"I think I will." He swung off her supine body, stood up, and began to unfasten his belt. "I never wanted to, you know. You never believed that, but it was quite true. I wanted a partner, not a slave." He was quickly stripping off the rest of his clothes. "Well, I'm not going to have that, but I'll salvage something for myself."
He was naked now as he came back to the bed and sat down beside her. His hand gently cupped one small breast. "You have such lovely breasts, sweetheart. Shall we start with them?"
She glared up at him with silent defiance. His hands were moving to the sides of her breasts, pushing gently inward to bring the mounds into swelling prominence, then his head was bending with deliberate slowness until his lips were just a breath away from one taut rosy peak. "So pretty," he said thickly. With every word, she could feel a little burst of warm breath against the sensitive nipple. "And so responsive. See how beautifully the little bud is beginning to blossom?" His tongue brushed her, and she inhaled sharply at the jolt of fire that light touch sent spinning through her. How could her body be this treacherous? He was stroking the nipple with his warm, skillful tongue while his thumb gently rubbed the other into engorgement. "Think about the baby I'm
going to give you, love. Think about how he'll love these sweet breasts when they're full of milk. Will his lips feel like mine, Tania?" Then his mouth was enveloping her with a strong, gentle suction while his hand kneaded and teased the swollen mound. She was unable to suppress a gasp as the evocative words followed by the erotic pull of his lips combined to cause a flood of heat to every part of her body. She didn't know how long his lips continued their sensual play with her breasts, alternating from one to the other, stroking, sucking, nibbling. It seemed like forever in the delirium of desire he was invoking within her. Her body was becoming excruciatingly sensitive, stretched taut and helpless by the silken rope, while his lips and teeth engendered a feverish heat. She felt each caress as a little shock that was almost painful.
Her head moved back and forth on the pillow. "No." Her voice was a choked moan. "No, Jared."
His head lifted, his eyes glazed. "Too much?" he asked huskily. "Then we'd better move on, hadn't we?" His hand slid down her body to gently rub the softness of her belly. "Will you like having my baby tucked in here, soft and secure? It's such a lovely, tiny haven. It's hard to imagine that it could hold a life." His hand moved caressingly down over her soft flesh to the juncture of her thighs. "But you can take a great deal, Tania. I found that out last night. Open your thighs, sweet."
"No." Her whisper was a mere breath of sound. “I’ll never give you anything willingly, Jared."
He was moving astride her, his own hands parting her legs. "Yes, you will," he said grimly. "Give me another hour and you'll be more than willing. Like I said, you're a very passionate woman, Tania." Then he set to work, his hands as devilishly skilled and sensual as she remembered. Probing, stroking, rotating until she was moving helplessly against them. He'd said he was a very patient man, and he demonstrated that patience now. He brought her to the very edge of release any number of times, only to jerk her back from the precipice. He would soothe her, stroking her with hands and words, and then begin the fiery arousal of her senses once more.
He'd said to give him an hour, and at the end of that time she couldn't have said whether it had been a moment or a decade that had passed. Her breasts were heaving from the tumult of her breathing, and her dark eyes were fever-brilliant in her flushed face. Only one thing was important in the universe, to assuage the aching emptiness that seemed to encompass her entire body. She was almost mindless with the need he'd provoked so skillfully, and the muscles of her stomach clenched painfully as he reached around to knead her buttocks with gentle hands.
He smiled down at her, his gray eyes noting the reflex with tiger-bright alertness. "I think you're ready, sweetheart," he said softly. "I think you're ready to ask me to give you what you want." His fingers gently compressed her flesh. "What you need. Just one sentence, that's all it will take. Just say the words."
Oh, God, she couldn't, she thought dazedly. She had to hold out or something inside her would be lost forever. Yet how could she not, when nothing seemed more important than receiving the completion that Jared was withholding from her? She felt as if she were being ripped apart, and suddenly she was unutterably weary of fighting her own body as well as Jared. Her lashes slowly closed, and she wasn't even conscious of the two tears that brimmed over and slowly rolled down her cheeks. She opened her lips to speak.
"Nol" Jared's voice was almost a shout. His hand
swiftly covered her lips. Her lids flew up in shocked surprise to see Jared's face above her, a twisted mask of agony. Suddenly the stranger was gone, but she almost wished she had him back. He would have been easier to face than this haggard, pale-faced man, whose silver eyes looked as if they'd gazed into hell. His hand moved from her lips to tenderly stroke the silky wings of hair at her temple. "It's all right, love," he said quickly. "I know you'll never give in." He gave her a pained travesty of a smile. "You'll always be the Piper. I guess I'll just have to dance to your tune one last time."
Then he was plunging within her, thrusting with a wild force and passion that was everything he'd teased her with, giving her the full vibrance of himself in a cascade of skilled movements that caused her to catch her breath with the sheer power of it. In a matter of minutes she'd received an explosive completion that left her shivering and weak.
She was so dazed and shaken that she barely felt the brush of Jared's lips on her forehead or the tug of the silken bonds as he swiftly released her. Then he was slipping off her and getting up. She lifted heavy lids a moment later, to see him fastening the snap at the waistband of his jeans. He was bare to the waist, and the low-slung jeans clung closely to his slender hips and the powerful column of his thighs. His face was dark and shadowed with the same pain she'd glimpsed before. He turned away from the bed without another glance at her and strode across the room to the French doors, thrusting back the curtains to stare sightlessly out into the darkness. His spine was straight and rigid, and she could see the coiled tension in every muscle in his naked back.
She sat up sluggishly and pushed her mass of dark silky hair away from her face. She felt so dazed and bewildered that for a moment she wasn't able even to begin to comprehend what had transpired in those last incredible moments. She shook her head as if to clear it, her gaze on the taut figure of the man across the room.
Chapter
12
“I’ll call Corbett in the morning. Jared's voice was harsh with strain. "I'll tell him that I won't have you here any longer. It won't be possible to send you back to New York, but he'll find a place where you'll be safe and comfortable until we can release you. I promise that you won't have to put up with my presence for more than a few days at the longest."
It was such a complete reversal that for a moment Tania was breathless. "You're sending me away?"
"I think it's more than time, don't you?" His voice held all the weariness in the world. He continued to stare blindly into the darkness. "Maybe Corbett and Kevin are right after all. They say were still too close to savagery to make any revolutionary transition easy. Well, I certainly proved that tonight. Perhaps I am the thief and destroyer you think me." He laughed mirthlessly. "You might add rapist to that list."
There were waves of such intense agony emanating from him that she could feel them across the room. It started an echoing ache somewhere deep within her, and instinctively she tried to make an attempt at assuaging both. "You didn't rape me," she said huskily. "Toward the end I wanted it just as much as you'd said I would." It
didn't bother her a bit to admit it, she found to her amazement.
"You're very generous." She could see his hand clench the velvet drapes until the knuckles showed white. "We both know that only made the offense more despicable. I tried to steal something from you that was a hell of a lot more important than the pleasure of your body." He added quickly, "I didn't succeed, of course."
But he had succeeded. Everything was suddenly coming into focus. She'd been stripped of her defenses and made to admit defeat for the first time in her life. She had opened her lips to say the words that would give him final victory, but he'd known even before that he'd won. Yet he'd defaulted at the last minute, denied his victory and tried to give her back the confidence in her own supremacy that he thought was necessary to her. And he was still insisting she'd bested him even while she sensed the pain and self-disgust tearing at him. He was trying to protect her shield, not realizing it was no longer there.
The knowledge came to her with the simplicity of unquestionable truth. She would never lift the shield against Jared again. Not because she was defeated, but because it was no longer necessary. Last night she had told him she trusted him, but it hadn't really been true. There had remained an ember of suspicion, quickly fanned into flame by dissension.
Her lips curved in a smile of almost maternal tenderness. It was strange to learn ultimate trust from a situation so fraught with violence and anguish. She'd been forced to admit to herself that Jared could dominate her, and then in the same moment she'd realized he never would. Even in his pain and anger, he had cared enough to stop before she'd been subjugated. If she could trust him at such a moment, she could trust him at any time.
And with trust came the final golden flowering she'd been refusing to acknowledge, even to herself. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, spreading its wings until it seemed to encompass everything she was, came the realization. How odd and new it felt.
"I'm not going to ask you to forgive me," he said quietly. "Some things are beyond forgiveness and understanding." He shook his head incredulously. "I can't understand it myself. I've always prided myself on being so civilized and logical. Yet I find I'm as much an animal as if I'd just crawled out of a cave. Not a very pleasant thing to discover after living thirty-eight years."
"And why did that control break tonight, Jared?" She got slowly off the bed and crossed to the large armoire against the far wall, pulled a tailored white wool robe from a padded hanger, and slipped it on. "What made the difference?" She walked toward him.
"I'm not going to make any excuses," he said harshly. "There aren't any that would be worthy of the name. I was frightened and in pain and I acted like any other savage and struck out." His voice broke. "My God, I tried to hurt you."
His back was still toward her, and she didn't see his face until she was right next to him. Then she caught her breath. She'd been so dazed before he'd left her that she'd been only subliminally aware of his expression of torment mingled with self-disgust. She immediately averted her eyes, not wanting to see his suffering.
"It's starting to snow," she murmured, watching the first pristine flakes gently drift against the pane. What could she say to him that would ease that pain? There was no question that she wanted to do so. It was sheer self-defense . . . for she felt his pain as her own. Would it always be like this now? She'd been so caught up in a virtual hurricane of emotions in the past hours that she wondered for a moment if she could put aside her own selfish need for comfort to give to him. Then she discarded the thought impatiently. Of course she could do it. Jared had given her back her strength, and now she must use it to soothe his pain.
"Don't worry, it shouldn't interfere with your leaving," he said, still not looking at her. "There's no major snowstorm forecast, and this flurry will probably have stopped by the time Corbett can make arrangements."
She moved closer. "I'm not worried," she said softly, "because I'm not leaving, Jared."
He stiffened as if an arrow had pierced him, and he slanted a glance at her. "What did you say?"
"You heard me." Suddenly a gamin grin lit her face. "You needn't think I'll let you whisk me away out of sight so you won't have to remember how you've abused me. I'm going to stick so close to you, you'll have to wear me like a hair shirt."
"You're laughing," he exclaimed.
"What did you expect, weeping and wailing? I'm not saying that what you did was right. It was very wrong. If anyone else had done the same thing, I'd probably be planning his murder." She scowled. "You mustn't ever do anything like that again, Jared. It causes far too many problems."
"Problems?" His laugh was sharp with bitterness. "You call what I just did to you a 'problem'?"
She nodded. "That's why you mustn't do that again. We're going to have enough problems adjusting, without your causing more." She stepped even closer. Her arms went around his waist, and her head nestled on his chest as if she were a trusting little girl. "There are several other things you have to understand, Jared."
She could feel his body freeze, until even his breath seemed to stop in his chest. "Understand?"
"That I must be allowed my own career, that's most essential. That you be honest with me at all times." She
rubbed her cheek against his chest like an affectionate kitten as she continued. "That you give me the baby you spoke of so eloquently. Last, but not least, if you're going to be any kind of monarch, it had better be as a monogamous king, not a sultan. I think I could become quite fierce if you suddenly decided you wanted to have a harem."
He had released the curtain and his hands were hovering above her shoulders as if afraid to touch her. "You're going to stay with me?"
"For a genius you really can be very thick, Jared." She sighed. "What have I been telling you? Of course I'm staying until it's safe for you to leave the chateau. It would be unreasonable for me to do anything else. But then I think you should insist they arrange quarters for you in New York instead of Washington. That's where my work is." She glanced up at him mischievously. "After all, you can be a king anywhere. Okay?"