Passion's Dream (The Doms of Passion Lake Book 1) (9 page)

Resting his left elbow on the underwater shelf, he released her top and lifted his hand to shape the back of her head, those long, lean fingers threading through the damp silk of her hair.  “Does his touch arouse you?”  Slowly, sensuously, he pulled her toward him, closing the distance between them, until his firm, mobile mouth was less than an inch from her own, his breath warm against her lips.  “Does he set you on fire?”

The hard contours of his body brushed tantalizingly against the softly rounded curves of her own as the cool water undulated against them.

“Does he kiss you like this?” Clay persisted, dropping a warm, feather-light kiss near one corner of her trembling mouth, “like a father?  Or perhaps like an uncle or older brother, like this,” he pressed his lips first to her cheek, then, tilting her head down, her forehead.  “Or does he kiss you like a lover?  Like this—”and his mouth closed over hers in a dark, golden storm, his lips expertly parting hers to admit the probing sweetness of his tongue.

Leah stiffened and tried to pull away, but it was too late.  The flame ignited by his touch was all-consuming.  Without volition, her arms went around his neck, her legs circled his waist, ankles locking behind him.  The sheer size of the erection pressing against her sex made her gasp.  Her belly plummeted, sending moisture gushing out of her pussy onto the strip of fabric that was the bottom of her two-piece.  She’d never been so aroused in her life.  Her traitorous body arched toward his, her hips grinding her sex against his cock.  She moaned into his mouth as his arms went tightly around her back, crushing her soft breasts to his hard chest.  Locked together, they sank beneath the surface of the water.  Instead of panicking and struggling to break free, Leah wound her arms tightly around his neck and held on, trusting in his care of her.

Without breaking the kiss, Clay pushed off the deep end of the pool with a powerful thrust of his muscular legs, gliding swiftly through the water to the center of the pool, where he could stand up.  They broke the surface still locked together, their mouths tearing apart only long enough to drag air into their oxygen-starved lungs before crushing back together, tongues dueling passionately.

Leah loosened her hold on his neck, running her hands wonderingly over his shoulders and back, savoring the power of the muscles flexing beneath his satin-smooth skin, delighting in the heat of his body beneath the cool slickness of the pool water.  In spite of the pervading smell of chlorine, she could still smell his clean, masculine scent.  Losing all reason, she broke off the kiss to bury her face in the side of his neck, where it curved into his shoulder, inhaling that scent deep into her lungs.  Daringly, she put out her tongue and took a tiny lick of his warm, moist skin.  God, he tasted so good!  He felt so good!  She couldn’t stifle the groan that ripped from her throat.  Her hands curved around to the back of his head, her fingers gripping the thick, wet mass of his hair, holding his head still.  She drew a shuddering breath, trying desperately to get herself under control. 
This is a mistake!  This is a colossal mistake!

But it was too late.  Never in her life had she experienced feelings like these, and while they scared the bejeezus out of her they also exhilarated her.  Without thought for the consequences, she gave herself up to them.

Clay moved his hands slowly up her back, kneading the smooth flesh on each side of her spine.  Dimly aware of something tugging at the clasp at the back of her top, the sensation was over before she could focus on it.  Clay’s mouth was blazing a fiery trail of kisses down the side of her neck and across the creamy slope of her left shoulder.  His hands slid around her sides to press gently against her breasts, pushing them together.  His incendiary touch burned her flesh and she suddenly realized that she was naked from the waist up.  The tugging she’d felt had been Clay undoing her top.

Lifting her head, she loosened her stranglehold, unwittingly giving him the opportunity he needed to move his hands between them and cover her breasts.  As he took the full, voluptuous weight of them in his hands, he groaned, bending his head once more to hers, seeking her mouth as a man too long in the desert seeks water.  The force of his kiss was like a whirlwind, moving through her heart and soul and leaving nothing behind but destruction.

Mindless with passion, she surged against him, opening her mouth automatically to welcome the invasion of his tongue, a series of tiny, whimpering mewls issuing from her throat as his thumbs lashed back and forth across her hard, aching nipples.  He drank deeply from her mouth, slaking his raging thirst with her honeyed moisture.

No one had ever touched her the way Clay Knight was touching her.  As if she were something priceless, something beautiful, something cherished.  She moaned again as he continued to stroke and pluck and pinch her berry-like nipples, making them rock hard with a desire she still didn’t understand.

“Leah…”It was a ragged groan against her lips as Clay’s hands left her breasts to slide around her back, down below her waist to grip her buttocks, pulling her even more tightly against his cock in a desperate embrace.  “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured against her mouth, “so goddamn beautiful.  Not just to my eyes, but to my heart.  My soul.  I’ve dreamed about this for three fucking years, but I never dreamed it could be like this…not like this…”

His mouth left hers to blaze a fiery trail of kisses down the left side of her neck and she bent her head with a sigh to give him the room he needed.  His lips and tongue tortured and tasted her flesh, igniting fires wherever they touched.  They brushed across her collar bone, lingering on the pulse point throbbing at the base of her neck, then down, down onto the softly sloping flesh of her breast.  His tongue traced fiery circles on her satin smooth skin, edging closer, ever closer to the hard, aching tip.  Leah waited, head back, eyes closed, breath held, her entire body trembling with needs she’d never felt before.  Needs she didn’t even recognize.  Needs that had her shaking with both arousal and anticipation.

Gently, oh, so gently, he touched the very tip of his tongue to the very tip of her dark nipple, then he pursed his lips and blew on it.  Leah’s fingers dug into his shoulders as her whole body twitched.

More boldly this time, Clay’s tongue came out and circled her entire nipple, bathing it in the heated moisture of his mouth.  A shudder passed through Leah as she flung her head even farther back and arched her body upward.  With a groan, Clay took as much of her breast into his mouth as he could get, sucking gently, flicking his tongue back and forth across the hardened nub like a lash.  His fingers slipped beneath the elastic of her swimsuit bottom to cup and caress the smooth, rounded curves of her ass.  He raised his head to claim her lips once more, then, without breaking contact, he lifted her hips slightly, pulled her forward, and pressed her sex against the jutting ridge of his cock.  She gasped in pleasure as his erection surged against the burning heart of her femininity.

“See what you do to me?” he muttered thickly against her mouth.  “God, Leah, I want you so bad.  I want to make love to you, right here, right now.  I want to lay you down on the pool’s edge and eat your luscious pussy until you come on my face.  And I know it’s luscious, because I can smell you and you smell so damn good I want to bathe in you.  I want to sink my cock into you and fuck you until we’re both screaming in pleasure.  God, you make me crazy with wanting you.”

The words were an icy splash of sanity in her face.

“No!” she cried in a strangled voice, twisting her head away from his marauding mouth and struggling to pull herself from his hold.  “No!  Let me go!”

CHAPTER FIVE

To her utter shock, he released her instantly.  Suddenly deprived of his support, she floundered.  Arms flailing, she sank beneath the water and came back up sputtering and wiping water from her face with the swimsuit top that had somehow become entangled in her fingers.

She didn’t bother to try to put it back on.  Instead, she clutched it in nerveless fingers, hunching her shoulders forward and crossing her arms over her bare breasts in a futile attempt to regain at least some small measure of modesty. 
Leave!
She ordered herself, a silent scream echoing through her head. 
Just turn around and go, for God’s sake!  Get as far away from this man as you can.  While you can. 
But she didn’t leave.  She couldn’t.  Instead, she just stood there, unable to move, imprisoned by the heavy weight of the desire raging through her.  Staring at him, all the pain and confusion swirling inside her mirrored in her eyes.

“What’s the matter?” he jibed softly.  “A sudden attack of conscience?  Did you suddenly remember you’re an engaged woman?”  His own eyes were hooded, revealing nothing of his inner feelings.  But the icy coldness of his voice made her shiver and look away, all passion stripped from her as if it had never existed.  “A very interesting experiment just now,” Clay went on when she didn’t speak, “and very educational.”  He took a step toward her.

She sucked in her breath, telling herself once again to leave.  But she couldn’t make her leaden limbs respond to her commands.  Nor could she slow her galloping heartbeat.  Her determination was unraveling at the seams until all that was left of her common sense was nothing but a pile of tangled threads lying at her feet.

“You’re a deeply passionate woman, Leah Stanhope.  How are you going to sublimate all those emotions once you’re married to an old man like Everett Burke?”

Her shoulders straightened in anger.  “What a vile thing to say,” she cried indignantly.  “Just because Everett is older than you doesn’t mean he’s decrepit.  He’s every bit the man you are.”

“Is he?”  Clay’s smile was tight.

“Of course he is.  Who the hell do you think you are?  What gives you the right to question anything about me or the man I intend to marry?”

Furious with her for not telling him the truth, he grabbed her shoulders and jerked her against him.  “You do,” he spat out.  Water splashed between them as his mouth closed over hers yet again, grinding her lips against her teeth in a kiss that was a painful assault.  “You gave me the right when you kissed me the way you did,” he repeated harshly, pushing her away from him so violently she once again lost her balance and sank beneath the water.

She came back up, sputtering and coughing, sluicing water from her face, gathering her hair and pushing it out of her eyes.  Then, remembering her breasts were bare, she hastily lowered her hands and covered herself again, glaring at him in anger and humiliation.

He closed the distance between them, grabbing her chin with his hard fingers and forcing her head up to look at him.  Trapped in the glittering fury of his gaze, she swallowed hard, holding back the urge to whimper.  “Can you deny that you respond to me, Leah?” he asked in a low, angry rasp.  “You’re the most responsive woman I’ve ever met.  You literally come to life beneath my touch, like a flower opening to the sun.  Admit it.  No man has ever touched you the way I touch you.  No man has ever made you feel the way I make you feel, not your ex-husband, not Everett Burke.  Especially not Everett Burke.  You’re not marrying him, Leah.”

“Oh, no?” she asked, her voice shrill with fear.  “And just who’s going to stop me?  You?”

He gave a curt nod.  “If I have to.”

“Oh, yeah?”  Leah’s short bark of laughter echoed wildly from the surfaces all around them, giving it a faint tinge of hysteria.  “What are you going to do, kidnap me?  Hold me against my will?”

“If I hold you, it definitely won’t be against your will.”

Narrowing her eyes, she peered more closely at him to see if he was teasing.  He was not.  His jaw was clenched, his lips set in a grim line.  In fact, his expression was downright savage, his glittering eyes reflecting the coldness of the moon.

Leah shivered, her anger replaced by a cold, numbing fear.  Lord, why did she keep provoking this man?  Why couldn’t she just tell him the truth about Uncle Everett?  Why did she feel she had to keep lying to him?

But she already knew the answers to those questions. 
To preserve my heart.  To keep from being destroyed by him when he takes all I have to give and leaves me with a gaping hole in my soul. 
“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked in a hoarse whisper, “what do you want from me?”

His hold on her chin gentled, then he slid his hand up to cup her cheek.  It took every bit of effort she could muster not to turn her face and press it into the warmth of his palm.  “Everything,” he said simply, with a blazing certainty which terrified her.  “Everything you have, everything you do, everything you are.  And in return, I will give you everything that I am.  You belong to me, Leah.  I’ve known it since that day on the beach three years ago, and if you would just be honest with yourself, you’ve known it, too.”

She shut her eyes, unable to bear the honesty shining from his, helpless to stop the low, tortured moan that escaped her lips.  What was she supposed to do?  How was she supposed to respond to such words?  Words that demanded so much, yet promised so much more?  No one had ever said the things Clay Knight said to her.  No one had ever
done
the things he had done to her.  Oh, sure, she’d been kissed before, caressed before.  But compared to the sensual mastery of Clay’s lovemaking, every other man’s efforts now seemed clumsy and laughable.

“You’re mine, Leah,” he murmured, his voice dark and soft and velvet-smooth.  “I don’t give a damn
who
you’re engaged to.”

In a last-ditch effort to steel her resolve against him, she stiffened her spine.  “Too bad your mother didn’t teach you that you can’t have everything you want,” she said tartly, proud of herself for managing to sound so cool and detached.  “I’ve already told you I’m not interested in a casual affair, not with you or anyone else.”

His lips twitched.  “Believe me, lady, my feelings for you are anything
but
casual.”

She shook her head.  What was she doing out here, standing half-naked in a swimming pool in the middle of the night arguing with a man who, if she gave in to him, had the power to destroy her?  A man who had awakened her body as no one ever had before.  A man who stirred her emotions and aroused her to heights of passion and sexual desire she had never even known existed.  Retreating a step, she turned to go.  “It doesn’t matter,” she said over her shoulder, seeking refuge once again in the lie that was her only hope of salvation.  The lie it was becoming more and more difficult to maintain.  “I am going to marry Uncle Everett, and nothing you say or do is going to stop me.”

Heedless of her bare breasts, she jack-knifed in the water and struck out for the steps at the shallow end of the pool.  She climbed quickly onto the deck and ran, dripping, over to the chaise, where she retrieved her towel and slung it around her bare shoulders, preparing to run back into the house. When his next word stopped her cold.

“Uncle?”

Even though he hadn’t raised his voice, it carried across the water and she heard it as clearly as if she were still standing next to him.  Stricken, she half-turned, only to find him eyeing her, one black eyebrow raised mockingly.  “Now why would a woman refer to her fiancé, the man she claims she’s going to marry, as ‘uncle’?”

“Get out!” she blazed, white-faced, her voice trembling with all the emotions spilling through her like an overflowing dam, “Just pack your bags and get out.  As far as I’m concerned, you are no longer employed here, not even temporarily.  I’ll see to it that Mr. Burke forwards you a check for whatever he owes you.”  She turned and strode away, forcing herself not to run.  Wrenching open the door, she re-entered her room.  Closing it quietly, she stood for a moment, one hand pressed to her breast as if to keep her heart from bursting through her rib cage.  She was panting as if she’d just run a marathon.  Slowly she turned her head and risked a look back out toward the pool.

Clay was standing exactly where she’d left him, in the middle of the pool.  His arms out to his sides, raised slightly, his palms turned up in a strangely supplicatory gesture, as if he were silently begging her to return to him.  Pale and remote, he appeared to be sculpted out of shadow and light, his expression distant and unreadable.

Realizing her entire body was trembling, she managed to stagger across the foyer, through the living room, down the hall and back into the sanctuary of her own room.  Moving almost mechanically, she went into the bathroom, wrapped a towel around her dripping hair and stripped off the rest of her swimsuit, draping the sodden pieces over the shower rod to drip dry.  She dried first herself, then her hair, knowing that if she went to bed with it wet, it would be a hopeless mass of untamable curls the next morning.

She returned to the bedroom, where she donned a fresh nightgown of pale peach satin and crawled into bed.  She lay on her side under just the top sheet with her knees drawn up to her chin, shivering all over, trying not to think.  But thoughts continued to buzz annoyingly through her brain like swarms of gnats, robbing her of the ability to sleep.  Thoughts, inexplicably, of Richard Gordon and the vast difference between his lovemaking and Clay Knight’s.

Richard had been cold and often cruel when it came to sex, eschewing foreplay as unnecessary and placing all the blame for her inability to have an orgasm squarely at her own feet.  Clay had been masterful, his kisses lessons in the art of seduction, beguiling her, priming her, building her need with every word, every touch, every swipe of his tongue, until she’d been vibrating like a tuning fork, ready to come apart in his arms.  Not only would he have gifted her with an orgasm, he would have seen to it that she’d had several.

Instead of calling her frigid and less than a woman as Richard had often done, Clay had called her the most responsive woman he’d ever known.  He had used his knowledge of a woman’s body and his mastery of sensual technique to arouse her as she’d never been aroused in her entire life.  Hugging her knees more tightly against her chest in an attempt to deny the creamy warmth spilling through her, she mentally catalogued every detail that made Clay Knight so unforgettable.  The smell of him, the taste of him, the feel of his smooth skin and rippling muscles beneath her questing fingertips.  The coarse silk of that glorious mane of hair.

How could she react so strongly and so instantly to a man she barely knew?  A man who, on a beach three years ago, had simply held her and let her cry in his arms?  A man who seemed willing to go to any lengths to get what he wanted.  And what he wanted was her, Leah Stanhope, naked and in his bed, in total surrender.  He’d made that plain from the very beginning.  There’d been no words of love…no words of commitment.  Just plain, old-fashioned sex—okay, maybe not so old fashioned.  After all, he
had
said something about spanking her and tying her to the bed.  But still, without that emotional commitment, he would eventually grow tired of her and, just like Richard, seek his pleasure elsewhere.  And she would be left hollowed out and devastated

Leah’s body stiffened. 
No! 
She had been used like that already and she was damned if she would allow any man to use her like that again.  Not Clay Knight, not anybody, no matter how attractive they were or how drawn to them she was.  The point was academic anyway.  She had fired him, and after tonight she would never see him again.  Why that thought could create such a tight, painful feeling in her chest mystified her.  Of course she wanted him gone.  Right? 
Right?

* * * *

“Goddamn it, Burke, pick up!  Pick up the damn phone!”  Muttering beneath his breath, Clay pressed his cell against his ear, listening to the endless ringing.  As he waited for the old man to wake up and answer, he paced back and forth across the Navajo rug at the foot of the iron four-poster bed in his bedroom.  The irony of the fact that he was a full Apache and had been given the only room in the entire house decorated with Native American artifacts and antiques was not lost on him.  But that was the furthest thing from his mind right now as he paced and muttered, willing the old man to answer the phone.

Finally, the ring-tone ended mid-ring and a groggy voice at the other end said, “’Lo?”

“Burke,” Clay rasped, “you need to hire another man for this job.  I quit.”

There was a brief pause.  “Clay?”

He sighed.  “Yeah.”

“Did you just say ‘I quit’?”

“Yeah.”

Burke paused.  Clay could almost see him pinching the bridge of his nose while he gathered his thoughts.  “Might I ask why?”

Because I want her
. 
Because I can’t keep my goddamn hands off of her.  Because I can’t keep her safe if I’m too busy fucking her
.  “I don’t like lying to her.”

“I take it you’re still attracted to her?”

“That’s not up for discussion,” Clay said sourly.

“I see.  Is she still attracted to you?”

“Neither is that.  Besides, she’s engaged to be married.”