She should have attempted a true protest. She should have stopped him. Fought him, wildly, determinedly. She should have stopped this. She should have bitterly decried so intimate a touch as that with which he so easily stroked her. He had come seeking vengeance, nothing more. Revenge. Was part of this revenge to seduce her into the flames…
As she had done with him?
Her gown was open. All slim barriers she might have possessed were gone now. His hands were cupping her breasts. His tongue bathed one and then the other. His body moved against hers. The wetness of his caress moved erotically over her abdomen, rising, falling, rising…wetting, licking, touching her while he stroked within her…
“Is this revenge?” she managed to whisper.
He groaned softly in turn, rising against her. His green eyes captured hers with passion, and he told her, “From hell I dreamed of you, Shawna, longing for revenge. Longing to see you again, and you are here, and I am newly seduced by the perfection of your face and form, even knowing that your beauty can be as deadly as the captivating brilliance of a fire!”
“I tell you?—”
“Tell me nothing!” he charged her. “For revenge, my love, can indeed be sweet.”
The heat of his body seemed to be a fire, and that fire burned from the green of his eyes and into her. His lips fell upon hers again with fierce demand, bruising first in their passion and ardor, suddenly gentle, then demanding once again, seeking, delving, into the heart of her. Revenge, perhaps. But he wasright, for it seemed that the violence of his kiss was unbearably sweet.
His hands, oh god, they were rough upon her, yet so strong, holding her. They moved with trembling strength into her hair, then against the soft flesh of her cheeks, stroking her shoulders, drawing her tighter against him, running the length of her body.
Seducing…
Pressing her against his body, against the fever that burned in him now like an inferno, consuming, taking her with him into a conflagration. She felt the strength of his muscled power, the erotic hardness of his arousal. She could scarcely breathe. The pressure of his mouth demanded and ravaged, his tongue brought liquid sweeps of searing heat that seemed to awaken and arouse the length of her.
She could not do this.
She pressed her hands against his chest. He didn’t seem to feel them. She tried then to find words to protest, yet the force of his mouth against hers gave her no chance to speak, no breath with which to do so.
In time she realized that his mouth had left her lips again to travel an erotic trail down her throat. Her gown was shoved to her waist, and the rough, calloused touch of his hands was against the bareness of her flesh, caressing her breasts, thumbs teasing and rubbing her nipples, sending exotic shafts of fire and light to sear throughout her like the rays of the sun. His lips, his hands, were everywhere. Ever more intimate. Whispered words escaped her at last, yet she could not comprehend them herself, and he did not hear or heed them. His thumb created a line down her abdomen from her navel, intimately invaded once again, thrust deeply within her. Again, some cry tore from her lips, and whether a cry of pure sensation or the dying gasp of a struggle she could no longer seek to wage, she did not know. She felt the gentle pressure of his teeth teasing against her upperthigh, the stroke of his tongue, a liquid fire that circled the center of her desire until she thought she would die, then stroking directly upon it until the sweeping sensations rose in a wicked explosion within her and a cry erupted from her lips.
He was atop her then, fumbling briefly with the buttons of his black pants. His mouth seized hold of hers once again, capturing her lips, her tongue, and her breath with whatever whispers might have escaped her. A deep, trembling shudder swept into her at his next invasion, for he thrust within her with the burning shaft of his sex, blunt, hard, bold. She might have shrieked aloud again at the deep, knifing sensation that filled her, but she could not, for his kiss continued to absorb all sound.
To seduce and arouse anew.
God help her, she was swept into his demand. And then, she discovered, she demanded in return, she was seeking herself. She wanted him so urgently. Forgetting him, forgetting herself, time, place, past, present, and all reason. She hungered, she ached, arching and writhing to meet his every thrust, to feel his every touch.
He covered and filled her, still dressed, with only his dark breeches loosened. Her flesh seemed almost unbearably vulnerable to the touch of fabric against it, and yet everything within her seemed drawn as well to that place where bare flesh met bare flesh, where his body stroked into hers with a thundering urgency, hard, wild, seducing no more, suddenly demanding everything. She clung to him, feeling as if she rode out a storm. His very fever touched her again and again, along with the driving relentlessness of his demand. The very force and power that filled her seemed to awaken in her the clamoring to have more and more, to reach surcease. His body constricted in a massive wave of tension and heat, then it seemed that sunlight rushed within her, triggering the sweet explosion of her own climax. `The feelings burst upon her, so incrediblywonderful, like a blending of all the hot, brilliant colors of the fiercest blaze within her body. She drifted in the sweet, warm fires, shaken again and again by a series of little rapid-fire convulsions, until she seemed to fall into the deep softness of the bed again.
David moved quickly, as if he had realized his weight just as she began to feel the pressure of it. He lay at her side, his face completely in shadows. Still clothed. She felt him button his breeches, then stretch out, his fingers laced behind his head as he stared at the ceiling.
“Oh god!” she breathed suddenly, realizing what they had done. Despite his flowers and gifts, he still accused her and her family.
And he had come for revenge. This, then, was nothing but revenge.
“Damn you!” she cried out, springing up to leap out of the bed.
She didn’t manage to do so.
He caught her upper arms, flinging her back down upon the mattress. “What do you think you’re doing now?” he demanded irritably.
“Getting up!”
“Why?”
“Because—because—” she sputtered. “Oh, damn you!” she cried again, a balled hand landing against his chest. She stared into his eyes and whispered vehemently, “I did not seduce you, Laird David Douglas!”
“You seduce me by being, Lady MacGinnis!” She felt his eyes sweep over her. “And I’m not sleeping in any damned chairs anymore, and you’re not going to catch pneumonia on the floor and expire on me, either.”
She was shaking, trying to fight when there was no fight left within her.
“You can’t?—”