Once in Paris (15 page)

It was the first time he'd admitted it so blatantly. She didn't even care about his reasons. It was enough that he shared the hunger that was consuming her.

He drew in a harsh breath and averted his gaze to the horizon. “You're very young, Brianne,” he said after a minute. “Even under the circumstances, our first time together was good. It's natural that you want to explore the newness of it. But this isn't the time.”

She closed her eyes and drank in the scent of him, the faint cologne that still clung to him, the smell of camel and leather that overlaid it from their ride into the desert.

“Are you listening?” he asked when he saw that she wasn't looking at him.

He looked at her with aching passion.

Her eyes opened, as green as spring buds, soft with tenderness. “I wish we were back in Paris,” she said absently.

He laughed faintly in spite of himself. “I was too drunk to have done you any good,” he reminded her.

“You were vulnerable,” she replied. “You needed me. You haven't been that way since.
I'm alternately a responsibility and a nuisance, and maybe once I was a convenience. But I can't get close to you at all.”

His jaw tautened. “We've already had this conversation.”

She let out a soft breath. “Yes, I know. You don't want to get involved with me. Once we escape from here, I'll go to college and you'll get on with your business.” She searched his black eyes quietly. “But before you send me away, I want a whole night with you.”

His body corded as if it had been starched. He thought of that, of having her in a big, soft bed, with all the lights blazing. “That would only make things worse,” he said curtly.

“They couldn't be worse than they already are, Pierce,” she replied. She lowered her eyes, breaking the spell, and moved away. “I want to be a whole wife before I'm a divorcee,” she said flatly. “One brief encounter isn't enough to live on.”

He hated the memory of that. It had been, like all his dealings with Brianne, villainous. He'd cheated her of a proper wedding and a proper wedding night, not to mention permitting her to be kidnapped and risking her life.

“It wasn't meant to be memorable,” he said shortly. “I was sparing you Sabon.”

“So you were.” She thought about poor Philippe, who could have nothing with a woman, and it made her sad. Even her cursory encounters with Pierce were more than Philippe would ever be able to enjoy.

“You'd better finish your chores,” he said. “The rest of us are going to start building a new wall with the adobe bricks the men made earlier in the week.”

“Right up your alley, Mr. Hutton,” she said with a forced smile. “Construction.”

He nodded. “But not in a place of my choosing,” he murmured as he turned away.

She watched him walk away with her heart in her eyes. She was going to have to get used to that view of him. Pretty soon, it would be the last one she'd get, perhaps for the rest of her life.

 

When they finally finished their labors, they had a scanty meal of bread and goat's milk cheese, which was surprisingly good. Then they all sat around the fire and talked of the day's labor. The villagers' language was musical and soothing to Brianne's ears, even though she
couldn't understand a word of it. She was sleepy and her nerves were all but worn-out. She dozed a little.

“She's tired,” Tate said, smiling at the picture she made curled up at Pierce's side. “And you look pretty drawn yourself. Why don't you take her on to bed and get her settled? I want to ask our hosts some questions about this so-called coup. My Arabic is a little rusty in this dialect, so I'll need Mufti to translate. We'll be along later.”

“Watch your back,” Pierce cautioned. “I trust Mufti, but we may have enemies that we don't even know about.”

Tate grinned. “If there are any here, I'll find them,” he said.

“I don't doubt it.”

Pierce bent and lifted Brianne into his arms, answering the good-natured teasing that accompanied the action. He smiled and nodded toward the group as he carried Brianne the short distance to the hay-filled stable and into the last stall, which was packed with fresh straw and two large woven blankets that would serve as pallets.

He laid her down, noting that her arms didn't
fall away when she was resting on one of the blankets.

Her eyes opened and looked up into his in the faint flickering light of the oil lamp that had been placed in the stall to light their way.

He felt the barest pressure of her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, heard her breathing go ragged, felt her hunger as if it were tangible. His face tightened. He reached up for the lamp and, looking down at her, deliberately blew it out.

She heard the rustle of straw as he replaced it on a nearby shelf, and the rustle of fabric as he came down beside her.

His big, lean hands smoothed the garment she was wearing up around her hips, and paused on the waistband of her briefs as he slowly searched for her mouth and covered it with his.

He moved over her. She could feel him wanting her. Her legs parted to admit the warm weight of him. She arched as his mouth nuzzled aside the top of her robe and found its way to her soft breast. He suckled her, enjoying her husky moans in the darkness of the stall.

There might be very little time. He didn't dare risk a leisurely loving, regardless of his hunger for it. He roused her quickly, every ca
ress intended to kindle fires. Her body arched up to him as he increased the suction of his mouth, as his hands smoothed up her soft thighs and found her most secret places.

She whimpered. He lifted his head and moved to find her mouth and silence it. While he kissed her with slow, fierce intent, he moved his own garment aside and, catching her upper thigh, brought her hips into sudden, stark contact with his own.

While she caught her breath, he shifted and began to enter her with exquisite care. She was new to this, and despite their earlier intimacy, he had to stop and rouse her carefully before she could accept all of him without discomfort.

The faint noises they made as they moved against each other seemed very loud in the silence. She clung to him, shivering a little as each movement of his hips brought them even closer together. He shifted again, and she gasped at the swell of hot pleasure that stabbed into her.

“There?” he asked quietly.

“Y-yes,” she bit off.

He felt her nails biting into him as he moved again, deeper this time, dragging his hips
against hers so that the contact was intensified, prolonged.

She sobbed, biting her lip to keep back the sharp cry.

His mouth brushed her open lips as he began to increase the slow, powerful rhythm of his body. He drew her leg over his hips and smoothed it there with teasing caresses, and still the rhythm built on itself.

She was gasping in his ear. She could feel him in every cell. It was beautiful. They were like puzzle pieces locking together, smooth and soft and tender. It wasn't even like sex. It was so exquisite to be intimate with him. She arched her back and hated the darkness that hid them from each other. She wanted to look at him.

Her sensual movements delighted him. She slid her arms around him and moved on her own, intensifying the silken thrusts with her own sinuous motion.

He laughed, deep in his throat, at the sensations she caused. He stilled over her for an instant and caught his breath as her body teased him.

She felt the tension and hesitated.

“No, don't stop,” he whispered huskily. “It
makes me throb all over when you do that. Do it again.”

She followed his lead, like warm silk where she touched him. Her hands smoothed up under the fabric of his own robe until they found his hair-roughened chest and began to caress it hungrily.

He paused long enough to push her own robe up under her arms so that he had access to her soft, bare breasts. He made a banquet of them while his body caressed hers in the heated silence of the stable.

She loved the sensuality of feeling his skin against hers, his hair-roughened chest dragging with exquisite abrasion against the very tips of her breasts.

She lifted to prolong the contact, aware of the heat that was growing, the throbbing full-ness that threatened to explode inside her. She grasped his shoulders and held on as the slow thrusts began to build a terrible, sweet tension in her limbs. She gasped as the pleasure grew to a throbbing heat and then a silken orgy of sensation that grew ever sweeter, ever more deliciously provocative.

It became urgent so quickly. From lazy sensuality to fierce passion, the movements became
desperate in seconds. He caught her head in his big hands and brought his mouth down hotly on her lips as he drove against her blindly.

She wrapped her silken legs around his and followed his quick movements with counter-movements of her own, helping him, demanding, pleading for an end to the exquisite pain of unbearable pleasure.

She moaned harshly under his mouth as she felt herself going over some dark, sweet precipice. She sobbed, arching, shivering as the tension snapped and she convulsed all over.

He felt her body give itself completely with a sense of wonder. Only then did he permit his own body to achieve satisfaction within hers. He arched down into her silken flesh with a harsh groan and gloried in the anguished spasms that racked him above her. It seemed never to stop. He sobbed as the pleasure grew and fed upon itself, as it washed over him like red fire, like red silk, like red waves of throbbing heat.

“Oh, Pierce,” she whispered at his ear as she felt him in that most intimate of contacts, burying her face in his throat as she savored the helpless motions of his big body and felt the
surge of heat that left him exhausted and shivering above her.

He couldn't get his breath, couldn't speak, couldn't think. He collapsed against her and fought for enough air to make his lungs work. He couldn't remember a time when he'd enjoyed a woman's body so intensely, so thoroughly, with such incredible possession that he felt her in the cells of his skin. He was sated to the roots of his thick hair. Under him, she was soft and warm, and he felt her skin slide against his when he moved helplessly against her to enjoy the echoes of pleasure that lingered even after the release.

She lifted to the movements of his hips and sighed sharply at the delicious sensations her sensitized body felt.

He rolled slowly onto his back, drawing her along, still joined intimately to him. He smoothed her body down on his, catching her hips and pulling her even closer.

She gasped and her nails bit into the hard muscles of his upper arms.

He arched sinuously and shivered with pleasure. “I love the way you feel like this,” he said gruffly. “You fit me like a warm silk
glove, so that when I move, I feel you all around me.”

She hid her face in his hairy chest. “It was uncomfortable at first,” she whispered.

“You'll adjust to me, but I'll always have to be careful with you when I'm this aroused.” His hands pressed softly against her hips. “Dear God, Brianne, I'm sated all the way up and down and I still want you.”

“Can you, again?” she whispered.

“I don't think so.” He arched his body, waiting, but his body was too tired to cooperate. He laughed softly. “But I wish I could. It was good, wasn't it?”

“Oh, yes.”

His fingers smoothed up and down her back in long, lazy caresses. “You contract inside, all around me, when you climax, did you know? It makes the pleasure all that much greater for me.”

She shivered at the blunt description. Intimacy was still new to her, and a little embarrassing. She was feeling some guilt as well, because she hadn't taken her pill in days and he didn't know that she could already be pregnant.

His long legs moved apart and he slid them over hers. In the intimate position they were
sharing, the contact was suddenly even deeper than before and she gasped as she felt the increased pressure of him there.

His hands settled on her hips and he began to move her body against him with a lazy tenderness that had explosive results.

He felt her body begin to tauten, to shiver, to move helplessly with him.

“Baby,” he whispered urgently into her ear. His breathing was suddenly ragged. “Baby, do you feel it?”

She cried out softly, because something was happening, something that hadn't happened before. She caught at his arms, feeling his legs contract around hers, feeling his body become insistent under her.

“No,” she sobbed, gasping. The pleasure was frightening. Frightening!

She must have said it aloud, because he was whispering tenderly to her, his lips soothing at her forehead. “Don't be afraid, baby,” he whispered. “Let it happen. Give yourself to it. Feel it take you. Surrender to it.”

She couldn't get close enough. She couldn't…Her body felt as if it had been corded in every muscle and drawn over a rack. She was too weak, she wouldn't be able to
reach that impossibly high pinnacle of pleasure. It was so harsh, so demanding, that it drained her of strength and breath. It was so deeply consuming that it almost made her sick. She groaned piteously and shivered.