Banner O'Brien (16 page)

She heard him groan as the mane tumbled to her waist, and she reveled in this small power that was hers.

With gentle hands, Adam smoothed her hair back over her shoulders and caressed her cheeks, her upper arms, her breasts. And while he touched her, he spoke softly, wickedly, of all the places and all the ways in which he would pleasure her.

Banner shuddered and, of her own accord, untied the strings that held her drawers in place. Easily, she stepped out of them, standing before her husband,
naked now, except for the shamrock pendant at her throat.

Adam touched the necklace with the tip of one finger, went on to touch the rosy gems beneath.

Banner gasped as he bent to suckle at one breast.

He savored that one nubbin as though it were a sweet morsel, and the warmth penetrated Banner’s flesh and mingled with the blood pounding through her veins. “Have me,” she pleaded shamelessly.

He chuckled. “Oh, no——not yet. Not—yet.”

Banner trembled and arched her back, silently offering herself to him.

Adam flicked at her with his tongue, ruthlessly taking what she gave. And when he had plundered both breasts, he knelt.

He parted the nest of silken curls with cautious fingers, found its sheltered secret with his tongue. Banner groaned.

“No—oh, Adam—”

He punctuated his answer with soft, wicked kisses. “You—are—mine now.”

Banner cried out softly as his lips caught at her, taking full and inexorable possession, driving her and yet offering a fierce sort of comfort, too.

Adam drew on her with gentle ferocity, pressing her legs apart, kneading the yielding flesh on her buttocks. He pulled her down and down, until she was kneeling over him, writhing in search of a freedom she had no desire to find.

His strong hands came to her hips, forcing her to give the strange, sweet nectar he sought so mercilessly.

Banner’s breath grew rapid and harsh, and beneath it coursed a low, primitive whine. Sweat shimmered on her upper lip and between her breasts, and then a sundering heat exploded inside her like a sunburst, centering in the nubbin Adam was still tormenting with his tongue and spreading to reverberate against the insides of her hipbones. From there, it streamed down
into her thighs and up into her weighted, pulsing breasts.

In the molten glory of her release, Banner sobbed out Adam’s name. He brought her gently down from the crimson skies with treacherous kisses—kisses that would soon send her soaring again.

Chapter Seven

B
ANNER COULD NOT RECALL BEING LIFTED AND PLACED ON THE
bed; it seemed, rather, that she had floated there. A singular satisfaction permeated her flesh and her spirit, and her breathing was still rapid.

She was a doctor. She should have understood human anatomy and the pleasures that could be wrought by skillful kisses and caresses, but she hadn’t. Never, for all the times she’d suffered beneath Sean Malloy’s heavy, straining frame, had she felt this fierce yet delicate fire that Adam had ignited within her.

He undressed quietly in the darkness, joined her on the bed. His fingers played over her breasts, her rib cage, her satiny stomach. He had drained her of every essence and he had yet to take her fully.

“P-please,” she managed. “Now?”

Adam withdrew his hand to light a lamp at the
bedside, and there were dark blue, smoldering embers in his eyes as he savored her nakedness. “I want to see you, Banner,” he said, in a voice so low that she almost thought she’d imagined it. “I want to know that I’m pleasing you.”

Banner shuddered as his great, gentle hands came back to her breasts, whimpered as he plucked the nipples into readiness with his finger. “I—oooooh . . .”

Adam chuckled as he released the pebble-hard morsels to take pillows from the head of the bed and fit them under Banner’s hips. She was more vulnerable than ever now, raised to him like an offering, and the sensations this stirred in her were woundingly beautiful.

She closed her eyes in a daze of passion as he began to stroke her again, circling her nectar-laden breasts with magical fingers, making patterns of fire on her middle, lifting her knees high so that she was spread for him, a tender banquet.

But Adam did not come to feast. Instead, he plied the quivering rosebud of flesh with his thumb, delighting in her soft, eager whimpers.

Everything within Banner leaped when his fingers sheathed themselves in her pulsing warmth, and her hips began to rise and fall with the thrusts of his hand.

She tried to draw her knees together—this pleasure was too keen, too fierce to be borne—but he would not allow her this defense or any other. No, he knelt between her legs, blocking one knee with his body and holding the other at bay with his free hand.

And still Adam plundered her sacred depths with tender savagery, smiling as she tossed her head back and forth in frenzy and thrust her hips ever upward, wanting more of him and still more.

Tears brimmed in her lashes and spilled down her cheeks as the passion grew to intolerable proportions. “Adam—oh, my God—”

“Let it happen, Banner,” he said, over her gasping cries. “It’s right, it’s good—let it happen.”

Banner’s entire being buckled now, in rhythm with the ceaseless, searing motions of his hand. A haze blurred her vision and an inferno raged within her and then she was sent spinning into the night skies, free of her body.

Adam brought her back to earth with kisses, pagan kisses that branded the spoils of their battle, the insides of her knees, the glowing smoothness of her belly. How much more of this could she bear?

In self-defense, Banner grasped the heated, imposing shaft that was his manhood in both hands. He groaned and fell away, still on his knees, and she somehow found the strength to lift herself from her prone position and plot vengeance.

Operating on instinct, she bent her head and nibbled at him, and her reward was a gutteral groan that seemed to rise from the darkest depths of him. As he had shown no mercy, she was ruthless with him, tormenting even as he pleaded.

Finally, in desperation, Adam thrust her backward and entered her. She had expected pain—there had always been pain with Sean—but even after the glories she’d already experienced that night, Adam’s conquering was a surprise.

This pleasure was the most ferocious of all.

Their bodies were one, woven together like the strands of a rope tossing and buckling in the wind. Frantic, Banner wrapped her legs around Adam and held on as the sun flew apart and the moon splintered and all the universe trembled with the resulting shocks.

They slept for a time, as one, exhausted, then awakened to love again. Now, Banner sat astride her husband, facing him, suckling dark nipples hidden in a carpet of ebony down.

Banner’s name was torn from Adam in a hoarse cry,
and he grew within her until she feared she could not contain him. She pressed him backward until he was prone and rode him wildly, professions of her love for him falling from her lips like a fevered litany.

And when their triumph came, in a sizzling, brutal fusion, their separate cries blended into one.

*  *  *

Adam opened his eyes to the insistent dawn, saw that Banner was sleeping beside him, one hip curved beneath the blankets, one delectable nipple peeking at him over the edge of the sheet.

He groaned and spread his legs slightly to accommodate the inevitable response. His tongue was thick and his head pounded.

God, he’d been drunk, and he’d seduced O’Brien in the bargain. What could he say to her? And how the hell was he going to explain this to his family?

Banner stirred beside him, and the one bare nipple taunted him, puckering in the chill air. Unable to resist such an inviting tidbit, he lifted himself onto one elbow and circled the pink confection with the tip of his tongue.

O’Brien whimpered and opened her wide, shamrock green eyes. Then she cupped one hand under the plump breast to offer it.

Adam nursed at his leisure, clinging to the sweet nubbin even as Banner sat up. He was cradled in her arms now, like an infant, but he didn’t care. He craved the intangible nourishment he drew from her.

Banner’s hand moved gently in his hair, pressing him close, and little cries of soft surrender came from her as he took his pleasure. After a long time, she guided him to the other breast and brushed his lips with the hardened nipple until he groaned and took it hungrily.

His gentle greed made her gasp and arch her back, then croon with soft contentment.

When Adam had taken his fill at her breast, he
wanted more. While she watched him, wide-eyed but trusting, he lifted her legs, one by one, to drape them over his shoulders.

Adam kissed his way into the silken, sanctioned place, and his spirit soared when she cried out a fevered welcome. He looked down the length of her, watching the passion play in her beautiful face.

And to intensify this, he lapped at her, the way a kitten might lap at sweet cream. She squirmed and chanted his name, and her eyes were glazed emeralds, pleading a cause of their own.

Adam chuckled and ceased the lapping to nibble.

Banner’s hips seemed to take wing; her hands knotted into fists and pounded at the bedding as she rode the forbidden pleasure. When she pleaded, he suckled until her small body quivered with release.

She fell from him, shuddering, and welcomed him when he came to her for final solace.

As he moved upon her, sheathed in her warmth, forever marked by her fire, he realized that he loved her.

It might, Adam thought, as his mind and soul collided within him, be a good thing if he married O’Brien.

*  *  *

“What?” Adam rasped, staring at Banner from across the wide, rumpled bed.

She swallowed. He didn’t remember! She drew the blankets up under her chin with one hand and reached for the certificate, which she had found sometime during the night and placed on the bedside table.

The document sailed through space and wafted down onto his naked, imperious chest.

Scowling, Adam took it up and read it. “Is this a joke, O’Brien?”

Hot tears welled in Banner’s eyes. She’d known this would happen all along, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear.

“We w-were married on the
Silver Shadow.
D-don’t you remember?”

Adam flung the proof aside. “I remember three things,” he growled, glaring up at the ceiling. “One: I was drunk. Two: we made love. Three: you weren’t a virgin, O’Brien.”

Color ached in Banner’s cheeks. “I told you, Adam—I explained about—”

In a sudden, terrifying motion, Adam hurled back the blankets and shot out of bed. “About your sordid past?” he snarled, wrenching on his clothes.

Banner couldn’t have been hurt more cruelly if he had struck her. She’d told him about Sean and her divorce—she’d told him. It wasn’t her fault that he’d refused to hear!

“Damn you to hell, Adam Corbin!” she whispered. “I—”

But he was at the door now, his clothes on but in disarray, his hand on the knob. “You ought to have cards printed, O’Brien,” he rasped.
“Always a gentle welcome.”

Banner shrieked, in her outrage and her pain, and he strode suddenly toward the bed. In one terrifying grab, he caught the filligree shamrock in his hand.

“Until now,” he whispered savagely, “I’ve prided myself on the fact that I’d never paid a woman for what you just gave.” He let the pendant fall, cold and oddly heavy, against her stinging flesh. “Now it appears that I have, doesn’t it, O’Brien?”

Banner flung herself at him, fists flying, wild in her injury, but he subdued her easily, his hands biting into the delicate skin of her wrists.

“You wanted to be a wife so badly that you would trick me into marriage,” he went on in a brutal undertone. “Well, it’s a wife you’ll be, Shamrock.”

Banner’s throat thickened, and she stared at him, aghast. “W-What do you mean?”

“I mean, you little sorceress, that I intend to get full
satisfaction from this marriage, when and where I want it. And let me assure you, dearest, that there is no end to my imagination. Do you understand me?”

Furious, Banner broke away from his hold and began gathering up her own clothes. She understood all too well, but she wasn’t going to give him the victory by saying so—she’d die first.

Adam grabbed the drawers from her hands and ripped them asunder in one vicious motion. “You won’t need these,” he said in a hissing growl, and then he flung the pieces of the garment into the crimson embers on the hearth.

Banner trembled with impotent rage, and her heart beat not in her chest, as it should, but in her face. Words eluded her, and her husband had stormed out of the bedroom, slamming the door behind him, long before she could move from where she stood.

*  *  *

Adam avoided the front of the house, realizing that it was Christmas morning and members of his family would no doubt already be gathering there. He was relieved to find the kitchen empty when he entered it by the back stairway.

He went to the windows and looked out at the snowy countryside and the mountain. Why in hell had he treated O’Brien that way when he loved her? Was he insane?

In the distance, he heard Melissa laughing. The sound was soothing, though it did not prompt him to face his family and make the necessary announcement.

I married O’Brien last night, he imagined himself saying. Of course, I don’t remember proposing or saying the binding words, but she has the license, so it must be true.

Memories wriggled in his mind like fingers: O’Brien with snow on her nose. O’Brien sharing his bed, touching him in more ways than just the physical, ways he had not begun to imagine before that. O’Brien
pleasuring him until he was half-blind with the need of her.

O’Brien, O’Brien, O’Brien.

And who had had her first? Who was the man who had taught her to love like that, so fiercely and so well?

Again, Adam lifted his eyes to the mountain. There was someone he had to see, had to talk with—if he expected to retain his sanity.

For the first time in his career, Adam Corbin walked away from his duties without once looking back, without leaving word of his whereabouts or making provisions for his patients.