by Olivia Gates
She finally stopped shuddering and whimpering, stood limp and quiescent within the cloak of his body. And he had to face it. Why her distress destroyed him, why her desertion nearly had. What he’d known from the first time he’d seen her.
Whether she wanted him, wanted him for a while or didn’t want him at all, he was hers. For life. And probably beyond.
“I’m sorry.”
Her tremulous words jolted through him. He moved away just enough to look down at her, scared she’d spiral back into anguish if he loosened his hold.
She moved, too, sniffed again. “I’m sorry.”
He pressed her back to his heart in relief. “Don’t be, you’re all right now.” Urgent fingers beneath her chin raised her face to his to make sure of his verdict. Tension rushed out at seeing her eyes clear again, at least of the terror that had tainted them. They were puffy and slumberous and he couldn’t believe they had the power to arouse him to that pitch even now.
A ragged sigh escaped her and she rested her head on his heart again. “You must think I’m a nutcase.”
“Why would I think you’re a case of nuts?”
Her eyes snapped to his, startled. Then she laughed. Deus, she laughed.
He stroked her cheek, absorbed the inner exquisiteness that had always been her power over him. He needed to know what had provoked her panic. But he’d go to his grave content never to know. He couldn’t risk stirring up her turmoil again.
She rubbed her face over his chest, still chuckling, and his heart tried to burst out of its confines to get a direct rub of her velvet cheek. “Now you must think I’m really fit for a strait-jacket.” She beamed up at him. “Howling like a wounded wolf one minute and a demented hyena the next.”
His smile shook on his lips as he rasped, “If you promise no more howls like the first one, howl like the second any time.”
She leaned back in his arms, her hand and eyes wavering over his face. “I couldn’t find you, then I heard you shout, thought they’d hit you—Oh, Roque…”
So all this had been fear for him? Could it be?
He found it hard to believe it had all been about him. So maybe something had triggered her—
Suddenly realization crushed down on him. Her accident. That had to be it. Her fear of him being accidentally injured, even killed must have resurrected her near-death experience. And he’d wondered what trauma she’d harbored! How insensitive and stupid and oblivious could he be?
“Did you—did it bring back your—your accident?” He could almost have cut his tongue off for putting his doubts into words.
Her eyes widened, as if she, too, hadn’t made the connection. Her words were slow and ponderous when she said, “No. I’m long over that. I remember so clearly what streaked in my mind during those moments—there were images of every injury I’ve seen and treated, imagining them happening to yous” She shuddered, clung to him harder, her fingers kneading agitated patterns into his chest muscles. “I never cried like this. Not when I thought I might never walk again, or when constant pain made me wish I’d die and get it over with. Not even when everything I had and was, had gone and I knew no one would even notice if I followed.”
Agony clamped his chest, kicked in his back. Was he having a heart attack? It wouldn’t be strange. For how could his heart withstand that insight into the depth of her ordeal? Knowing that he’d been there, at the height of her need, and hadn’t grasped it, hadn’t done anything about it?
But he’d tried everything he could. And she’d refused it!
And it shouldn’t have stopped him. He should have made her take his strength when she’d had none, and no one.
But he had done that. He’d pushed aside her protests, loved her, married her so he could be her strength and support.
When it had been much too late, when the damage had already carved its indelible scars in her soul. What a fool he’d been.
She turned in his arms, smoothed his drenched shirt. “I drowned you. Who needs a tropical shower with me around, huh?”
“I’d drown in your tears—I’d drown for real, if it would make you feel better, amor. I’m yours to do with as you please.”
Moisture appeared in her eyes again, shimmered in the rays of sunshine streaming through the canopy of foliage high above them. But her smile trembled on lips beginning to flush with returning vigor and equilibrium. “Oh, darling, thank you for saying that!”
Darling. She’d never called him that, never assuaged his starving heart with endearments. His heart clamped an obsessive fist around this one, hoarding it for fear there’d be no more.
Her hand slid a hesitant path between his shirt buttons, came to a quivering rest over his heart. “And are you sure about this generous offer? I can do with you anything I please?”
His throat closed. “Anything, amor. Anything at all.”
“You won’t say ‘not now’…?” The last two words wobbled.
Did she mean—? Did she want…? Here? Now? He searched her face, found confirmation in eyes that had become embers, burning with a need as huge as his. Sim, sim, here, now. At last.
He drove trembling fingers through her hair, cupped her precious head. “I can’t say ‘not now'. Not if I want to live…”
Her cry tore through him when their lips collided. He could only grind his lips against hers, no finesse, no restraint. The need to hide her inside him drove him to press his all against all of hers. Incessant moans filled his head, high and deep, his and hers, as if in profound suffering. And he was—in agony. Her flesh buzzed beneath his burning hands.
“Darling—please. I waited long enough.”
Darling—again. Deus, what he felt—he’d been afraid of this. He had no experience with wanting this much. He could hurt her, or leave her unsatisfied.
No. He’d die before he hurt her. He’d live to satisfy her. “Sim amor, longer than bearable.”
She writhed out of his arms, slid down to the forest floor and onto her back, inviting him. Alarm flashed in his mind. The ground was rough, jagged—he could bruise her back.
He went down beside her, tried to raise her and she grabbed his hands on a whimper and sank her teeth into them, suckled his fingers. A growled “Misericòrdia…“ tore out of him.
She showed him no mercy, pressed his hands to her breasts, hard, shaking harder. His hands felt unmatched as he uncovered her precious flesh, as he felt the pressure to demolish their barriers, purple bursts crowding his vision. Deus—was he having a stroke?
Not before he gave her what she needed. But it had been so long without her—so longs He raised her, bent her over his arm and she arched in a tight bow, her breasts a desperate offering, her hands behind his head, her talons sinking in his control, speeding his descent into oblivion.
His mouth opened on her engorged flesh, took as much as he could of her matured femininity, savoring her feel and taste. He rid her of her pants in uncoordinated moves. She thrashed, helped him, her moans becoming deeper. His own urgency deepened and he reached between her legs, opened her folds and shook, on the brink, just gliding his fingers over her fluid heat. Needing to know the extent of her need for him, he slid two fingers inside her slick tightness. He went blind with the acuteness of her response, with the blast of heat and hunger—and realization.
He couldn’t make love to her!
The blow was so hard he barely felt her going rigid, pushing at his hand, rasping, “I want you…“
He subdued her, drew harder on her nipple, thrust his fingers deeper, his thumb rubbing shaking circles over the knot of flesh where her nerves converged. He felt her convulse, gritted his teeth, anxious for the music of her release, hoping he wouldn’t suffer permanent damage hearing it.
But she wasn’t climaxing. She was pushing him away.
She staggered up to her knees, magnificent, disheveled—and in tears again. “You’restoying with me—again.”
He barked something that was both incredulous laugh and agonized grunt. “If you think s
o and want to kill me for it, don’t bother. I’ll die any minute now.”
Twin tears streaked down crimson-flushed cheeks. “But it’s w-worse now. You lied this time—promised anything…”
“I promised what I can’t deliver. I have no protection…”
Her gasp interrupted his impeded explanation, her eyes flooding with such stricken shock that words poured from him under pressure. “I’ll get plenty from the pharmacy, make love to you all day and all night—but let me pleasure you now.”
She shook her head, hiccupped a sob, her eyes full of an emotion that seared him even though he didn’t understand it. What was it? Regret? Grief? Despair? All? Deus, why?
An endless moment of confusion and oppression passed before she whispered, “That’s the only reason?” she choked again.
He drew in a shearing inhalation, nodded. And her smile broke out. His confusion only mounted at its melancholy.
Then he heard her whimpering that they didn’t need protection. From then on he felt nothing but her rubbing against him, his clothes coming undone, her doing or his or both, he had no idea. Anticipation was so brutal his grip on consciousness was softening.
He fought back to focus as he sat down in the lotus position, held her eyes as he opened her thighs, locked her legs around his hips. He gritted his teeth as her moist heat singed his erection, waited for her to sink down on him, to take him.
But she didn’t. She unlocked her legs and swayed up on shaking thighs, her hair swinging a thousand shades of amber and russet in the streaming rays, her breasts heaving, her face taut, her lips quivering.
She had to be punishing him. For not falling to his knees and groveling for all she had to give the moment she offered it.
He gazed his torment into her filling eyes and she swayed down for a desperate kiss, broke it only to close febrile lips over his ear. He roared. Her whisper was as intense, pouring right into his brain. “You once promised to please me until I’m mad—until I’m finished. Drive me mad, Roque—finish me.”
He couldn’t let her finish. He drove up into her, incoherent, invading her all the way, overstretching her scorching, living honey. And she engulfed him back, consumed him in clenching hunger, wrung him, razed him. At last. At last.
He rested in her depths, overwhelmed, transported, listening to her delirium, to his. Her graceful back was a deep arch, letting him do it all to her, fulfill his pledge. Blind, out of his mind, he lifted her, filled savage mouth and hands with her flesh. He withdrew all the way out of her then thrust back, fierce and full, riding her wild cry.
It took no more than that. One thrust made her complete. And him. Her satin screams echoed his roars, her body convulsed along with his in a paroxysm of release, one sustained seizure that destroyed the world around them.
Then it was another life, another time where nothing existed. Only being merged with her, still rocking together, riding the aftershocks, still pouring himself into her, feeling her around him, inside and out, sharing the descent from heaven to an even more blissful reality. His Jewel. His joy. His.
It had been beyond control. And it had been beyond description. Everything. Yet not enough. Would anything ever be?
Never. He had to have the rest of his life getting more of her, giving more of himself. All of himself. If she’d have him. Sim—it was way past time he faced it. His plans to have her then walk away had just been empty bravado, running scared, a desperate contingency plan in case he couldn’t have her.
But he had her now. At least her desire. This time he wouldn’t use it to railroad her. This time he’d let her need blossom, wouldn’t follow socially imposed expectations. She’d proved to him marriage meant nothing but a piece of paper without the underpinnings of understanding, respect and trust. He wanted to be her man, no matter if he wasn’t her husband. If all she wanted now were passion and freedom, he’d give them to her. Until she realized, without pressure, that he’d never tether or use her, only enrich her life and support her goals.
Her lips were pressing lightly over his face. He nuzzled her back, his hands spreading indulgence and worship over her, wallowing in delight. She melted back in the circle of his arms, humming the sound of fulfillment. His heart swelled, praying he had satisfied her as she had him. Not that he was satisfied. Would he ever be?
“Now you’ve finished me, what are you going to do with me?”
He couldn’t believe it. His senses shot past the red zone with one sentence. He devoured her teasing right off her lips, withdrew to watch her incredible eyes going slumberous as he hardened fully inside her. “I’m going to finish you again, right now. Then I’ll take you back to the riverboat and finish you again. Over and over and over again.”
“Ready to be finished again?”
Jewel’s grasp on the boat’s railing tightened. Trembling with the effort not to swing around and throw herself in his arms, she kept unseeing eyes on the magnificent panorama they were gliding past, the tropical twilight brightening again with his nearness.
She forced out a seductive murmur in answer. “Wonder how many times you can finish me and I’ll spring back re-formed.”
“It’s an endless process.” His awesome baritone was closer, his heat almost at her back in the cooling breeze. “Didn’t you read the fine print? The in-perpetuity clause?”
In perpetuity was right. It well described his presence in her thoughts, his effect on her senses and emotions.
And soon he’d snare her back into delirium. She’d lost count how many times he’d done that in the last week.
She couldn’t remember much of the trip back from the hunt, just that she hadn’t known what to do next, had been relieved when Roque had done it for her. He’d marched into her cabin, sought out every article of her belongings, packed them then hauled her and them all the way up to his suite. She’d been there ever since. It had been a week of indescribable ecstasy—and turmoil.
His breath now scorched her neck, then his words. “So now you understand the terms, are you ready, meu amante?”
His lover. He’d stopped calling her his wife. But he’d been calling her that in mockery and he’d stopped mocking her. He was beyond wonderful to her now. And he was honest. Their marriage was a forgotten piece of paper in some drawer. This was about drowning in each other, no pressure, no expectations. No future. And this was exactly what made being with him now possible.
It still didn’t mean that it didn’t gut her that she loved him in every way, for everything that he was and did, totally and endlessly, and he felt nothing but a passing lust for her.
She should be used to it. She’d never inspired emotions in anyone. Why should she in him? And she shouldn’t wish she did for the selfish needs of her starving heart.
But knowing he would walk away, probably at the end of the expedition, sated and vindicated, was agony. It didn’t make any difference that she knew this was what should happen, what she’d make sure happened, she’d still be destroyed. She was starting to crumple now.
Turn to him, tell him you want it over with now.
She turned, oppression and desperation stifling her—and almost dropped to her knees.
He was naked! For real this time. And fully, dauntingly aroused.
Her frantic gaze swung around the sundeck. A towel! She knew she’d left one on the chaise longue where they sunbathed.
She streaked to it, grabbed it, threw it at him.
He just chuckled and caught her in his arms. “I’ll never get used to the way you switch from wanton siren to shy prude.”
“Not being an exhibitionist doesn’t make me a prude.” She squirmed in his arms, her gaze slamming around, ready to knock him to the deck if anyone had them in their sights.
“Me, an exhibitionist?” He gave a teasing pout. “Not at all. I just want to cut out unnecessary steps. The only undressing ritual I revel in is the one I perform on you.”
“And you thought to perform it here?” He started to do just that, hands sliding in heavy
possession and sure knowledge over her. It was like watching flames dancing closer to dynamite.
“It’ll be dark in minutes.” He whipped her T-shirt over her head. When had she raised her arms? Had he put her in a trance? He must have. Now he deepened it, bent to taste the flesh he’d exposed, cutting a swathe of arousal from her neck to her stomach.
And though her heart wept, her body squirmed its helpless pleasure, begged, Just one last time. Yes, every time had been that. Pathetic, self-destructive and she’d pay the price—later.
Logic got one last hearing. “Dark? With a tropical full moon blazing in the sky? Sure.”
“What are you worried about? Some natives seeing us from the banks?As if they’d care. Or are you worried about our team, who know very well what we do here all day and all night?”
Her blood churned, inhibitions dissipating fast with every touch of friction against him. “Knowing is one thing, seeing is another.”
“So you’re OK with hearing? You do know they must hear us quite well in the midriver’s pervasive silence, don’t you?”
He laughed as she spluttered with embarrassment. Then everything ceased to matter when he took her lips in a kiss that seemed bent on extracting her soul.
He cascaded passion and possession over her, his words razing her with longing and regret, that this couldn’t be real, couldn’t be for ever. “I want the sky to be our only ceiling, meu amor, and darkness our only cover. I want to invade you, feel you capturing me and see the stars burning in your eyes, the moon gilding your beauty as I fill your every secret place, your every need, as I watch you coming undone with pleasure.”
Did he mean to do it? Turning the skewer in her over and over like that? She jerked with every poignant image he painted, sank her teeth in his deltoid in her suffering.
What did she care who saw them? When their time together was over she’d never see any of their groups again. She’d leave Brazil, never to return.
She let her mind go blank, let her love and hunger bury the pain.
She watched the incredible sight of his head moving against her breasts, his lips and tongue and teeth turning them into instruments of torturing pleasure, licking and tasting and nipping wonder and hunger over their flesh before he clamped one nipple on a groan of surrender and voracity and suckling. In her receding awareness a question echoed. How could he want her?
