Kane, Samantha - Brothers In Arms 4 (20 page)

Middleton and cut his prick off. Aunt Kate said Sophie had denied he was the one, but who else? Most of all Very wanted to cut her own tongue out. How could she have teased Sophie that way? God, how could Sophie stand her? She couldn’t stand herself.

She spun suddenly and grabbed a pillow from the chair near the window. She beat it against the chair arm with all her might, holding back a scream of rage until it came out as a growl. She raised the pillow and tore at it and beat it against the chair again until it finally came apart and feathers flew around her head. She stopped then, panting with her exertions, frustrated that there was still anger inside her in spite of her violence.

“Well, I’m glad that I’m not the pillow,” Kensington’s voice drawled from behind her.

She turned to glare at him. “Shut up. I’m not pleasant company tonight. I don’t have the patience to put up with your supposed wit.”

Kensington sighed and walked over to her warily. He reached up and tenderly

plucked a feather out of her hair. “I know I’m going to regret this, but what’s the matter, little Amazon?”

Very stared at him in disbelief. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? I just found out a dear new friend was raped as a child, I ruined her wedding day and you ask me what’s wrong?”

Tentatively Kensington stepped closer and wrapped his arms loosely around her.

Suddenly he was all that held her together. She clutched him desperately and he responded by wrapping her tighter in his embrace. God, how she had missed this! He’d hardly touched her in almost a year, not since that unforgettable first time they met, when he’d dragged her into an alley and gave her her first woman’s pleasure. She buried her nose in his neck and breathed deeply of his beloved scent. Spicy and exotic and all male, it made her blood thicken and heat.

98

At Love’s Command

“Very,” he said, and she thrilled to hear the roughness of desire in his voice. He took several deep breaths and spoke again, his tone almost normal. “You did not ruin Sophie’s wedding day. You can hardly blame yourself for her rape. In a sad way it’s only natural that those memories surface the day she married. She’s expected to share Ian’s bed tonight. I can only imagine what fears she has about it.”

Very turned her head to rest it on his shoulder. “Exactly, and I exacerbated the whole thing with my teasing. She was fine until I joked about being too drunk to enjoy her wedding night. If only Aunt Kate had confided in me sooner! I would never have said that.”

Kensington ran his hand down her back in what was supposed to be a soothing

motion. Instead it set every nerve aflame. Her pussy actually throbbed with desire for him as his hand came to rest on the rise of her rump. She couldn’t control the small, unsteady gasp that broke from her. Kensington froze and then tried to pull away.

“No! Kensington, please.” Very knew she was begging, but her pride was nowhere

to be seen. She needed him tonight. Needed him to show her again what love felt like, to help wipe out the image of Sophie being raped that was trapped in her head.

“Very, I can’t.” His voice was harsh and he put his hands on her shoulders and

tried to shove her back.

“You can, you can,” she told him, pressing closer, wrapping her arms around his neck in a death grip. She placed kisses along his jaw and bit his chin gently, eliciting a moan from him. “You see, you want me. You can’t deny it, I can hear how much. I can feel your cock, hard for me.” She rotated her hips, feeling the hard length of him rubbing against her stomach. She placed an openmouthed kiss against his neck and sucked the skin lightly and suddenly his hands were grabbing her ass roughly and grinding her in to him. She laughed triumphantly and Kensington groaned.

“God damn it, Very. I promised myself I would leave you alone. You’re so young, so innocent. Tell me to stop, tell me to leave you alone.” He was kissing her wildly, his lips on hers for one moment and then running over her face and neck. He licked a path upward from her shoulder to the soft spot behind her ear and then bit her earlobe. Very shivered with unconcealed lust at the sting.

“Don’t stop, don’t ever stop, Kensington. I want to feel it again, that wild drop off a cliff that made my heart race and my breath catch. Show me what it means to love a man. Make me forget just for a while about what happened to Sophie. Show me how it feels when you want it, when you desire a man and he makes you his.”

Kensington groaned aloud at her words and dragged her to the floor. “You make

me throw all my principles to the wind, Very. I have no resistance to you, no way to fight when you tell me how much you want me. You are the ruin of me.” He fell on top of her and Very had never felt such a delicious weight. She wrapped one hand around his head and pulled him to her for a kiss as her leg encircled his waist and yanked his erection down to her aching, damp mound. Though separated by layers of fabric, the 99

Samantha Kane

contact was exquisite and she cried out into his mouth. He ground himself against her and she bit his lip sharply. The copper tang of blood made her pull back.

“Oh God, Kensington, I’m sorry. I’m just mad, as if I have some kind of brain fever.

All I can think of is you and how wonderful you feel. You’re so hard and heavy and mine. I want to taste you, to eat you up. Is this normal, this raging hunger for you?” Her voice was breathless and eager and she smiled to hear herself that way. It was glorious, everything about this was glorious.

Kensington was licking the blood from his lip as he tugged wildly at Very’s bodice.

“I don’t know and I don’t care. Just knowing you’re dying for me is driving
me
mad.

You’ve infected me with your fever.” She heard her bodice rip and then she felt the cool air on her overheated breasts. “Yes,” Kensington hissed. He dove into her breasts like a starving man, licking and sucking and biting and Very writhed beneath him. He

rammed an arm under her back and yanked her chest high as he suckled one nipple ruthlessly, and Very thrust her hips into him, his cock rubbing against her in such a way that she felt the shudders of arousal through her whole body.

Reality became disjointed, as if time and place had no meaning for them. The heat and roughness of his touch, the feel of supple muscles flexing above her, the wet, smooth glide of his tongue on her skin seemed to be so natural, as if Very’s whole life had led to this coupling.

“Touch me, Kensington, like you did before.” She was like a woman possessed,

wrapping her arms and legs around him and kissing him as if she might swallow him whole.

“Michael,” he told her roughly, peeling himself away from her. He grabbed her

shoulder and shook her. “Call me Michael. I want to hear my name on your lips when I’m loving you, Very. Say it.”

“Michael,” she pleaded, and the intimacy of his given name made her heart beat

faster and her breathing grow ragged. “Michael, love me, please. I need you so much.”

His blond hair had turned to molten gold in the fire’s light, his eyes dark and fathomless in the shadows. She shuddered at the fleeting fear that gripped her at his inscrutable expression. For one endless moment they were frozen there, she laid before him like an offering, he towering over her, her conqueror. The dramatic nature of the image as it formed in Very’s mind broke the spell. “Michael,” she whispered, arching into him, and Michael’s hands came to her waist, gripping her almost painfully as he held her to him.

“I’m not strong, Very, not where you’re concerned. I haven’t trusted myself to be alone with you these last months. I’ve tried to leave you, but I’m weak, so weak. I keep crawling back—for this.” He leaned down and kissed her hard and possessively. When he pulled away, Very gasped and thrust her hips at him. He reached out and touched a fingertip gently to the curve of her breast. “I crave this like an opium eater craves the drug, Very. I need you.” She rose to her elbows to see his face as he stared at her. Those eyes closed in distress as he pulled his finger away, balling his hand into a fist. “Tell me to stop, Very.”

100

At Love’s Command

“Never,” she whispered. “I will never tell you to stop.”

When the library door opened, the crack of light from the hallway split the floor like an arrow that ended at Michael’s feet. Very gasped as Michael quickly tried to shield her from the intruder.

The door closed quietly with a click. “I’m sorry. Am I interrupting?” Wolf’s voice was a low purr of surprised delight, and Very released the breath she was holding.

“Wolf,” she whispered. Without thinking she reached out for him, and he came as if pulled by invisible strings. When he reached her side he dropped heavily to his knees.

Wolf Tarrant was not a large man. He was tall and lean, with the whipcord muscles of a fencer and the elegance to match. His face resembled his namesake with its sharp angles, long nose and square jaw. In the firelight his thick, wild dark blond hair took on the hues of the fire itself, red, gold, orange and black. He was always so composed, so self-contained, and yet Very suspected that there was a great deal of fire inside him as well, beneath the façade. She longed to see him burn—burn for her. She had never thought much of Wolf in sexual terms. She had accepted that he came with Kensington.

But here, now, she realized with relief and excitement, she wanted him. She wanted to touch him and be touched by him and the happiness this brought her made her giddy.

She brushed his strong cheekbone with the pads of her fingers as her thumb caressed his lower lip. “Wolf,” she said again, her new sexual awareness of him as an individual clear in her voice and her touch.

Wolf closed his eyes and dipped his head into her caress. “Very,” he said, his voice breaking, “Very.” He bent down to kiss her and she rose from the floor to meet him halfway. The kiss was a tender exploration, a first kiss in every way. It ignored the fact that she was spread out on the floor half naked, caught in the throes of passion with another man. In that kiss it was only Very and Wolf and the wonder of their discovery of one another. He passed his arms gently around her until he was supporting her, until she was wrapped tightly against his chest, their hearts beating together. Her arms were around his neck, one hand on his shoulder the other buried in his untamed hair.

Wolf’s tongue slipped into her mouth so gently that Very whimpered at the sweet sensation. He was so different from Michael, who devoured her like a starving man.

Wolf savored and gentled her until she could take no more tenderness. She broke the kiss with a sob. “Please, please,” she begged, her body once again on fire. Her nipples were so sharp they ached for a soothing touch, and she could feel the heat of her pussy as it was bathed in the cream of her sex. She clutched at Wolf’s arm, dragging it from around her and he was forced to lower her to the floor. She took his hand in hers and guided it to her breast, pressing it against the aching point there. “Yes,” she cried out her back arching. “Michael,” she whispered, wanting him to share this feeling. Wolf was kneading her breast as he nuzzled her neck.

“No.” The word was harsh and anguished. Wolf froze against her, and Very looked past his shoulder at Michael. He was still kneeling between her legs, but somehow he seemed apart, separate from her in a way he hadn’t before. He was very carefully not touching her. He was looking at Wolf with dawning horror, at his hand on Very’s 101

Samantha Kane

breast, his face pressed to her neck. Very didn’t know what to do. She was aching and burning and she was finding it hard to think of anything but the ecstasy that was just out of reach.

“Please, Michael,” she begged, arching into Wolf’s hand, which had resumed its

pleasurable caresses. She moaned as Wolf sucked gently on her neck. “Oh God, please.”

“I…I can’t,” he whispered brokenly, and Very watched him through a fog as he

crawled backward away from her and Wolf. “What have I done?” His question didn’t seem to be directed at her so Very didn’t answer.

Wolf shuddered as Very pressed his hand harder against her breast. He lay down

beside her, his warmth a delectable pressure against her side. “Michael,” he said, his voice rough, and he kissed the delicate skin above Very’s collarbone. “Don’t, don’t ruin it, Michael,” and his voice broke. He cleared his throat. “Don’t run away from this.”

“I can’t,” Michael said again. “What are we doing, Wolf? She’s a child.” He turned his head away and covered his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to look at them. “I can’t do this to her.”

“I am not a child,” Very told him, and Wolf pulled back to look at her. She gazed into his face and saw none of the guilt that seemed to beleaguer Michael when he touched her. Wolf looked at her like a woman, a desirable woman. His gaze was

possessive and arrogant and proud, and Very wanted to purr and roll all over him until she was covered in his scent. “I want this,” she whispered, and hardly recognized the sinful voice as her own. “I want to touch and be touched, I want to come and I want a man to come for me.” She looked at Michael. “I want to be a woman and not a child. I want to be wanted by a man without seeing guilt and shame in his face afterward.”

“I can’t, Very,” Michael said brokenly, “I can’t.”

“I can,” Wolf said firmly in her ear.

Very turned back to Wolf and with slow deliberation pulled his head down to hers and kissed him. She released all her desire into that kiss, tried to tell him all she wanted and needed with her lips and tongue and teeth, and he heard her and understood. He moved closer to her and slid one arm under her until her neck rested on it. He ran one hand down her stomach to rest between her legs. Very groaned and thrust against him.

“What do you want?” Wolf asked against her mouth. “Do you know?”

“I want you inside me,” Very demanded wantonly. “I want you to take me over the edge, Wolf. Will you take me?”

“Oh, Very,” he said wickedly, “I will take you any way you want.” He pressed his lips to hers again and his tongue danced in her mouth deliciously. Very became