Wild Midnight (9 page)

The liquid was hot. With split-second clarity she saw the steam in the air as it left the pot. The saucepan hit him in the middle of his chest and bounced off. Tomato soup splashed across the front of his shirt and down his tight-fitting jeans. She knew it was hot enough to scald.
 

For a moment he was stunned, the blood draining from his face. Then he seemed to go berserk. He gave a loud yell of pain and surprise. His hands shot out, finding the front of the terry-cloth robe. The next thing Rachel knew, she was being dragged against him, lifted from her feet, the robe tearing open. For one terrible moment those pain-clouded eyes stared unseeing into hers.
 

Then he turned, and with both hands clutching terry cloth, dragged her blindly out of the kitchen and into the living room, finally hurling her away from him. Rachel sprawled flat on the plastic tile flooring of the living room, too horrorstruck to make a sound.
 

With his head bent, Beau Tillson tore at the plaid shirtfront, ripping away buttons, pulling it out. She saw him wrench open his belt and the fastenings of his jeans. He pulled down the zipper of his fly and yanked out the rest of his shirttail. And in a low, furious growl, he cursed, words Rachel couldn’t believe.
 

She got to her knees quickly, not taking her eyes from him as he peeled off his shirt and bent his head to examine the muscular planes of his flat belly, the line of golden hairs that ran down into the elastic top of his underwear. A blotch of bright red skin extended from his ribs down to his navel. He stared at it, still cursing under his breath. Then he lifted his head.
 

“You
burned
me,” he snarled.
 

He had gone wild for a moment. She wasn’t sure whether to get up and make a run for it, or stay where she was.
 

“Burned me, dammit!” he repeated, feral gold eyes wide with disbelief.
 

Better to run for it, Rachel decided. As she scrambled to her feet he moved quickly to catch her, an iron hand closing around her wrist.
 

“And you tried to grab
me
!” she cried. Her hair flailed around them wildly as she struggled. “Let me go!”
 

“No way.” The chiseled features were contorted. “Damn you—you hurt me! What the hell’s the matter with you?”
 

The belt of Rachel’s robe had fallen away and the robe swung open. She saw the quick tightening of his expression as the gap revealed the white skin of her breasts, the indent of her navel in a smoothly tight belly, ruddy pubic curls, and a view of long, graceful legs. He held her for several frozen seconds, the sound of her gasping breath loud in the sudden stillness. When he lifted his head it seemed to her that his eyes had turned into golden stones. For a long moment the face that was a heart-stopping perfect mask studied her with no show of emotion. She was a trapped, desperate creature facing a captor too dangerous to fight.
 

“I told you that you were causing me a lot of trouble,” The words were soft, deadly. “Now I’m going to make you sorry you ever started this, lady, believe me.”
 

I saw two lovers sitting on a star,
 

He kissed her lips, she kissed his battle scar.
 

Nirvana
 

Chapter Five

Violence would be met with violence, Rachel knew as surely as she knew who had started it.
 

As she stared up at him she couldn’t find words that this angry man would understand. Did he realize she couldn’t fight him now, no matter what?
 

It took all her courage to whisper, “I’m sorry, but please don’t hurt me!”
 

“Christ, why would I want to do that?” His voice was a low purring rasp. “There are more ways than one for paying you back. I’m going to do something much, much worse.” He had gone very still, a big, sensuous animal coiled to spring. “I’m going to make you scream for me.”
 

“What?” Rachel went white with shock. “Please believe me, I didn’t mean to hurt you, I—”
 

“Lady, it’s too late for that.” He stared coldly at her. “I’m going to have you, I’m going to have everything you’ve been pressing around in front of me for the past few days, yapping about legal rights and public roads. I’m not going to hurt you—what kind of a bastard do you think I am anyway? But believe me, this is going to be something you’ll never forget.” For a moment Rachel could only stare at him. She knew he meant every word. She burst out, “Oh, please don’t do this! Just because I’ve made you angry—”
 

“You tried to scald the hell out of me,” he reminded her with ominous softness. “But don’t worry, I’m going to even things up. I’m just going to make you scream and scream for me until everything goes right out of that pretty red head.” His eyes glittered in heated promise. “And then I’m going to get inside you; deep inside you, and listen to you moan.”
 

She would have stumbled back from him if he hadn’t held her. The room tilted, and for a terrible moment the blackness at the edges of Rachel’s mind threatened to overwhelm her. “Y-you’re not frightening me!”
 

“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying to you.” His big hand cupped the back of her head to pull her face up to him. There was a faint smile on that enchantingly graceful mouth. “You’re going to
want
me. I’m going to make you beg for me down on your knees, moaning for me, burning for me to take you. Miz Brinton, baby, I’m going to give you a lesson in how to win.”
 

In an abrupt movement his hard lips covered hers, forcing open her mouth. His fierce tongue plunged in deeply, subduing her, mastering her, robbing her of breath. The sense of being helpless was panicky and complete as Rachel’s cries were swallowed into his mouth. Any remaining thoughts of resistance collapsed under the weight of the shock she experienced.
 

She’d been braced for violence, but as his fingers in her hair began the slowest of seductive circlings—the firm warmth of their touch flowing into the nerve endings at the back of her neck and into her blood—she couldn’t move. His kiss moved commandingly against her mouth, making her aching lips open even wider to him.
 

Then, quite terrifyingly, her response answered his tense, powerful body, so sharply and unexpectedly that she moaned. She was wildly aware of the opened front of his jeans, the sharp edges of the metal zipper and the fabric of his cotton briefs pressing against her bare skin where the terry cloth robe gaped open. His lean strength and the hard band of his arms surrounding her were as remorselessly sexual as his tongue’s thrusting invasion.
 

He had torn off his shirt when she fell. Now his silky skin, smelling faintly of sweat, was in hard contact with the yielding swell of her naked breasts. He tightened his hold, making her bend her head back so that she would take the full force of his sensuous assault. She dug her fingers and nails into the hard curve of his biceps and clung to him, wave after mind-darkening wave of her treacherous body’s reaction sweeping through her.
 

This was actually happening
! Her conscious mind grappled to believe it. This was her house. The glare from the living-room light fixture beat down around them and on familiar surroundings with a harsh reality. She, Rachel Brinton, was here. In that moment it was suddenly real—as real as the pain from her bruised mouth when yet another of his savage caresses tore through her. A sound strangled in her throat, and he crushed her to him.
 

Even more terrifyingly real was the hard, rebellious ache that flared quickly between her shivering thighs as blood rushed into them, the tips of her breasts tightening unbearably. She was responding to a man who could arouse a woman almost without trying, she thought wildly. He was punishing her, satisfying his anger while everything about him—the way he pinned her, the way his mouth ravished her—showed that women had always surrendered to him, that no matter how much she tried to fight it, he would make her surrender too. He plunged into her mouth repeatedly with his hard, smooth tongue, deliberately stoking his own desire.
 

When he pulled away from her the wide, curve of his lips was wet with her taste. “God, you’re so soft and sexy,” his murmur told her.
 

She felt his lean, powerful body tighten, his hips circling back and forth to press the stiff bulge of his erection against her through the open front of his jeans. What had begun in the rain in the lawyer’s parking lot, was now a certainty, with, no escape.
 

A last pinpoint of frantic thought told Rachel that it would be madness to try to fight him. But she couldn’t choke back a frightened whimper.
 

He heard it and the hard smile widened. “That’s it, honey, squeak for me, I want you to feel it—what I’m doing to you.” His voice was thick like dark honey. “But I want more than your sexy little bunny rabbit squeaks. I’m going to make you scream for me, just like I said.” The steely fingers pressed the back of her head. “Open your mouth.”
 

The hard, sensual caress that had gone before was nothing compared to the hungry plundering that burst from him now. She let him inside her mouth, let him caress her, let his teeth and lips plunge into every corner as his hands gripped her yielding bottom and ground her against, him. Under her clutching fingertips the muscles of his bare shoulders coiled and quivered reflexively; he gave a growl, raw and primitive. Then quickly his hands tore at her robe, getting it out of his way. He stepped back a fraction to look at her, and she heard his indrawn breath.
 

“Oh, God, that beautiful body.” His voice actually shook. “That damned incredible body, just like I remember down at the pool.”
 

When her hands jerked to cover her breasts he flung them away. His eyes followed the white heavy curves with their fragile, shiny pink points, the span of her narrow waist and the sweep of her taut white skin ending in a triangle of russet pubic hair, her long legs pressed tightly together. His look flared into yellow flames.
 

He had been there in the woods.
That it was Beau Tillson down at the tidal pool was yet another shock. “Please let me go.” The hoarse sound of her voice, pleading and uncertain, shocked her even more. “Please—I won’t tell anyone!” But she could see from the sudden, fierce look on his face that something had happened.
 

“I want you,”’ he said, looking at her oddly. “Damned if I don’t.” Very deliberately he ran a forefinger down the white valley between her breasts. He watched the slow movement of his hand against her silky, shivering flesh. And then he lifted dazzled eyes to stare into the deep velvet depths of hers. “I want you like hell,” he said almost to himself. “I really do.”
 

His long hand lifted to the still-damp curtain of her hair spread over her bare shoulders, and his roughened fingers tangled in it, pulling the parted strands softly over her arms and down to her pouting white breasts. He was playing with her, prolonging the moment.
 

He took a long red strand of her hair and drew it softly over his lips, eyes narrowed, watching her. “I want to feel you, honey.” Each low, sensuous word stroked her. “When I get through with you you’ll have felt so much you won’t want to think about anything else for a long, long time.”
 

Rachel quivered, mesmerized by the insinuating murmur of his voice and the sheer masculine beauty of his face and powerful, half-naked body. She sagged against him, a low sob rolling from her throat, her fingers clutching his corded forearm.
 

“Shh.” His arms supported her. The cat and mouse game relented. “I’m not going to hurt you, lovely Miz Brinton.” The husky words were followed by the brush of his fingers across the straining silk of her breasts. “I just want to touch all that white skin so thick and smooth like flower petals, and those little pink buds just waiting for me to taste them. I just want that beautiful pale body, ripe and ready, sweet as your mouth, for a little bit. Is it true about widow ladies,” he murmured, “how hungry they get? Or has somebody already been keeping you happy?”
 

Rachel gasped. She hardly heard the mocking words. She had not expected a brutal rush of feeling as her breasts engorged painfully under that light touch, or the searing jolts of electricity that sparked out from them. In that instant the fire plummeted and centered in the moist flesh between her legs. A hard, racking shudder convulsed her.
 

His narrowed look had followed every shock, every startled reaction in her face. “Ah, baby,” he whispered, “I haven’t even put my mouth on you and already you’re on fire. Come on, scream for me.” His thumb pressed her nipple seductively, fingers curled around her breast, the rubbing, circling caress raising the tight point to a stinging ache. When Rachel writhed, throwing her head back in helpless abandon, he quickly buried his face in the satiny valley between her breasts, nuzzling her softly, his tongue tracing burning kisses around her fullness. His head turned and his mouth opened wide to take her creamy breast into it. A low cry burst from Rachel’s lips, and his triumphant grunt answered her. The vise of his hand held her head while his other hand cupped her, pulling and caressing her flesh, the hard thumb pressing and releasing her nipple as she jerked in liquid, mindless shivers.