Elizabeth Lowell (21 page)

Ty’s
accusing voice was hoarse as he fought against his deepest needs and tried to force himself to retreat from Janna’s moist, clinging heat.

But he couldn’t.

He wanted only to continue taking her a bit at a time, and when he caressed her to ecstasy once more he wanted to thrust past the frail barrier separating their bodies from total unity. She would feel no pain at the instant he took her because she would be too deeply enmeshed in her climax to know or care that for the first time in her life a man would be fully sheathed within her.

Virgin.

“Christ,” Ty groaned, “if I’d known, I never would have touched you.”

“Then I’m glad you didn’t know,” Janna said huskily. She shivered and melted over him again, moving her hips helplessly, in the grip of a passion she had never expected and had no idea how to control. All she wanted was more of him, more of the sweet friction as she stretched around him. “I want this, Ty. Please. You’re not hurting me. I love...feeling you.” She moved her hips slowly, caressing him and herself in the same motion. “Oh, that’s so good,” she whispered raggedly, rocking, moving as much as he would allow, “but it’s not enough...not...enough.”

“Stop it,” he said roughly as he felt the last shreds of his self-control slipping away. “You’re a virgin!”

Her nails dug into the flexed power of his buttocks and her body twisted wildly beneath his as she whispered again and again that what he had given her was good but not enough. With each movement she became more seductive, more demanding, more welcoming, so hot and sleek that he found himself pressing again and yet again at the fragile flesh that barred total consummation.

He groaned and forced himself to move just slightly while his fingers sought and claimed the slick, delicate nub of Janna’s passion. He controlled the instinctive rocking of her hips by settling more of his weight between her legs, pinning her in place while he caressed her, bringing her closer and closer to ecstasy.

When he felt the sudden mist of passion flush her skin and her breath broke and her cries came quickly, rising urgently, he covered her mouth with his own and began to move again within her, trying to hold back from the elemental consummation that awaited him in the depths of her virginal body. A groan racked him as he thought what it would be like to sheathe every bit of his need in her, to pierce her virginity and feel her pleasure flow over him in a hot, ecstatic rain.

And then it was happening, the hot rain and the sheathing, ecstasy bursting with each movement of his hips while she wept at the perfection. He let go of control and locked himself so deeply within her that she felt the certainty of his climax as the most intimate kind of caress, a pulsing presence that sent her spinning into ecstasy once again, her body caressing him rhythmically in the quivering aftermath of his own release.

Her tiny, ecstatic cries pierced him like golden needles, reaching past the flesh to the soul beneath. Violent pleasure racked him until his muscles stood out like iron. The endless, shuddering release that followed overwhelmed him. Unable to see, unable to think, unable to speak, he spent himself again and again in the virgin who had touched a part of him no other woman ever had.

When he was at last quiet once more, she clung to his powerful, sweat-slicked body, savoring the intimacy of lying beneath him and feeling him inside her as evening condensed soundlessly into night around them. She hadn’t known what to expect from the act of love, but she hadn’t anticipated anything so hot, so sweet, so violently complete.

“I love you,” she whispered, kissing his shoulder.

The words were very soft, but Ty heard them. A combination of guilt and anger raced through him when he remembered the irrevocable instant when he had taken Janna’s virginity. Silently he raged at himself and his baffling lack of control where she was concerned. He had been able to keep himself tightly reined while he seduced her, yet he hadn’t been able to pull back after he had discovered she was a virgin.

He didn’t understand that. He should have been able to turn away from her. She wasn’t the first woman to try that particular marital trap. He had eluded the others in the past, and those girls had been much more accomplished in their snares and lures.

But Janna had been a handful of fire and beauty, and her ecstatic cries as he pierced her virginity would haunt Ty until he died.

“I never should have taken you,” he said in a low, bitter voice.

Her gently stroking hands became still. “Why?”

“Because I discovered that you were a virgin and I had no intention of marrying you, that’s why. But I had a lot of help getting past your innocence, didn’t I? First you tell me you’re not a virgin—”

“I never said that,” she interrupted in a fierce whisper.

“What about when you ran and I brought you down and kissed you too hard, and you said you’d taken a lot worse from men and survived?”

“I only meant that you hadn’t really hurt me. And you hadn’t.”

“What about Joe Troon?”

“What about him?”

“Ned said that Troon ‘kept’ you for a while.”

“Ned is a drunk and a liar. Troon caught me but he never kept me.”

“Well, sugar, you sure as hell didn’t act like any virgin I’d ever met. Ever since I came to after Cascabel’s gauntlet you’ve been rubbing up against me and sighing and smiling and looking at me out of those smoky gray eyes like I’d spilled honey in my lap and you couldn’t wait to lick off every bit of it,” Ty said in a low, angry voice. “It would have served you right if I’d backed you up against a tree, opened my pants and had you standing up like the lowest kind of camp follower.”

Janna thought of the ways she had tormented Ty without truly understanding the elemental force of his need...and her own. The memories of how often she had smiled when he had turned away to hide the evidence of his arousal made her ashamed now.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, touching his face tentatively. “I didn’t know what I was doing to you. I didn’t know the power of what you were fighting, how much you needed me.”

“It was a woman I needed, not you,” he snarled, jerking away from her gentle touch.

All the movement accomplished was to remind him that he was still held within the satin sheath of her body. And she felt even better now than in his hottest memories.

He told himself to roll aside, to separate himself from her, but his body refused to respond. He was drinking her heat, growing inside her, and his blood was beating heavily, urging his hips to move in primal rhythms.

“
Virgin,
”
he said, and it was a curse. “But you wanted it as much as I did, didn’t you? Hell, you damn near burned me alive with your cries and your hips sliding, pushing me deeper and deeper...”

He shuddered unexpectedly, memories bursting inside him, sensuality lancing through his body, tightening him, making him feel every bit of the hot perfection of being locked inside her.

The knowledge of his own helpless response to Janna shocked Ty. He shouldn’t feel this way. The sweat wasn’t dry on his body from the first time he had taken her. He shouldn’t want her again the way he did right now—need knotting his guts, his body hard and heavy and hot, filled to bursting once more.

He fought to remain still, not to respond, not to move, but the knowledge of the ecstatic consummation he would find within her body was too new, too overwhelming for him to deny or control. With a low, raw cry, he fought against the lure of her, but even as he cried out he was moving slowly, surrendering himself to her one hard inch at a time.

Her breath caught as he deliberately measured himself within her once, then twice, then three times. She didn’t understand his rejection of her apology or his anger with her, but she understood the need that was making him tremble. It was her own need, doubling and redoubling with each heartbeat, a flame burning up from their joined bodies, heat delicately melting and ravenously devouring her at the same time. She shivered and arched beneath him in sensual abandon.

Ty groaned and felt fire eat ever more deeply into him, burning away thought, burning away reluctance, leaving only the elemental union of male and female, a joining that was deeper than flesh, hotter than desire, two living flames leaping higher as they touched, overlapped, entwined. He swore in a mingling of awe and triumph as he felt his lover’s fluid grace rise to match his own savage need.

“Satin...butterfly,” Ty said hoarsely, more accusation than affection in his voice. “Did you think that I’d marry you once I found what it was like to have you?”

He thrust his tongue into Janna’s mouth, muffling whatever her answer might have been. Before the kiss ended she was moaning softly and moving in languid counterpart to the slow, circular dance of his hips.

“It won’t work,” he said, his breath coming quickly, heavily. “I’ll take every bit of your body. I’ll give you every bit of my body in return. But that’s all. Just two bodies giving and taking. Do you hear me?”

She moaned brokenly and closed herself around him in a deep, instinctive caress.

“Do you hear me?” he demanded, clenching himself against the unbearable seduction of her body.

“Yes,” she whispered. Her hips lifted slightly, then circled, seducing him, loving him. “I heard you the first time you told me in the valley.”

“What?”

His past words echoed cruelly within her mind:
I
’
ll have my silken lady or I
’
ll have none at all for longer than it takes to pleasure myself
.

“I know that I’m not the silken lady of your dreams,” Janna said, her voice a whisper of unquenchable hope and a foretaste of despair. “You’re pleasuring yourself. That’s all.”

He didn’t argue or protest her words.

She had expected no more, yet she had to bite her lip not to protest aloud the emotions tearing through her, passion and grief and the shivering precursors of wild ecstasy. When he moved within her again, she wept silently, grateful that it was too dark for him to see her tears, feeling his breath as cool, quickening gusts over her wet cheeks.

“But you still want me?” Ty persisted. “No games, no secret plans, no regrets?” He locked their bodies together suddenly, a joining so deep and hot and complete that it tore a low cry from his throat, a cry that was her name. He rocked against her with tiny, intense motions, burning up, buried in fire and wanting it, all of it,
burning.
“Do you still want this?”

“I want...” she whispered, but could say no more because tears drowned her voice and the truth was too bitter to speak aloud.

She wanted to be loved by him in all ways, not just one.

“Janna?” he asked, holding himself motionless but for the helpless shuddering of his aroused body. “Answer me.”

She tried to move, to take from him what he was withholding. It was impossible. He was too strong, too skilled, and she loved him.

“Yes, damn you,” she whispered achingly. “Yes!”

He heard only the agreement, not the pain. He let out his pent breath in a ragged groan.

“I need you,” he said in a low voice. His hips began to move in quickening rhythms as shudder after shudder of tension went through his powerful body. “God help me, I’ve never needed any woman like this.”

Janna heard the bafflement and strain in Ty’s voice and felt herself swept up in his overwhelming need. Crying silently, loving him and knowing that he would love no one but the silken lady of his dreams, Janna took all that he would give to her of himself and in return gave all of herself that he would take.

The sensual generosity of her response washed over him, bathing both of them in fire. She heard his broken groan, felt the power of him within her redouble, felt the hungry, rhythmic penetration as his body drove against hers again and again and again. His urgency excited her, overwhelmed her, shattered her, and still he moved hard within her, drinking her rippling cries, rocking, rocking, rocking...burning, she was burning and there was no end to the wild, consuming flames.

Her breath broke and a low cry was torn from her throat as she surrendered to savage ecstasy. He drank that cry and silently asked more of her, fierce in his demands of her body, wanting something he couldn’t name, driving into her as though she were the last woman he would ever have, wanting at some deep, wordless level of his consciousness to leave his imprint upon her very soul.

Her legs twisted around his waist and her body shivered, her mouth bit into his, her nails scored his back; and he smiled and spoke dark words to her as he slipped his arms beneath her knees and slowly pulled her legs up his body, over his shoulders, opening her to him fully.

With deep, shuddering pleasure he drove again and again into the satin heat of her body, smothering her abandoned cries with his mouth, penetrating her completely, repeatedly, powerfully, until she was wracked by ecstasy. And still his potent movements continued, as though he would become a part of her or die in the effort. She thought she could know no greater pleasure without dying, and she tried to tell him but suddenly she had no voice, no will, for she was transfixed by a savage rapture.

Janna would have screamed her pleasure then, heedless of the danger, but Ty’s mouth was consuming hers. He took the ecstatic scream into himself as passionate convulsions swept his body, burning him to his soul, ecstasy pouring through him with every heartbeat.

And he thought he was dying as he poured himself into her wildly shivering, welcoming body.

Utterly spent, Ty groaned softly and laid his head next to Janna’s. He kissed her very gently, feeling an almost overwhelming tenderness toward the woman who had accepted him without restraint or regret or promises, bringing him the most intense, consuming union he had ever known.

When his lips brushed her cheek he tasted tears. The thought that his ecstasy had caused her hurt made pain lance harshly through him, an agony as surprising to him as the endless, hot, violent upwelling of his need for her had been.