by Kay Hooper
Watching her instant response drove his own constant desire higher and higher, but this time his mind refused to let go of worry, unease. Fear. She was so elusive … and not his. Never, somehow, his. Something dark moved deeply within him. His eyes remained fixed on her, his fingers moved gently, and he heard his voice as if from a great distance.
“You’re so guarded … and so hurt inside. I can feel it. Sometimes I see it in your eyes.” His lips brushed her shoulder, the warm hollow at the base of her throat. “It tears me apart to see you hurting.”
Raven fought to control her body’s response to him, dimly aware that what he was telling her was important, vitally important, that she should try to listen to more than his words, try to hear what his rough voice was telling her. But her body was mastered by desire, her mind seduced. Heat tingled and writhed within her, spreading outward from the hollowness that throbbed emptily for him.
“You hide from me,” he murmured hoarsely, one hand slipping down over her flat, quivering stomach. “Except when you’re like this. Except when you want me. Then you let yourself go.”
“Josh …”
He shuddered. “Even your voice changes … warm and soft and wanting. And your incredible eyes lose that guarded brightness and go so dark, so deep.” Abruptly, he pulled her back onto the bed, raising himself beside her to nuzzle his face between her breasts. “And you touch me then,” he whispered as her hands rose to stroke his shoulders. “Only then. You never touch me unless you want me. You don’t draw back when I touch you, but you don’t touch me. Only when you want me. Only when we’ve made love and your defenses are still down.”
The slight rasp of his morning beard against her breasts was driving her crazy, and Raven couldn’t think of anything but his touch. The touch that ignited her. No matter how many times they made love, she was seduced again and again by desire, ignited, flaming with need for him.
One of her legs was pinned by his, and she moved the other to tangle with his long, powerful ones, stroking her flesh against his, catching her breath, feeling the flames rise. She shifted restlessly, trying to draw him closer, frustrated when his resistance defeated her.
He breathed hotly on one yearning nipple, flicked it with his tongue maddeningly. “I can make you forget everything but me and what we do to each other,” he whispered. “I can always do that. Can’t I, Raven?”
“Josh—” She gasped, trying to pull his head down, desperate to feel his mouth on her throbbing flesh.
“Can’t I?” His voice hardened. “Tell me.”
Dazed, she stared into that lean, hard, almost cruel face, its handsome lines altered by something old and driven. His eyes were bright with a sheen of determination and a nerve throbbed erratically at one corner of his mouth like a living thing writhing in torment.
Raven had believed that she’d seen the different facets of his personality. She’d seen his humor, his consideration, his strength and power; she’d seen his gentleness and passion and a desire as wild as unreason. She had seen his anger. She had never seen this.
But she recognized it.
“Tell me, Raven.” His tongue moved teasingly, and one hand slipped down over her stomach while his leg parted hers in a single strong, irresistible movement. His face was hard, intent, his eyes almost blind.
Even as her body responded instantly, inexorably, to his erotic touch, Raven held on fiercely to a shred of awareness, of understanding. All her instincts told her that if she didn’t understand what he was doing and why he was driven to do it, it could destroy them both.
He was something beyond himself, she realized, lost, torn from his moorings by primitive, utterly male needs. And she had done that to him. Elusive and enigmatic because her life often depended on it, she had unwittingly driven him to this place, where he was desperate, trapped.
He was a man who had known light romantic and sexual conquests, secure in his control, sure of himself. The thought of falling in love and losing control of his life had “scared the hell” out of him, and he had flinched from that with what amounted to an obsession.
She remembered the file on him in a flash, recalled all the unrelated facts that she now knew were tied inextricably together. His brilliant business maneuvering, the tactics complex but always within his control. The security force built carefully around him to provide a maximum amount of control in any given situation. The long succession of blondes casually escorted, never the same more than a couple of times and none allowed close enough to challenge his control of his life.
In his childhood, events had occurred beyond his control, stealing first his father’s life and then his mother’s, gifting him with almost unimaginable wealth and power, setting him apart from other boys, other men. And from those events, he had wrenched control, guarding himself against further pain, mapping his life with the sure touch of caution.
Then, in a single moment, he had lost that guarded, necessary control. He had, against all odds and perhaps his own nature, fallen in love—and his carefully planned path had taken an abrupt and unnerving turn. If theirs had been a normal romance, Josh would have coped, if not easily, then at least without this terrible struggle. But normality was the last thing they had found.
Danger hovered darkly in their present, and each had walked through a past filled with painful, hazardous shadows. Their time together was not even their own—stolen, furtive, hurried. Desperate. At any moment they could be torn apart, perhaps forever, the ground beneath them treacherously uncertain.
And Josh, control snatched from his grasp, had struggled violently to cope. To regain a thread of control. He had coped—somehow—with the devastating possibility that the woman he loved was something evil, emerging from that struggle with trust intact, belief strong. He had coped with the reality of her double life, never asking her to walk away from what she felt she had to do. He had coped with the dangers she faced, shaken by them but unflinching, struggling constantly and visibly against the male instinct to guard and protect.
He had loved her without reservation, giving of himself freely, asking of her only what she would give with equal freedom.
And Raven, unthinking, had held back. Unaware of the conflict tearing him apart, she had not realized what she was doing to him by protecting herself. Guarded, wary, she was unwilling to risk her innermost self, the hidden soul she fought to keep strong in spite of scars, because it was very nearly all that was real to her in her life.
She didn’t know, even now, why the tenuous, hard-won thread of Josh’s control had finally snapped. Perhaps it had been the visible scar of her past crying out the dangers she had faced. Perhaps it had been a sense of time running out, of risk and uncertainty closing around them with dark talons. Perhaps it had been all of that. Whatever the cause, the deeply ingrained instincts that had built an obsession demanded that Josh assert the only control he could hope to win. Male instincts millions of years old demanded that he take, possess, brand her indelibly as his. He had to find certainty in her, because there was no other certainty possible now.
And if he did that, battered down her guards against her will and took from her what she resisted giving, what he took would destroy her—and him, when he was sane again.
“Tell me!” he ordered in a raw, harsh tone, his strong body tense and hard, his mouth moving in hot, savage demand over her flesh. “Tell me that I can make you forget until nothing else matters. Tell me.”
Awareness, understanding flowed through Raven swiftly then. Even torn in two, he was not violent, and she wasn’t afraid of him. But she knew her response to his needs now would either bond them fierily together or tear them apart for all time. Words she should have given him before now would not be enough, she knew. Not now. Not enough to stop him, not enough to drain the brutal need from his soul.
To give him the certainty he needed, she would have to submerge herself, lose herself totally, offer everything she was to him. It was nothing so simple and basic as lovemaking, nothing so easy as the join
ing of two bodies. What he needed was an utter and complete release of all inhibitions, all restraints, all awareness of anything and everything but the total satisfaction of the raging emotions between them.
She had to tear away her pride, her instincts of self-preservation, lose her sense of self before he blindly, desperately, ripped them away himself.
Her choice was made in an instant, a heartbeat.
She moved against his roughly caressing hands, her own tangling in his hair, demanding an end to his torturing. “Yes,” she said, and her tone was harsh, too, and wild, breaking away from her because she wasn’t herself anymore. “You make me forget. Nothing matters but you.”
“Tell me what you want,” he commanded, lifting his head to stare down at her with glittering eyes. His fingers probed with sure knowledge.
Raven moaned, the whimpering animal sound surging up from her deepest being. Restraints were snapping one by one, leaving her a primitive, hungering creature with no mind, no awareness of anything but the needs of her body and soul. His knowing fingers were stroking her intimately, insistently, and her hips lifted to the touch. “You!” she gasped, her nails digging into his back, her body writhing. “I want you … all of you.…” Her voice was strained, trembling.
The aching, burning tip of her breast was drawn into his hungry mouth, his tongue swirling. He caught her wrists in one hand and held them above her head in an inescapable but painless grip, his other hand increasing its erotic caresses. And when she convulsed against him, her body arching and a wild cry torn from her throat, he lifted his head to watch her fixedly, still caressing her, driving her higher, refusing to allow her the downward slide into peace.
Again and again he shattered her senses, catching her mindless cries in his mouth, denying himself release. He held her still when she would have moved violently, resisted when she sought to free her arms and pull him closer. He fed her hunger, yet left her empty and aching, needing him with an all-consuming craving that turned her nerves to fire.
And when he finally moved between her thighs, she could only shiver wildly and cradle his body, her freed arms reaching to enfold him, her strong legs lifting, twining about him. Her voice was a shaking, helpless plea, wordless, primal. He drove into her with a single rough thrust, his hard body filling the emptiness that ached for him until she could feel him throbbing deep within her, and her cry was a sound of triumph.
For Josh, the world had condensed, shrunk, tunneled until it contained only them. His only conscious awareness was of her, her body sheathing his so tightly, so softly, her shaking voice uttering cries that drove him crazy, her nails digging into his back in sharp stings of desire. The inferno within his own body was a crucible, melting away everything but the savage hunger driving him.
He was still for an eternal moment, holding himself deep inside her, so close to exploding he could feel the feathery tremors along every taut nerve of his body. She moaned deeply, raggedly, her inner muscles contracting around him in a sudden, ecstatic rhythm, and he buried his face in her throat, gritting his teeth, hanging on to control for the fierce pleasure of feeling her release so intimately.
But his body, desperate, assumed a rhythm of its own. He caught her breathless cries, his mouth wild and hot on hers, driving into her with the strength and power of lost control and mindless need. She was taking him, all of him, and the satiny clasp of her body eagerly fueled the explosion both demanded.
His body shuddered violently as he drove himself into her, unbearable tension snapping and sending shock waves jolting through him in a feeling light-years beyond pleasure. He was dying … he was intensely, vividly alive … torn in half by the violent clash of life and death and the satisfaction of a hunger too primitive to have a name.
He lay heavily on her, his chest moving with the deep, ragged breaths his exhausted body demanded, his face buried in her neck. Raven held him with what strength she had left to her, stroking the powerful, glistening muscles of his back with hands that shook uncontrollably.
There was more, this time, than a simple sense of well-being. She felt almost electrified, acutely alive, and there were no shadows within her. For the first time in her life she had given herself totally, completely, stripping away the layers guarding her inner self and exposing what she was to the searing, healing touch of his need—and her own.
She slid one hand up his spine, threading her fingers through his thick black hair, and with a new and curiously powerful sense of communication, she knew the instant he came back to himself, became aware again. “I love you,” she murmured, her breath warm against his shoulder.
Josh lifted his head, his breath catching as he looked at her. Her eyes were wide and dark and bottomless, glowing with an inner fire far too deep and strong ever to be hidden by an enigmatic surface of violet or an expert shading of makeup.
He eased up on his elbows, shaken by what he saw and by what he had so nearly done to them. If she had resisted him … Memories like primal growls in the back of his throat haunted him, tautening a body that trembled from the strain of what he was feeling. “Raven …” His hands found her face, shaking. “I could have hurt you.” He remembered the savagery of his desire, the driven strength, and closed his eyes. “I did hurt you.”
She lifted her head from the pillow, kissing him very tenderly. “You didn’t hurt me. You could never hurt me,” she murmured. “Don’t you think I know that?”
He was still too shaken, too unnerved by his descent into a dark and savage place to be reassured. “I wanted … my God, I wanted everything. I didn’t think about hurting you, only about taking you. Making sure you belonged to me.”
Raven didn’t think now, she only responded to the anguish in his voice. Softly, her voice husky, she said, “There was something cold in me, something dark and alone. It isn’t there anymore, Josh. There was a wound so deep, the light could never reach it, never heal it. But you did.”
He looked at her, gazed deep into those bottomless, darkly flaming eyes, and saw truth. Whatever had happened between them, Raven’s need had been as great as his own, and the certainty both had required now lay deeply, warmly, within them.
“I love you,” he said, his voice a bare thread of sound. “I love you so much.”
She had promised to meet Leon Travers for lunch, and Josh, dressed, watched as she sat at the dressing table and piled her long hair atop her head and secured it expertly with a few pins. She was wearing a silk dress of deep, shimmering violet. And her eyes, even with the careful shading of makeup, were no longer cool and enigmatic.
The changes wrought in her would never again be disguised by a part she played. Her eyes were inexplicably wider, more vivid, and stirringly alive. No shadows lurked there, no hints of cool disinterest.
Josh got to his feet and went to stand behind her. “If you ever allow anyone but me to watch you dress and put on makeup,” he said casually, “I will strangle you.”
Laughter shimmered instantly to life in the eyes that met his in the mirror. “Oh, really?”
“Yes.” His hands lifted to her shoulders, moving gently to feel the beloved flesh and bone, the compelling warmth of her. “I never thought about it before, but there’s something very intimate in watching a woman get ready to go out.” His hands swept over the silk and surrounded her neck warmly. “Makes a man feel possessive.”
Raven gazed at the reflection of his face, seeing an easing of the strain that had gripped it for so many days. He was curiously at peace now, something she could feel as well as see. She reached up to catch his hands, leaning her head back against him with little thought of her hairstyle. “I’m not objecting,” she whispered.
“Good, because I can’t seem to handle it rationally,” he said, bending to kiss her lightly. Then he moved away, a gleam in his eyes warning her that if they lingered, she’d certainly be late for her appointment.
Very late.
Tearing her gaze from that silent, hot promise, Raven took a last assessing look into the
mirror and frowned slightly. She started to reach for the small case of eye shadow, but his comment stopped her.
“It won’t work.”
She turned on the low stool, staring up at him in puzzlement. “Why not?”
Unable to keep his hands off her, Josh brushed his knuckles lightly beneath her chin, caressing the silky flesh. “Because you’ve changed,” he said quietly, watching for her reaction. “Your eyes have come alive—really alive. You can’t disguise them with makeup any longer.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then smiled suddenly. “You’ve ruined me for Hagen,” she said, sounding pleased. Then she laughed. “I’ll just have to keep my lashes lowered demurely, I suppose, or wear sunglasses in the restaurant.”
Josh took her hands and pulled her gently to her feet. “Travers will see,” he said, uneasy as the import of that hit him. “He’ll know you’re different, know something’s happened.”
“I’ll think of something to tell him. Don’t worry.” She kissed his chin. “Now, I’ve got to get the bracelet, so be quiet.” She had told him earlier about the microphone in her bracelet, which had reassured him somewhat regarding Hagen’s precautions.
Instead of allowing her to move away instantly, Josh caught her chin and turned her face up, kissing her deeply and thoroughly with the new possessiveness that had marked them both.
Raven melted against him, drawing strength from him, glorying in the feeling of belonging to him. It was a special kind of belonging, she had decided, something deep and sure, with no overtones of mastery or selfishness. They belonged to each other, and both were more than they had been.
“I love you,” he murmured.
She smiled, her fingers touching his lips with a sense of wonder. “I love you.” Reluctantly, she went to get her bracelet and capture her now elusive alter ego.
Then they left, she to travel down in the elevator, her aloof expression and dark glasses hiding the glow within, he to vanish discreetly out the back way, unseen and unheard.
