Irresistible (26 page)

"Is he now?"

Still he smiled, even as his eyes scorched her. Then, moving slowly, oh, so slowly, he lifted a hand to touch her mouth. Just the faintest butterfly touch, his thumb rubbing over the soft curve of her lower lip, which was still damp from his kisses, but it was enough to make her tremble.

"Cold?" he asked.

"No."

Claire drew in a deep, shaken breath as she made the admission, knowing what it implied.

"Ah," he said, and kissed her again. This time the kiss was harder, deeper, compelling a response that she was only too ready to give. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body to his and kissed him as if she'd been dreaming of this moment all her life, which, indeed, she had been.

When he lifted his head again, they were both shaking. Claire felt the fine tremors in the arms that locked her to him, heard the harsh rasp of his breathing, saw the deep color that had risen to stain his cheekbones, and thrilled to the knowledge that he was as deeply affected by her kisses as she was by his.

"Cold?" she whispered, echoing his question to her.

His answering smile was no more than a flicker.

"No," he said.

He bent his head, but this time his target was not her lips. Instead his mouth found the sensitive skin just below her ear. Claire practically swooned as he ran his mouth down the side of her neck, pressing tingly little kisses to her soft skin. He kissed her neck, her collarbone, and finally her ear. The rasp of his beard was as arousing as the hot trail blazed by his lips.

By the time he sought her lips again, she was breathing erratically and clinging to him as if she would collapse if she let go. He kissed her, his tongue staking bold possession of her mouth, and she was happy to be possessed. Then his hand came up to cradle her neck, stroking the fragile cord he had just kissed, before sliding down over her collarbone, over the front of the thin nightdress, to close over her breast.

Claire gasped. The feel of his big hand holding her so intimately jolted through her body like an earthquake. She arched her back, pressing up against that caressing hand quite shamelessly. Her nipple was erect and so sensitive it almost ached as it thrust against his palm. He tightened his grip, and she thought she would die with the sheer wonder of it.

When he removed his hand from her breast, she felt bereft. She was breathing hard, as hard as if she'd danced for hours, and her legs were so unsteady that, when he took a step back, it was all she could do not to sink into a little heap right there in front of him.

"Let's have this off you, then." His voice was a husky murmur.

His fingers trailed around the neckline of her borrowed nightdress, just brushing her skin but making her acutely conscious of his touch nonetheless. He was watching her, waiting for her reaction, she thought, and she managed to nod. Her heart pounded so hard that it threatened to burst through her chest. Speaking was now, she feared, beyond her. He set both hands to her waist, lifting her from the bed and setting her on her feet. Claire swayed toward him instinctively, but he shook his head at her, smiling a little. Then his hands came up to cup her face, and he dropped a quick hard kiss on her lips before reaching for the buttons that fastened her gown at the neck.

He made short work of them, and then without another word he reached down and pulled the coarse linen garment up and over her head. With that single fluid movement she was naked. The slide of her hair falling back against her bare breasts startled her. Then she became aware of the cool air caressing her skin— and the hard glitter in his eyes as they moved over her.

Following his gaze, she instinctively glanced down at herself. Her breasts were perhaps a little larger than oranges, firm and full, creamy white crested in rose with small nipples, erect as soldiers at attention, that seemed to yearn toward his chest. Her waist was narrow and shapely above gently flaring hips and a flat stomach punctuated by a neat round navel. Below that, the velvety black triangle of curls that hid the delta of her sex topped legs that were long and slim and pale.

She had seen herself naked many times, in the bath and when she dressed. Ordinarily she never even thought about her body or how it looked. It was something on which to put clothes, and she liked its shape, which she knew was quite good, because she liked lovely, fashionable gowns and the way she was made helped them to look as they should on her. But she had never expected to be standing bare as the day she was born in front of a man, a man, moreover, who was to all intents and purposes a stranger, with his eyes touching her with appreciation all over and lingering with transparent pleasure on her most private places. The knowledge that he was looking at her naked made the insistent quaking in her loins grow almost urgent. Her reaction embarrassed the life out of her— and excited her as well.

But even as she acknowledged that, the precepts with which she had been raised won out over the wantonness that she considered her greatest fault. Claire blushed under his roaming gaze, and instinctively brought her hands up to cover herself in the age-old gesture of a modest woman.

As her arms covered her breasts and the black nest of curls, he looked up, meeting her suddenly shy gaze.

"You," he said, in a voice so low and scratchy that it didn't even sound like his voice at all, "are so beautiful you take my breath away. Do you have any idea how much pleasure just looking at you gives me?"

Heart pounding, Claire managed to shake her head.

"More than I can ever tell you. I love looking at you. Don't hide yourself from me."

The husky, coaxing voice and the burning eyes worked their magic. When he reached out to catch her hands, Claire let him pull them down to her sides. She was rewarded by his indrawn breath and the sudden flaring of his eyes as they moved over her, touching her everywhere, so hot they seemed almost to sear her skin.

"God in heaven." His voice was thick. "I want you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life."

Before she could even begin to formulate a reply, he reached out to grasp her hipbones. His big hands, strong and warm, held her possessively. When her hands rose to his shoulders and she would have moved into his arms, he kept her where she was, with some six inches between them, as his gaze roamed her body. She could only watch, breathless, when at last he bent his head and pressed his mouth to her left breast. As the hot wetness of his lips and tongue touched her nipple, Claire gasped. Her body tightened, wept, quaked. Looking down at his head pressed to her bosom, she thought that his mouth on her breast was the most erotic thing she had ever seen in her life.

Heart drumming, Claire watched him suckle her breast, felt the wet heat and tug and pull on her nipple with every nerve ending she possessed, and trembled as her body went up in flames.

"Hugh. Oh, Hugh," she breathed, her nails curling into the firm muscles of his shoulders. The secret place deep inside her loins was clenching and aching now, in a hot urgent rhythm that was as old as time. She wasn't even ashamed of it any longer. She was too far gone with wanting him.

When he took his mouth from her breast to straighten and look down at her, the cool air caressing the wetness at the tip of her breast was an instant reminder of what she was missing. Her breasts lifted toward him instinctively, wordlessly pleading with him for more. She felt shaken at the intensity of her need— and bereft that he had stopped.

"You like that, don't you?" His voice was thick. His hands had tightened on her hips, keeping her from closing the small distance between them. And she wanted to close it. Wanted to be in his arms. Wanted to be pressed right up against him. Wanted…

Claire met his gaze, helpless to hide the longing she knew must be burning in her eyes. Her innermost desires had always been a guilty secret that she had kept carefully hidden from everyone. She had always considered her sexual longings wrong. They made her, she feared, something less than a lady. Certainly she had never expected to admit to those longings to anyone, much less a man.

But Hugh was looking at her, his eyes blazing, his cheekbones stained with dark color, his mouth hard with passion— and she nodded. Shamelessly.

"Yes. I like it."

Her loins clenched, hard and tight. Just hearing herself admit to such a thing thrilled her. A blaze of satisfaction appeared in his eyes.

"I thought you would. You were made for loving."

Before she could reply— could even begin to think of a reply— his head bent again and his mouth moved to her other breast and she couldn't think at all. She closed her eyes, dazzled by the feel of what he was doing to her and by her body's shivery, quaking response. This kind of feeling, this fierce pleasure, was what she had been in search of for so many years. It was what she'd wanted, what she'd needed, what she'd dreamed of.

She'd never really believed it existed anywhere outside her deepest, darkest fantasies: the secret, shameful ones that sometimes came to her in the night. The ones she had never been able to banish, although she had most sincerely tried.

He drew the entire tip of her breast into his mouth, sucking hard. She must have made some kind of small well-pleasured sound, because he looked up, then straightened. His eyes were black and hot as they met hers. He was breathing erratically too, she saw, and the fine tremor in his arms was more pronounced.

"You sound like a little cat. A hungry little cat."

That embarrassed her. "I do not!"

"I like it."

He gave her the briefest of wicked smiles, then even as she blushed from her forehead clear down to her toes he scooped her up in his arms. Claire barely had time to take a breath before he deposited her in the middle of the bed. For a moment he leaned over her, kissing her mouth, caressing her breasts with both hands until she was gasping and arching up off the bed quite shamelessly. His fingers lingered on her nipples, rubbing them, gently squeezing the swelling nubs, until the pleasure was so exquisite she couldn't bear it. She cried out, the sound muffled by his mouth.

"Easy now. We're just getting started."

He pulled her arms from around his neck and stood up beside the bed. For a long moment he simply looked down at her, spread out like a feast before him, and this time she was content to let him look. As the heat in his eyes flamed over her she realized that emotionally and physically she was now completely defenseless with this man, whom she had hated and feared less than two days before. She was naked and quivering beneath his gaze, pliant to his every wish, his for the taking at his pleasure.

And she reveled in it. He could do with her as he would, and she had the most lowering presentiment that she was going to love every minute of it.

Then their eyes met. His were both hot— and tender.

Their expression made her dizzy.

"Didn't I tell you this would be fun?"

It took a moment for that to sink in.

"Don't tease." Her voice was unsteady. Her eyes never left his face as she curled her fingers into the bedclothes to keep herself from reaching for him. How could he talk at a moment like this, when she was on fire from wanting him?

"I'm not teasing. Let me get my clothes off and I'll prove it to you."

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he began to pull off his boots. Breathing hard, fingers clutching at the tumbled quilts, Claire watched the muscles of his broad back flex through his shirt and listened to the thump of the first boot hitting the floor with more restless anticipation that she had ever felt for anything in her life. Then she couldn't contain herself any longer. She sat up. He was close, easily close enough to touch, so she did. The linen shirt felt faintly rough beneath her palms, but it was thin enough that she could feel the heat of his skin beneath as she ran her hands along the breadth of his shoulders, over his shoulder blades, down his spine. He tensed as he first felt her touch, but after a quick glinting glance over his shoulder at her he pulled off the other boot without a word. It thumped as it hit the floor.

Then he pulled the shirt over his head. As it dropped to the floor, Claire paused, simply staring for a moment at his bare back. It was as beautiful as she remembered, all bronze skin and flexing muscle in a well-defined vee shape, with the yellowing bruise that still cut across his side as the only discordant note. She had touched his back before, fearfully, furtively, when she had slid her hand around his waist to remove his knife. This time she touched him openly, sliding her hands along the width of his shoulders and over the flexing protrusion of his shoulder blades, reveling in the warm satin-over-steel sensation beneath her fingers— and in her freedom to touch him as she would. His breath caught as her hands slid over his skin, and he stiffened.

Then, abruptly, he stood up and turned to face her, his hands moving to the buttons of his breeches. Her protest at his shift in position forgotten before it could be uttered, she watched as he made short work of his task. As she did, her mouth went dry.

She was about to get what she had long wanted. The thought reared its head in a rather cautionary fashion. A kaleidoscope of doubts, fears, and warnings swirled through her mind as she looked at the hard handsome face, the broad chest with its wedge of black hair, the bronzed, sinewy arms, the lean hips. She watched as he finished unbuttoning his breeches, then watched some more as he slid them down his legs.

The muscles of his thighs were athletic and powerful-looking, she saw, and roughened with dark hair, but it was not his legs that held her attention. It was that part of him, that enormous, jutting, swollen part, that was proof positive of his desire for her. It was far bigger than she remembered its being, far bigger than the only other one she had ever seen— David's, in shadowy glimpses once or twice as he had climbed into her bed in the dark— and far more fearsome-looking, too.

And it was about to be shoved inside her body.

Claire's heart began to thump even as she wondered, with no small degree of trepidation, whether it would actually fit.

"Hugh," she began, her fingers curling nervously into the bedclothes and her eyes wide as they focused first on that hugely inflated male part and then on his face. She had been going to say something more, warn him of her misgivings perhaps, or caution him of a possible size problem or something, but it was too late. He was coming down on the bed with her, his big body blocking the light from the candle, casting a shadow over her, then covering her, pressing his huge weight down on her, getting ready to make her his.