The devils own, p.18
The Devil's Own, page 18
“Go to hell.”
He made a tsking sound. “Is that any way for a nun to talk?”
“Don’t.” When his tongue playfully batted against the lobe of her ear, she tried to sound irritable, but the protest came out as a low groan of arousal.
Linc recognized the sound for what it was. He’d never had difficulty sexually communicating with women, whether they spoke his language or not. It wasn’t so much what they said as how they said it. And clearer than the single word of denial, was Kerry’s breathless way of saying it.
“You like that?” he murmured, catching her ear lightly between his teeth.
“No.”
He chuckled. “We both know you’re a liar. I think you like it a lot.”
He kissed the soft skin beneath her ear, nuzzled behind it with his nose, flirted with the rim of it with his tongue. It was hard to tell now whether her fitful movements beneath him were meant to put more space between them or to get closer.
His breath was warm as it drifted over her face. It smelled appetizingly of coffee. And that was just one of the reasons why her lips were far more obliging this time when his, with very little pressure applied, settled over hers. His open mouth moved upon hers, separating her lips for his thrusting tongue. As it speared into her mouth, she felt a correlating stab of desire in the depths of her body.
When he raised his head and peered deeply into her eyes, she thought that she might have made an involuntary sound. He asked, “Feel that?”
At first she thought that he was referring to that sweet ache deep inside herself. Then her eyes went wide with alarm when she realized that he was talking about the rigid flesh between his own thighs. She clamped her upper teeth over her lower lip and squeezed her eyes shut. His low laugh was nasty.
“I see that you do. Well, that’s how it’s been, baby. While you’ve been playing your devious little games with me, I’ve been hard with wanting you. All that time we were stalking through the jungle together, I was miserable not only with heat and fatigue and hunger, but with a desire that I couldn’t quench. I was ashamed of it because I thought it was a violation of your holiness.” He kept his voice as smooth as expensive brandy, but it had a bite as strong as cheap whiskey. “There’s nothing holy about you, is there?”
He worked his hand between their bodies. When Kerry realized what he was going to do, she went rigid. “No!” It was a soundless cry.
“Why, Kerry, you surprise me. Don’t you want to know the full extent of your powers?”
When he had unbuttoned his jeans, he reached for one of her hands and dragged it down. “No!” This time her protest was stifled by his kiss, a hard, possessive kiss that glued his lips to hers and sent his tongue deep into her mouth.
As he opened her hand over himself, Kerry’s brain recorded a thousand fleeting impressions. One prevailed. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to discover. She wanted to catalog the smoothness, the hardness, the warmth. She wanted to sink her fingers into the hair that was coarse and springy, but soft.
She fought the temptation as long as she could, but self-discipline didn’t serve her long enough. Her hand stopped resisting the relentless pressure of his. Of its own free will it molded to his shape and became inquisitive.
Making an animal sound, Linc tore his mouth from hers and roughly shoved her hand away. His breathing was unsteady and rapid. “Not that way, Kerry,” he said in a voice hardly above a growl. “You won’t get by with that. You never quit playing dirty, do you? I guess it runs in the family. You’ve always got one more trick up your sleeve. Well, your tricks won’t work this time.”
Perplexity filled her dark blue eyes, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was studying the buttons on her casual shirt. He negligently opened the first one. “I vaguely remember how it feels to touch you. You’re small, but nice.” The sexist comment brought a wave of resentment rushing through her. He saw the mutiny in her eyes and smiled arrogantly. “And as I recall, your nipples respond nicely.”
Her cheeks flared with color, especially when he succeeded in opening all the buttons on her blouse and spreading it open. She and Jenny were of comparable size when Jenny wasn’t pregnant. Kerry’s breasts filled the cups of the lacy brassiere she had borrowed. With the sunlight pouring over them, there was little left to Linc’s imagination.
His eyes turned dark and Kerry thought she saw a muscle in his cheek twitch with something akin to remorse, before his lips formed that hard, unyielding line again. “Open it.”
“I won’t.”
“Then you can explain to Jenny how the fastener got broken,” he said, reaching for the clasp.
“You’re vile.”
“Open it.”
Setting her jaw stubbornly, she opened the clasp, but left the cups alone. After muttering a snide thank you, he moved them aside and left her bare to his gaze. It was as scorching as the sun overhead.
Kerry’s bravado deserted her. Her eyes closed in shame, so she missed seeing him swallow convulsively. She also missed the spasm of regret that twisted his stern lips as he ran his hands over her. The words he spoke fell like harmful blows on her ears.
“That’s what I thought. Not much there, but what there is, is nice.”
She slapped at his hands, but he secured her wrists in one manacling hold. She shrank away from his touch when he cupped the underside of her breast and pushed it up. His thumb whisked across the sensitive tip. When it responded, he laughed gloatingly. Again and again he dragged his thumb across the beaded crest, sometimes with agonizing leisure, sometimes with a quick fanning motion, sometimes raking it gently with his thumbnail, until it was quite stiff.
“Very nice,” he said hoarsely. “At least to look at, play with. How do you taste?”
Her back arched off the blanket at the first deft brush of his tongue. “No, no,” she groaned, rolling her head from side to side.
“I’m not convinced you mean that, Kerry.” He spoke directly above her, so that even as he formed the words with his lips, they moved against the aching, throbbing flesh of her nipple.
She made a murmur of protest and had to bite her lower lip to keep from crying out, not in outrage or fear or disgust, but from pleasure. It was exquisite, the touch of his warm, wet tongue against her breast. He licked her until she was wet and glistening, then let the wind dry her while he treated the other breast to the same torturous pleasure.
“Please, no more,” she begged.
“A lot more.”
She gave an agonized cry when he took her nipple between his lips and held it within the satin heat of his mouth. He tugged on her gently; she made soft moaning sounds with each squeezing, milking motion of his mouth.
“Please, stop,” she gasped.
He raised his head. “What do you want?” His tongue moved capriciously over the raised center of her breast.
“For you to stop.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate it. Hate you.”
“You might hate me. In fact, I’m sure you do. But you don’t hate this.” Again he touched her with the tip of his tongue. “Do you?” He repeated the question, each time nudging her with his tongue or sipping at her with his lips.
“Yes,” she said, shivering with need.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you?”
“Ye...no, no, no.” A sobbing sound tore through her throat.
“I didn’t think so.”
He lowered his head and kissed her stomach, while he struggled to open the fly of her slacks. Breathlessly, Kerry gasped for air. She was barely conscious of what his hands were doing. All her concentration was centered on his lips as they moved over her flesh, seeming to touch everywhere at once.
She actually raised her hips and aided him when he worked her slacks down. He kissed her protuberant hip bone, swung his head around and kissed the other. His lips brushed her navel, his tongue danced around it and probed it provocatively. He kissed her mound through her panties.
Kerry gave a startled cry and struggled to free her hands. When she succeeded, she didn’t fight him. Instead she mindlessly entangled her fingers in his hair. He went on kissing her, leaving her flesh fevered and damp where his mouth had been.
“I thought about this that night you slept in my arms.” Linc could barely speak, and even then it was a hoarse whisper. “Your breasts beneath my mouth. Your thighs opening to me.”
She didn’t remember his getting her panties off, but she suddenly realized that his eyes were hungrily moving over her nakedness. She should have been terrified of his ravenous gaze, but, oddly, she wasn’t. Her single thought was that she hoped he was pleased with her.
His fingers sifted through the dark cloud of hair between her thighs. Reflexively her knees came up. He parted them. Then he lowered his head and placed his mouth where she most wanted to feel him.
When his lips touched her, she cried his name. When his tongue touched her, she died a little. Holding her hips between his strong hands, Linc gave her pleasure with the same dedication with which he did everything else.
He stopped short of bringing her to climax, though he brought her to the threshold time and again. Her face was dewy with perspiration when he bent over it. “Tell me you want me.”
It was a miracle that he could even form the words in his mind, much less speak them aloud. His body was pulsing with a need so great it surpassed mere desire. God, he needed to be sheathed inside her body, giving her the passion that threatened to kill him if it wasn’t shared. He was filled to bursting with his need for her.
And suddenly this revenge seemed a thankless, empty victory. He didn’t want to triumph over her. He didn’t want to see her cowed in defeat, but glowing with a desire to match his own. He wanted to see joy in her face, not subjugation.
But habits formed in childhood were hard to break. Nobody got the best of Lincoln O’Neal without knowing his vengeance. He’d had to scrap for every ounce of affection and respect he had ever received. He knew no other way to ask than to make it a demand.
“Tell me you want me,” he ground out again, clenching his teeth in an effort to keep his body from doing what it was primed to do without playing out this senseless game. He slipped the tip of his organ between the moist petals of her sex.
“I want you,” Kerry gasped.
“Inside you,” he panted.
“Inside me.”
Those two words snapped his control. He slipped into her body and gave a mighty push that sent him straight to her womb. He gave a cry of such anguish and regret that it seemed to echo off the endless sky. He wanted to withdraw, but his control was gone.
Knowing that he would be damned a sinner anyway, and powerless over the demands of his body, he made but three shallow thrusts before his climax claimed him. In sublime surrender, he buried his face in her neck and let the exquisite seizures wash over him. He abdicated control to the natural forces of his own body and filled the woman he had wanted for what seemed like a lifetime with the hot, potent issue of his loins.
For long moments afterward, he lay atop her, exhausted, spent, in blissful devastation. When he finally found the strength to pull himself away, he avoided looking at her. With endearing awkwardness, he draped a corner of the blanket over the lower part of her body. Lying there beside her on his back, he gazed up through the sparse branches of the mesquite tree and tried to think of a name despicable enough to call himself.
Because up until a few seconds ago, Kerry Bishop had been as chaste as the nun she had pretended to be. She had been a virgin.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you have believed me?”
“No,” he sighed, knowing that that was true. He wouldn’t have believed anything she had said.
He rolled to a sitting position and hung his head between his widespread knees. For several minutes, he mumbled curses and epithets aimed at himself. Then he lapsed into silence. Finally he risked looking down at Kerry. Tears had left salty tracks on her cheeks, but her eyes were clear and staring straight at him.
“Do you, uh, hurt?” She shook her head. He didn’t believe her. “Do you have any water?”
“The canteen on the saddle.”
He stood and hiked his jeans up his hips until he could rebutton them. He went to the saddled horse, which had been docilely grazing through it all. The canteen was hanging from the pommel by a leather strap. He uncapped it, wet the handkerchief he’d put in his pocket that morning, and carried both the canteen and the soaked handkerchief back to Kerry. He extended it down to her and tactfully turned his back while she used it.
“Thank you.”
He turned back around to find her dressed and standing quietly, as though awaiting instructions. He’d not only crushed her physically...God, when he remembered how hard he’d been when he sank into her...but he had wounded her spirit as well. Her eyes were no longer sparkling with lights as pure and fine as costly sapphires. They stared at him dully.
“You’ll ride back with me,” he said. “I’ll tie the horse to the back of the truck.”
When that was done, he came to her, took her elbow, and led her over the rough ground with a solicitousness that would have been comical under different circumstances. It was he who winced when she stepped up into the truck.
It took considerably longer to cover the distance back to the house than it had taken Linc to get to the tank. He drove much slower, in deference to the horse that trotted along behind them and out of regard for the discomfort Kerry must be suffering. He knew the rough ride couldn’t be comfortable for her and cursed himself as a brute with each bumpy, bone-jarring, teeth-rattling turn of the wheels.
When they reached the house, he pulled the pickup into the garage and cut the engine. They sat in the deep shadows for a moment of ponderous silence, then he turned his head and asked, “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Kerry glanced down at her hands, which were knotted together in her lap. You could say that you love me. “No,” she said, choking back tears.
Linc got out. Before he could come around and assist her, she climbed out of the cab and untied the horse. Wordlessly they led him into the stable and turned him over to one of the hands. Still maintaining that strained silence, they headed toward the house.
Everyone was congregated on the terrace. Jenny was bouncing a truculent Trent on her thighs. Cage was sitting in a lawn chair, staring broodily over the waters of the swimming pool, where all the children were splashing in the shallows. Roxie and Gary Fleming were sitting at one of the patio tables moodily sipping cold drinks. Sarah Hendren was clipping roses from an overloaded bush and laying them in the basket that her husband held for her.
The mood, except for that of the gleeful children, was glum.
Cage looked up and spotted Linc and Kerry coming through the gate. It was to her that he addressed his comment. “We’ve got troubles.”
Chapter 11
Kerry struggled up from the swamp of despair into which she had sunk and asked, “What kind of troubles?” She lowered herself into the chair Linc pulled out for her. “Not Joe?”
“No, not Joe,” Roxie Fleming reassured her. “Physically he’s doing all right, but the doctor told us that he’s awfully depressed. Doc suggested that he be moved here this afternoon. He’ll recover faster if he’s not alienated from the other children.”
“Here? Jenny, won’t that inconvenience you?”
“Not at all,” Jenny told Kerry. “We’ll just move an extra bed into Trent’s room.”
“I’ll leave,” Linc said bluntly. “Then you’ll have plenty of room.” Jenny glanced at him with asperity. “I thought we settled that last night. We’re not going to let you leave, Linc. Besides, Joe will feel more at ease with you around.”
That argument made sense, so neither he nor Kerry countered it. “Well, if you’re sure,” Kerry said uncertainly. “It’ll only be for another day or so. Just until his adoptive family arrives to take him home.”
Gary cleared his throat too loudly. Roxie shifted in her chair. Cage and Jenny glanced uncomfortably at each other.
“Did I hit a nerve?” Kerry asked intuitively. “I must have accidently stumbled onto the trouble spot you mentioned. What gives? Have Joe’s adoptive parents had second thoughts since he was wounded in the escape? The doctor assured me that his leg suffered no permanent damage, if that’s what’s bothering them.”
“Actually, Kerry,” Cage said with noticeable reluctance, “Joe never was spoken for.”
Stunned, Kerry could only stare at him for a moment before crying, “What? That was a condition of my bringing the orphans out, that they would have a home ready and waiting for them.”
“We know.” Jenny’s normally serene face was filled with anxiety. “That’s why we didn’t tell you. Cage and I discussed it and decided that no matter what, we couldn’t let you leave any of the children behind.”
“Most prospective parents feel that Joe is too old for adoption,” Cage said gently.
“I see.”
Kerry’s shoulders slumped with dejection. According to the clock, it was still well before noon. But it seemed that she had lived a thousand years since she had gotten up that morning. Her heart had already been heavy, knowing that she had fallen in love with the wrong man. That’s why she had sought the solitary peacefulness of a horseback ride. Then, what should have been an exultant experience had been a nightmare.
And now this. Just when she was about to accomplish the only worthwhile endeavor in her life, she was met with failure. Poor Joe. He, more than the other children, realized what coming to the United States meant to his future.
“He can’t be sent back,” she said fiercely.
“You can count on that,” Cage said.
