Rapture in His Arms (31 page)

A sweet, savage ache burned inside of her at the contact. Suddenly he pulled her into his arms and kissed her with such intense desire that Jillian could only cling helplessly against him as a storm surge of passion swept over her. His hand found one of her breasts and massaged the nipple through the thin material. She moaned against his mouth, her body reawakening to needs she thought she had buried with Donovan. Jillian wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him tightly against her, wanting to dissolve into his very body.

Donovan gazed down at her. In the candlelight she saw only his eyes, hooded and smoldering with passion, but she made no movement to remove his mask. And he seemed to have forgotten it. Teetering on the ragged edge of desire, he scooped her into his arms and carried her into the darkened bedroom. Placing her beside the bed, he then began to kiss her, and as he did so, his fingers busied themselves with the many hooks on the back of her gown. Soon, her dress puddled at her feet and she waited, naked and aching, after he picked her up and placed her on the bed.

She knew when he started undressing because she heard the swish of the cape as he pulled it off, followed by his shirt, and then his boots hit the floor with a gentle thud. And then she heard the sound of his trousers, skimming down his legs. The darkness obscured his features, but there was no denying how her body responded to his when he joined her on the bed. The moment his hot flesh touched hers, a shiver of raw, urgent desire streaked through Jillian.

He said nothing to her, and she was thrilled to her soul when his mouth found her breasts and suckled. The intense sensations built within her “and threatened to unleash a volcano of violent pleasure. A half sob, half whimper, escaped her as his lips devoured her nipples. She wanted him so much, it seemed she had always wanted him. Donovan possessed an all-pervading power over her body, and she allowed him free rein.

She strained against him and held him tightly by the shoulders. His wonderful hands slid across her back, lifting her eagerly toward his aroused manhood. The heat of his body burned into hers, and she ceased to think of herself as a separate being. She was one with Donovan, one on the cresting wave of desire. His mouth slid from one nipple to the other, filling her with a wicked and primeval ache, as he suckled and licked each pearled nub. The sensation was exquisite, and Jillian arched upwards to greedily seek his questing lips.

Heat flared within her womanhood, and her lower body writhed and wriggled beneath him, eager to contact his jutting manhood, so passion-starved that she purposely pushed upwards in invitation. “What do ye want?” he raggedly asked her.

“I—want—want—” She could barely speak as the fire seeped through her like hot lava, spilling from within the very core of her.

“Tell me,” he growled. “Tell me what ye want.”

“You, I want you,” she shamelessly whispered and wantonly parted her legs.

Donovan made a sound of triumph and rose onto his knees. Jillian, ever aware of how much she needed him to fill her, bent her legs and eagerly waited for his first thrust. And when he came into her, she moaned with the pure, hot bliss of their mating. He went deep inside her, so deep that Jillian thought she would succumb from the ecstasy of it. She pushed against him, unable to keep still, so in tune with his rhythmic movements that their bodies undulated as one.

His thrusts were frantic and furious, then soft and mind-drugging. She didn’t know which she preferred, only that he controlled her body. When the warmth threatened to flare into thousands of molten pieces, she stopped moving and clutched at his arms.

“Is it happenin’ to ye?” he asked her and ceased moving for a heartbeat in time when she nodded. His forehead perspired, his mask covered eyes ransacked her face. “Then let it come,” he whispered and began to move again.

Panting, she clung to him. Her body ached and throbbed with the wonder of Donovan’s loving. She clasped her legs tight around his waist and pushed into him in an attempt to quell the rising waters of ecstasy. But the movement only unleashed them, and Jillian cried aloud as the wondrous waves whirled within her and erupted in a cataclysmic torrent of heavenly bliss. And then, Donovan thrust into her with a heart-stopping claim upon her body and her heart. His hoarse cry mingled with her own, and it took quite some time before either one of them settled down to earth.

~ ~ ~

Jillian woke nearly two hours later. She hadn’t realized she had been asleep until her hands searched for Donovan and didn’t find him beside her. Opening her eyes, she noticed that the wall sconce had been lighted, and the room danced with candlelight. She heard a noise at the foot of the bed and looked up. Donovan stood there, wearing the mask, and in his hand was the red, satin gown. A beguiling smile turned up the corners of her mouth as she sat up. Long strands of tousled hair spilled past her shoulders. “I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep.”

Donovan threw the dress upon the bed. “Here is your gown. Dress and I’ll take ye home.”

Jillian laughed and stretched luxuriously. “I think I like it here a great deal, more now than I did earlier.” She rose onto her knees and reached out to touch him, but he moved abruptly away. Her smile faded a bit. Why was he behaving so peculiarly? They had just made passionate and unrestrained love. He acted as if she carried the pox. “Why don’t you remove your mask?” she whispered, aching to see his wonderful face again. She had missed Donovan so!

Donovan moved closer to the bed. He bent down, his face just inches from hers, and he shot her a disdainful smile. “Ah, so now ye want to see my face. After I finish makin’ love to ye, after ye respond to me like a wanton witch, ye want to see my face. ’Twasn’t my face which held your wicked interest, madam.”

Jillian licked her lips and flushed guiltily, but somehow she thought Donovan was teasing her unmercilessly. “Aye, I admit my wickedness. I loved every wanton second of it.”

Donovan winced and rose to his full height. “This night, madam, ye proved yourself to be as immoral as Priscilla Mortimer, to be just as wanton. But at least Priscilla knew what man was in her bed and inside her body. I can’t say the same for ye.” With a jerk, his arm rose up and he pulled off the mask. For the first time in weeks, Jillian gazed upon the face of her husband, but instead of being consumed with joy, she was possessed by such an intense sadness that her heart felt as if it had shattered into hundreds of fragments. “’Tis I, Jillian, your husband come back to ye,” she heard him coldly pronounce. “Haven’t ye anything to say? Don’t ye wonder where I’ve been the last weeks? Don’t ye wish to throw yourself in my arms and declare that ye knew who I was all along?”

She clutched at the sheet, torn between her own pain and her happiness to see him again. “I knew ‘twas you, I—”

“Quiet! I have no wish to hear your lies!” Bending over her again, Donovan’s gaze raked her face. “I know ye never mourned me, Jillian. Ye thought I was dead, and that was the end of it. Good riddance to the slave, eh? Well, I was very much alive and stayin’ at the home of Elliot Layton, bein’ nursed back to life by his pretty daughter, while ye were free to love your fancy Tyler Addison, to move into his house with him.”

“That isn’t the way it was, Donovan. You must believe me!” She reached out for him, but he grabbed her wrist and imprisoned it within his steel-like hand.

“I know how it was, Jillian. Most of the Virginia colony knew ye wanted to marry Addison years ago, but your father chose Edwin Cameron for ye. And I was fool enough to think ye could come to love me. Ye didn’t understand why I joined Bacon. Ye screamed I was a traitor, and maybe I was, but at least, I always knew who I was makin’ love to. Maybe Tyler Addison should wonder about ye, too. Evidently, ye are more hot-natured than either of us knows.”

“Let go of me! Leave me be!” She tried to loosen the hold but Donovan tightened it.

“Ah, so the truth hurts ye, does it? Good. I’m glad somethin’ has the power to wound your cold heart. Now, I’m goin’ to tell you this, Jillian; never will I make things easy for ye and your Tyler Addison. You’re goin’ to pay me for your unfaithfulness.”

“What do you mean?” A cold chill swept through her.

“A child,” he hissed at her. “Ye will give me a child. We’re returnin’ to Cameron’s Hundred and ye will play the dutiful wife—in all ways—and ye will bear me a babe to inherit the plantation. I owe it to Edwin Cameron to fulfill his dying wish. He hated Tyler Addison, and he never intended ye to bear Tyler a child who would claim Cameron’s Hundred. So I will get ye with child, Jillian. Ye shall bear my babe, and then ye can run off with Tyler Addison or any other man your wild heart desires. And I’ll be well rid of ye!” Donovan dropped her hand and gazed at her for a long time. “Have ye nothin’ else to say?” he asked her.

She gazed up at him with stormy aqua eyes. “Nay, ’tis nothing left to say. You have said it all, my dear husband. I’m to be a breeder.”

“Call it by whatever name ye want, Jillian,” he resignedly told her. “Now dress and let’s be goin’.” Donovan turned and slammed the door in his wake, the matter settled.

Jillian sat on the bed and stroked the cool satin of the gown, barely aware that her tears fell and spotted the material. But she didn’t care. Her heart was in a state beyond repair. In a gesture of defiance, she got up and dressed in her own plain, gray gown. Donovan may have made a whore of her, but she didn’t have to dress like one. Then she walked into the dining area and saw that the front door was open. The clear moonlight spilled into the room. With her head held high, she marched outside. Donovan placed her before him on the horse. She gazed up at him, aching to tell him how desolate she’d been when she thought she had lost him. But her pride prevented her from speaking her mind and confiding her innermost desires and feelings.

Let him think what he will! she defiantly thought. The stubborn Irishman would think what he wanted anyway. She’d never be able to convince him that she had loved him so much she had nearly forfeited her life to get him out of prison. Let Sabrina Layton have him! No doubt the woman deserved him for nursing him back to health.

But even as she thought about the unfairness of her situation, Jillian couldn’t deny one very important fact. She loved Donovan Shay with her whole heart and nothing would ever change her feelings.

Jillian’s nights were filled with hot passion. For the next few weeks, Donovan claimed her each night, dragging her half-protesting into his arms, but before he finished with her, she would whimper for completion. She wondered why he bothered to pleasure her when his main motive was to get a child by her. But Donovan always made certain she was well satisfied by each encounter. He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in forcing her to cry out her ecstasy, in driving her so insane with need that she would have done anything to claim the bliss his body promised.

And then he took her during the daytime hours. The sheets would be rumpled and covered in perspiration, and Jillian would blush to the tips of her toes whenever Lizzie happened to enter the bedroom after Donovan had finished with her. But Lizzie knew better than to say anything for even though Jillian’s body was well satiated, her temper was short. Jillian decided her husband was treating her like a wanton doxy, exercising his authority over her body, but she was weak-willed and she so thoroughly enjoyed his lovemaking that she was unable to refuse him.

Shortly after their return to Cameron’s Hundred, Jillian was honored with a visit from Grayson Chandler, Duke of Rockfield, and his solicitor, John Lattimore. Donovan had told Jillian about his grandfather, and Jillian was more than shocked, but she realized she shouldn’t have been. Donovan always managed to surprise her. But if he hoped to win her affections because of his aristocratic blood, he was soon proven mistaken. Jillian took the news in good stride, and was more than pleasant to the duke and to John Lattimore. Though Donovan was an aristocrat by birth, Jillian treated him no differently after she learned the truth. In her heart, he was still the same man with whom she had fallen in love. Nothing would change her perception of him, not all of the fancy titles and wealth in the world. If only he knew how much she loved him—but that was one emotion she kept to herself.

However, she didn’t keep a firm rein on her jealousy. Sabrina Layton always managed to visit with her father, and Jillian had grown to resent the young woman. She feared that Donovan had fallen in love with Sabrina during his stay at the Layton home, that he owed her a debt he couldn’t repay except with his love. One afternoon, Sabrina arrived with her father. Elliot left to accompany the duke and John on a walk around the property. Jillian had entered the parlor carrying a silver tray with a pot of tea upon it when she saw Sabrina in Donovan’s arms. Sabrina looked up at Donovan with a dewy gaze and held out her hand to the light. “’Tis such a lovely ring,” she praised. “I adore it, Donovan. I shall love it until I die.”

Donovan said something that was inaudible to Jillian, but it didn’t matter what he said. Jillian realized that Donovan must have presented Sabrina with a ring, a token of his love. Jealousy, fierce and painful, ripped through her, and she turned and headed back to the kitchen before they saw her. She couldn’t bear for either one of them to see the tears streaming down her cheeks, to know how badly she was hurt. Especially now.