Affair of Honor

by Stephanie James

  “It’s not like that at all!” she proclaimed fiercely, the need to reassure him somehow more important than a close look at the truth. “Believe me, Ryder, it’s not like that…”

  Knowing no other way to counter his accusation, Brenna caught his face once more in her hands and ground her mouth almost savagely down on his. She would not, could not, examine her options in the intellectual way she ought to. Brenna only knew that the night must not end with Ryder Sterne walking out her door.

  Ryder’s arms tightened around her with rough gentleness as he slowly sat up against the pressure of her slender weight. He never broke the kiss but Brenna found herself cradled across his thighs, her arms wound passionately around his neck.

  Then, in a surge of masculine power, Ryder was on his feet with Brenna in his arms. Still holding her mouth in the compelling mastery of his own, he started toward the stairs of the loft.

  Chapter 4

  One of Brenna’s high-heeled red sandals slipped off and fell on a step as Ryder carried her effortlessly up the stairs. She wasn’t really aware of the small loss, but the toes of her nylon-clad foot curled in a tiny gesture of gathering sensual tension. Ryder’s arms felt strong and secure about her, and she nestled against his chest in languid, delicious abandon.

  At the top of the stairs he at last broke the enthralling, lingering kiss to lift his head and search her bemused, heavy-lidded expression.

  “Tonight you’re a golden-eyed witch,” he told her huskily.

  “And you?” she countered, touching the corner of his mouth with a fingertip. “What are you tonight?”

  “Only a man. But one who wants you very much. Will that be enough for you?”

  What was he asking? Brenna wondered distantly. Whatever the real question, she wanted nothing more than to reassure him.

  “It will be enough.” Perhaps he was concerned that she would ask too much of him, demand more than he could give. Yet he had been the one who had talked of commitment. She didn’t understand but she didn’t want to get too involved in an analysis of the situation, either. Not now, not tonight. Tonight was a special place and a special time and she wanted only to exist within those borders. “Ryder, I’m not truly a witch. Only a woman. Will that be enough for you?” she heard herself ask a little anxiously.

  “It’s all I want,” he whispered, his voice as deep and gentle as she had yet heard it.

  He carried her to the bed and lowered her carefully to her feet beside it.

  “Oh!” The small exclamation came as Brenna stumbled slightly against him and instinctively braced herself with palms splayed across his shoulders.

  “What’s wrong?” He steadied her at once.

  “My shoe.” She smiled in soft amusement. “I seem to have arrived with only one.”

  “Playing at being Cinderella after the ball?” He eased her to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and went down on one knee in front of her.

  “Only if you’re interested in the Prince Charming role,” she tried to say nonchalantly and was very much afraid she failed.

  She didn’t feel nonchalant tonight. She felt elated, nervous, passionate, and high-strung. She felt a dizzying conglomeration of emotions but she didn’t feel at all nonchalant.

  “No, I’m not quite right for that role.” Deliberately Ryder put his hand on her uncovered knee and slid it silkily down her calf to the foot that still wore a shoe. Slowly he began to unfasten the buckle of the tiny red strap. “I’m much more interested in undressing you than I am in finding you a slipper that fits. Tonight I’d make a lousy Prince Charming.” His mouth twisted in a wry self-mockery that touched her heart.

  Instinctively Brenna threaded her hands through his hair and moved them slowly down to rest on his shoulders. An unbidden, feminine perception told her that he was asking obliquely for reassurance of her desire for him. How could she refuse? Tonight she wanted to give this man everything he asked.

  He looked up at her from under the tawny lashes and she smiled tenderly. “Tonight you’re a perfect Prince Charming. Exactly as I always thought Prince Charming would be.”

  Without a word he lifted his hands to pull her head down to his, and this time she knew from his kiss that the hunger she sensed in him was rapidly coming unbound. Why had he maintained it under such restraint? A man’s desire, she had always thought, was a relatively simple thing and certainly not something he bothered to conceal or control when the opportunity to indulge it occurred.

  But Ryder was different and the quality of his desire was different. She felt a hunger that was not strictly sexual underlying it and knew a fierce joy at being the one who could unleash it.

  When she moaned throatily under the impact of the spiraling kiss, Ryder lowered one hand to trace the distance from her shoulder to the tip of her breast. He drew in his breath sharply when he discovered the taut outline of her nipple and pushed her back against the quilt. He followed, coming down heavily beside her while he continued to move his thumb provocatively against the sensitive peak.

  Brenna arched upward, seeking more of his touch, and whispered his name softly into his mouth. His hand went to the bright red sash that held the white dress low on her hip. It loosened magically beneath his touch. Slowly he continued to undress her, finding the fastenings of the eyelet dress while he buried his mouth at the pulsepoint of her throat.

  “Oh, Ryder!”

  Brenna’s head tipped back over his arm in silent supplication and surrender and her eyes shut tightly against the wonder of the moment. Everything was so perfect; he was so perfect.

  “You’re so exactly right for me,” he grated in a velvet-gentle voice as the white dress slipped down to her waist and the curves of her breasts were revealed. Only the filmiest of lace and satin remained and the thrusting tips of her nipples were clearly outlined. “Small and sleek and sensuous.”

  He found the center clasp of the demicup bra and undid it. When the lacy covering fell aside, he groaned as he began to trail a string of kisses from the base of her throat to the rose-tipped crests.

  “My little lady cat burglar,” he whispered thickly as he stroked the length of her to her hips. “I wanted to do this the night you crawled through my window!”

  “No,” she protested even though the excitement was flaming through her at his words. “You didn’t want me like this. Not then…”

  “You still don’t know me that well, do you?”

  But he gave her no chance to reply as he curled his tongue coaxingly around her nipple and traced a circle that made her breath catch in her throat. Her red-gilt nails sank into the shoulders beneath the blue silk shirt as she cried out.

  Her response seemed to arouse him still further. In an swift, smooth movement he slid his palms down the curve of her hips, pushing the remainder of her clothing all the way to her ankles and off the bed. In one long, sweeping stroke she was suddenly and completely nude.

  Brenna’s eyes opened to find him drinking in the sight of her as his fingers went to the buttons of the blue shirt.

  “No, let me,” she managed, struggling to a sitting position and finding the buttons with fingers that trembled from passionate excitement.

  The tawny lashes feathered his cheeks as he let his own hands fall aside. Ryder sat very still as she worked at the fastenings of the blue shirt. But when she slipped her palms beneath the open edges to find the curling hair that covered his bronzed chest, he muttered her name a little violently and caught her wrists.

  “Brenna, my golden-eyed witch, you’ll drive me crazy if I give you free rein! I want this to last all night!”

  “I’m the one who will go crazy if you try to make it last forever,” she protested huskily. “I… I need you too badly.”

  She bit off the words, a part of her astounded by them. She had never truly needed a man in quite this way. This was different than mere affection tinged with sexual attraction. This was different than the time in graduate school when she had thought she was truly in love. This was di
fferent than the way she felt toward Damon. She needed Ryder Sterne and she ached to please him.

  “Do you, Brenna?” he growled in his dragon’s purr. “Do you really need me?”

  “More than anything else in the world,” she answered with an honesty that would have surprised her in another context. She lifted her lashes and the gold in her eyes met the silver in his. He groaned in satisfaction and a kind of relief. She knew in that moment that the strange hunger in him was finally and completely unleashed. He made no further protest as she fumbled with the remainder of his clothes.

  “You’re beautiful,” she breathed in wonder as he finally lay naked beside her. With delicate, questing fingertips she traced the shape of him, moving across the contours of his smoothly muscled chest, down to the flat stomach and over the muscular shape of his hip.

  Unable to resist, she bent to kiss the center of his chest as her hand clenched a little aggressively into the hard male buttock. Instantly his fingers wrapped themselves in her hair and he pulled her forcibly up to find his mouth.

  “We’ll make the next time last,” he promised thickly against her mouth. “This time I’m not going to be able to play the gentleman!”

  “Ryder!” His name was choked from her as, his hands still entwined in the depths of her bittersweet-chocolate hair, he moved, shifting her firmly onto her back. He sprawled heavily across her, his thigh pinning hers as he quenched his thirst at her mouth.

  “I’m sorry, sweet lady,” he muttered against her lips as he held her face cupped fiercely in his excitingly rough palms. “I meant to play the gallant lover but I can’t. Not this first time with you. All I can think of now is making you mine completely and absolutely. Do you understand? I can’t be sexually sophisticated tonight and impress you with my charm and gallantry. I want you too badly!”

  Brenna couldn’t answer. Her own passion was running too high and her senses seemed to swim. Her nails dug compellingly into his shoulders and she arched her hips against the pressure of his body. It was the only response she could manage.

  It was enough. With a violently tender exclamation Ryder slid his palm over her breasts, down the small contour of her stomach, and found the tangled thicket below. He forced her legs gently apart with his knee and let his probing fingers discover the intimate secret of her.

  When she writhed beneath him at the touch, he whispered her name hoarsely and pressed the hard strength of his body testingly against her thighs.

  “Please. Ryder, please!”

  “My God, sweet lady!”

  He lifted himself, his shoulders looming briefly over her in the shadowy light, and then he settled himself along the length of her, fitting himself between her legs with a gentle aggression that sent shivers through Brenna’s nerve endings.

  She reached up, clinging to him as if he were all that mattered in the world, welcoming him completely.

  He came to her with a bold power that shocked her senses. Her nails raked the contour of his back and his name was a silent cry of desire and passion on her lips as he held her with a strength she couldn’t have defied even if she had been so inclined. Then he was surging against her body, taking it by storm and sweeping her along into a vortex of swirling color and sensation. Ryder Sterne made love as if he were staking a claim; tuning a fine instrument only to his personal touch; taming a wild creature. The experience overwhelmed and consumed Brenna’s senses.

  He established a rhythm to which she responded at once. She locked her arms and legs around his driving body, thrilling to the potent, sinewy feel of him. When her nails dug deeper in a convulsive reaction, he nipped passionately at the smooth flesh of her shoulder. The small, tingling pain only served to heighten her awareness to new levels.

  Together they spun through their own private universe, so tightly entwined they were as one as they made the sensual journey. When the coiling, flickering tension in Brenna’s loins began to flare out of control, she gulped for air and tensed in Ryder’s hold.

  “Ryder! Ryder, darling!”

  He must have heard the amazement and wonder and perhaps even an element of fear in her words as she faced the blazing conclusion of the trip.

  “Let yourself go, lady,” he rasped. “Give yourself to me!”

  As if his words were the last impulse her body needed to send her over the edge, Brenna went abruptly taut beneath him, and then the explosion took her in a series of tiny convulsions that swept her from head to toe.

  “Oh, Ryder!”

  As if he, in turn, only needed her finish to spark his own, Ryder swept into her body once more, filling her completely and holding her with total possession as he reached the end of his journey.

  Long moments later Brenna stirred beneath the heavy male body still covering her own. At the hint of movement Ryder lazily lifted his tousled, tawny head from her breast and looked down at her, the faintest of smiles edging his mouth. The molten silver in his eyes had cooled to be replaced by a warm satisfaction that pleased Brenna. She had fed the hunger in him.

  They stared wonderingly at each other in silence for a time, each absorbing the fullness of the moment, and then Ryder ducked his head briefly to drop a tiny kiss on her love-softened mouth.

  “I know this is going to sound ridiculous in the light of events, but when I picked you up at your door this evening, I honestly had no intention of winding up in your bed later,” he confessed.

  “Was it fate or free will?” she teased dreamily, playing with the perspiration-damp hair at the back of his neck.

  “I don’t know and I don’t particularly care. It happened. That’s all that matters now.”

  She opened her eyes a little wider at the forcefulness of the statement. “Are you upset about what happened, Ryder?” Please, no, she thought. She only wanted him to be happy!

  “Of course not,” he drawled, his expression softening at once. “It was a little too soon and involved some risks because of that, but perhaps there wasn’t any other way it could have gone. You’re mine now, Brenna. I’ve waited a long time to find you, lady, and now that I have I won’t be letting you go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Not tonight,” she soothed, uncertain of his meaning and unwilling to press for clarification. The night was too precious.

  He stroked back the dark hair from her damp forehead and smiled with incredible gentleness. “No, you won’t be going anywhere tonight.” Then he shook his head once in amused bafflement. “A professor of philosophy. How could I have possibly guessed?”

  “Guessed what?” she prompted curiously, enjoying the soothing touch of his fingers across her brow. She wriggled beneath him contentedly.

  “That I’d find the woman I wanted and needed, the one who understood about things like honor and the one who was capable of sending me out of my head with desire, on the faculty of some small college of which I had never heard. Hell, Brenna,” he added with a wry chuckle deep in his throat. “I finished college in the Marine Corps, and I can assure you there wasn’t much attention paid to subjects like ethics and philosophy!”

  “A limited education?”

  “A practical education,” he corrected with a small grin. He lowered his head for another nibbling kiss, drawing back with some reluctance. “Are you happy with the results of your seductive techniques tonight, lady?” he taunted lightly.

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me,” she murmured, drawing inviting little circles on his upper arms.

  “Well,” he retorted deliberately, “I suppose it doesn’t much matter whether or not I manage to drag a confession out of you. It’s done. You’re mine.”

  Brenna thought about that, aware of the determination in him and not quite comprehending his full meaning. He was a possessive man, it would seem. And tonight he possessed her. She didn’t want to think any further than that.

  “Don’t go to sleep on me, witch,” he drawled humorously as her lashes lowered to her cheeks. “That first time was to settle the issue. No
w that it’s settled, I’m going to take the time to make a good impression.”

  Her mouth curved. “Is that a threat?”

  “Just try to stay awake so you can applaud the performance, okay?”

  He shaped her head with his fingers and lowered his mouth once more to hers. This time his kiss was slow and lingeringly passionate as he set about stoking the banked fires back to shimmering brightness.

  Ryder took his time, as promised, moving over her languid body with finesse and an arousing strength that pushed aside the remnants of earlier passion and set about creating a new experience. She was stroked from breast to thigh, teased with sensitive fingers that knew exactly where to tempt and tantalize. And his kisses, she thought deliriously, his kisses were a sweet ravishment. He poured them without restraint across the roundness of her breasts, dropped them delicately onto the softness of her stomach, and branded them into the exquisitely tender skin of her inner thighs. Brenna had temporarily lost herself in his arms the last time. This time she thought she might never find her way back out.

  When he came to her at last, enveloping her in his warmth, she never gave another thought to the prospect of being permanently lost. He flowed into her body and across it and there was no way she could have resisted. This time, when the shimmering conclusion approached, she gave herself up to it without any fear at all, welcoming the flames of surrender in the safety of Ryder’s arms.

  When it was over he turned her gently on her side, pulled her tightly into the curve of his glisteningly damp body, and ordered her to sleep in the softest of whispers.

  “Ryder, I feel like I’m floating.”

  “So do I. Go to sleep, lady.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what I’m going to do and I can’t bear the thought of you lying awake staring at the ceiling while I’m snoring blissfully!”

  “Oh, dear. Do you snore?” She chuckled.

  “It’s a little late to worry about it. Tonight you’ve agreed to take the good with the bad.” He yawned, nestling his head against hers.