Passion's Joy (26 page)

This was not lost on him. He spoke with his gaze more than anyone else she knew, but she still could not quite look up to see the flicker of his amusement—amusement resting on the edge of some inexplicable anger. All this was perfectly clear though, as he finally asked, "Just what the hell are you doing here?'

She had imagined many possible responses to her presence but this was not one of them.

What could she possibly say? How could she possibly explain? "I assumed you might guess." His low chuckle startled her. She brought her eyes up to him, only to retreat quickly,

instantly behind lowered lashes.

"It's not the what, sweetheart. The what is painfully obvious to me. What I cannot guess— though I am trying—is why?"

She remained mute and silent and did not stir, let alone venture a reply. Her fear was plain, but he would have expected that. He watched for a moment longer, the incredulity of it presenting only one conceivable explanation. Somehow, he had underestimated her; somehow she understood, grasped the force of their attraction that day at the lake and attempted, operating on some ridiculous school girl fantasy of her own, to set it into play. Of course, she had no idea of what that meant. His desire for her was bad enough left alone but now, after this trick—

Ram moved suddenly to the brandy decanter sitting on the table and poured himself an ample shot. Nothing could excite his desire more than her coming to him like this, despite the shield of her innocence, and as he continued to stare at the beckoning loveliness on his bed, he found himself in a furious fight for some semblance of control.

"Joy." He turned suddenly away and swallowed his drink whole. "I can only guess you don't know what you're doing. I am, as I speak, trying to temper my reaction to you." He almost laughed at how much. "And only because you deserve so much more than I can offer. I will not be your first Joy; I will not take the innocence that belongs to the man you marry."

This was the point Sean coached her on, the point of deception. She could not say it though, not directly, and the words sounded in a whisper as they sprang to her mind. "But I do know what I'm doing and—" she paused before finding the courage to ask, "Did you not say to me once that appearances are deceptive?"

He spun around and stared, just stared, the words crashing into his mind with a question. Never had any pairing of words conjured a more potent seductive force, and he wanted to believe

them—God, how he wanted to believe them. He came back to her and lifted her face to see the truth of the assertion there.

She was hiding something in those lovely eyes, something that frightened her. "Are you telling me I would not be your first?"

She kept her eyes lowered, so conscious of his touch, the consuming nearness of his bare muscled frame towering over her. She let silence speak for her.

He stared down at her, waiting for the answer. The silence stretched between them.

Ram’s thoughts raced where she had led it. Memories of her, the bits and pieces of her diary that he had read were placed against the beauty before him; he thought of the maddening music of her laughter, the tease that could spring in those eyes, the wild flirting with destruction shown in so many of her turns. He suddenly saw how he could have been misled. While her nature was innocent, and probably always would be, she could easily not be so in fact.

He knew better than to contemplate the next step further, and he did not let himself entertain for a moment who her first lover might have been, or if there had been more than one. It must have been recent or so damn careless as to have left him the impression that she knew not a man's passion. No other woman could make him care enough to wonder who. With her he cared far too much, and the question raised unpleasant emotions; anyone of those emotions could easily lead to a murderous rage. It was enough that the fortunate unknown had existed, quite enough.

"Please," she broke their silence with a soft plea. "Don't make this harder for me than it already is."

He stared at the trembling hands, still crossed over her bosom, the plea in her eyes and he experienced the effect as a physical unleashing of his long denied desire. He took her small hands in his own, bringing them behind her back and lifting her as he did so, shocking her with the hard warmth of his body against hers. "Ah, my love," he whispered, his lips gently pressing to hers, teased by the barest hint of lavender. "I will make it difficult for you." He chuckled. "I'll have you pay in full for these many months of tormenting me."

She had not time to think of what those words meant, yet she wouldn't have understood even if she had. She knew only the places where his body was touching hers—separated only by the thin cotton of her night dress—that her heart was beating much too fast. There was quiet amusement in his gaze as his hands ran through her hair, then brought her head back for his kiss.

The first kiss was her undoing.

His lips took hers with a gentle, tender insistence, filling her with the heady taste of his brandy. Warmth, a sweet tingling warmth, surged physically through her. Like a finely built crescendo, the kiss deepened slowly, and she couldn't resist or think or breathe. There was no thought past the lips on hers, the heady flavor of his mouth, the sweep of his tongue on hers, the feel of his body pressed to hers, and without knowing it, her arms reached shyly around his neck, her soft form melted by degrees to the demand of his.

The sweet taste of her was madness itself, but when he felt the beckoning softness of her small body melting against him, it was all he could do to hold back the full force of his desire. The battle was a blessed torment. The only thing stopping him was the very magnitude of his desire. He would force himself to have her slow, compel her desire to meet his own, all the while enjoying the exquisite pleasure of losing his own battle inch by precious inch.

His lips finally left hers but only to return playfully, teasingly, slowly. She was but vaguely aware of her name on his lips as his hands roamed over her form, barely touching through the cotton shift, dancing lightly over the slender curve of her hips, up from her waist, under her arms and stopping there.

“I want to see you.”

The kiss ended as he lifted her from the bed to the floor, standing very close. Her heart still pounded wildly, her pulse racing with the lingering heat of his touch, yet she felt shy and embarrassed, wanting to hide from his gaze. The very intensity of it held her perfectly still though, as he slowly unbuttoned the top buttons of her gown. Once parted, his hands slid over her slender shoulders, drawing the gown with the movement. The gown dropped to her bent elbows. She felt the heat of his gaze, and she nervously crossed her arms over herself, suddenly afraid.

He drew a sharp breath at the beauty thus revealed to him, but never satisfied with part, he gently brought her arms to her sides and slid the sleeves from each hand. The shift fell to an unnoticed pile at her feet.

"Ah my love," he whispered as he reached his hand along the curve of her waist to the delicious lift of her breasts. "You are indeed more beautiful than Botticelli's Venus."

The words, the rich timbre of his voice paired with the potency of his touch, brought a heated flush, a tremor of physical anticipation.

Beautiful indeed fell short of how he saw her. The beauty sprang from her startling femininity, an unmasked vulnerability that made him wonder. He had never known a desire like

this, a need to claim a woman as no other man had or would, and he decided for this one night he'd allow himself that dangerous illusion.

He lowered his head and his lips met hers, his tongue tracing a circle over her mouth till she trembled. He gently prodded her lips open to kiss her deeply. Uncertain and afraid, she trembled beneath him with a surge of desire mixed with and inseparable from panic. When his lips finally left hers, she felt fire and fear, and as he stepped away to remove his own clothes, her arms crossed over herself and she turned away.

The extent of her modesty brought a question, then the certainty that she had been used wrongly. Desire quickly overrode the thought and its subsequent fury. He'd deal with that later, and watching her, he reclined on the bed, contenting himself for long a moment to study the vision of his dreams: the lovely lines of her long legs; the soft curve of slender hips and small waist, a waist that could easily be encircled by a man's hands, his hands; the trail of thick dark hair cascading down her proud straight back to the perfectly rounded curves of her buttocks.

Beauty indeed fell short.

She felt his gaze as a tingling sensation along her spine, a heat that made her breath come in quick shaky gasps.

"Come here," he finally ordered as his arm reached out to draw her to him.

She turned, not understanding the tumult of her confusion and apprehendsion, about to blurt that it was all a mistake, that she couldn't go through with it, when her eyes encountered the magnificence and shock of his unclad masculine body.

She gasped, her hand flew to her mouth and she spun around.

Dark brows drew together, and having never possessed so much as an ounce of self- consciousness, he had no idea what sent her spinning back around in such obvious alarm.

Enlightenment dawned with uncontained amusement. "Oh Ram, I— I—"

He went to her, turning her around before lifting her face to him. Unmasked fondness shined in his eyes. "Is this my fearless young lady riding wild through the night braving men and pistols?" he asked. And with a warm chuckle, he answered, "I think not."

He swept her to his arms and laid her to the soft cushion of his bed, coming alongside her.

She closed her eyes and covered herself yet again, holding her breath as though waiting for the bullets of a firing squad.

"No my love," he laughed, bringing her hands over her head and holding them there. "I know not what rules you have been taught but get this straight: there is no modesty in my bed." His hands strayed where his gaze lingered. She shivered and tensed. His touch lightly glided over her breasts, drawing small circles there, causing her to gasp. A gasp answered with a kiss as he gathered her to him. It was as though her body leapt to greet his.

Wild feelings mounted and grew; she was swimming in a sea of sensations, lost to everything but him, his warmth and his touch, the feel of his body on hers and a kiss lasting minutes or hours, she could not know. She felt the same surge of sensation when Libertine raced to that jump, those tense moments filled with a heady fear, yet a wild excitement as she flew through the air, holding her breath with a rush of heightened suspense. Only this love was not a flash of time but rather a piece of eternity.

Warm languid desire flowed through her. His touch was light, evoking, as his warm lips pressed against her forehead, her closed eyes, her mouth. Then he was biting her lips, teasing with his tongue, kissing her long and hard, stopping only to bring her the pleasure of his lips elsewhere, everywhere.

He was a playful lover and she was his toy, and with a childlike fascination that hid the mounting agony of his own desire, he expertly played the music of her form. The first light and curious caress of his evolved into slow caresses of heated passion. She was lost beneath the exquisite pleasure of his hands on her body, the play of his tongue and mouth on her breasts. The long drawn prelude to his lovemaking felt like dying a thousand deaths. Only each one, each moment passed, carried her ever higher to a peak she had not the experience to know, and just when she thought he could carry her no further—

She was like a wild supple creature in his hands, writhing, crying softly, and he moved to answer those cries. She stiffened and gasped as his hand slid between her thighs and he began a slow caressing there. She panicked, and tried to twist away, but he mistook her sudden fear.

Holding her still for the pleasure he'd give, he took her mouth in his for a long deep kiss. Drowning beneath his kiss, mindless from his gentle exploration, she felt the knot of heat burst with small ripples of pleasure over and over, and just when she felt on the very edge of that high cliff, he shifted, turned over and brought her on top of him.

She arched her back, unknowingly offering her breasts to him, which were each taken in turn as he slowly slid her over the smooth pressure of him. Wild gushes of heat rushed in her loins,

and she was suddenly crying, begging for something she couldn't know. Ram knew his battle was lost.

He turned her unresisting body over again and came over her. A long muscled leg separated her for his entrance. She was too lost in his tightly spun web of desire to know what was happening, though her body knew its role. As he gently kissed her face, sliding back and forth over her sex, she arched with a soft cry, and he answered with a long deep thrust.

He stopped instantly with the shock of this first feel of her, the tearing of a virgin's resistance. He tensed dramatically, lifting partially from her, and stared into the terrified pools of her eyes.

"God damn your lying heart to hell."

Shocking pain ripped through her, and she bit her lip hard to stop the cry, terrified by those words and desperate to get him off. She pushed against the hard muscles of his chest and arms with all her strength, twisting maddeningly. "Please! I—"

"Oh no, Joy." He caught her fists and pinned them to the bed. "I said once before and now it's true, it's too late; it's far too late."

He stopped her cry with a long hard kiss and finally lifted to thrust hungrily into her, only to repeat the measure over and over, sparing her no pain, forcing her body to yield at last to his size.

She could not live with another second of it, and yet she had no fight left. Like a drowning person's final release to the dark powers overwhelming him, she collapsed suddenly. In the moment of succumbing to him, the experience changed. The very next thrust was a shocking stab of hot pleasure. He knew his triumph and slowed just when her body wanted only to feel the force of his passion. Yet all she knew was shocking hot warmth filling her, the merciful answer to the agonizing tension of the night, and she was wild, clinging to him, calling his name over and over as she twisted maddeningly beneath him, unknowingly returning his torment tenfold. Any semblance of control vanished as he yielded to the pace of passion's call, answering her cries until pleasure exploded deep inside her, sending her for a moment into darkness, only to return to feel sweet ripples drowning her mind, body and soul with him, nothing but him. Her intensity became his, and with a final thrust, he lost himself deep inside her with a force he had never before felt.