Sensuous Angel (18 page)

“But why…?”

Luke stood. He began talking slow, menacing steps toward her. “Why? Lorna just had to make an appearance at your wedding. She slipped past her guards, intending to slip back—just to be at your wedding.
Wedding,
Donna. Remember?”

“Yes, yes, of course I remember,” Donna said, inadvertently backing away from him. “It’s just that when I saw her, and when she ran—”

Her voice died away as he kept approaching. For the first time she really noticed the difference in their heights. And for the first time she was really frightened of him. She could see a pulse ticking furiously at the base of his throat, the ripple of muscle as he moved with athletic agility…slowly…like a tiger about to come in for the kill.

“Luke…” She murmured, panic setting in as she skirted around him, trying to put the width of the desk between them. “Remember, you’re a priest.” She tried a smile and a weak play at humor. “Priests aren’t supposed to go crazy and beat their wives. Oh! Luke…please!”

In a swift movement, he had hoisted himself over the desk to capture her wrists and pull her hard against him.

“I’m not going to beat you!” he said heatedly, his arms sliding around her. “Although I’d like to shake you until I could rattle some sense into that impulsive head of yours! Don’t you realize there’s a killer looking for Lorna? You might have led him to her, or gotten…oh, God! Don’t ever do something like that to me again!”

She was not the only one shaking, Donna realized as her hand had instinctively come to his chest, and she felt the quiver of muscle in that hardness. “Luke,” she murmured, “I’m sorry, really sorry. But she ran! Why did she run?”

She couldn’t see his eyes, she was being held too tightly against him. “Either she thought you were one of Simson’s men, or Andrew.”

“Andrew!”

“Umm. He would probably skin her alive.
Is
possibly skinning her alive—”

“Why…?”

“Shut up, Donna.”

“What…?”

He pushed her away to stare at her, his eyes intensely gold and narrowed with anger again. “The honeymoon is over. We’ve missed our plane, and there isn’t another one until tomorrow.”

“Luke, I’m sorry, I really am. But you have to realize….” Donna paused. He didn’t look as if he realized anything. She turned away, pretending to saunter calmly toward the fire and warm herself by its low flame. “I do know how serious the situation is, and she means so much to me. You have to understand—”

She broke off, spinning back around, when she heard his footsteps coming toward her again. Not a slow stalk. A hurried, swift and angry pace. She saw his features, taut and grim.

“Luke!” she cried out, her eyes widening with alarm as she held out a hand in self-defense. “Luke, please, calm down. Let’s be rational here—”

Her gesture was useless, her hand was swept aside. She felt his fingers on her, undoing the sodden buttons of the blue silk. “Donna! I am rational! I wish you’d quit trying to talk! I have done—and will always do—anything that I can to help Lorna. But damn it, Donna, I don’t want to hear anything more about her tonight!”

His fingers worked quickly. The sodden blue silk fell to the floor. He stood back a second, staring at her in her slip and the low-cut lacy bra. She saw something in his eyes change. Gold to burning amber. His hand came to her, his forefinger, lightly stroking over her cheek, his knuckles, falling to brush over the mounds of her breasts. Donna began to tremble all over again.

“Today,” he told her huskily, “we were married. And I’ve waited too long for you, Donna. Tonight…is ours.”

She nodded, feeling the trembling deep within her. She shivered, but in her womb, she was hot. She could barely breathe. She had wondered and wanted so long too. And now, now she was his wife. She could touch him. Have him. Reach out and take all that was him, luxuriate in his physical splendor….

He released the front clasp of her bra, smoothed his hands over her flesh, and edged the straps from her shoulders. She heard his intake of breath, felt his eyes as their hungered gaze raked her breasts. She was suddenly shy, suddenly longing to crawl against him and escape that gaze that made her feel as if she burned…and ached…and longed for more.

But she didn’t move, as his hands moved to her waist, then upward, until he cradled her breasts, cupped them, as if he tested their firm weight and found them to be perfect. His palms grazed over the nipples, and they hardened into twin peaks as a low moan escaped from her throat. She tore her eyes from his as she leaned heavily against him.

He slid down her body until he knelt at her feet. Her fingers braced into his shoulders as he removed her sodden shoes one by one and tossed them across the room. She felt his hands graze over her knee, along her thigh…travel to her waist, and then she felt the delicious rasp of silk as her stockings were swept away. He stood then, eyes locked with hers as his palms coursed over her hips, finding the elastic, of her last garment, and forced the slip to fall in a soft flutter to the floor at her feet.

He stepped away. She could cling to him no longer. But the touch of his eyes caressed her and held her. She stared at him, loving his look and his hunger and the hot and beautiful way he could make her feel just by savoring the naked sight of her.

He came closer again, not touching her. “I knew you would be beautiful,” he whispered to her hoarsely. “But not so…perfect….”

His voice touched and teased her earlobe. His breath warmed and thrilled her. Donna emitted a little cry and threw her arms around him.

“Donna…” He murmured, his voice muffled against her hair. “I want you…now.”

Kisses, light, nipped; the touch of the tip of his tongue, the graze of his teeth, found her throat…her earlobes. Her own breath rose on a jagged plane to meet and mingle with his. She continued to cling to the solidity of his shoulders to stand. “Luke…” she whispered a soft plea. It was all that she could do.

The fire burned warm in low embers behind them. He stepped back from her again, gazing at her with desire tautening and darkening his features. Donna lifted a hand to him, but he caught it and remained still, savoring her. Shadows and glimmers of golden light were cast over her angles and curves. Her breasts gleamed with that gold, full and firm, over the shadows of her ribs, the trim waist. Her hips were full, rounded, inviting; her legs were long for her height, shapely…beautiful…gold against the fire. He could stare at her forever. He could never drink in all of her….

He moved toward her, pressed his lips to hers, loved them, revered them. Then his tongue filled her mouth with his hunger, sweet and warm and passionately exciting. Donna returned the kiss, awed at the response he could elicit in her. Nothing mattered when he touched her. No concern or fear could haunt her in his arms.

She stood on tiptoe and pressed her body to his, the softness of her form against the hardness of his. Her fingers played with the hair at his nape that curled over his collar. Roamed his shoulders, his back…slipped beneath the waistband of his slacks. The vibration of his groan trembled against her and through her. She slid her fingers around until they met at his buckle. She was as sure as he as she released it. She half laughed and half cried with frustration as his zipper refused to give way to her fingers.

Luke stepped back again, kicking off his loafers. She was certain that she ripped away half the buttons in her haste to remove his shirt. She could wait no longer. She threw herself against him again, luxuriating in the feel of the dark hair on his hard chest, teasing, pressing her breasts. He laughed huskily, and she heard the rasp of his zipper giving. He was gone from her for a moment as he shed the pants and his briefs, and then he was holding her, touching her, taking her lips, her throat, the hollows of her shoulders with kisses of spiraling passion.

Against the soft flesh of her belly, she felt the strength of his desire. Hard and potent and so insinuating that she moaned his name, losing all thought except of her need for him.

She forgot that they stood in his office, that they were newly married, that a plush bed awaited them down the hall. She brought her fingers to his face, cupping his chin in her hands, savoring the rough texture of his cheeks. High on her toes, she kissed him and then slid her body against his. It was her turn to explore, and she did. Touching, kissing, tasting his flesh, utilizing secrets so recently learned from him, charting out patterns over his shoulders with just the moist tip of her tongue. Her fingers threaded through the thick dark hair on his chest, followed that triangle until it narrowed at his waist.

He responded to her every touch, his lean, powerful frame trembling, whispered words of encouragement that increased her own spell of passion and desire. She trailed lower and lower against him, unaware that she had ever been afraid of him, that she had feared for her soul for wanting him with such lust. To love him so was a carnal venture, yet nothing had ever felt so pure or so right, or so utterly delicious and primal.

“Yes…yes…Donna. Touch me…love me….”

The deep rasp of his tone thrilled her. She had never felt such sensations, nor had she known the bounds of her own sensuality. Hesitancy was lost, inhibition fell to the flame of her desire and love. She touched and loved him, knew him, held him, explored, and savored his groans, his hoarse whispers, and the knowledge that she drove him to a fever pitch. She slid to her knees, leaving no part of him unloved, until he buckled down before her, grasping her into his arms and laying her before the fire. He rose over her, his lips touching her forehead…her nose…her mouth…then falling to her breast. She whimpered with the sensation as the hardened peak was drawn into his mouth, bathed with the lash of his tongue, drawn inward once again. His dark head moved lower, his tongue delved into her navel, swept her abdomen.

“Luke….”

She tried to grab his hair. The sensations were becoming so exquisite that she could hardly bear it.

“Do unto others…” he whispered huskily.

“Ohhh….”

She didn’t feel the hard floor, she felt only his touch and her response. Her body began to move, arching, writhing. His kisses flowed over her, through her, into her while the erotic touch of his hands cupped over and adored her breasts. At last she sobbed out his name, and he hovered over her once again, his eyes catching the flame as they stared into hers. He didn’t speak then, he moved purposely, shifting, coming into her, a stroke that united them with a sweet and shuddering force. His body closed over hers like a velvet blanket, moving with it, an undulating power that encaptured her heart and soul and passions in a tumultuous rhythm.

Her lashes lifted slightly. She saw a flicker of burning gold and red. A flame in the fire. Reaching…high…just as she did. Something beckoned, deliciously elusive, a pinnacle that had to be reached. And then time hung suspended. Sensation filled her like sweet wine. She drifted, quaking, floating, holding on to the moments of fulfillment and awesome beauty.

She stared at him with that same awe as he lifted his head, stroking a damp tendril of hair from her face. He lifted a brow, and she smiled demurely, lowering her lashes.

“Bless you, Father,” she murmured chastely.

His laughter filled her. “I’m glad to see you’ve gotten over the fact that I’m a priest.”

Donna looked up at him and innocently ran a finger through the hair on his chest. “I never knew just how ‘divine’ life could be.”

“Didn’t you?” he teased, catching her hand, kissing her fingers, swathing them erotically with his tongue.

Her smile faded, her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes met his intently, “No,” she whispered seriously.

He released her hand and stood. She marveled at the taut beauty of his body as it was silhouetted by the fire.

She didn’t have long to allow her eyes that lazy pleasure. He reached down, sweeping her into his arms. Donna laced her arms around his neck, her eyes locked with his.

“Mrs. Trudeau,” he said lightly, “I want to spend the entire night showing you just how divine life can be. But in the bedroom. I’d hate to have you unable to function because of rug burns when we do leave for our honeymoon.”

“Can we still go?” Donna cried.

“Umm. We’ll just be a day short.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Donna promised.

“Yes,” he said in mock anger. “I intend that you will.”

She chuckled as he raised a diabolical brow. But as his long strides carried them down the hallway, she touched his cheek.

“You’ve known a lot of women, haven’t you, Luke?”

He sighed. “I’ve told you, Donna, I’m not a saint, and I wasn’t born a priest. I’m afraid that you’re far more the angel than I am. A sensuous angel, at that.”

His foot nudged open the bedroom door. Donna felt herself encompassed by the softness of the bed, made warm by the heat of his body.

“I love you, Luke,” she whispered.

“Donna…I love you. I can’t tell you how much…ever.”

“Show me…please.”

“What…a…divine request.”

His words were broken as his kisses seared her flesh once again. His hands moved on her, showing her breasts an absolute adoration.

“I’ve never felt more…moral.” Donna gasped. “Or”—she breathed to him with an erratic whisper a moment later—“more deliciously…wickedly…

Excitedly…

Delightedly fulfilled and Loved.”

L
UKE SAT BACK IN
his chair, idly drumming his fingers over the desk rather than the typewriter that sat before him. He was supposed to be writing his Sunday sermon. But it was hard to write a sermon when he’d just returned from his honeymoon.

A week in the sun. Blue skies, bleached sand beaches, an aqua surf. A small cottage with complete privacy…Donna. The two of them making love on that bed of damp sand beneath that brilliant sky…beneath a benign moon. In the crystal-clear water….

A little tap sounded at his door and he started. “Yes?”

Donna popped her head in, then entered. They had left the heat and clear skies behind them; winter had come, with its first snow, which had immediately turned to a grimy slush. Donna was no longer clad in a skimpy bikini, a strapless sundress—or nothing at all. But the sweater she wore molded provocatively to the fullness of her breasts, and being well acquainted with the lush mounds that lurked beneath it, her appearance did little to dispel the sexy thoughts that had come to him with his memory of the island.