Part 31 (1/2)

Even if she'd been listening she couldn't have heard his footsteps, so quietly did he move. She looked up just as he reached her, as he caught her chin in his hand.

”Don't worry, Mac,” he said. ”You'll make it up to me.”

She felt the heat reborn in him, burning away that all-too-brief insecurity, the doubt he couldn't allow himself.

”Were you afraid I'd abandoned you?” he asked, stroking her cheek with startling tenderness. ”I'd never have done that. I had plans to see you settled in a safe place, where you could live as you wished. You didn't give me a chance to tell you. But now it doesn't matter, does it?” He touched her lips with a calloused finger while his other hand began to work at the waistband of his trousers. ”I don't give a d.a.m.n anymore who you are or what you've done. I don't care if you worked for Perry or even if you're crazy. You succeeded, Mac. You made me want you.”

The top b.u.t.ton of his trousers popped free of the b.u.t.tonhole. He let them fall, giving Mac an eyeful of magnificently aroused male. She remembered the way that sleek hardness had felt under her hand, and against hera”

”No need to stare, darlin'. You'll see plenty and get a lot more before we're through.”

Darlin'. How long had it been since he'd called her that? Back in the jungle, when he'd played her for a foola ”It works better when you don't try to woo a woman with intimidation,” she said, managing a semblance of sarcastic bravado.

”You didn't need wooing yesterday,” he said, trailing his finger to the hollow of her throat. ”Pretty speeches are wasted on you. It's something a little rougher that excites you, isn't it?” He'd returned to that deep purr that made his blunt words unbearably erotic, lethally carnal. ”Last night you were ready for me, wet for me.” He rested his palm on the swell of her breast. ”You were right when you said it was good between us. It'll be better this time. This time we won't stop.”

Her mouth went dry, robbing her of a retort.

”Shall we find out if I'm right?” he said, kicking his trousers free.

Still she couldn't move, frozen in an agony of terror and desire. Terror, not of him, but of herself. Of the wild feelings he aroused in her as he aroused her body, spinning her out of control. Of how desperately she did want him. Wanted him to make love to her, all the way.

”You think you've won,” Liam taunted, herding her back to the bed. ”But there's always a price for victory, darlin'. Take it from me.”

Yes, there was a price. Mac had only begun to understand in the Poodle Dog, when he'd almost taken her there on the settee.

It was hunger: a physical, aching needa”the woman she'd never fully recognized within herself, coming to painful life inside her awakened body. Liam had done that. He had that power over her, a power too terrible to give to a man she should never have known.

”It'll be good, Mac,” Liam murmured. She felt the play of muscles in his thighs as he carried her with him onto the bed. He stretched out beside her, his hand resting on her hip in masculine possessiveness.

She lay still while he ran his hand down her muslin-clad thigh and under the hem of the chemise. Well, Mac, she told herself, trying to maintain her calm, look at this rationally. You do want him. You can enjoy this for what it is. Exactly as he will.

Her thoughts fragmented as Liam's fingers worked along bare skin. She bit the inside of her lip as he found what he was looking for and stroked hera”once, again, a third time. His fingers found no resistance, no friction. He withdrew, but she felt no relief.

”Ah, darlin',” he said, ”you don't have to say a thing.” He waited until she met his gaze and then deliberately licked her wetness from his fingers.

The gesture almost undid her.

”You want me inside you,” he murmured. ”You want me to take you hard and fast, the way I would have done it last night. Admit it.” He pinned her down, his erection pressed to her inner thighs, his breath hot on her ear. ”The woman in you wants to be tamed, and there's only one way and one man to do it.”

He began to stroke her again, pus.h.i.+ng her chemise up over her thighs, her hips, to her waist. ”You took from me. Now I'll do the taking. But you'll enjoy it, darlin', I promise you.”

His touch was expert. It couldn't have been more effective. In spite of all his threats of ”hard and fast,” he didn't hurry. His finger slipped inside her, moving with a rhythmic omen of what was to come. She jerked and arched against him.

”That's it, darlin'. Give in.” He pushed her chemise higher still, and then it was over her head and she was naked. Defenseless. His mouth found her breast, nipping and suckling. A moan betrayed her, and then there was no more point in pretending.

And no more pa.s.sively lying there like a frightened virgina”even if the latter designation was almost true. She'd be d.a.m.ned before she gave him all the advantages in this affair. There'd be two to tango, and she wasn't going to let him forget the experience.

With a heave and a lift of one knee she encouraged him to s.h.i.+ft position. While he was still off-balance she rolled, carrying him with her, until she was on top and straddling him.

He didn't know what'd hit him. She reached down between them and found his prominence. No confusion there. She had him where she wanted him.

”Since we're on the subject of confessions,” she said softly, ”I think it's your turn.”

She smothered his retort with a kiss designed to get his attention. She was a very fast learner; he looked almost dazed when she came up for air.

”Admit it,” she said. ”Admit that you wanted me in the jungle as much as you want me now.”

She closed her hand around him, worked her fingers up and down his length until he shuddered as she had shuddered at his caresses. ”Admit,” she said fearlessly, recklessly bold, ”that you want me the way you've never wanted any woman before.”

She waited. An eternity pa.s.sed.

”Yes,” he said. He trapped her arms and pulled her down flat on top of him. ”Yes, d.a.m.n you.”

And he proved it with his kiss.

Chapter Twenty.

One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name.

a”THOMAs...o...b..RT MORDAUNT THEY DANCED.

No decorous waltz this time, but a wild and primitive duet that began with a kiss and followed only one inescapable rhythm.

It didn't matter that he was experienced and Mac had almost none. She knew her instincts were good when he groaned at her touch, at the stroke of her tongue on his neck and chest and belly. She gloried in the power of her newfound womanhood.

But Liam wasn't quite prepared to surrender his traditional masculine prerogatives. When matters had progressed to the greatest extremity he rolled Mac beneath him again, parted her legs, and entered with a deep, bold stroke.

He'd been right. She wanted him hard and fast. There was no pain, though she'd been celibate for more years than she wanted to count. He made her forget there was such a thing as celibacy. He made her forget there was anything beyond this rapture, this completion, this unbearable joy of taking and being taken.

But it was more than that. A s.h.i.+fting had begun inside her, and she almost grasped the meaning of it before Liam drove it from her mind again.

Plain, skinny Mac was gone, reborn like a phoenix out of the fires of pa.s.sion, from the conflagration that consumed them both and left them weary and tangled in each other's arms.

For a moment suspended out of all time they were in harmony, all conflict forgotten, content beyond joy. Mac took that moment and built a box around it within her mind, a case of velvet and satin and clouds and dreams. Wherever, whenever she went, it would go with her, protected and eternal.

She didn't mind when Liam slept afterward. She studied his face, so unguarded in sleep. Almost gentle. Almost innocent. She could see the boy he'd been, the boy who had existed before the school of hard knocks got hold of him. A boy who'd fought all his life and didn't know how to stop.

But there was so much she didn't know about him. So much she badly wanted to know. Who that boy had been. What he had suffered. How that suffering had built his obsessions and his need to save and protect those he thought incapable of caring for themselves.

Like Caroline. Like the slave girls. Irrational in one obsession, n.o.ble in the other.

Wanting even to protect her. Mac, who'd never had anyone but Homer try to protect her from anything.

Liam had called her jealous. She wasa”jealous of the secrets Liam kept so firmly locked within himself.

She brushed Liam's hair from his forehead and immediately flashed back to that time in the jungle when he'd come so close to death.