This Fierce Splendor: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Iris Johansen

  He smiled faintly. “Very sensible.” His fingers went back to her polished black leather and silk ankle-high boot and began unfastening the buttons on the side. His hands were trembling, he noticed with annoyance, and he’d never get these damn buttons undone if he couldn’t manage to keep his eyes on what he was doing. Her legs were slender and shapely in the black cotton stockings, and he could see a plain black garter above her knee. Rina’s garters were usually blue satin, made in New Orleans, and always intriguingly feminine, yet he had never wanted to remove them with this degree of frantic impatience.

  He pulled her left boot off and tossed it aside. He braced her right boot against his thigh and began to unbutton it. Lord, he was aching. His chest was so tight he had to open his mouth to force air into his lungs. He caught a glimpse of pale soft thighs above the black garters and a stab of desire twisted like a knife in his belly.

  “Are you all right?” Elspeth was looking down at him, her gaze troubled. “You seem to be in pain. Is there something I can do?”

  He froze, stunned. Merciful Christ, what kind of woman was she? “You’re about to do it,” he said harshly as he threw the right boot aside. “Hell yes, I’m in pain, and you’re going to stop it. Do you know how?” He roughly pulled the black garter off and jerked the cotton stocking off her right leg in one motion. He did the same with the left stocking and lifted his head to look at her. His blue eyes were blazing as he took her naked left foot and brought it to his throbbing loins. “Like this.” He rubbed the sole of her slender white foot against him in a slow, yearning motion. “You’re going to touch me, and I’m going to touch you. Then I’m going to come into you and you’re going to take me, every inch of me. I’m going to use you to stop this ache and then I’m going to teach you how to make me ache again.”

  The hard length of him was burning against the soft arch of her foot and Elspeth could feel the muscles in her calf knot beneath his palm. Intimacy. She had never experienced such shocking intimacy. Waves of heat were washing over her and she was sure even the roots of her hair were hot. Her breath was coming in gasps and she was trembling so badly she thought she would fall off the chair. “Let … let me go.”

  He was still. His eyes were blazing into her own and his hand on her ankle kept her foot pressed firmly against him. “Do you understand now? This is not a pleasant outing. You’re going to belong to me tonight.”

  “You do mean it.” She was looking at him in wonder. “I wasn’t sure—”

  “Well, be sure,” he said. He dropped her foot to the rough floor and stood up. “I bluff only in poker, Elspeth.”

  “You’re going to ravish me.” It was said with the same wonder he had seen in her experience. “Will it hurt?”

  “Not if you don’t fight me.” Would it hurt her? He had never had a virgin, and the subject had never come up. He had heard that sometimes … He firmly blocked the thought. “If you don’t make it difficult, I’ll be careful to—”

  “That means I’ll be a fallen woman, doesn’t it?” Her brow was wrinkled in a pensive frown. “Perhaps even a hetaera.”

  “What the devil is a hetaera?” He pulled her to her feet and his fingers began working swiftly at the buttons at the front of her gown.

  “They were ladies in ancient Greece who were trained to pleasure men and—” She inhaled sharply as he slipped the gown from her shoulders to her waist and then to the floor, leaving her in only her chemise, crinoline, and petticoats. She looked straight ahead. “They were very accomplished at—” Garments were falling from her like maple leaves after the first frost. She closed her eyes tightly. “The hetaeras became well known for—”

  “My God!”

  She was perfect. Small and infinitely delicate with the clean symmetry of a young Venus. High taut breasts crowned with pointed pink nipples flowed down to a flat stomach and an impossibly small waist, then widened to pertly rounded buttocks. His gaze moved down to exquisite thighs that invited the touch and then up again to center on the golden-brown curls that shadowed her womanhood. He felt the breath stop in his lungs and the blood pound painfully through his veins.

  “Am I … completely unclothed?”

  Her eyes were still tightly shut as if her nudity would cease to exist if she could not behold it. He could see the delicate color move beneath the fair skin of her throat and shoulders and, for a moment, he felt a wild surge of tenderness. She was so goddamn vulnerable. Why did the blasted witch have to look vulnerable? She was the epitome of a desirable woman and he was one yearning ache just looking at her; and at the same time her exquisite vulnerability caused him pangs of guilt at the mere thought of touching her. Hell and damnation, he would not let her sway him. She had humiliated and tormented him until he had been driven to this end and he was not going to let her go unscathed. Not that he had any choice, he thought grimly, there was no possible way he could stop himself from taking her now. “You’re as naked as the day you came into this wicked world.”

  She moistened her lips with her tongue and he felt a jolt of pure lust strike his groin. “This isn’t too terrible so far. Does it get worse?”

  Tenderness flooded him again and with it a desperation born of guilt and frustration. “No, it gets better. Much better.” He picked her up and carried her toward the mat across the room. “As I’m about to demonstrate.”

  Flesh against naked flesh. Elspeth could feel the dark curly hair of his chest pressing against the side of her breast, his warm muscular arm across her naked back. Heat again. Why couldn’t she think? She was going to become a hetaera, but would that be such a terrible fate? In ancient times hetaeras had apparently had a greater freedom and independence than their more respectable sisters. There must be some disadvantages, but she was having trouble thinking of them at the moment.

  Still, she must think, for this was a very important step in her life. She was merely caught unprepared because she had never thought she would be placed in this position.

  “Stop shaking,” Dominic ordered as he placed her carefully on the mat and settled himself beside her. “I told you I’d be careful.” If he could, he thought desperately. The soft pressure of her body against his thighs was driving him insane. Her hair was a fragrant mass of honey silk splayed across his arm, and she was trembling like a bird. “I won’t hurt you.” Tenderness again. The thought of hurting her was becoming intolerable. He had to prepare her, ease her into passion. Damn, she was so tiny and he didn’t know how long he could keep himself from mounting her. Just the thought of sinking into her warm satin tightness caused him to flex with mindless hunger. He drew a deep breath. “I’ll pleasure you, Elspeth. Yield to me.” His lips brushed the delicate skin at her temple. “I’ll find a way to ease you through it.”

  Her lids lifted slowly and she looked up at him. “You don’t wish to punish me any longer?”

  His throat tightened. “No, not any longer.”

  His voice was so strange, she thought hazily, but no stranger than his eyes looking down at her or the heat of his skin against her flesh … It was all strange, all foreign. She couldn’t think.

  His hands were golden against her pale skin as they delicately touched her belly.

  She inhaled sharply. Heat, heaviness, dizziness.

  His face above her was taut, the long planes of his cheeks hollow. His dark hair shone with midnight flickers of fire in the lamplight. Beautiful. She hadn’t realized a man could be this beautiful. Michelangelo’s statues were beautiful, of course, but they were cold. Dominic wasn’t cold, he was blazing. She could feel his fire coiling and sparking, wreathing her in flames. Yet he was scarcely touching her, the tips of his fingers brushing her belly with a touch as light as butterfly wings on the petals of a flower.

  Did butterfly wings leave this trail of fire on a blossom’s petals? she wondered hazily. Was this ravishment?

  His fingertips had left her stomach and were moving over her, touching lightly on her breasts, the sensitive skin beneath her collarbone, the hollow of he
r throat. “Elspeth.”

  She tensed. “Yes?”

  His fingers moved to her lips, his index finger tracing the curve of her lower lip. “I don’t want to frighten you. How much do you know about what I’m going to do to you?”

  The hot color stung her cheeks. “I’ve seen … drawings that were made by my father’s students of murals on the walls in Pompeii … women are not permitted to view them … the murals, I mean. And once I saw a statue in a temple in India …”

  Dominic felt an enormous surge of relief. At least she wasn’t completely ignorant.

  “It looks … uncomfortable,” she whispered.

  A faint smile tugged at his lips. “It’s not at all uncomfortable. You’ll see, Elspeth. It feels very right.” His voice was soft, coaxing, as his hand moved down to her belly once more. His fingertips began to stroke the tight golden-brown curls and she felt a sudden hot tingle between her thighs.

  He said it would feel right, but how could that be, when everyone said this was a sin? It had to be wrong, didn’t it? She wished she had been taught more about the consequences of being a woman. Her father had never told her anything except to say it was something a plain body like herself would never have to fret about. The housekeepers who had come and gone through the years in their small home in Edinburgh had been hired to tend to the cooking and the cleaning and discouraged from wasting their time with Elspeth.

  Except Clara. Clara had been younger than the rest and had a small child of her own. She had been kind and even let Elspeth slip out into the garden to play with Bobby when her father had business at the university.

  Bobby.

  Elspeth suddenly stiffened as the memory of that day in the garden came back to her. The other children with their faces pressed against the black iron gate and their harsh cruel words. Bastard, they had called Bobby. Taunting words that had caused helpless agony in a small child.

  “No!” She pushed against Dominic with all her strength and jumped to her feet.

  Elspeth was across the small room before his bemused senses could fully comprehend what she was doing. One moment she had been lying quivering in his arms, letting him fondle her, permitting him to do whatever he wished, and the next she was standing across the room. Her pale, naked body was even more alluring as the candlelight played upon it like a loving, golden hand, her long tawny hair flying about her in a wild shimmering cloud. He frowned. “Come back here, Elspeth.” His voice held a dangerous softness.

  She shook her head. “No, you’re a terrible man. How could you do this?” Her voice was shaking and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Ravishing me is wicked enough, but how could you be so cruel to a bairn?”

  “Bairn?” he asked blankly.

  “If you ravished me, we could have a bairn. Do you deny it?” She plucked her black cloak from the chair and flung it around her shoulders. “I’m not sure I’d mind so much being a hetaera, but what of the bairn? Children can be very cruel to a bairn born on the wrong side of the blanket. They’d taunt him and throw rocks and—” She broke off, the tears suddenly pouring down her cheeks. “You’re a cruel, cruel man and I’ll not be ravished by you.” She whirled and ran toward the door. The next instant the door was thrown open and she was gone.

  6

  A bairn.

  Dominic rose slowly from the mat and reached for his white shirt lying on the table. There was no question in his mind that Scottish witch was driving him to madness. She had accepted her fate with surprising meekness, almost as if she felt she was deserving of punishment. Yet at the thought of possible harm to their child, she had reacted like a wild woman. Their child? Christ, he was already mad. He had hardly touched the woman and already he was imagining his seed filling her womb, their child forming.

  He finished fastening his shirt and unbuttoned his trousers to tuck in the tails. What kind of bastard did she think he was? He had never fathered a child to his knowledge, but he would never abandon a woman who was carrying his baby. He would see that Elspeth was well taken care of and the bairn free from— Dear God, he was doing it again!

  He strode through the doorway, his gaze searching the narrow trail in the direction from which they had come. The moon was almost full and the winding path hanging over the gorge clearly illuminated. No Elspeth.

  Well, she couldn’t have gone far. She had been wearing only the cloak and no shoes on her feet. The trail was full of sharp rocks that would cut her feet to ribbons before she had gone a quarter of a mile. Perhaps he should just wait here for her to return to him in defeat.

  He dismissed the thought immediately. He knew very well how determined Elspeth could be. She had amply demonstrated her strength of will to the entire town of Hell’s Bluff in the last week, and would probably crawl all the way back to town on her hands and knees before she returned to ask him for help. Well, by God, no matter how stubborn she was, he would have her back. The thought of Elspeth on her knees before him, his fingers tangled in her long fair hair, was very pleasurable at this moment, when his body was aching so intensely it was difficult to move.

  He turned on his heel and strode around the cabin to where he had picketed the horses. On horseback he would be able to overtake Elspeth in a few minutes. There was no place to hide even if she left the trail. The rocky sides of the gorge were dangerously steep and bare of vegetation except for a tall saguaro cactus here and there. She would be forced to stay on the trail and should be easy to spot.

  A pale gleam of slender limbs beneath the voluminous blackness of a cloak. A broken doll thrown into the rockstrewn darkness below him.

  “Jesus … no!”

  He wasn’t even aware he had muttered the words as he ran toward the steep, sloping verge of the gorge. He half-ran, half-slipped down the fifty-odd feet to the shallow, trickling stream at the bottom of the gorge.

  Elspeth was ominously still, her head half in the water and half on the uneven stones that banked the stream. She didn’t stir as he carefully turned her over. In the moonlight her skin shimmered as whitely as the tombstones in the family graveyard at Killara. He shuddered as the thought came to him. She couldn’t be dead. Only a few moments before she had been alive and trembling in his arms. Dammit, he wouldn’t let her die.

  He thrust aside the cloak and pressed his ear to her naked breast. He couldn’t tell if it was her heart or his own that was throbbing so erratically. His hands ran quickly over her limbs. Nothing seemed to be broken, yet how the hell did he know? She needed a doctor, but it was too far to take her back to Hell’s Bluff until he knew she could stand the trip. He didn’t even know if he should move her, but he couldn’t leave her lying here in this damn creek.

  “Snakes …” Her voice was almost inaudible, but it caused relief to cascade over him with a force that made him light-headed. She was alive.

  He gently brushed the hair back from her temple and came away with blood on his fingertips. Her scalp was bleeding steadily, the blood darkening the fairness of her hair. He made an effort to mask the sickness he felt, but it wasn’t necessary. Her eyes were still closed, her long lashes lying like sooty smudges on her pale cheeks.

  An anxious frown formed a wrinkle between her brows. “Snakes,” she whispered. “Don’t let them—”

  He closed his eyes. Snakes. He had deliberately held them up to her as a threat and now, when she was lying here helpless and unable to defend herself, the memory was coming back to torment her. “Don’t worry. I won’t let them near you,” he said thickly. He opened eyes that glittered in the moonlight. “I won’t let anything hurt you. Trust me.”

  She didn’t seem to hear him. “S-snake.” Her voice rose with panic and terror. “Sna—” She broke off as her body went limp against him.

  The door of the cabin was thrown open with an explosiveness that sent it crashing against the cabin wall!

  Patrick stood in the doorway. “Dom, you’re a goddamn son of a bitch. Why the hell did you think you could—” He broke off as his gaze fell on Elspeth’s slig
ht body lying motionless on the mat on the floor. “My God, what did you do to her?”

  “What does it look like?” Dominic’s fingers adjusted the white linen bandage around Elspeth’s head, and then pulled the tan blanket closer about her throat. He didn’t bother to turn around from where he was kneeling by the mat. “I’ve damned near killed her.” He rose to his feet and stood looking down at Elspeth. “She may still die. I’ve done everything I can but it’s been two days and she’s not much better.”

  “You did this?” Patrick moved slowly across the room to stand beside him and look down at Elspeth. He inhaled sharply as he saw the livid bruises marking Elspeth’s pale cheeks and throat and the bloodstained bandage on her head. She looked like a small, helpless child who had been mercilessly beaten. Sudden rage flared in his brown eyes as he turned to look at Dominic. “I hope to hell you’re proud of yourself. You had to be crazy to do this.”

  “Yes.” Dominic wearily rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess I was crazy. It’s hard to remember. Let’s go outside. I’ve just managed to get her back to sleep, and I don’t want to disturb her. She has … dreams.”

  “How considerate of you.” Patrick’s voice was caustic as he whirled and strode across the room. “You brutalize her, almost killing her, and then you worry about disturbing her.” He didn’t stop walking until he was several yards away from the cabin. It felt good to take action, any action, and the morning sunlight was strong and clean after the sick horror he had experienced in the cabin. Poor little owl. God, he had never been able to bear cruelty to the helpless and he would have sworn Dominic would never have … He whirled to face his uncle, his eyes blazing. “Was it fun? She’s so damn little.” He drew a harsh breath. “Why? For God’s sake, why, Dom? I know she must have made you mad as hell. They told me in town what she did to you after I left for Killara, but did she deserve this?”