Dangerous Ladies (58 page)

But like some Greek god, he sat above her, looking down at her, his gaze never leaving her. He held her hips and directed their movements until she wanted to scream with frustration.

Yet she did nothing but writhe and moan . . . because everything he did to her felt so good. Too good.

She clutched the robe-draped sides of the bench, bunching the material in her fists in building frustration. Each time he lifted her, he leaned in so his groin connected with her clit, and the pressure . . . the pressure built.

Her skin grew so sensitive that even the cool breeze felt like a caress. It hurt to breathe, hurt to have Devlin thrust inside, hurt to have him slide out. “Please. Please, please, please, please . . .”

She didn’t care what he thought, whether her begging constituted some triumphant mark on his supremacy scoreboard. She knew only
that he had better do something about this intense compulsion that drove her to madness or . . . or she really would lose her mind and her memories, and be lost in some glorious place with Devlin.

“Please.” She kissed her fingertips and placed them on his lips.

His lips returned the kiss. Then his stark features tightened; his lips parted as he pulled air into his lungs. He lifted himself—and her—and rode her in a driving rhythm.

Her back went taut as a bow. She wrapped her legs around his hips, accepting him, welcoming him, taking him as he took her—and finally, finally climax seized her.

Devlin had held her off too long, and her orgasm was almost painful in its intensity. She screamed. Her hands went over her head and gripped the bench behind her. She heard him say one word: “Meadow!”

To hear his deep, warm, Southern voice call her name sharpened her response, and the climax, already so powerful, blotted out the rest of the world . . . except for Devlin. Always she was aware of Devlin.

And he was aware of her. Even as his balls drew up tight against his body and that shudder ran up his spine, he couldn’t stop observing her—the way her small breasts lifted as she clutched the bench over her head, her taut belly, her expression of mingled agony and exaltation. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He wanted to spend every moment of his life inside her, kiss her mouth, her breasts, her belly. He wanted to pleasure her until she believed the tale he wove of their love, until she remembered no life except with him.

He wanted this moment to go on forever . . . and he couldn’t stop the rush of semen that spurted from him. He laid claim to her in the ancient, primal way dictated by the moon for generations past . . .

And it wasn’t until he finished, until he rested on her, panting, and felt the rise and fall of her chest as she gasped beneath him, that he realized—he hadn’t used protection.

For the first time in his life, he hadn’t used a condom.

C
lad in the innocuous black-and-white uniform of a security guard, Judith stood under the huge live oak and watched as Meadow and Devlin pranced toward the house.

They’d had sex. Great sex.

So freaking lovely for them. The only time Judith had had great sex was when she was alone and had an unending supply of D batteries. Men didn’t seem to be interested in a woman with a broad chin, thin lips, legs like tree stumps, and a waist as broad as her beam. It wasn’t fair, but she was used to “not fair.”

What
was
fair was acquiring a sponsor like Mr. Hopkins, who helped her get a job in the right place at the right time doing the right thing—being a security guard at the house where Isabelle’s painting was hidden. Here she could keep tabs on Four and Meadow as they searched Waldemar, and when they found it . . . she would be the first to know.

But never for a second did she imagine she would end up with custody of the painting. She had made a deal with the devil, and better than anyone in the world, she understood the nature of evil—her father had taught her that—and respected its strength.

Besides, in the end, she would get what she wanted. Mr. Hopkins
had promised she would have the credit for discovering that painting.

“Why are we sneaking back into the house?” Meadow stage-whispered.

“Because every security person in the place is watching and—” Devlin broke off. Why
were
they sneaking into the house?

He couldn’t herd Meadow across the lawn and through the corridors to their bedroom without every security person on duty—and probably a few who weren’t—seeing them. And he knew damned good and well the conclusion they would draw from their disappearance—the right conclusion. Especially since he claimed Meadow was his wife. And because she was still dancing, although now she wore her nightgown and robe—but only because he made her.

And she was smiling. She was so happy.

He couldn’t believe he’d been so criminally careless.

He couldn’t believe he let her take his hand and swing it as they walked. He should have explained the danger they’d courted. Instead, he let her blissfully babble on.

“My mother always told me that mankind isn’t as far removed from the primitive as we would like to believe,” Meadow said. “That when we take the time, we respond just as our ancestors did to moonlight and springtime and nature. I think tonight we proved she was right.”

He thought about cornering Meadow, asking her how, when she had amnesia, she remembered what her mother said, but Meadow grinned at him so mischievously he couldn’t.

He’d made her sparkle. He’d given her satisfaction. For some ridiculous reason, tonight she trusted him. With her joy and easy acceptance of their relationship, she made him feel like Scrooge—armored against the good things in life, suspicious . . . old.

And horny. She made him horny.

It was damned embarrassing, walking around like some bull moose following a female in heat.

She’d been so small and tight. For a horrified, exultant moment he’d been afraid she was a virgin.

But no, only seldom touched, and not for a long time. And he, who had intended to take his pleasure of her—but on his terms and in his own time—had put his heart and soul into claiming her.

Without protection.

She could be pregnant right now.

“Watch your step.” He led her up onto Waldemar’s wide porch and opened the door.

Inside, moonlight streamed through the windows and lurked in square patches on the carpet, and, suddenly superstitious, he avoided walking through the white light. What if her mother was right? What if it was the moonlight that had caused his madness? He certainly had no other explanation.

Meadow showed no such care. She skipped along, apparently energized by sex with him.

Great, fabulous, wonderful, earthshaking, marvelous, dick-building sex.

“Be careful,” he called. “Don’t run into anything.”

“I won’t!”

If she was going to race around in the moonlight every night, he would have to order the lights turned on. Or perhaps he should keep her in bed at night through whatever means he had at hand.

He shook his head. He had to stop thinking of sex or he’d knock that vase off that table and lift her up there and—

Did he have no sense of propriety? Was he like his father after all? He’d worked so hard to develop the moral character that his parent had so obviously lacked. Now he’d broken every rule he’d set himself about women and about life. He could have created a baby with her, and he remembered all too well how miserable his childhood had been as the one bastard offspring of the Fitzwilliams.

Which brought him to Bradley Benjamin—what had happened to his plan to use her for revenge against Bradley?

He had, of course, and thoroughly enjoyed Bradley’s attack of angina.

But now Devlin had spent an hour ardently enjoying her body to the point of madness. He slept with a liar, and one of the hated Benjamin clan.

Worse, he wanted to do it again.

Meadow got ahead of him. He heard her feet patter up the stairs, and like some creaky old man chasing a two-year-old, he pursued her, calling, “Don’t trip.”

She turned the corner at the top of the stairs. “I won’t!” Her voice floated back, full of devilry.

Shit
. What was she up to now? By the time he reached the top of the stairs, she’d disappeared.

“This way,” she called.

Shit.
He ran down the corridor toward their room. The door was closed. The light shone beneath it. He flung it open, fully expecting the sitting room to be empty. And it was. Except for her bathrobe pooled on the Oriental rug.

In the bedroom, he could see her nightgown tossed on the floor.

Did the woman ever keep her clothes on?

But it wasn’t annoyance that made his blood surge and his subsiding erection stir.

She was naked again.

He shut the door behind him. He locked it. He walked into the bedroom—and through the open bathroom door he heard the shower running.

For a long moment he shut his eyes. Water . . . sluicing down her body. Her copper red hair . . . getting wet and turning auburn. Her hands . . . caressing her breasts, her arms, her stomach, between her legs, leaving a soapy trail of bubbles.

He found himself standing in the doorway, staring at the glass shower enclosure.

The view was even better than he imagined. She stood with her head tilted back, her arms up, rinsing the shampoo from her hair. Dense white bubbles slid off her shoulders and down her chest, and one small batch broke away to perch on her nipple. She was pale and starkly bare against the claret tile, and so beautiful his eyes blurred, probably because all his blood had left his head and rushed to his dick.

As if she sensed his heated stare, her eyes popped open. In a laughing voice, she asked, “What took you so long?”

“ A
nd I was afraid I would be too quick,” Devlin said ironically.

Meadow’s grin disappeared. Just like that, with a few words, he turned her from a merry water nymph into a woman who hungered . . . for him.

She popped the door open and gestured invitingly. “Let’s test you out.”

He glanced at the drawer by the sink. He kept condoms in there. There were condoms by the bed. Just in case, he needed to put some in the desk drawer in the sitting room. . . . Then somehow he found he had his clothes off. He stepped into the shower.

The multiheaded Hydra of a shower shot water onto their heads, into their backs, and vibrated their buttocks.

He told himself he was in here to do the responsible thing. He squirted shower gel on his hands and rubbed them together. “We have to talk. What we did in the garden was reckless.” He rubbed her shoulders, and the combination of water and bubbles made her slickly erotic. “We can’t allow passion to sweep us off our feet and onto whatever horizontal surface is available.”