She opened her mouth to speak again, only to gasp as he jerked her against his unyielding body in a casual display of power that forced her to fight for breath.
“Don’t say a word,” Linc said.
He looked down at Holly with eyes that were dark with memories, glittering with reflected light and anger.
“If I hear one more lie out of those pretty lips—” he said.
Abruptly, he said no more.
His arm kept tightening, squeezing the breath out of her. The hand holding hers tightened mercilessly.
Tears magnified Holly’s golden eyes. She turned pale, but made no sound. She didn’t want to ruin Beth’s victory by making a scene. Nor would she lower herself to the level of Linc’s memories of his stepmother.
Teeth clenched, Holly waited until she could talk to him alone and tell him what a stupid, stubborn son of a bitch he was.
He saw the change in her eyes and felt the stiffness in the body that had always yielded so deliciously to his. He realized that he was holding her hard, much too hard.
What am I so angry about? he asked himself silently, sardonically. For days I’ve been worried about frightening a virgin with my hunger.
No worries now.
Abruptly, he loosened his hold.
Holly took a deep breath and cautiously moved her head, trying to ease the unnatural angle of her neck.
His arm shifted, freeing her hair.
Then his hand slid underneath her hair, caressing the bare skin of her back. Hidden by the long, silky fall of her hair, his fingers probed beneath the open waist of her dress until he could feel the taut curves of her buttocks.
With a throttled sound Linc forced Holly’s hips against his. The message of his desire was unmistakable through the thin silk of her dress, yet his face showed nothing but contempt.
She struggled to put some distance between them. She succeeded only in rubbing over him in a way that both aroused and embarrassed her.
“No, Linc. Please,” she said, pushing futilely against his strength.
“You danced with every other man,” he said, his fingers probing intimately beneath her dress. “Why not me?”
“I didn’t dance like this!”
Air rushed out of her as she was once again yanked against his body.
“I said no more lies, Shannon.”
“I’m not—”
“A liar?” he interrupted coldly. “The hell you aren’t. All beautiful women are faithless liars.”
Anger coursed through Holly like lightning.
“It’s your party, Linc,” she said in a cold voice. “If you want a floor show, I’ll give you one.”
“Yeah, I bet you do a sensational striptease.”
“You lose,” she snarled. “A down-and-out brawl was more what I had in mind, and to hell with spoiling Beth’s victory and not bringing back bad memories of your stepmother.”
Holly’s voice was loud enough that several other couples looked at them curiously.
He smiled blandly at her, but suddenly she was off her feet again.
She didn’t bother flailing about or telling Linc he was holding her too hard.
He knew precisely what he was doing.
Deliberately her left hand moved from his shoulder to the place where his head had struck a boulder two days ago. Her nails scraped lightly over the bruised, still tender skin.
Though she did nothing more, the threat was clear.
His eyes widened in surprise. For a moment he studied her determined expression. He returned her feet to the floor and loosened his hold on her a bit.
“Who taught you to fight dirty?” he asked mildly.
“You. Just now.”
Oddly, he smiled.
“There are other ways,” he said.
Holly wondered what Linc meant, but decided that asking would be inviting an argument. She knew one was coming, but she wanted privacy for it.
Linc loosed his hold on her even more, giving her freedom to dance with him. At first she moved stiffly, too angry and wary to allow herself to blend with him.
He gathered Holly’s body against his with a slow, sensual care that mocked her anger.
“You know,” he breathed against her hair, “I can’t decide which is most silky—your dress, your hair, or your skin.”
His fingertips traced her spine with delicate care, sending showers of sensation through her.
Linc felt Holly shiver and laughed softly. He brought his left hand in close, so that her right hand pressed against his chest.
The back of his hand brushed lightly over her breast each time she breathed.
“Not all of you is silky,” he murmured. “Some of you gets delightfully hard.”
Holly’s breath caught as Linc’s knuckle gently circled the tip of her breast. Strands of pleasure spread through her, bringing a subtle tension to her whole body.
It was no longer his hand at her waist that was holding her close to him, but rather her own desire to feel his warmth radiating through the thin silk of her dress.
Linc let go of her fingers and filled his palm with the sweet weight of her breast.
Holly knew she should protest, but could only gasp with surprise and pleasure. She shook her hair until it fell like a dark curtain around her, concealing his hand beneath.
Her soft hair was like a brand against his skin. He groaned, a bare thread of sound against her ear. His fingernails rasped lightly over silk, then closed around her nipple.
“Linc . . .” Holly said in soft protest.
“Shhh. No one can see.”
Linc’s hand moved toward the warm gold links that filled the diamond between her breasts. His fingers eased through the chains, seeking her naked warmth.
“I’ve wanted to do this since I walked in and saw you,” he said huskily.
For an instant Holly was shocked into stillness. She could hardly believe that she was in a roomful of people with his fingers stroking her naked breasts.
Whatever protest she might have made was lost in a sunburst of sensations that radiated from the pit of her stomach throughout her body.
Her back arched against his touch in a reflex as old as passion. She felt the tremor that went through his body, the sudden tension in his muscles that she had learned came from heightened desire.
“I want to taste you,” Linc said, holding Holly tightly, his voice thick. “I want to slide over you like that damned witch’s dress and then I want to—”
Abruptly he withdrew his fingers, stopped dancing, and led her toward the nearest exit.
“What about your guests?” she asked.
“I said my goodbyes before midnight.”
“Beth—” Holly began.
“Beth left with her girlfriend an hour ago. She won’t be back until tomorrow. Late.”
Holly made no further protests. Her body was still shimmering with the hunger Linc aroused in her.
The night was thick with clouds. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Raindrops from a recent shower reflected the walkway lights like crystal tears.
When Holly stopped to gather the hem of her dress out of the reach of puddles, Linc lifted her into his arms with barely controlled impatience. He walked with long strides toward the house.
A fold of silk escaped her fingers and fell perilously close to the wet path. She tried to gather the cloth up again, but she was being held so tightly that she couldn’t move.
“Linc—” she began.
“No more excuses,” he interrupted in a harsh voice. “Beth is gone, the guests know their way home, and I’m not going to wait any longer.”
Startled by the strain in Linc’s voice, she looked his face. Outlined in shadows and white light, it was the face of a stranger who knew neither kindness nor love.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said impatiently. “We both know the score. Your game of tease and retreat is over, Shannon. Now it’s my turn.”
Seventeen
Before Linc set Holly on her feet
, he shut the door to the master bedroom and shot the bolt. Impatiently he pulled off his tie, tossed it over a chair and unbuttoned his shirt. He pulled a foil packet out of his pants pocket, unzipped his pants, and kicked them aside.
Holly watched with a combination of hunger and confusion.
“What are you waiting for?” Linc asked. “Take off your clothes.”
His hands went to the waistband of his underwear. He peeled off his briefs, tossed them aside, and ripped open the foil packet.
Quickly she turned her back. She had seen him without clothes in the camp tent, but that had been different, intimate and warm and exciting.
This was like watching a stranger undress.
Suddenly she felt Linc behind her. His naked strength pressed against her while his fingers closed possessively over the taut curves of her hips.
“Hurry up,” he said in a husky voice, “or I’ll take you right here, right now. Or is that how you like it?”
Her hands trembled toward the zipper hidden beneath a fold of silk at the back of the dress. Accidentally her fingers touched his rigid, aroused flesh.
She jerked back as though burned.
Linc’s breath hissed out. He wanted nothing more than to wrap Holly’s fingers around him in a lover’s caress.
But she was acting like she had never seen a naked man before, much less touched one.
“Knock it off, Shannon,” he said impatiently. “You’re no more a shivering virgin than I am.”
She spun and faced him.
“I didn’t lie to you,” she said. Her voice shook with intensity. “I’ve never made love with anyone but you.”
“Uh-huh,” he said.
His tone said just the opposite.
Linc’s hand found the zipper on Holly’s dress and yanked it down. Black silk slid to the floor.
She wore nothing beneath but black lace bikinis.
What control Linc had burned up with the desire that had been devouring him.
Effortlessly he lifted her. His impatient fingers pulled off the band of black lace briefs. His mouth descended, forcing her lips apart. His hands clamped over her hips, lifting her against him with the same careless strength he had used earlier on the dance floor.
The intimate contact surprised Holly. She didn’t know how to respond or what he expected from her.
The arousal she had felt earlier gave way to confusion.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked uncertainly.
Linc made a disgusted sound.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know!”
“Crap.”
With that, he carried her across the room and dumped her on the bed. Before she could say a word, she was pinned beneath his weight.
“Linc—” she began.
His mouth closed over hers, shutting off any questions, any protests, anything at all. His hands raked over every bit of her body, demanding a response that she was too inexperienced to give. His weight and intensity overwhelmed her.
After a few minutes Holly didn’t move.
He swore and braced himself on his elbows, looking down at her with eyes that had no color, simply darkness.
“It’s better if you cooperate,” he said.
“I don’t know what you want,” she said desperately.
“The hell you don’t, Shannon. I want exactly what you promised when you held your arms out to me in Palm Springs and begged me to do this.”
His hips drove against Holly. There was an instant of tearing pain that made her cry out.
A stunned look came over Linc’s face. For a long moment he simply stared down at her white face.
With an agonized sound, he withdrew and rolled off her.
“My God, Holly,” he said raggedly. “I’m sorry. I thought you were—”
His voice broke. With a choked sound he tried to gather her into his arms.
“No,” she said wildly.
Holly jerked over onto her side, her back to Linc. Shivering, she huddled around herself like a child.
He lay without touching her, fighting to control the emotions raging through him.
He had been so sure she wasn’t a virgin.
And so wrong.
The realization almost destroyed him.
“Holly,” he whispered. “I . . .”
When his hand smoothed her hair away from her face, she flinched and retreated.
Very gently he rolled her rigid body over until she faced him once more.
“Holly,” he began.
“If you’re finished,” she interrupted in a clear, childlike voice, “I’d like to take a bath.”
Linc would have preferred sarcasm or screams or tears to Holly’s simple statement of fact.
He had made her feel unclean.
“Holly . . . don’t.”
His voice was as ragged as hers had been clear. His hands trembled as he tried to comfort her.
With an inarticulate cry, she shoved him away and ran for the bedroom door. She was too upset to realize that it was still bolted shut. She tugged on the knob with both hands like a child.
Then Holly saw the bolt.
She clawed at it, breaking her nails in her haste as she finally unlocked the door.
Linc’s hand shot past her shoulder, slamming the door shut again before she could get out. His other hand flattened against the wall, holding Holly captive between his arms without actually touching her.
His broken breathing stirred her hair like a caress.
She shuddered.
“No more,” she said in a raw voice. “I should have told you I was Shannon and you should have believed I was a virgin. But I didn’t and you didn’t. We’re even. Now let me go.”
He made a hoarse sound of anguish. His hand shook as he stroked the midnight fall of her hair.
“Holly—”
“My name is Shannon,” she interrupted savagely.
Linc made a noise not unlike Holly’s as she had clawed at the bolt, but he didn’t let her open the door.
For long moments there was no sound but his broken breathing. When he finally spoke, his voice was so changed it made tears burn behind Holly’s eyelids.
“I can’t let you go,” Linc said raggedly. “You’d never come back.”
Holly shuddered again.
“I can’t live with that,” he said, “with what I did to you, hurting you because I didn’t believe you and I’d wanted you for so long. Too long. Too much. I’m so sorry I hurt you. So damned sorry . . .”
He made a choked sound and fought to control his emotions. He wasn’t wholly successful.
The feel of a single tear dropping onto her shoulder shocked Holly all the way to her soul.
Slowly she slumped against the bedroom door as though she wished she could sink into its wooden pores and vanish.
“I was told my first time would hurt,” she said dully.
“Not as much. Not if I had taken more time to arouse you.”
Holly felt the hard, cool wood of the door on her forehead. Only the raggedness of Linc’s voice gave her the courage to keep on talking.
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” she said.
“Like hell it wouldn’t.”
“Forget it,” she said dully. “It’s not all your fault. I’ve been told time and again that I’m frigid. I finally believe it.”
“Frigid?”
At first Linc thought Holly was joking.
The defeated line of her body told him she wasn’t. He would have laughed if he could, but he was too shocked.
“Holly, you are the most wonderfully sensual woman I’ve ever known,” he said finally.
“Uh-huh.”
Her cynical tone was an exact echo of his earlier response when she had told him she was a virgin.
“It’s true,” Linc said. “I had a hard enough time believing you were a virgin when you were Holly. When you were Shannon . . . my God . . .” He took a swift, broken breath. “Impossible.”
/> “Why do you think I was a virgin whether Holly or Shannon?” she asked bitterly. “I didn’t want men.”
“You wanted me.”
“Not enough.”
“Not tonight. I didn’t give you a chance.”
He lifted her like a child in his arms, ignoring her protest and the stiffness of her body.
“Please, Linc,” she said hoarsely. “Please, stop. I can’t take any more.”
He brushed the top of her head with his lips.
“I won’t hurt you,” he promised. “It will never be like that again.”
“It will never be, period. Don’t you understand? I’m frigid!”
Holly couldn’t see Linc’s smile.
“Put me down,” she said.
“Not yet. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to. I promise. Trust me, Holly.”
“I did, once . . .”
Her whisper was more for herself than for him, but he heard.
He froze, finishing the rest of her sentence in his mind even though she said nothing at all.
She trusted me once and then I violated that trust.
Linc took a deep, broken breath.
“I trusted someone called Holly,” he said when his voice steadied. “I want to trust her again. It’s so easy to trust the first time, but the second . . . ?”
She went still as she understood what he was asking from her now.
Not sex.
Trust.
Again.
Just as she wanted him to trust her.
Again.
Motionless, Linc waited for the longest moments of his life, straining to hear Holly’s answer.
It didn’t come in words. Slowly she became less stiff in his arms. She didn’t rest her cheek on his chest, but neither did she show him only the back of her head.
Letting out a long breath of relief, he carried her past the bed and into the bathroom.
The Jacuzzi steamed quietly, surrounded by lush ferns and wooden containers thick with exotic flowers. Lights hidden amid the greenery glowed like fallen stars.
Slowly Linc set Holly on her feet, supporting her until her legs stopped trembling. Then he opened counter drawers until he found a hairbrush.
Gently he brushed her hair until there were no more tangles in the shining mass. With deft motions, he gathered the strands into a single long braid.
Desert Rain with Bonus Material Page 16
