CHAPTER NINE
THE thunder of the surf against the shore seemed no louder than the thundering beat of Alex’s heart.
Travis’s kiss was everything she had remembered, and more. She felt as if he were demanding the surrender of her soul as well as her body, but that wasn’t true. How could it be, when the only thing between them was desire?
Oh, but such desire.
Travis’s hands were in her hair, tipping her face up to his, holding her a willing prisoner as his mouth ravaged hers. It was a hard, possessive embrace, almost savage in its urgency. You belong to me, it said, to me and to no other man.
She knew it was an illusion. She didn’t belong to him. She didn’t want to; she had belonged to her father, then to her husband.
But Carl had never made her feel like this.
Travis whispered her name, sucked her bottom lip into his mouth. She moaned and wound her arms around his neck, lifted herself to him and shuddered with excitement when she felt the rigidity of his arousal hard against her belly.
His hands were under her blouse. She trembled as his callused fingertips rode her hot skin.
“Travis,” she said, her voice broken and husky, “Travis…”
“My Princess,” he said, and his hands swept up the soft underside of her breasts and cupped them.
Need roiled through her blood but she fought it back. Don’t, she told herself, don’t do this, Alexandra. Remember how you felt the last time, the terrible feeling of emptiness, the self-loathing…
Remember the feel of him within you, the blinding pleasure of his body in yours. Remember that moment when you tumbled off the edge of the earth and exploded in the heavens but most of all, most of all, remember how it felt afterward, lying in his arms, so at peace, so replete with happiness…
“Give yourself up to me,” Travis whispered, against her throat. “Come with me, Alex, come with me and let me show you how it can be.”
A hot, sweet wave of desire swept over her. Lost to it, she reached for him but his hand clamped down on hers.
“No,” he said thickly. “Let me do this. Let me do it all.”
She whimpered as he drew back, and the knowledge that she didn’t want him to leave her was almost more than he could endure. He imagined having her now, pulling her down to the sandy beach in the darkness, rolling her under him, entering her on one long, hard thrust and riding her until she shattered in his arms.
It was how he’d taken her before, swiftly and with an elemental hunger. But it was not how he wanted to take her now, especially when the words she’d spoken with such terrible dispassion still echoed in his head.
Sex had been unsatisfying.
That was what she’d said, this woman who burned in his arms. Sex, with her husband, had been unsatisfying. He knew what it meant, that she had been a dutiful wife, that the son of a bitch who’d taken her to his bed had given nothing and taken everything.
Tonight, he would change that forever…but not if he gave in to the animal instincts that drove him. It took all his strength to stop her from touching him but even more than he wanted Alex, he wanted to give her this night.
“No,” he said. “Not here.”
“Of course.” She stepped back. “I’m sorry, Travis. You’re right. I should never have…”
“Dammit,” he said roughly, and hauled her into his arms again. He kissed her, over and over, until she was clinging to him. “Don’t ever apologize for wanting me. Don’t you know how exciting that is, Princess? To know you feel the way I feel?” He took a deep breath, clasped her face gently in his hands and brushed his mouth over hers in a soft, lingering kiss. “I have a suite at the inn. It’s where I planned on spending the night. Will you come there with me, and let me make love to you as if this were our first time?”
He waited for her answer, knowing that giving her time to think was a gamble. He was asking her to admit her need for him instead of being swept away by it, but he didn’t want her to come to him blinded by passion.
Not tonight. Tonight, he wanted to seduce her. Awaken her. And to know, after this, the only man she would remember would be him.
“Alex.” He ran his thumb over her parted lips. “I want to make love to you. Tell me it’s what you want, too.”
Her answer was in the soft surrender of her kiss.
* * *
His bedroom was high in the round turret of the handsome old inn.
The night’s darkness held the room in close embrace, save for the ivory path laid across the bed by the moon.
Travis shut the door and locked it. The turn of the lock seemed to echo through the silent room.
Alex shivered.
There’d been no time for thinking, or for fear, when she’d gone to bed with him that other time. Desire had made her a creature of instinct, not of logic.
This was different. Travis had given her a choice and she’d made it. It was her decision that had brought her here, to his bed.
What would he expect of her, and what could she give him? If she failed him, she would fail herself…
“I can’t do this,” she said, and spun toward the door, straight into Travis’s waiting arms. “Travis. Travis, please. I can’t.”
She was trembling. What was she afraid of? Of him? Of herself? Of the passion he had unleashed in her, that last time? She sighed, and he felt the warmth of the exhalation against his throat.
“What is it, Princess? Why are you afraid?”
She drew a shaky breath. “There was no time to think, before. It’s why everything was…Travis. I’m not—I’m just not—”
“What?” he whispered, and kissed her, slowly, gently, his lips coaxing hers to soften and cling.
Alex gave a choked laugh and buried her face against his shoulder. “You’ll laugh.”
Travis gathered her closer. “Tell me.”
“I’m not…experienced. I know that sounds silly, after the way I acted with you, but—”
“I don’t believe you.”
She shut her eyes in misery. “I didn’t think you would. But what I told you is the truth. I’ve never—I’ve never been with any man except for my husband, and you.”
“I believe that, with all my heart.” He smiled and stroked his thumbs along her cheekbones. “But I don’t believe you acted when we were together last time.”
“Acted?” She drew back and looked up at him. “No. Oh, no. Everything I did and said was—”
“Real.”
“Yes. But this isn’t going to be the same. I can feel the difference already. I’m all the things I’ve always been when it comes to—to bed.”
Travis gritted his teeth. Alex’s husband really had been a bastard but he didn’t want to think about that now. He wanted to think only of Alex.
“Yes,” he said calmly, “you are all the things you’ve always been. You’re beautiful.” He feathered kisses over her face. “Desirable.” He smiled. “And incredibly sexy, even without that red dress.”
Alex shook her head. “That dress! I can’t believe I bought it, or that I wore it. Carl used to say—”
“I don’t give a damn what Carl used to say.” Travis shut his eyes, told himself to take it easy. Pretending the wall was her ex’s face and putting his fist through it was not going to make things better. “Listen to me, Princess. If you’ve changed your mind about making love with me, tell me so. But if your ex is lodged inside your head, I know exactly how to get rid of him.”
Alex’s smile trembled. “I don’t think you can.”
“Will you let me try?”
She looked up at him. “I’d like to. But—”
Travis took her into his arms. “Do you hear the music, Princess?”
She did. It was drifting in through the open windows, along with the soft, sighing breaths of the sea.
“Dance with me,” he said, and he began moving to the slow, romantic tune.
She felt silly, at first, dancing in a darkened bedroom. Dancing was something you did in a b
allroom, each of you with one arm outstretched, your hand on your partner’s shoulder and his placed lightly in the small of your back. It was what Miss Mallory had taught her in Etiquette class, when she was a girl.
But Travis had broken those rules the first night they’d met, when he’d held her hard against him as he’d whirled her around and around the ballroom of the Hotel Paradise.
Now, he was breaking them again. Both his arms were around her, his hands low on her spine. And this was no dance that took a couple around the floor in light, graceful movements as Miss Mallory had taught. It was a dance a woman could only learn from a man who desired her.
“Relax,” he whispered, “and feel the music.”
What she felt was him. His heat. His breath. The tightly leashed power of his body, the steady beat of his heart.
Alex closed her eyes and put her head on Travis’s shoulder. His arms tightened around her. One hand dropped lower, to spread across her bottom; the other slid slowly up her spine. He curled his fingers around her nape and toyed with her hair.
“I like your hair this way,” he murmured.
“Tied back? It’s the way I always…”
“I like it because it’s kept me thinking, of how it would be to take it down.” He drew back and looked down at her. “Shall I undo your hair, Alex?”
His voice was low, rough as raw silk. She felt a tightening in her breasts, and in the pit of her belly.
“Yes,” she said, her eyes on his. “Yes, please. Undo—”
Her breath caught as he unclasped the barrette at the back of her neck. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, and over his hand. He lifted a handful of it, brought it to his lips.
“Beautiful,” he said softly, and kissed her.
They swayed with the music. Mouth to mouth. Breast to breast. His thigh just between hers. Alex sighed. Travis kissed her hair, the shell of her ear.
“Look,” he whispered.
She blinked, opened her eyes. They were in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror, locked in each other’s arms, bathed in the soft light of the moon.
“Do you see how beautiful you are?” Travis said.
Alex flushed. “Travis…”
He moved behind her, lifted her hair and let it sift like gold over his fingers. He bent his head and pressed his mouth to her neck, and then he began undoing the tiny buttons that ran down the back of her silk blouse. He opened them slowly, pausing to kiss each bit of newly exposed skin. At last, when they were all undone, he slid the blouse from her shoulders.
Her bra was made of unadorned white cotton. It was nothing like the stuff she’d worn the night they met but that didn’t matter. There was something about her reticence, her trust, that made this bit of utilitarian cotton sexier than any concoction of black lace could ever be. Was that why his fingers shook as he undid the clasp?
He watched her face in the mirror as her breasts tumbled into his waiting palms.
If she looked at him like that again, he’d be finished. It was too much to ask of a man, that he hang onto his sanity while a beautiful woman stared at him as if he were showing her all the secrets of the universe. But he had to hang on, had to make this right, for her.
His hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs skimming over her nipples.
“Travis…”
Her voice was a tremulous whisper. She tried to turn toward him, away from what she saw in the glass, but he wouldn’t let her.
“Not yet,” he whispered.
He nuzzled her hair aside, so it fell over one bare shoulder. He bent his head and kissed her nape, nipped lightly at her throat. Alex had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. She was drowning in a river of sensation but she couldn’t, she couldn’t. If she let the river sweep her away, how would she know if she was doing all the things a woman should?
Travis was wrong. She couldn’t get Carl out of her head this time. He was there, telling her that she was unresponsive, that she didn’t know how to please a man and never would.
And she wanted to please Travis. To give him pleasure. To hear him groan as he spent himself inside her…
His thumbs rubbed across her nipples again, and the cry she’d tried so hard to suppress burst from her throat. Her head fell back against his shoulder.
“Travis,” she whispered, and he cupped her breasts again, holding them, molding them, stroking the swollen peaks until, without thinking, she lifted her hands and placed them over his before she realized what she’d done and she snatched her hands away.
“Do that,” Travis said thickly. “Put your hands over mine.”
“No. I mean—not if you don’t like…Not if you think it’s—it’s wrong…”
“Open your eyes, Princess. Look into the mirror.”
She thought of that day two weeks before, when she’d looked into the mirror and seen what Travis’s passion had done to her, of how horrified and humiliated she’d been.
“No,” she said, “Travis, please. I don’t—”
“Just look,” he whispered.
And, slowly, she did.
The woman in the mirror wasn’t her. It was a woman trembling on the brink of surrender. Her hair was tumbled around her naked shoulders. Her mouth was pink and swollen, her eyes were feverishly bright.
And the man who’d made her look like this stood just behind her, staring at her reflection with such naked hunger that it made her dizzy.
“Go on,” he said softly, his eyes never leaving hers. “Cover my hands with yours.”
Color swept into her face. “Carl said—he said it was wrong to do that. It would be like touching myself.”
“Put your hands over mine, Alex.”
Their eyes met. Slowly, she raised her hands and did as he’d asked. The sight electrified her. His skin, so dark and hers, so pale; his hands so large and powerful, hers so small and feminine…
“There’s nothing you can’t do with me, Princess.” He bent his head, kissed her throat. “There are no rights and wrongs, not between us. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“There’s only you, and me, and what pleases us both.” Her hands fell away from his as he let go of her breasts. His fingers went to the fly front of her linen trousers. She felt the button give, heard the hiss of the zipper. Her trousers slipped down her legs and fell to her feet. “Tell me what pleases you, Alex,” Travis said, and cupped the damp silk between her thighs.
Alex cried out, not only with need but with the shock of realization. She’d thought Travis had been in her dreams for the past two weeks. Now, she knew he’d been in them forever, this handsome, dangerous, tender stranger who’d come into her carefully planned world and turned it upside down. He was no longer a dream. He was flesh and bone and blood, his eyes pools of darkness, his body hers to lean against, his hands hers to watch as they touched her.
“Do you like this?” he whispered, and slipped his fingers under the silk. “And this?”
She exploded against him, her body’s most intimate tears scalding his hand with her heat as she called out his name.
It almost undid him.
And it would almost have been enough. Just to see her lovely face as she came, to know his strength was her support, to hear her say his name as if he was the only man she’d ever want, ever need…
It was more than most men would ever know of heaven.
And yet, he wanted more.
He turned her in his arms, drew her against him, lifted her off her feet so that her head was above his and he kissed her, swallowing the last of her cries, knowing that he—and only he—had brought her such pleasure.
Would ever bring her such pleasure.
Slowly, he lowered her the length of his body.
“Undress me,” he said, against her mouth.
She tried, but her hands were shaking. And he couldn’t wait, not anymore. He undressed them both, scattering his clothes and hers, tearing things, ripping them in his desperate haste to carry her to the bed, sink into her silken
heat, to cover her soft body with the hardness of his. Gently, he manacled her wrists with his hands and lifted her arms above her head as he sucked on her breasts, licked her throat, buried himself in her slowly, slowly, slowly until, at last, she pleaded for release.
He let go of her hands and she wrapped her arms around him, wrapped her legs around him, took him so deeply inside her that he couldn’t think. And, when he knew she was on the brink, he said, voice hoarse with passion, “Look at me, Alex. And say my name.”
Her lashes lifted. Tears glittered like starlight in her eyes.
“Travis,” she whispered. “Travis. Travis. Trav—”
He groaned, drove deep, and the world shattered for them both.
* * *
Travis awakened slowly, blinked his eyes against the sunshine and inhaled the sweet fragrance of the incredible woman who’d spent the night in his arms.
A smile spread across his mouth as he sent up a quick thank-you to whatever gods might be in the vicinity for letting him wake up and find that the night—the long, wonderful night—had not been a dream.
Carefully, moving so as not to disturb her, he rose on his elbow and gazed down at Alex’s beautiful profile. She lay with her head pillowed on his arm and her backside snugged into the cradle of his hips.
Very snug, he thought, as the warmth of that curving bottom sent an early-morning wake-up call zinging through his blood.
But he wouldn’t wake her. She needed her rest, after the night they’d spent. Besides, he wanted to watch her. Just watch her, as she slept.
Her hair streamed over her shoulder, a cascade of golden silk. Her lashes lay thickly on her cheeks. Her lips were slightly parted. One hand was tucked beneath her pillow; the other lay on top of it. It was a lovely hand, he thought, with long fingers and blunt-trimmed, unvarnished nails. Last night, he’d sucked those fingers into his mouth, one by one. Such a simple thing, but there’d been nothing simple in the way his body had tightened as he’d watched Alex’s pupils grow black with each stroke of his tongue.
Hell.
Travis stifled a groan and drew back enough to put a discreet inch between Alex and himself. He’d made love to her endless times through the night but he wanted her again, right now, with a hunger so intense that he might as well have spent the past hours in a monastery.
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