Chapter 10 #3
He covered and filled her, still dressed, with only his dark breeches loosened.
Her flesh seemed almost unbearably vulnerable to the touch of fabric against it, and yet everything within her seemed drawn as well to that place where bare flesh met bare flesh, where his body stroked into hers with a thundering urgency, hard, wild, seducing no more, suddenly demanding everything.
She clung to him, feeling as if she rode out a storm.
His very fever touched her again and again, along with the driving relentlessness of his demand.
The very force and power that filled her seemed to awaken in her the clamoring to have more and more, to reach surcease.
His body constricted in a massive wave of tension and heat, then it seemed that sunlight rushed within her, triggering the sweet explosion of her own climax.
`The feelings burst upon her, so incredibly wonderful, like a blending of all the hot, brilliant colors of the fiercest blaze within her body.
She drifted in the sweet, warm fires, shaken again and again by a series of little rapid-fire convulsions, until she seemed to fall into the deep softness of the bed again.
David moved quickly, as if he had realized his weight just as she began to feel the pressure of it. He lay at her side, his face completely in shadows. Still clothed. She felt him button his breeches, then stretch out, his fingers laced behind his head as he stared at the ceiling.
“Oh god!” she breathed suddenly, realizing what they had done. Despite his flowers and gifts, he still accused her and her family.
And he had come for revenge. This, then, was nothing but revenge.
“Damn you!” she cried out, springing up to leap out of the bed.
She didn’t manage to do so.
He caught her upper arms, flinging her back down upon the mattress. “What do you think you’re doing now?” he demanded irritably.
“Getting up!”
“Why?”
“Because—because—” she sputtered. “Oh, damn you!” she cried again, a balled hand landing against his chest. She stared into his eyes and whispered vehemently, “I did not seduce you, Laird David Douglas!”
“You seduce me by being, Lady MacGinnis!” She felt his eyes sweep over her. “And I’m not sleeping in any damned chairs anymore, and you’re not going to catch pneumonia on the floor and expire on me, either.”
She was shaking, trying to fight when there was no fight left within her.
“You can’t—”
“Did I hurt you in any way?”
He couldn’t begin to know how he was hurting her.
“Say yes, m’love, and I’ll call you a liar. Our greatest danger here tonight was that one of us might have shrieked out loudly enough in pleasure to have given us both away.”
She gasped, ready to hit him. He gave her no chance to do so, drawing her to him.
“You had every chance to deny me,” he told her.
“You’re wrong. You seldom give me a chance at anything.”
He stared at her in the darkness, then his knuckles brushed her cheek, and his thumb moved over her lower lip. “Maybe I don’t dare give you any more chances!” he whispered softly.
“We can’t—let this go on,” she said fervently.
He shook his head, frowning. “You think that you can take back what happened between us.”
“You don’t understand—”
“Nor do I care to.”
“There can be—consequences!” she told him.
“Not this time. I will not be taken this time!”
Shawna lowered her lashes, but she couldn’t hold her tongue. “I don’t mean you!” she lashed out.
“What, then?”
The truth she couldn’t bear to share with him retreated within her. “Nothing.”
“Damn it, what are you talking about?”
She shook her head vehemently. “Nothing!”
“Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing will change the fact that one of your kin is guilty, and I will discover who. Sleeping on the floor will not help you. My spending the night awake on a window seat will not change anything for anyone either.”
In the flickering light of the fire, she saw him looking at her, his eyes filled with anger and passion and determination. She trembled, wishing that he could not feel her every little movement.
“If you intend to continue to accuse my family and expect my help, you’d better intend as well to keep me advised about what is happening, what you’re doing!”
He smiled. “You know I’ve been with you every night.”
“Aye, the flowers, the necklace, left upon my pillow.” She tried to study his face in the firelit shadows. “Why?” she asked very softly. “Part of your revenge?”
His teeth flashed in a white smile. “Most definitely,” he told her.
She studied him gravely. “Five years ago—I did not mean to seduce you. I—perhaps that isn’t exactly true, but I didn’t intend—”
“You intended to seduce me, you simply didn’t intend to consummate anything you started,” he said bluntly.
She shook her head, then twisted away from him, lying with her back to him when she spoke again. “I didn’t intend to seduce you into the hell you discovered. And I do fear your revenge—”
“Perhaps my revenge, my lady, is partly to make you want me as I wanted you when that fire began.”
His husky tone sent warmth cascading down her spine. She swallowed hard, fighting a strange surge of tears once again. He couldn’t know how she had wanted him. How she had missed him. How she had longed for him. How she had needed him with her.
“Perhaps, Laird Douglas,” she whispered in turn, “I am determined not to let you take revenge so easily. Perhaps I shall refuse to want you—I didn’t seek to seduce you now, and so help me, I will not do so—”
“No?” he queried.
His tone was oddly tender and yearning.
Yet his touch was firm as he rolled her back to him, suddenly straddling her in the darkness.
“Then it seems that I will have to seduce you,” he promised her heatedly. “And I will want you. Again and again…”
He did want her.
And he did seduce her.
Expertly. Shedding his clothing that time.
And sleeping naked beside her when he was done, holding her close to his warmth through the hours of the night.