On Thin Ice (23 page)

His eyes glittered down into hers, and if she wanted tenderness it wasn’t there. Simply a dark, naked heat sparking between them.

“No more running away,” she said.

His kiss was far different from hers. He used his tongue, kissing her hard, and she felt her initial panic begin, and then fade. He wouldn’t hurt her, she understood that instinctively. She let herself relax into his kiss, and it softened, so that he was exploring her mouth, with slow, sensuous need, and her own need flared. He reached behind her and opened the door to her cabin, and then he broke his possessive kiss to lift her in his arms, carrying her into the cabin and kicking the door shut behind him.

He set her down on the bunk. She’d turned off the light when she’d left to follow him, an ingrained habit, and he didn’t bother to switch it on. The small cabin was lit by moonlight and the reflection of the ship’s lights, and it was a place of shifting shadows. She liked the shadows. She wanted to hide from him, pretend she was somewhere else, pretend…

“Don’t do that,” he said, pushing the cotton shirt off her shoulders.

“Do what?” She shivered at the touch of his hard hands against her skin. She was hot, she was cold, and he tugged at the hem of her tank top.

“You said you wouldn’t run away. That means you look at me, acknowledge me, not pretend you’re in some fairy tale. I’m no magic prince who’s going to wake you with a goddamned kiss.”

She didn’t even want to consider how he knew what she was thinking. He knew her too well, only one of the many scary things about him. He stripped the shirt over her head, and she was wearing nothing but the baggy jeans. She instinctively tried to cover her breasts, but he caught her wrists and held them down on the bed, leaning over her.

Her voice caught. “Then who are you?”

He was looking into her eyes, not at her breasts, and his gaze was intent. His mouth, the mouth she wanted, curved in a slight smile. “Your worst nightmare?”

She shook her head. “Let go of my hands.”

He did, and she lifted them, cradling his face, pushing his long, multi-colored hair away from the planes and angles of him. “Fate,” she said. “You can’t run away from fate.”

“Are you trying to scare me off, Sister Beth? This is a blip on the horizon, not a relationship.”

“You already said that. Several times, in fact. Who are you trying to convince?”

He laughed softly, and the sound curled in her belly, warming her. “You’re evil, Sister Beth. I like that in a woman.” He put his hands on her shoulders, big, strong, rough hands on her, his thumbs beginning to knead the tension, the fear, out of her. They moved down her arms, slowly, so that she could stop him, and then he pushed her back on the bunk, and she felt the mattress against her back, the cool sheets, the soft pillow beneath her head.He let his slow, carnal gaze slide down to her breasts then, and he breathed in a ragged sigh. She waited for him to say something crass, to try to break the strange, erotic lassitude she was sliding into, but he was silent, watching her breathe. He moved then, onto the bunk, over her, straddling her, and he was dark and hot and everything she wanted.

He put his hands on her waist, letting them slide up to brush against her breasts, barely touching them, and she could feel her nipples contract almost painfully. She jerked, wanting more.

“Small,” he said in a rough voice. “And perfect.” He leaned down, and she could fee his tongue against her, brushing across her nipple, and she felt her womb contract in fear and anticipation “You’re going to let me suck them, aren’t you, Sister Beth?”

He waited for permission, but her throat closed, unable to say the words, terrified that he’d leave her. His eyes darkened, and he ran his thumbs across the swollen nubs. “That’s all right, sweetheart. You’ll tell me. Eventually. You’re going to say everything I want you to say. You’re going to cry it, and whisper it, and scream it.”

The heat between her legs grew hotter even as fear danced across her nerve endings. “We can take this slow, can’t we?” she managed to ask. “You won’t push me?”

“Oh, my precious one.” He was sounding more Irish, an instinctive croon that made her melt. “I’m going to push you so far you won’t know where you end and I begin. I’m not going to approach you on my knees. I don’t worship virgin queens. I fuck them.”

“Don’t.”

“And you’re going to tell me you want me to fuck you. Hard.” Her nipples felt so tight and hard they were almost painful, and the soft brush of his rough thumbs against them was a glorious kind of torture. “No fairy tales. Just you and me. And sex.” He leaned over her, his mouth catching her nipple, drawing it in, sucking, his tongue swirling, and she arched off the bed, burning.

She heard the sound she made, a soft moan of need. Her hands came up, almost of their own accord, and threaded through the long hair that fell around his face, sifting her fingers through it, dancing across his hot skin. Lifting his head, he blew on her breast, and she cried out as sensations danced through her, and before they died down he moved to her other breast, sucking, licking. She felt his teeth rasp against her, and she shivered in response.

He moved down, and his hands were at the fastening to her jeans, unzipping them. How many hands did the man have, she thought dazedly, awash in sensation. The tug of his mouth at her breast was like nothing she’d ever felt before, hot and hard and needy. She felt his hand between her legs, against the heavy seams of denim, pushing, stroking through all those layers of cloth, and she arched up again, pushing back, wanting more.

He lifted his head, looking down at her. “Tell me to take your pants off.” The demand was husky but clear.

She swallowed, fighting it, fighting the desire, fighting herself. “Are you wearing my pants?”

His laugh was shaky. She liked that. “Saucy, aren’t you?” he said. And then she felt his hands on her hips, shoving the jeans down, moving back and stripping them off her legs so fast she didn’t have time to react before he was straddling her again, holding her in place with his hard thighs. “There, that was painless, wasn’t it?”

It took her a moment to catch her breath. “You left my underwear on.”

“Well, getting your knickers off is half the fun, isn’t it?”

“Half the fun?”

He was unbuttoning his shirt, slowly, and his eyes glittered in the moonlight. “Well, no. Just one of the many bits of fun to be had.”

Fun. This didn’t feel like fun. If felt dark and torturous and powerful, this strangling need that was rushing through her body, but it didn’t feel like fun.

He tossed the shirt away, and he’d removed the bandage from the knife wound. She tried to angle her head, to look at him, but he pushed her back down. “You can play doctor later, sweetheart,” he said, reading her again. “We’ve got better things to do.”

“I just want to make sure …”

“If you make me bleed you can patch me up again. You sure I’m not going to make you bleed?”

She was glad the moonlight didn’t show her flush. “How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not a virgin? Why don’t you hurry up and get this over with and then you’ll know for sure.”

“Oh, I’m in no hurry. What’s another hour when you’ve waited three years?”

“Hour?” her voice rose in a little shriek.

“Well, perhaps not an hour,” he amended, a dark light in his eyes that shone even in the moonlight. “I have excellent control but I don’t think even I could hold out that long. Not since I’ve spent almost every second of the last six days thinking about doing this.”

She frowned, trying rapid calculations. “Six days.”

“I’d say since the first moment I laid eyes on you, but I didn’t even need to see you to want you. I just had to hear your voice in the darkness of that shack where they kept me and I was off.”

She swallowed. “Nonsense. It was simply because I was female.”

“Nonsense,” he mimicked. “There were any number of females I could have had in Puerto Claro. There’ll be women everywhere when we get to Spain, and I have a fondness for Latin women. They’re comfortable with their bodies, they’re comfortable with sex.”

For some reason she felt hurt. “I’m not,” she said flatly.

“There’s a news flash.”

“Then why are you here? Apart from the obvious, being that I’m the only female available?” Shit. She was being vulnerable again, when she wanted to be strong and sure.

“You can stop that right now,” he said. “Sometimes I like a challenge.”

She hadn’t realized she was clenching the sheets in her hands. He pried them loose, easily enough, and put them on his chest, sliding them up his warm, smooth skin. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. By the time I finish with you you’ll be speaking Spanish like a native.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

She tasted like fear and need and a thousand other things too complicated, and MacGowan didn’t care. He needed to be inside her, holding her, fucking her. But it took more self-control than he would have thought he possessed to keep moving at this pace when he wanted to do nothing more than yank down his jeans and thrust inside her, over and over again until he was lost in the bone-shaking orgasm her reluctant flesh promised.

That accident in the apartment only made the need more powerful. He felt an almost atavistic need to claim her. As if, having gotten through the desperate measures of the last few days she was now his trophy of war, to wallow in, to take, over and over again, until he could finally slake his overwhelming hunger.

He wanted her hands on him, he wanted her mouth on him, he wanted to take her from behind, leaning over the bunk, he wanted her to go down on him, he wanted everything he could possibly think of and more. He wanted it hard and nasty, gentle and sweet. But most of all he wanted it now.

He moved off her, stripping off his jeans and kicking them off the berth. He would have thought she would be closing her eyes and trying to run away again, but instead she looked at him, and impossibly he could feel his cock swell at her calm regard.

“That’s not going to fit,” she said.

He laughed. God, how could she keep making him laugh when things were so intense? How could the laughter not lighten the darkness between them, around them? “Bet you another hundred thousand,” he said.

He would have liked to linger on the elegant offering of her body, a little bruised but still lithe and beautiful, but his patience was wearing thin, and he knew how to get her ready, fast.

He nudged her legs apart, and she let him, which surprised him. The underwear was more delicate then he would have expected, and it was easy enough to slide his hands beneath the lace bands on her hips and rip, pulling it off. Shocking her with the sudden violence of the move. But she didn’t pull away.

“Show time, Sister Beth,” he said, pushing her legs apart. He put his mouth on her.

She bucked in surprise, but he’d taken the precaution of holding her hips steady as he slid his tongue down, tasting the sweetness of her, the need of her. “Don’t,” she said in a choked cry. “I don’t like this.”

He didn’t lift his head. He was very good at this – he loved women, loved the taste and the touch and the smell of them, and he knew how to bring exquisite pleasure to the shyest of flesh. If she really didn’t want this she wouldn’t be threading her fingers into his hair, mindlessly stroking him, her hips arching toward him.

He brought her up slowly, teasing her, feeling the first reluctant tremors of response, the shiver as he slid his fingers inside her, the wetness of her that called to him. Her fingers tightened on his hair, and then released him as she clutched the sheet, but this time she wasn’t searching for control, this time she was simply trying to hold on as he tongued her, kissed her, bit her. And her body went rigid as an orgasm riveted through her, making her tight as a bowstring before she flung herself free, dissolving into shocked, choking cries.

He had moved up between her legs, resting against her, his arms on either side of her, shaking at the effort. “Hell, Sister Beth, haven’t you ever used a vibrator?” he asked with a soft laugh.

“That … that was better.”

He let the head of his cock press against her, sliding against the wetness, teasing her, teasing himself until he thought he’d explode. “Double or nothing?”

She was still having trouble catching her breath, and the hard intensity of her response was another bolt of pleasure shooting through him. He pushed, just a bit, feeling her body open to accommodate him, and he froze for a moment, to bring himself back under control. He couldn’t lose it now. Not until he was deep inside her, not until she came again, could he let loose and have her as hard and as fast as his body demanded. She deserved a gentle lover. Tonight she was going to have to make do with him.

She groaned, shifting, taking him inside. Her eyes were half-closed, but he didn’t chide her. She knew exactly who was between her legs, who was inside her, and he didn’t need to play games to prove it. He paused, his muscles so tight they might snap. “Are you all right?” His voice was raw, and he cursed. She couldn’t know how much it cost him to ask. If she said no he’d have to pull out, and it would kill him. But he’d do it.

“Yes.” It was the merest breath of a word.

He pushed in more, and she moved again, and he was afraid he was hurting her. She looked beautiful in the moonlight, her white silk hair, unwrapped finally and spread over the pillow. Out of the blue he remembered the old joke, that a Dublin man’s idea of foreplay was “Brace yerself, Bridget.”

He was shaking, sweating, determined not to hurt her, keeping his weight on his elbows, slow, slow, careful not to hurt her, gentle, easy now … He felt her hands on his face, gentle, cool hands, and he opened his eyes to look down at her, and she was in the grip of the same blinding need He was wrong, she didn’t need easy, she didn’t need gentle. She needed hard, and she needed now.

“Finn,” she said in a hoarse voice, a plea, but not for mercy. “Do it. For God’s sake, do it.”

He stared into her eyes, not breaking the connection, and then flexing his hips, he thrust home, deep and hard, so sweet, so tight, and she cried out.