He stood, still as death, his hand gripping the governor's gilt bedpost. Her gaze fell lower this time and her fear exploded when she saw his manhood still swaying from his previous movement. But what terrified her even more was the dragon. Though she couldn't see the tattoo on his back, she finally saw the tail. It swept across his hip and wrapped twice around his iron-hard thigh before its spade tip disappeared in his groin. It hugged him,, it possessed him completely, and it was now going to take her too.
She leaped off the bed and made a wild run for the door, her hands over her bare chest, the skirt of her gown trailing behind her, still clinging seductively to her hips. She thought he might try to grab her, but he didn't even need to expel that much effort. His foot stomped her trailing skirt, and she was thrust backward into his arms. He growled out a laugh and pulled her out of her gown. She cried and scratched and clawed, to no avail; he threw her down on the bed and subdued her like a shrewish wife.
"Vashon, I beg of you!" she panted before he eased himself on top of her.
"No more talk," he said, his hand making a studied slide down her breast.
"My God, I beg you! I'm a virgin!" she sobbed.
"Then like a festering wound, best to rip the bandages off quick."
"No!" she cried.
"Yes," he whispered.
She beat him but her efforts were futile. For as much as she flailed, as much as she twisted, there was no way to keep him from doing his worst. He pinned her down and his hand parted her thighs, caressing the creamy skin between them, his thumb brushing against the soft brown hair of her sex.
The shock of his touch nearly killed her, but it also summoned what little fight she had left. She'd meant to slap him, but in the flickering candlelight of the bedchamber, her gaze caught the glint of his earring. Her finger looped through it almost before the idea occurred to her. Immediately he stopped, suspended above her on corded arms.
"You stop this madness! This evil!" she panted.
"Go ahead. Rip it out, Aurora. It's happened before."
She looked up at him, her aqua eyes filled with fury and hesitation. He was being a monster. She couldn't let him continue. But could she hurt him like that? Rip the earring right through his ear? She looked at him, her full, pliant chest pressing against the granite of his as she caught her breath.
When her gaze moved to his ear, she saw a thick scar marred his earlobe. He'd lost that earring before. New tears pooled in her eyes. She could only think of one instance where another could get this close to Vashon to do such a deed.
"Was it another woman then?" she blurted out. "Did you get her this angry?" Her voice quavered. "Did she go as unwillingly as I?"
His eyes almost dared her to pull it. " 'Twas a beggar in the Casbah. I was only fifteen. He wanted the silver and came upon me in the darkness."
A long moment passed while she stared at her finger looped through his earring. "What did you do to him?"
"Let's just say he found he didn't need the silver after all."
She met his gaze. She didn't want to know any more.
"Go on, pull it so we may continue."
His harsh words frightened her more than anything had before it. She stilled her trembling hand, then gave a slight tug, not enough to inflict any damage. Her gaze caught his and she saw the planes of his face harden as he readied himself for the pain. Physical pain was just another facet of his black-and-white world. He'd take his pain to get his pleasure. It was as simple as that. But as she looked deep into his green eyes, she saw just a glimpse of how pain had shaped him. He'd been just fifteen and the world around him had been willing to see him bleed for a tiny bit of silver. She began to realize just how hard he'd had to fight to survive and how masterfully his cruel world had taught him.
Now it was her turn to teach him.
To hurt him was her only chance for escape. But with soul-crushing defeat, she knew she wouldn't, and the reason for it was more painful than what she'd been about to do.
With a heart-wrenching sob, she released her finger. He was obviously surprised by her surrender. He grabbed her but she wouldn't look at him. She turned away, her tears streaming down her cheeks like rivers. Softly, bitterly, she cried into the counterpane.
"Aurora—!"
"I can't hurt you!" she confessed, sobbing against his hand. "I can't hurt you," she cried like a curse over and over again.
"Aurora! Look at me!" he commanded, his every muscle growing taut from anger. But she refused, her tears still flowing, her chest heaving with her wretched newfound emotion.
"Aurora!" There was fury in his voice, yet something else, something almost like panic. "You listen to me. I won't feel for you, you tight-laced bitch! Do you hear me? I won't feel for you!" He brutally shook her, but she would not cease her crying. She held the counterpane with her hands and waited for his sexual onslaught. She almost didn't care. Her entire world had been shaken tonight. Even being kidnapped couldn't compare with this awful feeling, a feeling she knew she would rather die than admit.
"Aurora," he whispered, breathing nearly as hard as she.
She tossed her head back and forth, unwilling to meet his eyes, afraid of what her own might reveal. But finally he clamped her head between his flat palms and she was forced to look up at him. When she did, it seemed the entire island stilled.
He stared at her as if it were for the first time, as if they had no past at all. She couldn't look away, for though his hold was gentle, his eyes, his very being, had her completely captured. Her lips trembled; she was unsure of what was to come next. Slowly, hesitantly, his hand reached out and he touched her face.
"Vashon, don't . . ." she whispered as his finger traced her lips, bruised from his kisses. His thumb crossed her brow while her eyes chastised him through thick sienna lashes now spiked with moisture. He seemed almost to be trying to confirm that she was real as his fingers slid over her cheeks, tracing the path of her tears. Finally he believed it. He pulled back and stared at the tears glistening on his fingertips, and that was when she saw him—the man she so desperately sought. She found him in the slightest glimmer of remorse in Vashon's eyes.
"He's there," she said in an aching, quiet voice.
Angered, he pulled her further beneath him. She tried to caress his cheek but he pinned down her hands so that she couldn't touch him.
"Deny it. Yet he exists," she stated softly, her eyes brilliant from emotion.
"No," he rasped and grabbed her to him for a brutal kiss.
When she saw the magnitude of his rage, she thought he might hurt her after all, yet when the moment of his kiss arrived, his head lowered, not to her lips, but to her shoulder and he lay there, completely still, as if forcing himself to reconsider his course of action.
She ached to touch him, but he still had her hands pinned to the counterpane. She wriggled beneath him, and he finally lifted his head and looked down at her. Though they were still naked, lying chest against chest, heartbeat to heartbeat, she could sense him pulling away. She now knew he couldn't hurt her, and that made the thought of his leaving that much more unbearable. They had come too far.
He moved to leave the bed, but before he went, he woodenly placed a kiss upon her tear-stained cheek. Desperate to make him stay, she summoned a womanly guile she never knew she possessed. She waited for his lips to leave her cheek and just when they did, she turned her head and her lips met with his.
Their kiss was sublime. Never in her most wishful dreams did she believe a kiss could be like this: a man's heart and soul distilled into one soft motion of his lips. He made her want him with a desire that surpassed the physical, that grew and grew until she was almost made wild by it. Losing her self-consciousness, she slid her hand between them and let her palm mold to the grid of warm muscle over his torso. Her other hand reached up and caressed his beard-roughened cheek. Their kiss deepened.
Her lips instinctively parted for him. He tasted her, pushed himself into her, all the while per
suading her to taste him. She was a slow pupil, but finally she succumbed and slipped her tongue out to meet his.
Her pleasure was intense and immediate, but it increased tenfold when she realized that she had moved him also. She could hardly believe the power she suddenly possessed. He groaned against her, cupping her breast as if he held the wealth of the world in his hand. She shivered deliciously; her nipple hardened beneath his palm.
In the most fleeting of thoughts, she marveled at him, wondering when he had changed. When had his touch grown gentle, his caress tender? His kiss aching and sweet? She wasn't able to think so coherently for long. His mouth broke from hers and dragged along her throat. He moved lower and the velvet of his tongue traced one tight apricot bud, the black coils of his hair falling across her chest in stark contrast to the smooth ivory flesh beneath him. When he pulled himself up once more, the scent of his skin filled her, again bringing to mind the sea: salty, pungent, elemental. He looked down at her, his breath coming swift and insistent. She could feel him against her bare thighs, and her senses, filled to the point of intoxication, barely registered what happened next.
"Aurora," he groaned, "I think old Phipps just may be the one to kill me. . . ."
Everything moved quickly then. His arm reached beneath her hips; he arched her against him, awakening instincts in her she'd never known she had. When she helplessly moaned, it seemed he could take it no more. His knee forced apart her alabaster thighs and he slid between them, taking her sweetness in one searing motion.
The shock far outweighed the pain. She gasped and looked up, her eyes wide with disbelief. He stared back, implacable and devouring. Turning her head away, she felt panic overwhelm her. He began moving and her hysteria increased. Writhing beneath him, she did her best to pull back, but with him upon her it was utterly impossible. She was trapped like a wild bird suddenly caged.
"Stop, stop," she gasped, her eyes darkening with fear.
He never even broke rhythm. Instead he kissed her, his lips clinging, persuading, seducing, with all the dark fury in his soul. She sank back into helpless surrender, her body lifting to his as if it ached for him. She wrapped his violent motion in the gentle embrace of her femininity, and against her will her loins melted, tingling with the sensations of her dream. Her hands clutched at him, trying to hang on, but the turbulent ride became too much. Unbidden came the picture of the dragon on his back rippling with his every thrust, and she began to fall, everything around her sinking quietly into a deep, sweet oblivion.
Her last foothold on solid ground was her glance at him. He never blinked. His stare burned with sparks of lust, yet there was another desire there too. One that burned even brighter. It was a need of the spirit, and she wondered how he would ever satisfy that need when the dragon could not be slain. She understood that now. The dragon possessed him and always would. Her only hope was that it could be tamed. For the dark side of him would never completely go away.
She surrendered, and another truth came to her, a truth as shattering as the first, as naked as the picture of her fingers clawing down his back, clawing down that dragon in blind, wild ecstasy. She panted and cried and shook her head, but there was no denying it any longer. Vashon had confirmed it in a language more eloquent than words.
She had a dark side too.
Chapter Seventeen
A shaft of brilliant sunlight spilled across the two sleeping figures. When Peterborough entered the bedroom and threw back the heavy bed-curtains, one body stirred, the sheets twisting with his lazy movement. The young man's eyes slowly opened and he squinted in the blinding morning light.
"Viscount," he said, his voice thick with sleep.
"My good Lord Worthington," Peterborough greeted sweetly. "Does your illustrious father, the duke, know where you are?"
"No—no, my lord."
"Then imagine his disappointment when he discovers your little pleasures are hardly going to produce the family heir." With that dry comment, Peterborough whipped back the brocaded counterpane and grabbed the slender young man by the hair. He jolted him out of the bed and while the nude fellow scrambled to get to his feet, Peterborough tossed him off into the corner.
"What is the meaning of—!" Asher sat up in the bed, his words cut short when he saw Peterborough.
"Get up. We're going to Mirage."
Asher glanced at his paramour. The young man had grabbed the damask window curtains and was shamefacedly holding them to his loins. "I don't understand," he said. "I spoke to Azzedine myself. He was supposed to take care of Vashon."
Peterborough's face hardened and he eyed the young man in the corner. "I'm hardly going to explain all this with your lover staring at us from the drapery."
Asher ran an agitated hand over his jaw.
"Will you excuse us, Worthington?" Peterborough inquired politely, turning to the young earl.
Lord Worthington looked at Asher. Asher gave him a slight nod and the young man acquiesced. "Where can I find a dressing gown?" he asked.
"No time for that," Peterborough answered.
The young man was about to give the viscount a rather snubbing retort when his eyes opened wide in horror. Peterborough had a pistol aimed directly at his forehead. Before Asher could even gasp, Peterborough shot the young earl dead and drolly watched as his body slumped beneath the window, the lad's face a frozen, blood-flecked mask of horror.
"Why did you do that!" Asher cried, rushing to the young man.
Peterborough stopped him. "I want to talk to you. We have business."
"He would have left us alone!" Asher exclaimed, anguished by the sight of the dead young man.
"There wasn't time."
"Are you out of your mind? I'll be hanged for this! How shall I explain to the duke?"
"You won't need to. We're leaving. Our ship is already at the docks." Peterborough looked scornfully at Asher's nudity. The blond man's thin lily-white body looked as though it might perish in the sunshine. "Get dressed," he said.
Asher stared at him with loathing—and something else, something strangely like misplaced desire, on his face. "I wish you hadn't killed him," he said. "He was a good lad, despite his . . . waywardness."
"Don't mourn him. He wasn't your type. You're a kneeler, Asher. In more ways than one." Peterborough uttered a scathing laugh.
Asher's expression soured.
"Get dressed. I'm not going to say it again."
Asher slowly stepped over the dead earl and went to his wardrobe.
Showing a vast amount of callousness, the viscount sat in an armchair right next to the young man's bloodied corpse. He resumed conversation as if there had never been a killing. Testily, he said, "I just received word this morning that the Bleeding Heart has sailed to Johanna for an extended raid. Azzedine failed like the miserable bastard he is."
Asher peeked from behind the wardrobe door. "Why can't we send another—?"
"Shut up, you fool. Say good-bye to your buggering little earl here and get ready for a voyage." Peterborough shot him a look that promised all the fires of hell if he didn't comply. The viscount's green eyes sparkled with fury, and to emphasize his point, he pounded his fist on the windowsill, unconcerned with the dead young man near his feet. "I'm going to get him this time, Asher. Mark my words, I no longer care that Vashon's my brother. I'll see him dead and that emerald mine. And I'm going to do it in such a way that I'm going to make those men wish they were back on the Leviathan!"
"One day you'll go too far," Asher said in an ominous voice.
Peterborough laughed handsomely and kicked the corpse. The young earl's bloodied hand fell forward in a mock entreaty.
"But I haven't yet," the viscount said sarcastically, "have I?"
Turning back to the wardrobe, Asher closed his eyes. He appeared as if he wanted to fight back, at least with words. But he didn't. Something weak and terrible in him always bowed to those more forceful. And ever since he'd met this handsome, monstrous viscount, he kn
ew he would never win.
Reluctantly he buttoned his shirt.
Vashon held her to him for probably an hour. He was quiet, almost peaceful, but his arms gripped her as if she were a present too soon to be taken away.
Aurora watched him, her gaze hungering for every detail. The tension was gone from his normally hard mouth. His eyes were sleepy and half-lidded, their emotion now cloaked only by shadow. Somewhere she heard a clock ring four times and she wanted to scream to make it stop. She wanted to run through the mansion and destroy all the clocks. Time must stop; she never wanted to leave his arms.
But time evaporated like desert rain. When Vashon finally left the bed, Aurora knew she had never seen a man so cold. The night air was hot, and perspiration slicked back the tendrils of her hair, covering her body in a fine glistening sheen, but still she shivered watching Vashon's frozen silhouette. He stood at the doors to the balcony, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. The dragon didn't move. She pulled the scarlet counterpane to her, suddenly chilled, suddenly self-conscious about her nudity.
"Vashon?" she whispered.
He allowed his head to fall back, as if he'd already begun to regret what he must say.
"Vashon," she said again, barely able to keep the quaver from her voice.
"Get dressed. We've stayed here already too long. Ignatio may give up his search for me and return."
"But we must talk—"
"Get dressed."
His tone sent one huge tear cascading down her cheek. She should have broken all the clocks after all. She knew the moment he left he would be lost to her. He was now pushing her away, and after what she'd just surrendered to him, she'd have welcomed a knife with more pleasure.
He faced her and she quickly wiped her tear away, but not before he saw it.
"This should have never happened," he said.
"But it—has—happened," she answered, her voice cracking.
"Never again. Never again."
Till Dawn Tames the Night Page 22
