Irresistible

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  Looking at them, he felt his stomach clench.

  “I—don’t know what you want me to do,” she confessed, her lashes dropping down to hide those heart-stopping eyes. She sounded very young, very shy, and he thought, again, that if she was acting she was the best, by far, he had ever seen.

  But somewhere, deep in his gut, he didn’t think she was acting.

  “I want you to kiss me back,” he said, and his hand came up to burrow beneath her long hair and mold the back of her skull. “It’s not hard. Just do what I do.”

  He cradled her head, tilting it, angling her mouth for a better fit, and then he kissed her again, soft and sweet and slow, giving her time to get used to the feel of his lips on hers. When his tongue finally slid inside her mouth, he was gentle still, touching her teeth, the roof of her mouth, the insides of her cheeks. Patiently he coaxed her tongue into play, teasing it with his, caressing it. When she responded, hesitantly meeting caress with caress, he drew her tongue into his mouth and sucked on it, nearly killing himself with the force of his barely checked desire in the process. Sweat beaded his forehead, fierce pressure built inside his loins like steam in a boiler, and a fine tremor racked muscles tense with wanting her. Resolutely he forced himself to ignore those signs of the urgency of his need, concentrating instead on tutoring her in the fine art of kissing. He was rewarded for his patience when she shuddered and moaned and tightened her arms around his neck.

  “I didn’t know . . . kissing . . .could be like this.”

  Her words were no more than a warm breath feathering across his lips, but they stopped him cold. He lifted his head to stare down at her, wondering if his senses could actually be telling the truth, if she could really be this trustingly naive, this dizzyingly desirable, this unbelievably intoxicating, or if she was spinning the biggest web of lies since the Trojans left their gift and pretended to walk away from Troy. He was aware that he was breathing as if he’d been running for miles. He was aware that he was no longer in complete possession of his faculties, no longer objective, no longer possessing any judgment where she was concerned. Then her lashes lifted as if she would see what he was doing, and he found himself looking into eyes that were deep pools of molten fire.

  “Didn’t you?” he asked, knowing even as he said it that he was lost, that any further attempt at saving himself or the situation was doomed beyond redemption. Drawn by those eyes, by those lips, he kissed her again, with considerably less control this time, and she responded with a hot sweet wildness that took him by surprise. She was pressed as close against him now as ink to paper. He felt her breasts rising and falling against his chest. The blanket was no longer between them, and only two thin layers of cloth separated her flesh from his. He felt the hard little nubs of her nipples nudging his chest, and the sensation nearly sent him over the edge. He wanted her, oh, God, he wanted her. It would be easy, so easy, to take what he wanted.

  But would it be wise?

  Her tongue left his mouth, and he let it go as he fought to keep his mind separated from his body at least to some small degree. Then her lower body pressed against him too, pushing up against the hard hot urgency of him, rocking against him, and her tongue came back inside his mouth of its own volition and that was all it took.

  All hope of keeping so much as one tiny part of his mind separate and functioning was lost in the sudden rushing blaze that caught him unaware and roared over him, consuming him in its flames. Kissing her deeply, he rolled so that she was pinned beneath him, conscious of the tiniest twinge in his ribs but not giving a damn, not giving a damn now about who she was or what she was or anything except assuaging his hot fierce need in her body. She felt so right under him, so exquisitely female, so warm, so welcoming. His tongue was in her mouth, her arms were around his neck, and he was pulling at the hem of her shirt, yanking it up toward her waist.

  He was going to take her, meant to take her, had to take her, just like that, in and out, hard and fast, with no more time for pretty words or tutorials or any other damn fool thing except the hot savage ecstasy of sex. He was beyond thought, his body thick and heavy and fiercely ablaze, and the only ease for him lay in the soft yielding sweetness that quivered and quaked so excitingly beneath him.

  His hand found her breast and closed over it, squeezing more roughly than he intended, but he was far gone with desire and gentleness was quickly growing beyond him. Through the thin lawn of (ridiculously, as it briefly occurred to him) James’s second-best shirt, he could feel the hard little pebble of her nipple thrusting into his palm, and he gritted his teeth as his body sizzled and threatened to explode.

  She, who just minutes before had been kissing him so shyly, arched up against him, moaning her pleasure into his mouth. The small sounds she made sent him out of his mind. His hand slid from her breast to fumble at the fastenings of his breeches.

  He couldn’t wait, not another minute, not another second. He would have her despite everything, despite anything. It was far too late and he was far too hungry to count the cost.

  14

  “No. Please. No. Hugh. Stop.”

  His hands were undoing his buttons; his knee was edging between her thighs. His body was a human torch, as taut as a bowstring, an arrow on the verge of being launched, when she pulled her mouth from his and gasped out the words.

  Stop . . .

  God, he didn’t want to hear that. He really didn’t want to hear that. He—almost—could—not—comply. Stopping hurt. Clenching his hands into fists, closing his eyes, resting his cheek against hers, he made himself go still.

  Stop. She’d said stop.

  He couldn’t believe it. But that was what she’d said.

  Whatever else he was, he was not the man to take a woman against her will. Damn it—and himself and her and the whole bloody universe in the bargain—he would not force himself on her. He’d never forced a woman yet, and he was not starting now.

  But, dear Lord in heaven, it was a near-run thing.

  “Stop?” he asked carefully once he could trust himself to speak. His voice was scarcely more than a croak, and that one questioning word was all he could manage for the moment. He was hurting from head to toe, and aching like be-damned at a certain crucial point in between. Even lying on top of her as he still was, feeling the naked-to-the-waist softness of her yielding to his hard weight, listening to the gentle rhythm of her still-too-fast breathing, inhaling the unmistakable fragrance of woman and sex, was torture.

  The problem was, he didn’t think he could move. At least, not yet.

  He took a deep, steadying breath. Even breathing hurt. Good God, he hadn’t experienced pain like this in years.

  Not since he’d been old enough to ease it in the way nature had intended for it to be eased.

  “Please stop.” Her voice was low and throaty and—the death blow for his still stubbornly hoping body—entreating. She sounded like she really meant it.

  “Why?”

  Sweat had popped out on his brow. His teeth, in between uttering his single-word questions, were clenched tight. It occurred to him that, under the circumstances, this was a ridiculous conversation to be having. He hadn’t had such a conversation in—he couldn’t remember when. He’d never had such a conversation. Every woman he took to his bed was flatteringly eager to be there, from his very first at age fourteen. Women never said no to him. Never.

  “B-because.”

  This one was saying no to him. The evidence was incontrovertible. Her hands, instead of hugging his neck as they had done up until now, were pushing at his shoulders quite unmistakably. She was—most naively—trying to wriggle out from beneath him, and doing her cause a tremendous disservice thereby.

  He wanted her. He could take her. Still. She was his prisoner, after all. And she might only be pretending to object, trying to convince him that she was too sweetly virtuous to be a tart.

  No.

  Hugh took a deep breath and rolled off her before he could succumb to temptation. He lay on his b
ack, panting, hurting, with one arm flung across his eyes to block out the world and one knee bent to afford himself what ease he could. Though his eyes were clenched tight—along with his teeth and every other muscle he possessed—as he fought the devil within him to a standstill, he was aware of the hasty movements she made as she put herself back together.

  If she elbowed his ribs again, he thought grimly, he would almost feel like thanking her. At least it would take his mind off the fact that he was now suffering even more severe discomfort elsewhere.

  Which was, again, all her fault. The whole damn fiasco, from start to finish, was her fault. No, it was his. He should have paid attention when he’d been thrown from his horse. But he hadn’t, and somewhere the gods were surely laughing as he paid the price for ignoring their warning.

  “Because?” he repeated on an inquiring note a few minutes later, when he had himself almost fully under control again. “Because why?”

  “Because—I just can’t.”

  Oh, enlightening. Lowering his arm, he cracked open his eyes and slanted a look at her. She was lying on her side as far away from him as she could get—which wasn’t very far. The bunk was narrow, and at most, in a few places where she curved in instead of out, perhaps three inches separated them. The blanket in which she had reshrouded herself still brushed against his side, and he was perfectly—no, make that excruciatingly—aware of the feminine shape of her beneath it. Her spine was clearly pressed up flat against the wall, her arms were folded protectively over her breasts beneath the blanket, and her eyes were now wide and nervous-looking as she watched him.

  Nervous. Not scared.

  Which crystallized something for him: She had responded with enthusiasm, kissing him and moaning and pressing herself against him—but with a neophyte’s enthusiasm. If she’d been Archer’s mistress for a year, he must have scarcely laid a hand on her. This was no highflyer, no lightskirt, no woman of experience at all. This girl didn’t even have the sexual knowledge of most gently bred ladies of his acquaintance.

  This woman either knew little to nothing of sex—or she was the greatest actress on earth, and he was the greatest fool.

  Taking a deep breath, Hugh rolled onto his side and propped his head on his hand again, noting that her eyes widened and she tried to press herself even farther back against the wall as he moved. Her hair was swept away from her face, but the black-as-night mass of it fanned out across the lumpy pillow on which her head lay and beyond. Hugh discovered, to his annoyance, that waving strands trailed over his bent arm. The sight of the midnight silk against his brown skin and white shirt was unsettlingly intimate. It reminded him of what he was missing.

  “Would you care to explain why you can’t?” His voice was faintly dry. She was looking at him as if she feared he might roll on top of her again at any minute, but he was pleased to realize that he had now fully regained his self-control.

  She hesitated, and her lashes dropped. Hugh found himself intrigued by the inky thickness of the curling fringe, and cursed himself for his susceptibility.

  “It would be wrong,” she said, and those lashes rose again and she met his gaze. Her eyes were no longer molten pools of longing, he was both glad and sorry to see. Like his, her internal temperature appeared to have cooled considerably.

  “Allow me to point out that the rightness or wrongness of it didn’t appear to bother you unduly when you offered yourself to me earlier.”

  She lowered her lashes again. Hugh found himself waiting, almost with bated breath, for them to rise. When they did, he saw that her expression was resolute, as if she had made up her mind to stand her ground with him and not let him embarrass her or make her feel shy. Again, he found himself intrigued. Or, if he was to be perfectly honest, almost—enchanted.

  “Then I thought I might have to—to—you know—to save my life. Now I know you’ll not harm me. At least, I don’t think you will.”

  Hugh studied her. Was the artlessness real? God help him, he was beginning to be all but convinced it must be.

  “So you would be willing to sleep with me to save your life, but not just for your own pleasure?”

  She made a harsh sound that was not quite a laugh.

  “It’s not a pleasure,” she said, and her lashes swept down to hide her eyes again.

  “Now, why would you think that?” he wondered aloud, watching her as carefully as a cat at a mouse hole. “Archer is an old man, I know; was he somehow lacking in bed?”

  She gave an indignant little gasp, and her eyes flew open again. “I wouldn’t know. I have never had occasion to find myself in bed with Lord Archer. As I’ve said, I only know of him because he is a friend of my aunt’s.”

  There was hostility in the golden eyes now.

  He raised his brows at her. “Then just who was it who managed to convince you that making love is not a pleasure?”

  “My husband,” she said with something of a snap. “Who else would I . . . ? Never mind. This conversation is most improper.”

  Even under the circumstances, she managed to look haughty. Given that she was in total deshabille, next to naked, trapped in a bunk with him, and had just kissed him halfway to heaven, looking haughty was no mean feat.

  “The most interesting conversations generally are,” he said tranquilly. “Tell me about your husband. How long have you been married?”

  “We were married a year ago last June.”

  “About a year and a half, then. And the bloom is already off the rose?”

  “What do you mean?” She was frowning at him, from displeasure at the turn the conversation was taking, he thought, rather than from any lack of understanding.

  “Well, if you no longer find any pleasure together in bed . . .”

  “It was never . . .” she began. Then her lashes swooped down again, hiding her expression from him. Looking at her closely, he was fascinated to discover a faint wash of color creeping up her cheeks.

  “It was never—a pleasure?” he guessed, and from the sudden opening of her eyes he knew he had hit the mark. “You never took pleasure from your husband in bed?”

  “I refuse to continue this conversation,” she said in a stifled-sounding voice.

  “Is he an old man? Ugly?”

  “David is twenty-five, and accounted very handsome,” she flashed.

  “David?” Suddenly he knew, or thought he knew, who her husband was. Unless, of course, she was a very clever liar indeed.

  “My husband. Lord David Lynes.”

  “Whom you married a year and a half ago,” he said slowly, still working out the probabilities in his head. If she wasn’t lying . . . “Why did you marry him? For his money?”

  She looked outraged. “Certainly not. He has no money.”

  “Then why?” he prompted, more fascinated now than she could ever begin to guess.

  For a moment he thought she wasn’t going to reply. Then she made a restless movement, and her mouth twisted with what he took for a touch of bitterness.

  “I wanted a man who would be kind to me,” she said. “And David was kind. He wasn’t loud or aggressive, as some of my suitors were. He was gentle. I was quite certain that he would never beat me, or abuse me in any way. And—he was—is—handsome. He has blond hair and blue eyes, and he’s slender, not so tall but taller than I am. I—I fell in love with him, and I thought he fell in love with me.”

  “And so you married him, only to discover that he’s no fun in bed,” Hugh said dryly.

  “Fun?” She sounded as if the word had gotten stuck in her throat. Her expression was horrified. “I never said—I never expected . . .”

  “To have fun in bed? A man and a woman in bed together should have fun, my poor deluded darling. We were having fun, you and I, until . . .”

  “I absolutely refuse to continue with this conversation!”

  She flounced around so that her back was turned to him. He had to dodge to save his ribs from injury. While she stared stonily at the wall, he stared at the back
of her head, lost in thought. Everything she had said was spot on—if she was who she claimed to be. Could Sophy Towbridge have known so much? Perhaps. Could she have acted so convincingly? Perhaps again. Could she look like an angel, kiss like a green girl, and spin a story that, in all the particulars he was in a position to verify, rang absolutely true?

  Who the hell knew?

  With a hand on her shoulder, he turned her onto her back. She did not resist, but lay glaring up at him. He noted that she kept the blanket wrapped closely about her, as if it would somehow protect her from him.

  If she was Sophy Towbridge, she would need far more than a scratchy gray blanket to protect her, he reflected grimly.

  And if she wasn’t?

  “All right, my little Scheherazade, tell me your tale,” he said wryly, his gaze moving over her face. “Tell me just exactly how you came to be on that beach where we—uh—first made our acquaintance.”

  She met his gaze, and for a moment he thought she meant not to reply. Then her little pink tongue emerged to wet her lips—a visual torture he grimly willed himself to ignore—and she sighed. Then she began to talk. By the time she had finished, a long time later, she was comfortably nestled against him again. He lay on his back with the pillow beneath his head and his arm around her. Her head rested trustingly on his shoulder, and one slender arm had emerged from the blanket to curl across his chest. Lulled by the gentle rocking of the ship, Hugh gave himself over to thought. He found himself listening to the soft rhythm of her breathing as he once again contemplated the unexpectedly intricate patterns of the cobwebs above his head.

  He realized that what he had just listened to was the verbal equivalent of watching straw being spun into gold. What he had to determine now was whether the end result really was gold—or just a devilishly clever trick.