Judith McNaught (40 page)

And she accomplished her goal.

Zack's restraint broke with a low groan as he rolled her onto her back, kissing her with a raw, urgent hunger that made her feel at once powerful and helpless. His hands and mouth claimed her body, sliding

over her breasts and waist and back, and when his mouth returned to hers again, he shoved his fingers into her hair, holding her a willing prisoner. When he finally lifted his mouth from hers, Julie's whole body was on fire with desire.

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"Open your eyes, little one," he whispered.

Julie obeyed and found herself staring at a muscular male chest covered with curly dark hairs. The mere sight of that chest made her pulse pound. Hesitantly, she raised her gaze from his chest and beheld the changes that passion had made in him. A muscle was moving spasmodically in his throat, his face was hard and dark, and his eyes were burning. She watched his sensual lips form two words and heard the

rasp in his voice as he enunciated them: "Touch me."

It was an invitation, an order, and a plea.

Julie responded equally to all three. Raising her hand she laid it on his cheek. Without taking his eyes from hers, he turned his face into her hand and slid his lips back and forth against her sensitive palm.

"Touch me."

Her heart beginning to pound ferociously, she trailed her fingertips down his hard cheek, over the thick cords of his neck, to his shoulder, then lower along the rigid planes of his chest. His skin felt like satin over granite, and when she leaned forward and kissed his chest, his muscles contracted reflexively.

Heady with her newfound power, she kissed his small nipples, then trailed a long kiss downward toward

his waist. A half-laugh, half-groan escaped him, and he abruptly rolled her onto her back, pinning her hands beside her head, his body half covering hers.

His tongue plunged into her mouth, tangling with hers,

plunging and retreating in blatant imitation of what he wanted to do to her with his body, and the fire that

had been building inside Julie exploded into flames.

She pulled her wrists from his hands, wound her arms

around him, and turned into his arms, returning his drugging kisses, stroking his shoulders and back, moaning with joy as his mouth touched her breasts.

So lost was she in the desire he was skillfully building

in her that she scarcely noticed when his hand reached down between her thighs until his fingers began to

explore her intimately. Clenching her eyes closed, she fought back waves of embarrassment and let herself yield to the exquisite pleasure his knowledgeable fingers were giving her.

Fighting back his rampaging desire, Zack watched the reactions flicker across her lovely face as her body submitted to the unfamiliar, intimate stroking of his fingers. Each sound she made, each restless movement of her head, each time she quivered at his touch, filled him with poignant tenderness. Each second became crystallized in his mind, as bright as a diamond. Beneath his fingers, she was opening for him, wet and warm, and he was desperate to bury himself in her. Instead he held back, and bending his head, he kissed her long and thoroughly while he slid his finger deeply into her. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and shivered, and the convulsive movement reminded him poignantly of her earlier

words to him. "Shivering is good," he whispered, increasing the depth of his exploration. "Shivering is very, very good." Around his fingers, she seemed unusually narrow and extremely tight, and he had an awful feeling that he was built too large for her, that she wouldn't be able to take his erection without being torn or hurt.

Her hands were moving over him, gaining courage, and his breath caught when she finally brushed her fingers over his rigid arousal and then took him in her hand. The moment her fingers wrapped around him,

her eyes flew open in shock, riveting on his face. If the situation weren't so dire and so urgent, Zack would have chuckled at the expression in her eyes.

But he was in no mood to laugh or feel flattered that he'd obviously "impressed" her with his size. In the firelight, she looked at him as if she were waiting for something—a decision from him, a movement, and all the while her fingers were driving him crazy, until he was on the verge of exploding in her hand. Her other hand lifted to his jaw, soothing away the tension,

and the words she whispered to him made him melt.

"You were worth waiting twenty-six years for, Mr.

Benedict."

Zack lost control of his breathing. With his palms on either side of her flushed face, he bent his head to kiss her, only this time the word he whispered was hoarse with awed reverence. "Christ…"

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With blood pounding in his ears and foreboding weighing him down, Zack cased himself on top of her

and between her legs, probing at the entrance of her body, easing his way slowly into her tight, wet passage, expelling his breath at the exquisite sensation as her body expanded to take him in, her wet

warmth clasping him. When he encountered the fragile barrier, he lifted her slim hips, held his breath, and

lunged.

Her body stiffened with the brief pain, but before he could react, her arms were around him and she was opening for him like a flower … welcoming him, sheathing him. Fighting to control the orgasm that was

threatening to erupt, Zack moved slowly within her, but when she began moving with him, clutching him to her, his restraint broke along with his desire to prolong the act. Seizing her mouth in a plundering kiss,

he drove into her, forcing her faster and faster to the peak, driving her toward it, reveling in her muffled cry as she dug her nails into his back and began to shudder convulsively beneath him. Lifting her hips higher and tighter to him, he plunged harder, driven by some uncontrollable need to be as deep within her

as possible when he came. He exploded inside her with a force that tore a low groan from him, and still he kept moving, as if she could somehow empty him of the bitterness of his past and the bleakness of his future. The second climax erupted in a jolt of sensation that screamed down his nerve endings, shook his

entire body, and left him weak. Spent.

In a state of boneless exhaustion, he collapsed on top of her and shifted onto his side, still joined with her. Breathless from exertion, Zack held her in his arms, stroking her spine, trying not to think, clinging to

the fading euphoria as he fought to hold reality at bay, but after a few minutes, it was no use. Now that his passion was finally spent, there was no barrier between his brain and his conscience, and as he stared

into the fire, he began to see all his actions and motives of the past three days in the light of glaring truth:

The truth was that he had taken a defenseless woman as a hostage at gunpoint; he had blackmailed her into believing he would let her go if she took him to Colorado; he had threatened her with physical violence if she tried to escape, and when she defied him anyway, he forced her to kiss him in front of a witness, so that now the national press was crucifying her by intimating she was an accomplice.

The truth

was that he'd begun thinking about having sex with her the same day he'd taken her captive, and he'd been campaigning for it using every means he had at hand from intimidation to kindness to flirtation. The sickening truth was that he'd just managed to achieve his final, loathsome goal: He'd seduced the virginal

daughter of a minister, a lovely, spirited, innocent human being who'd repaid all his cruelties and injustices

by saving his life today.
Seduced
was much too polite a word for what he'd just done, Zack decided with

sick disgust as his gaze shifted to the carpet. He'd taken her right here on the damned floor, not even in a

bed! His conscience clawed at him with renewed vengeance for using her too roughly, for forcing her to

take two climaxes from him, for burying himself all the way inside of her instead of using a little decent restraint. The fact that she hadn't cried out or struggled or given any sign of being either hurt or humiliated

did nothing to assuage his guilt. She didn't know she was entitled to more that what she'd gotten, but he did. He'd been promiscuous as hell as a teenager, as an adult he'd had more sexual flings than he could begin to count. The entire responsibility for the mess he'd made of Julie's entire life and now, her first encounter with sex, was solely and exclusively his.

And that was looking at the matter

optimistically—without considering the possibility of pregnancy! It didn't take a genius to figure out that

the daughter of a minister probably wouldn't consider having an abortion, so she'd either have to bear the

public shame of having a baby out of wedlock, moving to another city and doing it there, or foisting his

child off on her almost-fiancé to father.

Zack fully expected to be shot to death within days, or even hours, after he left the safety of this house.

Now, he wished to God he'd have been caught before he ever got into the car with her. Until he went to

prison, he'd never have considered involving an innocent human being in his problems, let alone pointing a

gun at her or getting her pregnant. In prison, he'd obviously become a sick sociopath without conscience,

scruples, or morals.

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Shooting, he now realized, was too good for the monster he had become.

He was so involved with his own thoughts that it took all that time before it finally penetrated his brain

that the woman he was holding in his arms was crying, and the dampness on his chest wasn't his sweat,

but her tears. Speechless with remorse, Zack loosened his hold on her and let her lie back on the carpet,

but she kept her hand curved round his shoulder in a death grip and her wet face pressed against his chest.

Leaning up on his elbow, helplessly trying to soothe her by brushing wayward strands of shiny hair off her wet cheek, he swallowed to clear the knot of remorse in his throat. "Julie," he whispered gruffly,

"if I

could undo all the things I've done to you, I would.

Until tonight, the things I've done were at least done out of desperate necessity… But this—" He paused to swallow again and awkwardly brushed a curl off her temple. With her face still turned into his chest, he couldn't judge her reaction, other than the fact that

she seemed to have gone perfectly still from the moment he began to speak. "But what I just did to you,"

he continued, "was completely inexcusable. There are explanations for it, but not excuses. You can't be so naive that you don't realize that five years is a long time for a man to go without…" Zack broke off abruptly, belatedly realizing that he was adding insult to injury by making it seem as if any woman would

have suited him in his state of sexual deprivation.

"That's not why I did this tonight. It was part of the reason. The main part of the reason was that I've wanted you ever since…" Self-disgust welled up like bile in his throat and he couldn't continue.

After a prolonged moment of silence, the woman in his arms finally spoke. "Go on," she said softly.

He tipped his chin down, trying to see her shadowy features, his brows drawing together in a puzzled frown. "Go on?" he repeated.

She nodded, her soft face brushing against his skin.

"Yes. You were just getting to the good part."

"The good part?" he repeated blankly.

She looked up at him and, although her eyes were still damp with tears, there was a winsome smile on her face that made Zack's heart slam against his ribs.

"You got off to a very bad start," she whispered,

"by saying you were sorry we did this. And you made it much worse by saying that I'm naive and then

making it sound as if any woman would have suited you just fine after five years' abstinence—"

He gazed at her while relief began to pour through his body like a balm. He knew that he was getting off

much too easily, but he seized his unexpected reprieve with the grateful desperation of a drowning man

grabbing at a life preserver. "Did I say that?"

"Pretty much."

He grinned helplessly at her infectious smile. "How ungallant of me."

"Very," she agreed with sham indignation.

A minute ago, she'd had him in the grip of black despair, five minutes ago she'd sent him into sexual paradise, now she made him feel like laughing.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Zack was aware that

no woman had ever had this effect on him before, but he didn't want to examine the explanation for it.

For now, he was content to bask in the present and ignore what little future he had left. "Under the circumstances," he whispered, smiling as he brushed his knuckles over her cheek, "what should I have
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done and said?"

"Well, as you know, I haven't much experience in moments like these—"

"No experience whatsoever, in fact," he reminded her, suddenly and crazily pleased by that.

"But I have read hundreds of love scenes in novels."

"This isn't a novel."

"True, but there are distinct similarities."

"Name one," he teased, distracted by the sheer joy of her. To his astonishment, she sobered, but there was a look of wonder in her eyes as they gazed deeply into his. "For one thing," she whispered, "the woman often feels the way I felt when you were inside of me."

"And how did you feel?" he asked because he couldn't stop himself.

"I felt wanted," she said with a tiny break in her voice. "And needed. Desperately needed. And very, very special. I felt—complete."

Zack's heart constricted with an emotion so intense that it made him ache. "Then why were you crying?"

"Because," she whispered, "sometimes beauty does that to me."

Zack gazed into her glowing eyes, and he saw the kind of gentle beauty and unquenchable spirit that could almost make a man feel like crying. "Has anyone ever told you," he whispered, "that you have the