Chain of Love

by Anne Stuart

  “No, Sin,” she gasped, backing away. But in that small room there wasn’t much space to back into.

  “Yes, Sin,” he corrected gently. “Yes, indeed, Sin. Yes, please, Sin.” He reached out and caught her by the retreating shoulders, his hands warm and firm and inflexible. “Don’t run anymore, Cathy,” he whispered, drawing her slowly toward him. His hands ran up her shoulders to her neck, cupping her face, and his eyes burned down into her frightened green ones. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, his mouth descended to capture hers, his lips moving against hers in a sensual appeal. The only parts of his body touching hers were his mouth on hers and the hands holding her throat, the thumbs stroking along the side of her neck slowly, sensuously, as his tongue explored the wet, hungry interior of her mouth. Cathy’s hands were at her side, her fists clenched, and she willed herself to resist the practiced seduction of that experienced mouth. But Sin had all the time and patience in the world, teasing, enticing, seducing her with his tongue, until her arms slid around his waist of their own volition, pulling him closer against her yearning body.

  His mouth left hers to bury in her neck, the lips nibbling at the sensitive cord above her collar. “Say it, Cathy,” he whispered against her heated flesh. “Say that you want me.”

  She shook her head helplessly. “No,” she whispered. The hand on her neck slid back to her shoulders, and she felt herself pushed a few inches away. It seemed like miles, when all she wanted to do was bury herself against his leanly muscled strength.

  “No?” he echoed, his eyes blazing, his voice soft but implacable. “Do you really mean that?”

  They stared at each other for a long, tension filled moment. And Cathy knew that this was her last chance. All she had to do was tell him no, one more time, and she would never have to worry about being further enthralled by the strange power he had over her. One word and he would release her forever.

  “Answer me, Cathy,” he said, and his voice was fire and ice. “Do you mean that?”

  “No,” she whispered. “I mean, yes. I mean...” She stumbled helplessly to a halt. And still he waited, unwilling to help her. She had to cross that last bridge alone.

  Reaching up, she covered his hands with hers, pressing them against her shoulders. “Yes, Sin,” she said, her voice husky. “I want you.”

  A slow smile spread across his face. “You’ve got me,” he said simply. A moment later one arm had slid under her knees and she was in his arms, held high against his chest with effortless ease. “Lady, you’ve got me for as long as you want me,” he promised, and his mouth found hers again as he carried her into the front cabin, kicking the door shut behind them.

  Moonlight was streaming in the open hatch over their heads, casting silver shadows on the wide berth as he gently laid her down, his body following hers with pantherlike grace.

  “You aren’t still afraid of me, are you, Cathy?” he whispered, staring down at her.

  She gazed up at the bronzed, unreadable features poised above her, and she shook her head, the last of her misgivings vanishing. She loved him and wanted him, had loved and wanted him for what seemed an eternity. And now, for at least a time, he was hers. She smiled up at him tremulously, raising a tentative hand to the buttons of his shirt. He lay there on his side, motionless, his eyes burning into hers, as she fumbled with the final button of his shirt and slid her hand across the heated flesh of his chest. The skin was smooth and muscled beneath the light layer of curls, and Cathy sighed.

  “To think I didn’t use to like men with hair on their chests,” she murmured dreamily, raising her other hand to slip the shirt off his broad shoulders. He moved a bit to help her, then rolled back on his side, one hand possessively on her slender hip, an amused smile lighting his eyes as she discovered the wonders of his body.

  Slowly she let her hand trail across his flat stomach, until, on impulse, she leaned down and buried her mouth against his chest. She could feel his heart pounding against her lips, slow, heated beats that betrayed his need for her. Smiling against his flesh, she slid her hand up his smoothly muscled back, her sensitive fingers kneading his hungry skin with soft, sure strokes. His breath was coming more rapidly now, ruffling her silken hair as she moved her mouth across the muscled planes of his stomach and up his chest. Her hand trailed back across his stomach, drifted lower to the belt of his jeans, and then jerked back, her courage finally failing her.

  “Coward,” he laughed softly in her ear, catching her reticent hand and moving it lower. She let out a small gasp of surprise, her widened eyes meeting his. “Is that all the exploring you’re going to indulge in, darling?” he whispered against her ear, his tongue tracing the delicate lines. “There’s a great deal more of me to discover.” His hand reached up to cup her chin, his thumb gently stroking her trembling lips.

  Moving over, he replaced his thumb with his lips, kissing her slowly, deeply, with a languorous passion that set the fires in her loins burning more fiercely. She was barely aware of his hand undoing the buttons of her shirt, pulling back the cottony material and dispensing with the front clasp of her lacy bra with practiced ease, his hand caressing one soft, aching breast possessively, his sensitive fingertips gently stroking the tender nipple.

  “Oh, God,” he breathed suddenly, his voice husky with passion. “I can’t stand these damned clothes any longer!” With an impatience that bordered on savagery he unzipped her jeans and stripped them from her body, tossing them on the floor with her shirt and bra. His jeans followed, and then there was nothing separating them but their own determination to wring every last, lengthy ounce of pleasure from a moment long denied.

  His lips found one soft breast in the moonlight, his tongue flickering across the suddenly rigid nipple as Cathy moaned, her fingers digging into his shoulders. His hand trailed up her slender thigh, softly tantalizingly, until he reached the center of her soul-destroying need. She jerked away, startled, but his sure, gentle stroking first calmed, then overwhelmed her. She arched her hips against his hand, little whimpers of desire echoing from the back of her throat. The burning fires had turned into a conflagration, one that threatened to destroy her. Her body trembled and shook all over with the desperation of her need, a need she had never known before. Sin pulled his mouth reluctantly away from her breast and trailed small, damp kisses across her collarbone, all the while his clever, clever hands were driving her to the edge of madness and beyond.

  “Sin,” she gasped, her nails digging into his flesh. “Please, Sin. Oh, please...” she moaned, moving her head back and forth in the extremity of her need.

  His hands left her, catching her head and holding it still as his eyes bored down into hers. “Are you ready so soon?” he whispered sweetly against her mouth. “I was expecting to have to coax and reassure you for hours yet.”

  “Don’t... tease me,” she gasped.

  A slow, tender smile curved his mouth. “Never, my sweet.” And, setting his hungry mouth on hers, he moved over and covered her body with his, joining them at last in that final embrace, swift and sure and deep. They moved together in perfect union, a masterful blend of mind, body, and spirit, until the blazing conflagration engulfed them both in a fiery holocaust that left them, weak but replete, to struggle upward, phoenixlike, from the ashes of their fulfillment.

  Sin reached out a tender hand to brush the hair away from her flushed, sweat-dampened face. The cool wetness of tears caught his fingers, and very tenderly he leaned over and kissed them away.

  “Sin, I...” His hand covered her mouth before she could tell him, before she could say that she loved him.

  “Not now,” he whispered, his warm breath tickling her ear. “Don’t tell me now.” He pulled her exhausted body against his, spoon-fashion, cradling her against his taut, sweat-drenched leanness. And before she had time to wonder why he would stop what would surely have been a very satisfying confession, sleep claimed her, leaving her wrapped in her lover’s arms and at peace with the world.

  Cathy woke, slowly at fi
rst, the thoughts and feelings and images drifting lazily through her sleep-fogged brain. All along her left side was warmth and comfort, and a heavy weight was pressing around her middle, a weight she slowly realized was Sin MacDonald’s arm. One large hand was cupping her breast, and despite the even rise and fall of his breathing she knew he was more than aware of her. She lay very still, reveling in the feel of his strong, lean body against hers.

  “Good morning,” his voice rumbled in her ear, sounding sleepy, smug, and satisfied. As in-deed, she herself was. “How long have you been awake?” He stretched beside her, rubbing his body against hers slowly and sensually.

  “About half an hour,” she replied honestly, snuggling back against him. “I felt too happy to sleep.”

  His arm tightened around her, and she felt her body being drawn slowly back down onto the bed. He leaned over her, pressing her against the soft mattress, and the look on his face was tender, and, even if he wouldn’t put the word to it, loving. “Then you’ve only had a total of about an hour’s sleep,” he said with a lascivious grin. “Aren’t you tired? You certainly should be after the workout you gave me last night.”

  “The workout I gave you?” she shrieked, albeit softly. “I’ll have you know, Sin MacDonald, that I was sound asleep when you... when we...”

  His grin broadened. “You can still blush,” he marveled. “Not that I’m surprised—if anything could make you blush, that infamous ‘when we... when you...’ should. And I’ll have you know, Cathy MacDonald, that I was sound asleep the time before, when you... when we...”

  “You’re incorrigible,” she said crossly, trailing her hand up his tautly muscled arm. “And who says I don’t want to keep my maiden name?” she added teasingly.

  She had the dubious satisfaction of seeing his hazel eyes turn fiery with rage. Covering the lower half of her body with his stronger one, he held her captive as his hand cupped her mutinous face. “I say,” he informed her huskily. “That five-minute ceremony made us one, a unit, and I want us to stay that way. In name, in spirit, and”—he let his hips bump against hers suggestively—”in body.”

  Her eyes widened in shocked recognition. “Good heavens, Sin. Not again,” she breathed, her eyes alight as she lifted her mouth for his possession.

  He kissed her long and deep, with a savagery that alarmed and excited her. “Is that a protest?” he murmured hoarsely against her throat.

  “Hm-mn,” she denied with a low guttural noise, a purr of pleasure as her tired body responded once more to his practiced caresses. “Merely an expression of awed wonder.” And sliding her deft hands down his lean torso, she met his passion fully, exploding within moments of him as they reached the apex of their perfect desire. And once more they slept.

  “You know, you don’t really need to wear that,” Sin said lazily as he stretched out on the bunk beside the small kitchen. He caught hold of the short, velour wrapper she’d appropriated from him as she tried to find her way about the pocket-sized galley. It fell to just below her knees, and must have been barely decent on Sin’s lengthy frame, she thought wistfully.

  “Don’t mess with the chef,” she ordered sternly, twitching the robe out of his grasping fingers. “If you want coffee you have to let me get to it.” She fumbled with the automatic coffee-maker, mastering its intricacies with her usual difficulty with mechanical objects.

  His hazel eyes were half-closed as he surveyed her lithe form, and Cathy knew perfectly well that his imagination was stripping away the robe with devastating accuracy. She could feel the color rising, and she forced herself to turn and survey him with the same sensual directness. Leaning against the counter, she let her hungry eyes roam over his tanned, muscular body. From the long, long legs, the trim hips and lean buttocks encased in the scantiest excuse for underwear Cathy had ever seen, the flat stomach and broad, hair-fringed chest that she had wept and moaned and laughed into last night. And this morning, she added silently. To the broad shoulders, strong arms, and diabolically clever hands that seemed instinctively to know what part of her needed to be touched, with just the right amount of gentleness or force. And the hazel eyes that looked so tenderly into hers, the mouth that had taught her things she had scarcely known existed. All in all it was a very potent package, she realized with a small blissful sigh.

  The tiny laugh lines around his eyes crinkled in amusement. “I’d ask you what you were thinking but I’m sure I’d be shocked out of my mind.” He accepted the coffee she offered, never taking his eyes off her. “And I don’t see why I have to wear these.” He plucked at the briefs. “I’ll allow you your modesty, but when there’s no one around for miles and miles...”

  “You have to wear them,” she said, sitting down cross-legged beside him and sipping at her rich black coffee, “because I find you far too distracting without them. It’s hard enough to concentrate on cooking as it is. What do you want for dinner?”

  His eyes roamed lazily over her. “You,” he said, pulling her down to lie against his broad, hard chest without spilling a drop of her coffee.

  “I think you’re going to need something a bit more substantial if we’re going to keep on at the pace we’ve started,” she said, sighing happily. She let one hand trail intimately across his stomach, listening to his stifled groan of pleasure with a smile as she snuggled closer against his chest. She took another sip of her coffee. “Speaking of food— you know what the trouble with you is?”

  His arms tightened companionably around her slender form, one hand dipping into the robe to touch her breast. “No, tell me. What is the trouble with me?” he demanded lazily, showering small, unhurried kisses in her cloud of silver-blond hair.

  She moved her head to look down at him mischievously. “You’re like Chinese food,” she explained in dulcet tones. “Very satisfying at the time, but a half an hour later I’m hungry again.”

  A shout of laughter greeted her impish remark. Taking the half-empty coffee cup from her hand, he placed it on the table beside his, then stretched back, taking her with him, so that her slender, half-clad form was stretched out on top of his lean, strong body. It was a dizzying feeling, with his warm flesh and hardening desire beneath her, waiting for her. With a sigh she buried her head against his chest, nestling against the soft cushion of hair as his hands reached beneath her robe.

  “All I can say,” he sarcastically murmured in her ear, “is that it’s a lucky thing you’re frigid. God knows what I’d do with you if you actually liked to make love.” His hips, magically divested of the restraining briefs, reached up to meet hers, as her whole body tensed.

  “What’s the matter?” His voice was soft and patient, unlike his passion-stirred body.

  She tried to pull away from him, but his hands sensed her withdrawal and reached up to stop her, holding her frailness against him.

  “It’s just...” Her words faded for a moment, then strengthened. “You reminded me of something I’d rather forget.”

  “Greg Danville,” he supplied in a short, angry voice. At her reluctant nod, his grip tightened. “Listen, Cathy,” he said in a surprisingly stern tone, “Greg existed. You can’t wipe him out of your life, forget that you ever knew him or that he ever hurt you. It happened. But it’s over, long over. And it has nothing to do with you and me, and what we have together. Nothing at all. Is that understood?” Despite the sternness there was a gentleness in his eyes and the hands that held her captive against his still fully aroused body. “Is it?” he demanded again.

  And strangely enough, it was true. Greg Danville was out of her life, never to be heard from again. He had nothing to do with her and Sin, nothing whatsoever. She managed a smile, tentative at first, then widening with real delight. “Yes, sir,” she said sweetly. And then with dizzying force he turned her over onto the bunk, covering her body with his ardent one. And Greg Danville vanished completely in a torrent of desire.

  * * *

  Chapter Eighteen

  * * *

  Cathy sat on the deck,
soaking up the hot, Caribbean sun with truly hedonistic fervor. Her body was turning a lovely golden brown, setting off the thin gold chain with its perfect emerald, and she felt warm, full, and completely satiated. She reached out to touch the emerald, which served as a sort of talisman for her. Any time she began to doubt what had happened to her during the past weeks, and particularly the past two days since she married Sinclair MacDonald, she would reach for the chain through her clothing or, more frequently, on her naked body, and touch it. For good luck, or to remind herself that it was real. She wasn’t sure which—maybe a little bit of both. Her eyes trailed across the deck to Sin’s lean frame. He was hunched over some piece of equipment, his face intent beneath the sunglasses, his tanned body, clad only in the briefest of denim cutoffs, glistening with the sun and a light film of sweat.

  “I hated to leave that island,” Cathy said dreamily. “Everything was perfect there. The water, the sun, the privacy.”

  He looked up and smiled at her, easily, casually, the very naturalness of it incredibly sexy. “I hated to leave it too,” he replied, squinting out at the horizon. “But we need supplies, and Martin’s Head is the closest place I know. We can sail right back.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she sighed. “For some reason I’m afraid it will have vanished if we try to find it again. You don’t even know what island it is, do you?”

  “Hey, I’m not that bad a navigator. I can find it again,” he protested. “Or maybe we can find another island.”

  She turned to peer up at him in the brilliant sunlight. “That would be nice,” she sighed. “We may never run out of islands at this rate.”

  He seemed to hesitate, on the verge of saying something and then obviously thought better of it. He returned his attention to the instrument in his hand, his fingers as dexterous on the intricate machinery as they were on her responsive body.