"What—what are you doing?" she gasped out.
"The better question is, what are you allowing me to do?"
"I... I don't know."
"But of course you do. Think, Lori. Think."
She struggled for coherence. "Whatever you want," she managed to say. "I'm letting you do whatever you want."
"Exactly. But why? Tell me why," he demanded.
"Be-because..." Why had she let him do what he'd done? And with her eager assistance, no less. It was crazy, made no sense. But then came a flash of insight and it made all the sense in the world. She had the answer and she knew it was the answer he wanted. Swallowing hard, she whispered, "because I trust you."
"Very good." The approving nod of his head made her realize she had just been taught a lesson by a master logician whose methods had left an indelible impression. In her head, in her heart. And it sure as heck didn't end there.
"Okay, Noble, you made your point," she conceded, past ready to pick up where they'd left off.
"Then you realize what I need from you, what you need from me, can't possibly be relegated to a bed?"
"Yes!" She threw up her hands in exasperation and her grinding frustration rose to a dangerous level when he softly chuckled.
"In that case..." Noble kissed her soundly then swept her into his arms and took the stairs, two at a time. "Off to bed with us."
Chapter 13
The scent of vanilla snaked through the air, rising from a dozen flickering candles. They lent his quarters, the bedroom of his request, a soft illumination, a perfect complement to the vision Noble beheld. He thought Lori ravishing as she undressed, quaintly shy, unquestionably eager, ravishing in her proud nakedness as she slipped into an exotic gossamer gown.
She was soft and lovely, such a stark contrast to the hard jolt seizing his groin. But even harder was the fisting in his gut now that the moment of his own body's display was at hand. Perhaps the candles would make the sight less jarring, he told himself, knowing full well it wouldn't.
"Do you like the gown?" she asked, the transparent silk floating around her like a whisper as she came to him, laid her palms on his chest.
"It's divine, love," he assured her, winning a pretty blush as he traced the lacy bodice. "Almost as divine as you." His heart quickened from her nearness, but then Lori began releasing the buttons of his shirt and it beat faster, thudded with dread as his shirt fell to the floor.
She pressed her cheek against his heart.
"I love your chest, Noble. But not just because it's beautiful to look at. I feel your strength there. And it makes me feel strong, too—almost as if you're sharing some mysterious power with me."
"You are strong, Lori. Stronger than almost anyone I've ever known. Perhaps what you feel is your strength meeting mine. Meet it now so I might borrow some of yours?" Steeling himself, he explained, "I have something to show you which I've taken care to keep from your sight. It is not pretty to look at, I must warn you."
"What is it, Noble?" She searched his gaze, concern brimming in her eyes.
Noble took a steadying breath, then forced himself to turn.
"My God," she gasped. He could feel the fine shake of her fingertips as she traced the shape of the letter J branded between his shoulder blades. "Who did this to you?"
"A few bloody bastards who gave me a permanent reminder that I was not welcome in Juneau. They were the same men who killed my parents and stole our land. When I returned to demand a rightful legal justice, this was the justice I got."
"But didn't the sheriff do something? Arrest them or—"
"No, Lori," He laughed darkly. "The lawman stood by and watched as they did it."
"How could he do such a thing? I—I mean, it was his job to protect you, not let some horrible men commit such a brutal crime."
"Those horrible men fairly owned the city. While I spent my years in England, they filled the bank with my family's gold and claimed a wealth of power. It was a minor thing, really, to have a lawman in their pockets."
"I've never heard of anything so... so obscene." She laid her palm over the brand and he silently gave thanks she hadn't recoiled, had spared him her pity. "If something like this happened today, those men would be put behind bars and that sorry excuse for a sheriff would lose his badge and probably do some time himself." Voice seething, she said, "I can't even imagine living in a society as twisted as that."
Noble was certain what she said was true. And because she couldn't imagine it, neither could he expect her to imagine the thrilling satisfaction he had taken in committing murder. The twisted society had twisted him, this he could not deny. Perhaps it was why he felt no remorse or shame for his own monstrous deeds, only a gut-deep fear of Lori's rejection once he confessed them. Oh, but how he did loathe his lie of omission. It was between them, separating them. But it was Lori's modern sense of justice keeping him silent.
"There is much about your society which is twisted as well," he pointed out. "You lost your husband to a robber with a gun. A tragic crime. Yet, from what I have read in your papers, there is no end to the brutalities against innocent people. Is it any wonder some take the law into their own hands when your current legal system fails them?"
"Two wrongs don't make a right, Noble. As much as I'd like to kill the bastard who shot Mick, as many times as I've dreamed of doing it, I couldn't and still live with myself."
Carefully, he tested the boundaries between them. "But if you had killed him in retaliation for your loss, I would form no ill judgment of you. Indeed, Lori, I would understand and feel no less for you than I presently do."
He endured her hesitation. "I wish I could say the same, Noble, but that's your time talking, not mine," she replied. She kissed his back and he felt branded all over again, marked by the sweetness of her lips. "Let's just be thankful we survived," she whispered. "There's a special closeness between us, and strange as it is, I think we owe part of it to having gone through a lot of hell to touch a piece of heaven together."
Shutting away the past, Noble faced the woman he could lose with a single, shattering revelation.
"Yes," he agreed, "to look at you, to touch you, is to know that I have been blessed. It's as if I fell asleep in hell and woke up in the arms of an angel. That's what I thought when I first saw you, the light glowing like a halo around your golden hair."
She laughed softly. "And your second thought was that I was a harlot." Her eyes holding his, she unfastened his belt. "Maybe I was in a past lifetime. All I know is you sure have a way of bringing out the harlot in me."
Lord, but he did love her. Noble gripped Lori to himself, embraced both angel and seductress. With her smiles and tart tongue and bungling attempts at seduction, she had aroused his body beyond measure, laid open his most hidden emotions, which he had learned to hide ever so well.
"Be my harlot," he said into her ear. Be my wife, he beseeched her in silence.
"What do you want?" she asked, sliding down the zipper, pulling down his pants, taking them off, kneeling at his feet.
"I wish for a most intimate kiss, my saucy wench. But first, what shall it cost me?"
"More than a pinch of gold." Looking up at him with a simmering, liquid gaze, she named her price. "One good kiss deserves another. However, I do expect a little accumulated interest when you pay up."
The sound of her sultry laughter filled his ears while he felt his most vulnerable flesh embraced by her mouth. Vulnerable. Never in his life had he felt so vulnerable. Nor to anyone or anything. Not even when his face had been shoved to the ground, his shirt ripped open by a knife, and a branding iron put to his back while scream after scream ripped from his throat. Despite it all, he had not been abased, his pride had not been conquered.
And yet here Lori was, conquering his body, his very soul, until he begged her to cease and desist. With no pride at all, he demanded an equal justice.
He paid the price she had named—with an exorbitant amount of interest.
"Enough," sh
e screamed. "Enough!" She dragged him up by his hair and covered his face with kisses.
The need, the absolute need to take her, immediately and with a savage passion, was blinding, and how close he came to taking her on the floor. But then he remembered her wish for protection, the small box she had laid on the nightstand. He carried her to the bed and hastily shook open the box of sheaths. Enough to last them a few days, he supposed. Nonetheless, he'd go to the store after he visited the law library.
"Will you put it on me?" She slid the sheath on him and, once done, kissed the shield. The sight was enormously arousing, but he cared not a whit for the barrier between him and her lips.
"I like doing this," she said with a throaty sigh. "If it's all the same to you, I'll do it for as long as we're together."
"That will be a very long time, if the gods are as gracious as they've been thus far."
Lori pulled him on top of her. "Be gracious, Noble. Be where I want you now. All of you inside me. And whatever you do, please don't be polite about it."
Despite her demand, he was respectful of her body's resistance, testimony to her celibate years. He descended, ever so slowly giving her his flesh and blood now as he kissed her with a possessive hunger.
She whimpered his name, and he fought the urge to plunge. For if he did, it would be over too soon, and this night he would give her release upon release, seal their intimate bond, and mark her as his.
The condom helped rein in the demand of his instincts to thrust until they were bathed in sweat and collapsed on lust-drenched sheets. The vision proved too tempting and Noble tried to block it from his mind. This was what he'd been waiting his whole life for, what he felt with Lori now. And what a gift it was, to have been inside many a woman's body and yet, with this slow slide into Lori's, to feel like a virgin again. A rare and wondrous thing, he savored his painful restraint and knew what he had now was what his parents had had.
Good, life had been so good. And then... as always he tried to shut out the massacre, the other painful, horrible memories. In reflex Noble pulled up and aggressively surged down, damning himself at Lori's sharp cry. But then she cried out again, arched her hips, and sank her nails into his back, and he heard her sob in ecstasy, not pain.
She bit into his shoulder and it snapped the leash of his control.
He had no control. None whatsoever over the flood of his emotions or the ravaging pump of his hips. From a distance he heard himself call to Lori, entreat her to take his poison, his love, the fury of his passion.
She took them all. It was ease he sought and ease she gave as they writhed amid tangled sheets and sweat-slick limbs.
Suddenly his coming was upon him. With a last, primal lunge, Noble stared down at Lori, who opened her eyes to him. Her gaze was wild and feverish, as was his own, and she chanted his name like a prayer while, in silence, he pulsed within her intimate embrace and touched the threshold of...
Home.
He was home as never before, and yet, as they rocked together in the aftermath, Lori crying while he sipped at her tears, Noble was shaken.
"Are you all right?" he asked with concern, not sure if he was all right himself.
"I—I feel like I'm in a thousand pieces, and if I let go of you, I'll fall apart."
"Yes," he whispered. "Yes, I feel that way exactly. I've... Lori, please forgive me for behaving as I did. Not even with a harlot have I ever been so rough, so stripped of self-control. And you, you are a lady deserving of gentleness, your body honored with care."
The gaze she turned on him was soft as her fingertips traced the scratches her nails had scored on his back.
"My body has never been more honored, Noble. I can only hope you feel the same way. Never, never have I clawed my way down a man's back." She kissed his shoulder, the place which slightly stung and bore the imprint of her teeth. "I can't believe I did this." She kissed another mark on his chest. "Or this."
"But you did and I loved it. And now, knowing only I have ever driven you to do such a thing, I love it all the more." They shared a small, pulsing silence. "It would seem, Lori," he said slowly, "that we have discovered something remarkable with each other that we didn't expect. How lucky we are to be graced with such a startling surprise. And how wrong we would be to disgrace it with our apologies. Apologies imply shame and there should be no shame between us for what we have been blessed to share."
Lori nodded. And then she said, hopefully, "Is it really true that you treated me worse—or make that, better—than you ever did one of your harlots or courtesans?"
"Absolutely," he answered without pause. "Though I gained a reputation as a skilled lover, I apparently presented a bit of a challenge. Or so I was told on a few occasions. It seems I was perceived as rather remote and much too courteous."
"Why? After all, you were paying them to have it however you wanted and I'm sure they would have been glad to oblige."
"Quite true. But I wanted it with the safety of distance. There's the difference, love. I want no distance from you." He felt her hand wrap around his base, felt himself responding with remarkable speed.
"Mmmm. I never was one to back down from a challenge. Let's see if I can make you even less courteous than you've already been."
"Lori," he warned, "much as our first time means to me, I fear to subject you to a second until I fully collect myself." And he did. She had stripped away the defenses that protected him, and what was in him was so dark, so deep, that once it was fully unearthed...
God help them both.
"Do me a favor, Noble?"
"I could deny you nothing." A vow, it was true.
"Don't collect yourself. I want you rough and I want you sweet. Every way you can be, I want you."
Chapter 14
"Want another strawberry, Ryan?" Lori tapped one into a heap of sugar and popped it into her mouth. Maybe if she kept herself chewing, she'd quit trying to fill in the awkward silences.
"No thanks. By the way, quite a layout here. You really outdid yourself, Lori."
"Noble put it all together," she said too effusively. "Hey, if you think this is great, just wait till you take a bite of his bread." She felt Noble squeeze her knee, a secret gesture to acknowledge the secret seduction they'd shared. But he kept his gaze trained on Ryan, she noticed uneasily, just as Ryan kept his on Noble.
"Lori, love," Noble said, emphasizing the endearment, "would you mind fetching the cognac? I'd like to indulge in a finer spirit than tea over strawberries and lox. Perhaps you and your, ah, friend here, will join me."
"Fine by me," Ryan agreed, unsmiling.
"Cognac for three coming right up." Lori was almost relieved to leave the room, though she worried about leaving Ryan and Noble alone.
"Okay, she's gone." Ryan shoved aside his untasted tea.
"But not for long, so let's have at it, shall we?"
"Lori's got it bad for you, and that's got me worried."
"As well it should." Noble felt a grudging respect for the man who had minced no words with his rival. "She's obviously very fond of you, which disturbs me as well. Clearly, both of us care deeply for the woman."
"You bet I care. Did she tell you how her husband died?"
"She did. An abysmal, nightmarish thing."
"A nightmare is right. I was with her when Mick was brought in. I was there for the funeral, too, and I've been there for her ever since. I love Lori. I've loved her for years. And I'll be damned before I ever watch her go through hell again."
"Your devotion is admirable. However, you have no further need to 'be there for her.'"
"Because you're here, right?"
"But of course."
Ryan glanced toward the door. "You're sleeping with her, aren't you?" he said in an accusing whisper. "Gotta hand it to you, man, you didn't waste any time. She's been wobbling into work with a glow on her face a blind man couldn't miss in the dark."
Noble came over the table and seized Ryan by his shirt. "No gentleman would ever divulge such
matters. And no gentleman would presume to ask such a thing. You, sir, have overstepped your bounds. Do so again and I'll call you out. Lori is my woman now and I will not relinquish her to you or anyone else. Just as I will not tolerate even a hint of disrespect shown toward her, not by word or deed. If you should ever touch her in an unseemly manner, I will break the hand you put on her. Heed my warning and heed it well."
He released Ryan with a jerk and prepared for an attack. With surprise, Noble watched the other man settle back in his chair, the hint of a smile twitching his lips. "So, you'll break my hand if I make a pass at her, huh?"
"Are you so foolish as to take my vow lightly? Lori does care for you, though not the way you apparently care for her. For Lori's sake, please spare me the need to send you to the hospital for reasons other than work."
Ryan reached toward his hip and Noble automatically reached for his. Just as he cursed his missing gun, Ryan laid a lighter and a small pack of cigars on the table.
"Lori said if I wanted to impress you, I should come bearing gifts. I waited for you to impress me first." He took out two cigars and extended one. "I'm impressed."
After a small hesitation, Noble took it. "I do not understand. Explain, please."
"It's like this, Noble. I won't give you any cause to break my bones if you don't give me any to break your neck. If you hurt Lori, I will. As long as you're good to her, we'll get along just fine."
"You mean... you do not want her for yourself?"
"Hell, no! That'd be like marrying my sister." With a hearty burst of laughter, Ryan offered his hand.
Noble gripped it, then flicked the lighter and put the flame to the tip of Ryan's cigar before lighting his own.
Feeling quite pleased with the outcome of their confrontation, Noble blew a smoke ring. Ryan coughed and sputtered then managed to wheeze out, "So, want to join me and the boys for a few rounds of poker? We've got a game lined up for a week from tonight."
Mallory Rush - [Outlawsand Heroes 02] Page 12
