared into that dark face and felt something hot and urgent
begin to clamor again inside her. Her hands slid from his shoulders over the
sweat-dampened pelt of hair on his chest, rubbing over his flat nipples with a
kind of sensual delight before suddenly, fiercely digging into the rigid wall
of muscle that was his chest.

“Sweet Jesus!” He stiffened for an instant, his eyes
closing, his lips clenching as if in pain. Then, as if he couldn’t help
himself, he began to move. He lowered himself upon her, his mouth finding hers
and taking it with hot, drugging urgency while she clung to him and trembled
and quaked.

The hot, slick strokes that made her his were like nothing she had
ever experienced. The pain was gone now, and there was nothing but pleasure, a
dark, secret pleasure such as she had never felt before, had never dreamed she
could feel. She wanted it to go on and on and on. . . . He was arching over
her, his hips moving in and out in a hot, urgent rhythm, and she was moving
with him, her arms and legs clutching him, her hips undulating in an answering
rhythm that seemed to drive him wild. His arms were tight around her, crushing
her to him in a hold that should have hurt but didn’t because she was
beyond feeling it, was beyond feeling anything but the fiery bursting ecstasy
that was exploding inside her.

“Oh, Dominic, oh, oh, oh, Dominic!” The cry and the
accompanying stiffening of her body seemed to drive him to a sudden frenzy. He
plunged into her fiercely, grinding her into the unyielding ground as he panted
and groaned above her and his sweat fused them like red-hot lava. She clung to
him, shuddering, as he found his own ecstasy. Finally he groaned, thrusting
into her savagely one last time, holding himself inside her as he stiffened and
shuddered. Then he too was still.

For long minutes they lay fused together, unmoving, the ragged
tempo of their breathing as it evened and slowed the only sounds they made.
Slowly, reluctantly, Sarah became aware again. Aware of the feel of the prickly
ground beneath her bare backside, aware of the sound of the wind in the leaves
overhead, aware of the cold white face of the moon that stared down at her with
such icy disdain. Even more reluctantly, she acknowledged the fact that she was
naked, lying sprawled upon the ground with a sweaty, still-panting man lying
heavily across her. A naked man who still possessed her body. A
convict
. . .

Sarah felt sudden nausea rise in her throat. She lay staring up
sightlessly at the star-studded sky, while sick horror began to clutch at her
stomach and make her shiver.

“Dear God.” The words replayed themselves over and
over again in her brain in an endless litany of regret. “Oh, dear God,
what have I done?”

“You’re crushing me.” Sarah managed to force out
the words a long time later. He still lay sprawled across her, crushing her as
she had said, his body hot and wet and abrasive against hers, his breath
searing her neck. The part of him that had caused first her pleasure and then
her shame still possessed her; she could feel it slowly ebbing between her
thighs. His arms were hard around her and his black head was buried in the
curve between her shoulder and her neck. She shuddered with distaste.

He didn’t move for a long moment after she had spoken; then,
at last, he lifted his head. Sarah wanted to close her eyes in shame as his
raked her face. But proudly she met his gaze with a bitter stare. He frowned,
looking down at her. His arms shifted, and one hand came up to smooth the
tangled strands of her hair away from her face. She jerked away from his touch.