Irresistible (16 page)

What stopped him was the innocence of her mouth.

He was a grown man, a grown man who liked women and whom women found attractive. He had bedded so many members of the fairer sex that he'd long since lost count. He knew what a woman in the throes of passion looked like, what she sounded like, how she kissed.

Not like this.

Though most of the time he managed to forget it, he had been born and raised a gentleman. That distant upbringing gave him the strength he needed to pull his mouth from hers as soon as the extent of her inexperience became clear to him. He gave himself credit for that much self-control at least. But she had her hands twined in his shirt front now, which, he supposed as he lifted his head, gave him as much excuse as he needed for not peeling himself off that bunk and away from her.

The truth was, he didn't want to move off that bunk and away from her. He admitted it to himself even as she opened her eyes and looked at him as if she had just glimpsed the sun after a fortnight of rain. She was inexperienced— he knew that as well as he knew his own name. But he also knew with equal certainty that she was willing.

"Hugh?" she murmured, her hands tightening on his shirt.

That was all the invitation he needed. All the invitation he could stand.

Because the first touch of his lips to hers had set him on fire. She hadn't protested, hadn't so much as tried to turn her head away. Instead she had turned her face up to his with a little sigh, and seemed to welcome his kiss. Her lips were soft, and tremulous, and parted for him easily. By the time his eyes closed and his tongue slid inside her mouth, the blaze that consumed him had turned into a full-fledged conflagration. He had found her tongue, caressed it, probed deep inside her mouth. Her mouth had tasted, just faintly, of brandy, and was so warm, so warm and wet and sweet, that he had nearly lost himself in the taking of it. His heart had raced. His breathing had grown ragged. His body had hardened until it strained painfully against the confines of his breeches.

But she hadn't kissed him back.

This time, he was going to make sure she did.

"Put your arms around my neck," he said, smoothing her hair back from her face with a hand that he was bemused to see was slightly unsteady. She met his gaze, her eyes still faintly glazed from the kiss they had shared. He saw the minute his words registered: Her eyes flared, and she let out her breath on a long but clearly quiescent sigh.

Then she let go of his shirt, and slid her arms around his neck. The feel of those cool, silky-skinned fingers clasping the nape of his neck made his breathing stop. Fiercely he wanted them all over him; he imagined them stroking his arms, caressing his chest, clawing his back….

For a moment longer he managed to remain motionless. He was leaning over her, his upper-body weight supported by his elbows, and his gaze searched her face before he said or did anything more, anything he was going to regret. The cabin, lit by a single swaying lantern, was dim. Deep in the recesses of the bunk, as they were, there was more shadow than light. But the delicate angles and elegant lines of her features were only emphasized by the shadows that danced across them, and her eyes gleamed with the soft patina of old coins. Her lips, still faintly damp from his kiss, were parted and inviting.

Looking at them, he felt his stomach clench.

"I— don't know what you want me to do," she confessed, her lashes dropping down to hide those heart-stopping eyes. She sounded very young, very shy, and he thought, again, that if she was acting she was the best, by far, he had ever seen.

But somewhere, deep in his gut, he didn't think she was acting.

"I want you to kiss me back," he said, and his hand came up to burrow beneath her long hair and mold the back of her skull. "It's not hard. Just do what I do."

He cradled her head, tilting it, angling her mouth for a better fit, and then he kissed her again, soft and sweet and slow, giving her time to get used to the feel of his lips on hers. When his tongue finally slid inside her mouth, he was gentle still, touching her teeth, the roof of her mouth, the insides of her cheeks. Patiently he coaxed her tongue into play, teasing it with his, caressing it. When she responded, hesitantly meeting caress with caress, he drew her tongue into his mouth and sucked on it, nearly killing himself with the force of his barely checked desire in the process. Sweat beaded his forehead, fierce pressure built inside his loins like steam in a boiler, and a fine tremor racked muscles tense with wanting her. Resolutely he forced himself to ignore those signs of the urgency of his need, concentrating instead on tutoring her in the fine art of kissing. He was rewarded for his patience when she shuddered and moaned and tightened her arms around his neck.

"I didn't know… kissing… could be like this."

Her words were no more than a warm breath feathering across his lips, but they stopped him cold. He lifted his head to stare down at her, wondering if his senses could actually be telling the truth, if she could really be this trustingly naive, this dizzyingly desirable, this unbelievably intoxicating, or if she was spinning the biggest web of lies since the Trojans left their gift and pretended to walk away from Troy. He was aware that he was breathing as if he'd been running for miles. He was aware that he was no longer in complete possession of his faculties, no longer objective, no longer possessing any judgment where she was concerned. Then her lashes lifted as if she would see what he was doing, and he found himself looking into eyes that were deep pools of molten fire.

"Didn't you?" he asked, knowing even as he said it that he was lost, that any further attempt at saving himself or the situation was doomed beyond redemption. Drawn by those eyes, by those lips, he kissed her again, with considerably less control this time, and she responded with a hot sweet wildness that took him by surprise. She was pressed as close against him now as ink to paper. He felt her breasts rising and falling against his chest. The blanket was no longer between them, and only two thin layers of cloth separated her flesh from his. He felt the hard little nubs of her nipples nudging his chest, and the sensation nearly sent him over the edge. He wanted her, oh, God, he wanted her. It would be easy, so easy, to take what he wanted.

But would it be wise?

Her tongue left his mouth, and he let it go as he fought to keep his mind separated from his body at least to some small degree. Then her lower body pressed against him too, pushing up against the hard hot urgency of him, rocking against him, and her tongue came back inside his mouth of its own volition and that was all it took.

All hope of keeping so much as one tiny part of his mind separate and functioning was lost in the sudden rushing blaze that caught him unaware and roared over him, consuming him in its flames. Kissing her deeply, he rolled so that she was pinned beneath him, conscious of the tiniest twinge in his ribs but not giving a damn, not giving a damn now about who she was or what she was or anything except assuaging his hot fierce need in her body. She felt so right under him, so exquisitely female, so warm, so welcoming. His tongue was in her mouth, her arms were around his neck, and he was pulling at the hem of her shirt, yanking it up toward her waist.

He was going to take her, meant to take her, had to take her, just like that, in and out, hard and fast, with no more time for pretty words or tutorials or any other damn fool thing except the hot savage ecstasy of sex. He was beyond thought, his body thick and heavy and fiercely ablaze, and the only ease for him lay in the soft yielding sweetness that quivered and quaked so excitingly beneath him.

His hand found her breast and closed over it, squeezing more roughly than he intended, but he was far gone with desire and gentleness was quickly growing beyond him. Through the thin lawn of (ridiculously, as it briefly occurred to him) James's second-best shirt, he could feel the hard little pebble of her nipple thrusting into his palm, and he gritted his teeth as his body sizzled and threatened to explode.

She, who just minutes before had been kissing him so shyly, arched up against him, moaning her pleasure into his mouth. The small sounds she made sent him out of his mind. His hand slid from her breast to fumble at the fastenings of his breeches.

He couldn't wait, not another minute, not another second. He would have her despite everything, despite anything. It was far too late and he was far too hungry to count the cost.

Chapter 14

"No. Please. No. Hugh. Stop."

His hands were undoing his buttons; his knee was edging between her thighs. His body was a human torch, as taut as a bowstring, an arrow on the verge of being launched, when she pulled her mouth from his and gasped out the words.

Stop…

God, he didn't want to hear that. He really didn't want to hear that. He— almost— could— not— comply. Stopping hurt. Clenching his hands into fists, closing his eyes, resting his cheek against hers, he made himself go still.

Stop. She'd said stop.

He couldn't believe it. But that was what she'd said.

Whatever else he was, he was not the man to take a woman against her will. Damn it— and himself and her and the whole bloody universe in the bargain— he would not force himself on her. He'd never forced a woman yet, and he was not starting now.

But, dear Lord in heaven, it was a near-run thing.

"Stop?" he asked carefully once he could trust himself to speak. His voice was scarcely more than a croak, and that one questioning word was all he could manage for the moment. He was hurting from head to toe, and aching like be-damned at a certain crucial point in between. Even lying on top of her as he still was, feeling the naked-to-the-waist softness of her yielding to his hard weight, listening to the gentle rhythm of her still-too-fast breathing, inhaling the unmistakable fragrance of woman and sex, was torture.

The problem was, he didn't think he could move. At least, not yet.

He took a deep, steadying breath. Even breathing hurt. Good God, he hadn't experienced pain like this in years.

Not since he'd been old enough to ease it in the way nature had intended for it to be eased.

"Please stop." Her voice was low and throaty and— the death blow for his still stubbornly hoping body— entreating. She sounded like she really meant it.

"Why?"

Sweat had popped out on his brow. His teeth, in between uttering his single-word questions, were clenched tight. It occurred to him that, under the circumstances, this was a ridiculous conversation to be having. He hadn't had such a conversation in— he couldn't remember when. He'd never had such a conversation. Every woman he took to his bed was flatteringly eager to be there, from his very first at age fourteen. Women never said no to him. Never.

"B-because."

This one was saying no to him. The evidence was incontrovertible. Her hands, instead of hugging his neck as they had done up until now, were pushing at his shoulders quite unmistakably. She was— most naively— trying to wriggle out from beneath him, and doing her cause a tremendous disservice thereby.

He wanted her. He could take her. Still. She was his prisoner, after all. And she might only be pretending to object, trying to convince him that she was too sweetly virtuous to be a tart.

No.

Hugh took a deep breath and rolled off her before he could succumb to temptation. He lay on his back, panting, hurting, with one arm flung across his eyes to block out the world and one knee bent to afford himself what ease he could. Though his eyes were clenched tight— along with his teeth and every other muscle he possessed— as he fought the devil within him to a standstill, he was aware of the hasty movements she made as she put herself back together.

If she elbowed his ribs again, he thought grimly, he would almost feel like thanking her. At least it would take his mind off the fact that he was now suffering even more severe discomfort elsewhere.

Which was, again, all her fault. The whole damn fiasco, from start to finish, was her fault. No, it was his. He should have paid attention when he'd been thrown from his horse. But he hadn't, and somewhere the gods were surely laughing as he paid the price for ignoring their warning.

"Because?" he repeated on an inquiring note a few minutes later, when he had himself almost fully under control again. "Because why?"

"Because— I just can't."

Oh, enlightening. Lowering his arm, he cracked open his eyes and slanted a look at her. She was lying on her side as far away from him as she could get— which wasn't very far. The bunk was narrow, and at most, in a few places where she curved in instead of out, perhaps three inches separated them. The blanket in which she had reshrouded herself still brushed against his side, and he was perfectly— no, make that excruciatingly— aware of the feminine shape of her beneath it. Her spine was clearly pressed up flat against the wall, her arms were folded protectively over her breasts beneath the blanket, and her eyes were now wide and nervous-looking as she watched him.

Nervous. Not scared.

Which crystallized something for him: She had responded with enthusiasm, kissing him and moaning and pressing herself against him— but with a neophyte's enthusiasm. If she'd been Archer's mistress for a year, he must have scarcely laid a hand on her. This was no high-flyer, no lightskirt, no woman of experience at all. This girl didn't even have the sexual knowledge of most gently bred ladies of his acquaintance.

This woman either knew little to nothing of sex— or she was the greatest actress on earth, and he was the greatest fool.

Taking a deep breath, Hugh rolled onto his side and propped his head on his hand again, noting that her eyes widened and she tried to press herself even farther back against the wall as he moved. Her hair was swept away from her face, but the black-as-night mass of it fanned out across the lumpy pillow on which her head lay and beyond. Hugh discovered, to his annoyance, that waving strands trailed over his bent arm. The sight of the midnight silk against his brown skin and white shirt was unsettlingly intimate. It reminded him of what he was missing.