Tonight she was in his home, and the trap had closed shut around her. Tonight Jase was going to take by storm the feminine prey he had lured into reach. Amy had known, deep in the core of her body, what his intentions were the moment she heard his voice behind her on the veranda. She couldn’t run then and she couldn’t raise her defenses now.
“Amy... !” Jase broke the contact for a split second to groan her name against her mouth, and then he was pressing her back against the rail, letting his body lean heavily into hers while he forced her lips apart with his own.
Amy gasped as he invaded her mouth, her senses reeling. She was dimly aware of the hard line of the rail against the small of her back. The weight of his aroused body took away her breath and at the same time fed her passion.
As his tongue surged between her teeth, seeking the moist warmth beyond, Jase slid his left foot between her legs, prying them apart just as his mouth had pried apart her lips. The champagne-colored silk of the French nightgown was whipped lightly around his khaki trousers by the midnight breeze.
“Jase, oh, Jase, please,” Amy breathed achingly. “I don’t... this isn’t... oh, Jase!”
He caught her face between his rough, urgent palms, holding her still as he rained a scorching line of kisses across her cheek and down her throat. “Hush, sweetheart. It’s too late. It was probably too late the minute you walked into The Serpent.”
She sensed the unyielding truth of his words, her body shivering with reaction. Somehow it was all too overwhelming, too vast, too ordained, to even think of resisting. Amy was being swept up into the vortex of passion Jase was unleashing, and she couldn’t get her bearings long enough to find reality.
The large, strong hands cradling her face moved lower, slipping down to trace the curve of her shoulder. Jase was trembling with the hot rush of desire pouring through his body. She could feel the unmistakable need in him, and a very primitive part of her thrilled to it.
“Put your arms around me,” he grated against the vulnerable point just below her ear. “Hold me, for God’s sake, Amy. I need you tonight!”
With an incredulous sigh of surrender, Amy reacted to the husky command. Her fingertips, which had been splayed half protestingly against his chest, lifted to curl into the thickness of his mahogany hair. How could she deny this man? He drew a fierce, totally feminine response from her that brooked no rational attempt at explanation. In that moment Amy found she couldn’t even think coherently. All she wanted to do was obey the passionate, timeless call of the senses. She wanted to give herself completely to Jase Lassiter.
Jase felt the totality of her surrender in every fiber of his being. He wanted to shout his savage exultation, and it carne out as a hoarse groan. “Amy, Amy, I want you so.” He slid his hands down to cover her breasts, enthralled with the silky feel of the fabric beneath his fingers. Through it he felt the budding thrust of her nipples, and the heady pleasure waving through him rose to an even higher level. She wanted him.
He tugged at the bodice of the beautiful nightgown, and she lowered her arms so that he could pull the shoulder straps down. Jase raised his head, gazing down into her face as he lowered the elegant gown to her waist. Amy’s head was thrown back, her eyes closed in dreamy supplication. She was caught up in the magic of the moment as thoroughly as he was.
He had brought her to this point, Jase Mold himself, glorying in the knowledge. She hadn’t wanted this, hadn’t wanted to give herself to him, but he had managed to find the primitive core of her and now she would be his.
Jase pulled her against his shoulder as he touched the small, full curve of her breast with trembling fingers.
“Oh, Jase, Jase, I’m aching,” she whispered at his throat.
“Not any more than I am,” he vowed hoarsely. “God, you feel so good. Take off my shirt for me, sweetheart. I want to feel you against me!”
Shakily Amy’s fingers dropped to the buttons of his khaki shirt. Jase uttered a deep, husky laugh as he felt the uncoordinated movements of her hand. She was unable now to stand alone, he realized, thoroughly aroused by her helplessness. She needed to lean on him She needed him to hold her.
“Easy, honey,” he crooned as she fumbled in obvious frustration with his clothing.”I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of everything.”
He shrugged out of the shirt, ripping the last button off as he did so, and dropped it heedlessly to the veranda floor. Then he brought her toward him with a slow, savoring movement. Amy opened her eyes as her hardened nipples brushed the crisp hair of his chest, and Jase looked down into the endless depths of the gray-green pools.
“Like the sea in a storm,” he muttered. “A man could drown and not even care.”
Then her softness was crushed against the wall of his chest, and Jase thought he would lose what control he had left. The deepening level of her surrender was far more intoxicating than the finest rum. It sent him to a high he had never known, made him feel both aggressively dominant and exquisitely tender. The urge to possess a woman had never been stronger, never more consuming.
“I have to have you, Amy.” For some reason he wanted to explain the level of his own passion to her. “My blood is burning for you tonight. I would go out of my mind if I didn’t take you tonight.”
He barely heard her reply. “Yes, Jase. I know. I know.”
Unable to wait any longer, he swung her up into his arms. The champagne gown flowed down, over his arms. From the waist up she was naked, and in the shadows she looked and felt like a captive Sabine.
“And, God help me, I feel like a conqueror,” he muttered thickly, carrying her through the open windows of his bedroom. Carefully he lowered her onto the turned-back bed. Amy lay looking up at him through her lashes, her lips moist and slightly parted, her breasts inviting. He read the desire in her face and shook his head once in amazed disbelief at the knowledge that she was giving herself to him so completely.
Slowly he sank down onto the edge of the bed, his eyes never leaving hers. “I’m going to make you mine,” he managed heavily. “Do you understand? Tonight you’re going to belong to me.”
“Why do you keep trying to warn me about your intentions?” she asked softly, her fingertips drifting upward to his chest, where they grasped hungrily at the short, curling hairs. “I know what they are.” Her smile was infinitely seductive.
“Maybe I’m trying to give you a chance to run,” he admitted roughly.
“I couldn’t run,” she replied simply.
“And even if you tried, I wouldn’t be able to let you go,” he sighed, reaching out to stroke his hand across her breast and down to the small curve of her stomach. Then he leaned closer and slipped his fingers beneath the nightgown, pushing it down over her hips until it formed a silky pool at the foot of the bed.
For a long moment he sat drinking in the sight of her body, entranced with the signs of her arousal. When her legs shifted languorously, he put out a hand and threaded his fingers through the thicket of hair at the apex of her thighs. His pulse pounded violently as he touched her intimately. When it came time to take her completely, he thought dazedly, he was going to literally explode. Never had his own sense of control been so dangerously lacking.
Almost violently he surged to his feet beside the bed and yanked at the fastening of his trousers. As he stepped impatiently out of them, Jase glanced up to find her staring, wide-eyed, at his thoroughly aroused body.
“You’re very beautiful,” she whispered in wonder.
“No, you’re the beautiful one.” He came down beside her, reaching to pull her against the hard, waiting length of him. “Soft and warm and womanly. God, Amy...!”
Shaping the curve of her rounded thigh, Jase luxuriated in the silk of her skin. Deliberately he forced his knee between hers, opening the center of her passion to his touch. There he found the damp heat of her and thought he really would go out of his mind.
<
br /> “Honey, I know I should wait a little longer, give you a little more time, but I don’t think I can!” he groaned, burying his face against her breasts while he teased the core of her with his hand. “I need you too desperately this first time.”
“Oh, Jase, I’ve never felt like this,” she confided, twisting her arms around his neck. “Don’t wait. I want you so!”
Unable to resist any longer and knowing he had to have her or go crazy, Jase pushed her onto her back and lowered himself onto her soft, inviting body. She reached up, urging him to her. He felt the touch of her palms on his back, and when she parted her legs and lifted her hips, he knew the throbbing excitement of being wanted.
He came down against her in a passionate rush, his hands gripping her shoulders as he thrust himself heavily into her moist, clinging warmth. She gasped as her body absorbed the unrelenting impact of his, and he covered her mouth with his own while he forged deeply into her.
Then he was losing himself in that which he had sought to conquer. With Amy’s every response Jase fell further into the luscious trap. He knew in some distant corner of his mind that he was seeking to bind this woman to him totally. In that same corner of his brain a small voice whispered the impossibility of doing any such thing.
But the need to make her his was far more primitive and far more urgent than any amount of rational thought. Jase knew that even if it was hopeless, he had to try to achieve the impossible. He had to try to chain her to him.
Exquisitely soft sounds emanated from far back in Amy’s throat now as the spiraling tension carried them both to higher and higher planes. Jase knew the sting of her nails on his back and growled a fierce response. He surged again and again into her, sliding one hand beneath her hips to lock her body more tightly to his. He felt fevered, his passion heating his whole body. Soon he would explode, just as he had known he would.
“Amy, Amy,” he cried out hoarsely as the most delightful tremor rippled through her. He could feel the spasmodic shivering deep inside her body, and as she called his name aloud, Jase knew a fierce, masculine triumph that was beyond anything he had ever experienced.
He drove into her one last time as the world seemed to come apart around him in small, shimmering fragments. Then he was clutching her tightly as they both fell through passion’s gate.
It was a long time before Jase could rouse himself enough to even lift his head, and when he did so, he found Amy lying quietly beneath him, her eyes closed and an expression of total relaxation on her face. He smiled to himself in tenderness and satisfaction, reluctantly shifting his body to one side and tucking her against him
Had he exhausted her so thoroughly? It was only fair. She had certainly done the same to him He hadn’t felt so at ease with himself and the world for longer than he could remember. In the morning, he promised himself as he drifted off into a deep sleep, he would tease her a bit about falling asleep on him. And after he’d teased her a little, he would make love to her again. Only this time it would be slow and voluptuous. Now that he’d made his claim, he could afford to relax and enjoy what he had taken.
It was Amy who awoke first, coming out of a thick, sensuous slumber to find the tropical dawn filtering into the room. For a long moment she lay still, aware of the possessive weight of Jase’s arm across her breasts. She was curled tightly into his body, spoon fashion, and one of his ankles rested heavily against her own as if he would chain her in case she tried to slip away in the night.
The night. Amy drew a long breath, remembering the passion of the night. Reality returned with a savage jerk.
“Oh, my God!” The words were a bare whisper on her lips, but they fairly screamed inside her head. What had she done? She must have been out of her mind!
Out of her mind. Yes, she’d gone a little crazy in the heat of the island night. Crazy enough to surrender to a man she hardly knew, a stranger she would never see again when she left Saint Clair.
A man who would not care about the emotional risk she had taken—or the physical one. Men rarely seemed to care about the ultimate risk they took such pleasure in letting a woman run. It was a woman’s responsibility to protect herself.
And she hadn’t even thought about protecting herself. Good Lord, what had come over her? She’d always been so incredibly cautious, so circumspect and wary. Her extremely limited sexual experience had taken place years earlier, shortly after graduation from college, and even caught up in what she had assumed was the throes of passion, she’d had more than enough presence of mind to take precautions. There had been no man in her life for so long now that for ages she hadn’t had to worry about getting pregnant.
After twenty-eight years of being careful, she’d gone crazy. And it had happened with a man she knew almost nothing about, a man whose need of her had stripped her of rational thought and normal caution.
“Oh, my God,” Amy breathed, shaken. Her palm went instinctively to her stomach. She might even now be pregnant. What on earth would she do?
Cautiously she edged out from under the restraint of Jase’s arm and leg, inching across the sheets to the edge of the bed. There she sat up and nervously glanced around for her nightgown.
“Going somewhere?” Jase’s lazy tone held all the satisfaction in the world. When his palm wrapped around her waist, Amy panicked and leaped to her feet. “Amy?”
She couldn’t look at him, but she sensed the quizzical way he watched as she frantically searched for her nightgown. She felt ridiculous, bouncing around the room naked.
“Amy, what the hell’s the matter with you? Come back to bed,” Jase ordered coaxingly. “We have things to talk about, you and I.”
“Later,” she gasped, seizing the crumpled nightgown and slipping it hastily over her head. “We can talk over breakfast.”
She whirled and fled through the open window, darting along the veranda to her own room. God, she felt stupid. She couldn’t seem to think straight. Everything in her brain seemed to be churning with self-admonishment and incipient panic.
“Amy, settle down and tell me what’s wrong.”
Clutching to her breast the shirt she had just dragged out of the suitcase, Amy spun around to find Jase standing naked in the window. He regarded her with wary determination, as if he didn’t know what had gotten into her but sure as hell intended to resolve the matter.
“It’s all right, Jase,” she said, trying to inject calm into her words. “I...I just want to get dressed. I’ll meet you downstairs in a little while.”
“Honey,” he soothed, starting forward cautiously, “you’re staring at me as if you were a rabbit facing a wolf.” He stopped when she instinctively backed away a step. “Surely after last night you know I’m only a man,” he added gently.
“I know you’re a man,” she wailed. “That’s the whole problem.”
“Care to explain that one?” he invited with a touch of dryness.
She drew a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. “Never mind. I know it’s my fault. It’s always the woman’s fault, isn’t it? My only excuse is that I just wasn’t thinking last night.” She stared at him, her incomprehension plain in her widened eyes. “I honestly don’t know what came over me. It’s never... I’ve never been like that before....” She clutched more tightly at the shirt in her hands. Damn it, she was going to be cool about this if it killed her. “I’ll be fine,” she concluded starkly.
He arched one eyebrow. “Will you?”
“Yes, yes, of course I will.”
“You sound like you’re having a hard time convincing yourself of that.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about it one way or the other, will you?” she snapped back angrily.
He eyed her broodingly for a moment and then ran his fingers distractedly through his tousled hair. “Do I get an explanation for all this or are we going to play Twenty Questions for the remainder of the morning? I warn yo
u, I haven’t got a lot of patience with games of any kind.”
She stiffened. “I’ve told you, it’s not your problem.”
“That’s a ridiculous statement under the circumstances. I’d say it definitely is my problem!” He reached out and snagged her wrist. She flinched and dropped the shirt into a heap on the floor. “Well, at least it wasn’t another glass full of wine or rum,” he noted, glancing down at the awkwardly released shirt as he sank down on the edge of the bed and yanked her into his lap. “Now, tell me exactly what’s going on here, Amy Shannon. There are other things I’d rather be doing right now than chasing you around the house, demanding explanations!”
She reclined tensely across his naked thighs, tremblingly aware of every inch of him. It was incredible, she thought in amazement. She was in a panic about the consequences of last night’s passion, and he had only to put his arms around her again to make her start thinking of taking the same risks once more!
“Please let me go, Jase,” she said with forced steadiness.
“Not until you tell me why you’re running around in hysterics this morning. Was my lovemaking so bad? Are you afraid of having to submit to my clumsy efforts again?” He stroked the side of her cheek with the edge of his thumb, turquoise eyes gleaming with amused exasperation.
“You know damn well there was nothing clumsy about your... your bedroom technique,” she told him tersely. “I’m the only clumsy one around here. And knowing me, I’m probably just klutzy enough to get myself pregnant, even though I only went to bed with you one time!”
His thumb stopped its sensuous movement at the side of her face as Jase stared at her. “That’s what this imitation of a chicken with its head cut off is all about? You’re afraid I’ve gotten you pregnant?”
“Not a very attractive description of my behavior, but yes, that’s why I’m feeling nervous this morning,” she gritted. “As I said, it’s hardly your problem. I don’t know what came over me last night. I’ve always been so careful! I haven’t even been that... that close to a man for so long that I...”
Serpent in Paradise Page 7
