Authors: Elizabeth Thornton
And then Deveryn was there, his hand grasping her bare ankle. Maddie tried to kick herself free, but his hand moved higher, fastening with paralyzing force on the soft flesh of her thigh. With a strangled cry of rage, she threw herself at him. It was a fatal mistake. Her blows were ineffective. She was lifted, high in his arms, and carried to the open door of the bothy. He dumped her roughly on the floor and fastened the latch securely.
"You bitch!" he breathed, and dragged her to her feet. His mouth, purposefully cruel, closed over hers, scorching her lips with the full flame of his anger. She tried to drag her head away, and that small act of resistance seemed to strip away the vestiges of his control. With a vicious jerk, he swung her round and pinned her against the door. Though she tried to shrink from the crush of his body as it pressed relentlessly against hers, her spine flattening against the hard, unyielding surface of the door, he would not permit it. His hand caught her hip, dragging her close to the lower half of his body, forcing her to accept the heat of his muscled thighs pressed 'intimately against hers.
There was never any doubt in her mind that his motive was punitive. There was nothing of the tender lover who had seduced her to willingness in the darkened nave of the church. His lips burned, his hands bruised, and he used his body like a weapon to subdue her. If it had been any other man, Maddie would have been terrified out of her wits. But this was Deveryn. That he could humiliate her in such a degrading way, making her feel all the implications of her helplessness, fanned her fury to boiling point.
Her puny strength was no match against his. His weight was smothering, permitting her little movement. But what little was left to her, she used to convey her utter contempt for the hurt he was inflicting. Her lips firmed and she pressed them ruthlessly against his until she could feel her teeth grinding his. Her hands clenched on his arms, her nails digging into the corded muscles which restrained her so effortlessly, and she jerked her small body spasmodically, straining against the hard planes of his length.
The change in him was subtle. By degrees, he began to absorb her anger into himself. His lips softened, his muscles relaxed and the cruel clasp of his hands gentled, moving over her back and hips with the sensuous touch of a lover. Maddie's anger flamed higher. He had frightened her half to death, called her vile names. And now he thought to insult her with enforced tenderness! If he cared for her at all, he would never have subjected her to this terror.
She pulled her head back. "Let me go, Deveryn!" There was no pleading this time, only a command.
The wish to punish her had been short lived. The satiny feel of her skin as it pressed intimately against his had aroused other, more compelling emotions. But it angered him that she would still resist when she had given herself freely to Moncrieff. She was an experienced woman. Nothing could change that. He would get over it, in time. But he would be damned if he would tolerate her missish rejection when she had been his for the taking anytime this past week. With bitter clarity he saw himself as a lovesick schoolboy in the throes of first iove. Any other woman, he would have simply walked away from. This chit had enslaved him. By God, when he had finished with her, he'd make her
his
slave! She'd known the
fumblings of an inexperienced boy. When this was over, she'd know what it was to be pleasured by a man. Wordlessly, he swung her in his arms and carried her to the cot.
He threw himself on top of her before she had a chance to escape him. His mouth closed over hers with restrained savagery, persuasive, pleasuring, unyielding. When she tried to drag her head away to evade the scorching heat of that embrace, his hand grasped her chin, opening her mouth wider, and his tongue forced its way between her teeth to penetrate to the sweet moistness within. That one wanton act of possession had an electrifying effect on him. Deveryn lost control.
He reared over Maddie, his hands dragging at the straps of her chemise. She caught at his wrists to prevent him.
"Don't!" he warned, and there was something in his voice, not anger, not passion, but an unwavering resolve coloured by an emotion which Maddie could not name.
In that moment, she felt as if a hand had closed over her heart. She had credited him with a few redeeming qualities, not least a certain
tendre
for herself. She had been mistaken. Nothing seemed to matter any more.
Her hands fell away, freeing his wrists, and the chemise was swiftly stripped from her. She could not hold that unwavering stare, and turned her head away. Slowly, with deliberate possessiveness, his hands traced the curve of her shoulder, smoothed the indentation of her waist, the flare of her hips, and tested the taut muscles of her abdomen. He stilled and Maddie opened her eyes.
His head was thrown back, his eyes closed, his features carved in harsh lines, and beads of perspiration dewed his skin. In different circumstances she would have supposed that he had endured some unspeakable torture.
Conscience and passion fought for mastery of Deveryn. Doubt took hold in his mind. The girl was trembling, her hands unconsciously trying to shield herself from his gaze. He had known many women. If her innocence was a sham, it was an excellent counterfeit. Then again, she could be a consummate actress.
Without warning, his hands moulded themselves to her breasts, the soft pads of his fingers brushing against the sensitive nipples. The air in Maddie's lungs froze.
"Damn you, no," she cried out, shamed by her body's unexpected response, and flung his hand away.
Her wrists were grasped easily in one strong hand. He held them above her head, gently but forcefully, and he arched her back. His head descended, and she felt the soft pull at her breast as his lips and tongue played with her. A nipple contracted, then hardened as his mouth became more purposeful. Her body jerked, and she sobbed in protest. Her distress was ignored. Sensitive, skillful fingers and lips lavished her with slow, tantalizing caresses. Nothing had ever prepared her for this total seduction of the flesh. She discovered a new enemy that she was forced to contend with. Herself. Outraged will and rioting senses warred within her.
"Maddie, please! Let me!"
The hoarse plea acted on her senses more potently than an aphrodisiac. Her lips formed the
word
"no" but she became restless. Her breathing changed, became slower, less regular. Deveryn recognized the beginnings of her surrender. He released her hands and eased her legs apart. His hand slid to the silky auburn curls at the junction of her thighs. Unerringly, his fingers found her and pressed to the secret core of her femininity.
Pleasure, sweet and wanton, stirred Maddie's blood, and bone and sinew seemed to melt under Deveryn's sensual onslaught. Flame licked through her veins, heating her skin, engorging the most intimate and secret parts of her femininity. Her pulse soared. Breathing became difficult. She felt the world slip. Instinctively, she reached for Deveryn, seeking a more intimate joining.
His mouth took hers with compelling urgency, his tongue surging and receding in erotic tempo as his fingers sheathed themselves in her soft woman's core. Maddie writhed in an agony of sensation, her body arching rhythmically against his hand. Her hands kneaded the powerful muscles of his shoulders, communicating the depth of her need. Deveryn pulled back. Through passion dazed eyes, he observed the quick rise and fall of her full breasts. The small room seemed to throb with the tempo of their rough breathing.
He eased between her legs. With infinite tenderness, he pushed back the tendrils of curls which lay against her damp cheeks. "Love," he said softly, "forgive me. This will hurt. But only the first time. I'll never hurt you again. I swear it."
The reassuring words were at first unintelligible to Maddie. A moment later, she grasped the full import of their significance. There had never been any doubt in his mind of her innocence. He had used her friendship with Malcolm as a convenient excuse to wreak his will on her.
His thighs settled against the lower part of her body, the demanding hardness of his arousal poised for the final act of possession. He braced himself on one arm.
Tentatively, Maddie stayed him, her hands spreading out against his shoulders. She stared up into the
velvet,
blue eyes, and she said softly and unflinchingly, "You're not the first, I thought you knew."
He closed his eyes. Instinctively, she shrank from the violence she could sense as the hard muscles of his body tensed. The explosion was not long in coming. His mouth curled in a cruel line, and with a feral snarl, he ripped through the delicate membrane, sheathing himself fully.
Maddie screamed as that rending pain sliced through her. Though she had achieved her object, though she had punished her willful body and cured it of its sensual addiction, the price was more than she had counted on.
"Maddie?" His voice was unmistakably etched with remorse, but still he remained inside her, unmoving, his male arousal stretching her unwilling body to accommodate him.
In her torment, her nails curled into claws and she flayed the rigid muscles of his arms and shoulders. He flinched but made no move to protect himself from her anger. Neither could she compel him to withdraw.
By slow degrees, the pain receded to an uncomfortable fullness. She averted her head and lay like a block of marble beneath the press of his weight. Only then did Deveryn try to coax her to passion again.
She was too spent from everything that had gone before to offer more than a passive resistance. But it was effective. She was deaf to his pleas, immune to the voluptuous caress of his hands, and finally unmoved by his bitter frustration. As he moved upon her, trying to draw a response from her unwilling body, her eyes closed. She concentrated on the pain of the
violation she had been forced to endure. It was an effective I antidote to passion.
When it was over, he left her abruptly and stalked to the fire. The silence stretched taut. Not for anything would she give him the satisfaction of hearing her whine like a whipped cur. Let his conscience flay him, if he had one. In a moment, he was back at the cot, looming over her like an angry tiger who had discovered a kitten in his lair. "How could you do this to me?" His eyes glittered with the strength of his emotion.
The words momentarily robbed Maddie of speech. She pulled herself to a sitting position and dragged one of the sheepskin pelts across her lap.
He repeated his question, but this time, there was no mistaking the hard anger in his voice.
He had frightened her half to death, forced her against her will, and now had the temerity to put her in the wrong. "I think" she retorted, "you have taken the words out of my mouth.
I'm
not the one who has anything to apologize for."
"You wanted me to hurt you!"
It was true, of course. She had known when she had uttered those taunting words that he would not be gentle. She had sought pain as a cure for . . . Her mind shied away from the word that formed on her lips.
"What you did to me was wrong," she parried. "Even if Malcolm was my lover, you had no right to . . ."
"You gave me that right."
"Never!"
"Yes, Maddie. If you're honest with yourself you'll admit it. I'm experienced enough to know when a woman's affections are engaged. I could have taken you anytime I wanted this week past. I held off because I knew you to be an innocent."
"Don't pretend that made a difference. It didn't stop you tonight."
"I was crazed with jealousy. I thought you had betrayed me with Moncrieff."
"Liar! Your words convict you. You knew that this was my first time!"
"I learned it only as I made love to you. I could tell that you had never been with a man before. By that time, it was
impossible to stop what I'd begun. God, Maddie, what else should I think when I found you naked and with that cub's name on your lips but that I had surprised you in a secret tryst?"
"If you had asked, you would have learned that I had fallen in the ford. I was waiting for my clothes to dry. And it's not the first time I've mistaken you for Malcolm."
"All this is beside the point," he interrupted. "When you said those words to me, and at such a moment, you knew what the outcome would be. Why, Maddie, why?"
There was a thread of something in his voice which gave her pause. She studied his face carefully. His expression was open, vulnerable. A rush of guilt, as sudden as it was inexplicable, surprised her. She squelched it.
"I saw no reason why I should conspire in my own ruin," she answered coldly.
"Your ruin?" He settled himself at the edge of the cot and grasped her chin firmly, turning her face up to the light. "I've never yet ruined a woman." She could tell that she had kindled his anger again. "Don't bandy words with me, my girl. Between us, such clichés are meaningless. If anyone has been ruined, it is I."