Authors: Jennifer Horsman
Praise be the fates that made her want him dead!
"So," he said easily, torn between laughing out loud and dropping to his knees in gratitude to Papillion, fortune, fate, for the gift of this night. "You offer yourself to me. Like a condemned man's last meal, you will give me the taste of a sweet treasure before ending my life."
The words somehow made the idea seem ridiculous. Only because he did not believe. 'Twas this very absence of faith that would cause his death!
"Aye," she said.
"You little fool."
Her blue eyes shot to his face. He wrapped the string of her gown around his finger, as if it were a noose on her neck. Then he pulled it. Both hands came to her neck to part the dress from her shoulders. A soft cry escaped her as her hands flew to his as if to stop him.
"Which is it, Roshelle?" he asked in a compelling whisper of words. "Shall I stop and live to see the sun rise on the morrow? Or shall I play this game and march verily down this sweet, mercifully dark tunnel that ends in my death?"
She could not answer, yet distress marked her face. Heat gathered where his hands covered her shoulders. She felt confused and scared of so many things, she could hardly separate and make sense of any of it. Fear bought by his inexplicable anger, the threat posed by his strength and power. This, set uneasily alongside memories of what would come, memories of the play and passion of his kisses and tender play of his hands. All of it was shadowed by the pending violence. She would remain as cold and hard as a wooden doll. Surely! She would hardly feel a thing.
As cold and hard as a wooden doll.
The thought let her slowly lower her hands to her side and she braced.
“
So, you would see me dead.”
She started to shake her head, to tell him he was choosing death, but he parted the cloth from her shoulders, and she forgot to breath. The intensity of his stare stole her breath. Heat shot to her cheeks and she closed her eyes in shame.
She drew a shaky, uneven breath as his large warm hands slipped beneath the cloak of her hair and then grazed her slender back, riding up and then down again, his touch as light and stirring as feathers.
His tall form cast a shadow over her, and with the hot press of his body aligned with hers, she felt another surge of naked fear, a maiden's fear. Before she could think better of it, before she could stop herself, she raised her arms to protect her modesty and shook her head.
Again, he just stared, his stare a challenge. She could not meet it and her lids lowered as if they were a curtain on her heart. His large hands came over hers, bringing her hands not just to her side but behind her back as he pulled her tight against him, their bodies firmly aligned.
The pleasure of the heavy softness of her breasts on his chest caused a sharp intake of breath, released in a whisper as he lowered his head to hers. "Roshelle, Roshelle." He let his lips graze hers, demanding without words that she hold perfectly still for what pleasure he'd take, and she did; only the anxious pounding of her heart moved in her still body. His warm, firm lips rocked over hers until he heard her heated gasp.
His hands lowered to her sides, traveling back and forth in a sea of sensations, stopping beneath her breasts, where he was teased by the length of cloth between them. He pulled it all the way over her arms and it dropped around her ankles. Venerability, intensely felt, came with her complete nakedness, growing as his gaze found the beauty thus unveiled. She crossed her arms over herself. "Oh, no, Roshelle," He took her clenched fists in his hands. "I will humor no modesty tonight."
Her cheeks burned with color as he stared, his gaze traveling over the straight, slender shoulders, the oh-so-generous lift of her full, rounded breasts. He reached a hand to the silken side that narrowed to her small waist before sliding over the sensual flare of her hips and the shapely lines of her long legs.
She tensed, her flesh recoiling from the warmth of his touch as if it were scalding water. It was all she could do not to bolt, and as the moments stretched beneath his unkind scrutiny, she wondered above the furious pounding of her heart what, please to God, was taking so long.
Then she heard him say, unbelievably, as his lips rocked gently over her forehead, "Ah, Roshelle, I wonder, is it really my death that you want?"
The startling words brought her blue eyes up with a shocked gasp, and he had to bite his lip hard to stop from laughing at the moral indignation there. She cried, "You are filled to full with conceits! To imagine that I might welcome this, this torment! I am a most reluctant player here and your, your every touch is a tribulation to me!"
A wicked kind of amusement filled his eyes, and absolutely no pity. "Such a forceful protest—shall I humor the pretense and pretend it's true?" The question was asked as he swept his hands along her back to cup and hold her bottom, a movement somehow so intimate and possessive, she felt heat spread from the tips of toes to the roots of her hair. "Or, Roshelle, perhaps I should show you how effortlessly I can change this reluctance and turn your tribulations to a celebration."
The words brought a kind of heartfelt agony and she cried, "How can you laugh in the face of your death? How?"
"Here, I'll show you, love."
From behind, he reached his hand around a handful of her hair, gently tugging so her head tilted up for his kiss. At first he teased his lips over hers, testing their softness until she released her breath in their joined mouths. Fear engulfed her, growing as his lips seemed to ruthlessly devour her, a kiss given with as much pain as pleasure. It stole her will, and she tried weakly to steel herself against the force of this kiss, she tried to conjure up the triumphant image of a waiting French army, but the very thought burst into a sea of bright gold-and-orange suns.
Her head spun like a child's top beneath the dizzying onslaught of sensations, and somewhere in the passion of the kiss, he had released her hands, so that she realized all of a sudden that they lay against his chest, opening and closing with the frantic beat of her heart. He broke the kiss to stare down at her changed expression.
She felt a wild race of tremors as his lips grazed her lids, her forehead, the corner of her mouth where her lips trembled. "Kiss me again, Roshelle," he whispered against her ear, gently taking the sensitive lobe between two teeth. A hot tremor of shivers coursed through her and she gasped as he said, "And see if I won't trade my life for another."
His finger lightly circled her lips until they parted with another gasp. Her eyes flew open, only to close them again as she felt the sensual press of his lips. His hands held her head with a gentle but firm restraint, forcing her head back to accommodate him. And he wanted more. The kiss changed as he molded her mouth to his, teasing her with the skillful play of his tongue, moving in tantalizing slowness over every height and hollow.
He broke the kiss to let her draw a deep breath. “Look at me, Roshelle." Her blue eyes, darkening with passion and drawn from his dreams, slowly lifted to him with confusion and fear and passion. "You are confused now?" he asked. He let his lips lightly graze the place where hers trembled, savoring the sweetness of her small breath and mouth. "And very frightened. Roshelle, Roshelle," he whispered, then let her feel the light lash of his tongue on her ear. Like a hot little lick of fire. "I will answer your confusion by increasing your fear."
The fear he spoke of trembled through her. She felt a tingle of the rough cotton of his breeches on her abdomen, the threat of his hard, aroused manhood. Her senses reeled and against her will, she felt that melting warmth rising to greet him. He called her name against her ear. Shivers, she felt a rush of tiny shivers, a feverish trail where his lips touched her skin. The pounding of her blood drowned out the crackle of the fire and his own changed breathing. His lips met hers with a promise calling to the very core of her being.
So tenderly did he first kiss her, she felt a strange sense of wonder, mixed potently with some small distress. But her distress was quickly soothed as the sensual press of his mouth deepened, fueling a tingling warmth surging from deep inside, growing, spreading, until—
The pleasure magnified as his tongue skillfully entered her mouth again, sending her into a soft swoon, melting and helpless. Yet he was holding her now. She didn't know when or how he did it, but somewhere in the space of that kiss, as her senses soared, then swooned, he had lifted her and moved three paces to the bed. Before she understood what was happening he came partially over her, pulling her against the full length and measure of his desire.
The shock of it sounded a long, loud no in her mind and she tried to pull away. Only to abruptly feel his large warm hands catch hers, and pin them to the soft folds where she lay. "Don't," he said. "That's part of my pleasure."
The hot, burning part of him brought fear pounding with her pulse and she started to shake her head, but then she could not think, not as his moist lips found the soft hollow of her throat, the line of her neck and the curve of her ear, where he whispered her name over and over. She felt hot and cold all at once. The artful tease of his mouth and tongue sent small, hot slashes of pleasure through her until her breath came in tiny little gasps and an involuntary whimper escaped from her.
"You move so slowly . . . 'Tis a cruel torment to me!"
The exclamation made him chuckle. "Beg no sympathy from me, Roshelle. For if killing were made easy, there would be no human history to step into…" He kissed her again before adding. "Let me see how I might draw out, magnify and prolong thy torment.''
Blood rushed hot and fast through her veins. A strange burning sensation filled her, as if his heat penetrated her very skin and, to her wild alarm, her very loins. Futilely, she tried to steel her mind and rally her defenses against the pleasure of his lips, his hands, even the anticipation of his touch, and in desperation she blurted, "Why do you persist? When you know—"
I am trying to steal your life.
She did not have to say it out loud. He answered anyway. "Why do I persist?" The question repeated itself in his mind and he said nothing for what seemed an eternity as he studied the beauty of her naked form bathed in firelight. Then he closed his eyes, trying desperately to restrain the surge of desire he had never known before, managing only, when he opened his eyes again, to see the slight tremble of her lips. He lightly kissed the corner of her mouth, soothing the sensations there.
Leaning on an elbow, he took one of her small hands in his, his eyes never leaving her as he whispered, "If I believed in the power of this curse as the sun will rise on the morrow, as an absolute, unalterable fact, I still would neither offer impunity nor take it. Not when your lips wait for mine." He touched her lips, kneading her bottom lip between his teeth until he heard her gasp and she trembled with its gentle eroticism. "Not when your naked beauty lies before me, begging for my touch..." His hand grazed the beckoning curves as if sculpting her very softness, lingering beneath the flattened mounds of her breasts, until her blue eyes closed on a sigh. The callused tips of his fingers brushed the petal-satin of her skin above her breast, over and over, until a hot congestion gathered there and each breath came with a conscious effort. "Nay, death is no distraction, Roshelle, not now, not when my need for you pounds through every part of my being ..."
"Vincent ..."
His name was uttered in whispered agony. Agony the moment his mouth claimed hers. There was no thought past the lips on hers, the heady flavor of his mouth, the sweep of his tongue on hers, the feel of his body on hers. She had never felt this, anything like this, except—
Except in her dreams. He had kissed her before, not once but many times, in the secret world of her dreams. The knowledge, the very force of what was overwhelming her, struggled up from the sweet onslaught of sensations and she knew at that moment that a part of herself would die with him, a large part of herself...
He drew back, only to let her feel his lips elsewhere, everywhere. Shivers erupted in full force. Shimmering heat swept through her. The pounding of her heart became the pounding of her blood. As if needing a lifeline, her hands were suddenly clinging to his head, her nails running through his hair, and only in the furthest recess of her mind did the thought persist—
He would be struck dead, any minute now, he would be struck down dead! A violent tremor shot through her, one he completely misunderstood. She stiffened dramatically as his hands came over her breasts, scared, just scared by the caress of skilled fingers. The palm of his hand slowly circled there as his lips and tongue teased the most sensitive lobe of her ear. She tensed with a rush of chills. She shook her head in a mindless kind of negation as his hand continued to circle in erotic patterns, sliding over her side to the curve of her hip and thigh, then back again in ever-deepening strokes.
Dear Lord, 'twas coming…
His desire mounted, driving hot and fast and far. He went weak with it. My God, she felt so soft, slim and warm. Passion overwhelmed his mindfulness of her innocence; the demand of his desire became like a flame, consuming and devouring. "Roshelle, I want you ... I want you . . ."