The Husband Trap (7 page)

Features grim, he watched her. Wished she weren’t quite so beautiful, quite so desirable. “Never been touched. That
is
what you said, is it not?”

She looked startled by his question, then she nodded. “No, never.”

“Then you are bound to be shocked, my dear, but do not worry. I promise I will not hurt you…” slowly, deliberately, he slipped the white ribbon from her hair, let her tresses swing free over her shoulders “…any more than I must.”

Her eyes widened at his implication. Silently, she cursed her twin for leaving her in such straits. Leaving her to accept the consequences for actions she herself had not taken. She wanted Adrian. But not in anger, not in falsehood and disillusionment. Then she didn’t have time to think anymore as his mouth came down upon her own, smothering any protest or resistance.

Like being plunged headfirst into a deep whirlpool from which there was no escape, he crushed her lips to his. Passionate, impatient, without concern for her supposed maidenly sensibilities. She quivered and gave herself over to the storm. Letting him take as he wished. Letting him fit her close against his firm body, his arms locked behind her back like a pair of iron bars.

“Open your mouth,” he demanded, pulling away enough to speak.

Senses swimming, she blindly obeyed, having no idea why he had asked such a thing of her. She gasped when his tongue thrust fervently between her lips. Hot and wet, he played with her own tongue in a way that left a warm, red haze rushing through her veins. She gasped again, then shuddered with pleasure when his hand moved low, curved over her left breast. He kneaded her flesh. Massaged it. Stroking his thumb across her nipple through the lace bodice. Back and forth, back and forth, until the sensitized nub stiffened to a rigid, aching peak.

“Kiss me back,” he said. “Stop pretending you don’t know how.”

But Violet was beyond the point of pretending to be anything or anyone other than who she really was, and could only answer him with the truth. “I am not pretending,” she whispered.

His eyes flashed, in irritation or hunger she could not tell. He slid a hand up into her hair, held her head steady for his delectation. Slower, with increased deliberation, he angled his head, tipped her jaw to one side. Softly at first, his lips grazed hers, plucking and nibbling. Playing with her, on her, in her mouth. Easing her into a dance he believed she knew but which she was only beginning to learn.

He kissed her in myriad ways. Hard then soft. Slow then fast. Sweet then sharp. Waiting between each touch for her to match his move, imitate his technique. Thinking became impossible as she acted purely on instinct. As she learned to simply enjoy and be enjoyed. And for a small span of time she forgot everything. Aware of nothing but the two of them, as he drew her into a drugged mating of lips and teeth and tongues that seemed to stretch into forever. Each of them taking from the other in long, pleasurable draughts of hot, wet wanting.

He pulled away suddenly and shocked her anew by bending to take the breast he had so thoroughly handled into his mouth. She could barely breathe as he licked and suckled her flesh through the thin barrier of lace that still lay between her skin and his lips. A patch of damp spread across the material.

She had never imagined such an act. Never dreamed such delicious, stunning pleasure might exist. A dark need she didn’t understand began to crawl through her veins. An insistent ache forming between her legs that urged her on, demanding more.
More what?
she wondered in a daze.

Her eyes fell shut as she squeezed her fingers into the fabric of his robe. Sensation pounded through her in forbidden waves, roaring up, crashing over. She shuddered and strained for breath. Her lungs pumping as a thin, high sound she didn’t recognize as her own issued from her throat. Then he bit her, a small pinch of teeth on her sensitized nipple.

“Oh,” she cried out, body stiffening in astonishment. She took an abrupt step backward.

He looked up into her flushed face, into aqua eyes dilated with shock and dawning carnal awakening.

If he didn’t know better he would think she was genuinely astonished by his last act. As if no man had ever touched her in such a manner. Had he made an error in his judgment of her? Was she actually innocent, or just a damned fine actress?

She was passionate, that was for certain. Yet somehow untried. Her kisses untutored in their hesitancy and eagerness to please. He could sense the raw need that lay coiled within her, waiting to be freed.

Already she made him throb like an inexperienced youth ripe to couple with his first woman. It wouldn’t do for him to lose control of the game now. No, it wouldn’t do at all if he gave himself over to mindless animal instinct and forgot where his true purpose lay. After all, that was what she would want if she was playing him false. For him to begin to need beyond all other considerations, to forget her lies.

Enough with the preliminaries, he decided. He would know the truth, one way or the other.

He swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed. He removed his robe, tossed it across a nearby armchair, exposing his aroused, naked body to the warmth of the room. When he turned back, her eyes were wide as saucers. Her expression one akin to horror.

He was so big, Violet thought. So male. So completely different from her. She had never seen a naked man before. She had had no idea what to expect. He was…stunning, magnificent, his long limbs hard and sinewy with muscle, sleek arms, powerful thighs, narrow hips. As she had suspected, there was more of the same dark hair she had glimpsed earlier dusted over his body. It lay in flat, black curls across his firm chest, narrowed into a slender line that nearly disappeared as it ran over his taut stomach. Then the hair grew heavier again, circling down low around his…male parts.

She didn’t know what else to call that portion of his anatomy. Seeing him unabashedly draped in nothing more than candlelight, her heart skipped a single, hard beat. She tried, yet somehow couldn’t look away. Her mind scrambled frantically as a startling idea appeared in her head. Surely he didn’t intend to…to put
that
inside her? For one thing, it would never fit; he would surely split her right in two with the attempt. For another…well, she didn’t have time to think of another reason, she just knew she needed to get away.

She gulped visibly and scooted on her haunches toward the opposite side of the bed.

He reached out, snagged an ankle to stop her, then came down beside her. His long length, his great power overwhelming in its intensity. “Going somewhere?” he asked.

She shook her head, fatalistically accepting the fact that there was nowhere for her to go. Knowing she was well and truly trapped. Desperately she reminded herself who he was—Adrian, the man she loved, the man who was her husband. She gazed up into his eyes and told herself it would be all right. Whatever he planned to do to her, she would be fine. Wouldn’t she?

He took her chin between his fingers. “Have you had a change of heart? Would you like to admit the truth now before we proceed?”

Violet shivered, wishing suddenly she could tell him what he wanted to hear. It would be so much easier. But she refused to lie. Not about this. Her integrity, her innocence, her honor. He had said he would know whether or not she was untouched. Soon, then, she supposed, he would realize she spoke the truth. If only she didn’t fear what he must do first to find out.

She shook her head, silent, her eyes speaking the truth that she could not say.

His face hardened. He reached for the hem of her nightgown, pushed his hand underneath, stroking his fingers up along the skin of her thigh. Instinctively, she tightened her legs against his advance. He paused. “Open up.”

When she didn’t immediately comply, he gave the order again, this time in far more graphic terms. “Spread your thighs.”

She trembled anew, then squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to do as he bid.

“Don’t be afraid, my dear,” he said, dropping a kiss upon her lips. “You know it won’t hurt. And I’ll take care to see you find your pleasure.”

Then Adrian thrust a pair of fingers inside her where she was hot and wet and tight. Far tighter than he had expected. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. She was a small woman. Perhaps her previous experience had been with small men.

Before she could voice any objection, he began to work inside her. Stroking, rubbing, moving his fingers in a nimble rhythm he soon planned to repeat with another portion of his body. He looked up, watched her wide, open eyes begin to glaze over. Her fingers curling at her sides, clutching tight at the coverlet beneath her.

He’d have her panting before he was done, he promised himself. He’d have her writhing with desire.

Her breasts heaved. He watched them, her nipples puckered, pink as flower petals beneath their fine lace covering. He tugged at the material. Then he tore it, ripping it away to get at her bare flesh. He clamped his mouth around one nipple, drew deeply upon it as he pushed his fingers deeper still.

Violet’s hips arched up off the mattress. Straining, grasping for something she did not understand but wanted irregardless. It was as though he had taken possession of her body. Literally reached inside and assumed control. Her fear vanished, falling away like leaves scattered from a windswept tree.

He had spoken of pleasure. And oh, he was giving it to her. Great heavy waves of pleasure. Delight such as she had never known. The sounds. The scents. Fresh sweat and other odors, unfamiliar odors, both sexual and forbidden. She should be embarrassed. But she was not, too caught up in the wanting to consider such things.

When he transferred his mouth to her other breast, to indulge it with the same treatment he’d given the first, she lifted a hand. Threaded it into the black silk of his hair.

He groaned and murmured against her flesh, “Touch me. Touch me.”

Obediently, wanting to please him as he was pleasing her, she raised her other hand and stroked. First his shoulder, then down, over his smooth, naked back. He shuddered, groaned anew. She rolled her head from side to side. Mindlessly she opened her legs wider to permit more of his compelling touch.

Then abruptly he withdrew, taking away his lips and hands as he moved to rise over her. He planted his knees between her thighs, steadied her hips in his hands. She was ready, he knew. Wet and throbbing, trembling on the very brink of completion.

Now, he thought, now he would make her cry out in ecstasy.

And cry out she did. Only not in the way he had planned. Hers an exclamation of true anguish as he thrust inside with a single, firm stroke.

Adrian froze, not wanting to believe what his body was telling him. What his senses were shouting.

A virgin! Sweet Jesus, she was a
virgin.

Chapter Five

Adrian trembled as his body hung suspended over hers.

She’d told him. Time after time. Only he had not listened, had not believed.
A virgin.
How could he have been so wrong?

What of the talk he had heard, the confidences shared? Were they all nothing more than scurrilous lies? Apparently so. He had no doubt now, remembering how he had torn through her maidenhead only seconds ago when he had forced himself inside. Even now he was not yet fully sheathed inside her, her passage so narrow.

A tear leaked from the corner of Violet’s eye. Maybe if she didn’t move, she thought, the pain would cease. Maybe if she stayed still, he would go away. Surely it couldn’t be any worse?

“Jeannette, I—I’m sorry.”

And then she knew it could be, his words hurting far more than the physical pain. Hearing him speak her sister’s name at such a moment, with him lying over her, inside her like this. It was unbearable. Only, he didn’t know who she really was.

Her fault.

Just as he hadn’t known about the innocence that had been hers alone to give. Her fault again, she supposed. She turned her face aside, another tear sliding over her cheek.

He kissed it away, lips tender against her flushed skin. His body held in the grip of a fierce, unsatiated desire. Poised halfway between heaven and hell. He should probably withdraw, he thought, leave her alone. Only, he couldn’t quite bring himself to. Not now. Not when it felt so extraordinarily exquisite. Not when he knew it could feel even better still.

She was his wife, he told himself. He had a right. The thought made his body harden further. Besides, if he let her go now, he might never get her into bed again. Not without force. And that he did not want. All she knew now was the pain. He needed to show her there was more. Needed to show her there could be pleasure too.

“Relax and it will be better,” he said.

She made a small sound like a squeak.

He reached down a hand to reposition her hips, then gently eased himself the rest of the way inside.

She whimpered.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he urged.

Violet didn’t think she could. But if it would satisfy him, get him to finish whatever it was he intended to do, then she supposed she would comply.