Nobody's Angel (20 page)

"Take your hands off me!" Her whisper was shrill with outrage. "And it's
Miss
Susannah!"

He laughed. The sound was soft, unpleasant. "I don't like being knocked on my ass in the dirt,
Miss
Susannah. I don't like being left in the middle of the night to walk three miles home over a pitiful excuse for a road. And I especially don't like having a prim little minister's daughter look down her nose at me every time I turn around. That I don't like at all."

"If you don't leave my room this instant, I'll scream." The depth of his fury should have frightened her. But Susannah was angry herself, and when she got angry, as her family liked to say, Susannah didn't fear the devil himself.

"Scream, then. Go ahead."

He had her there. She wouldn't scream, and he knew it. The very idea of having her family discover him in her bedroom, with all the explanations that would entail, was enough to make her cringe.

"No?" His voice was soft, taunting. "I didn't think so."

His hands tightened around her arms, and lie pulled her up against him. Her breasts pressed against his chest. Her belly brushed his abdomen. Her thighs lay against his. Heat engorged her body, flushing her skin, setting her blood to boiling. The sheer shock of it saved her. She jerked back from him as convulsively as if he'd been a poisonous snake,

"Let me go! Connelly, I'm warning you!" It was a furious whisper.

She had managed to put some six inches between their bodies, though she remained all too blindingly conscious of the hard, warm length of him so near. Her head was thrown back so that she might meet his gaze head on. His hands remained tight about her arms.

"I'm getting bloody tired of you calling me Connelly in that haughty little way you have, too. You've ruled the roost around here for far too long, I'm thinking. Now the time's come to pay the piper."

"Meaning you?" Her voice was scathing. His eyes narrowed, and then one corner of his mouth moved upward in a way that Susannah misliked.

"Meaning me." So quickly that Susannah hadn't time to guess what he meant to do, his hands moved up to encircle her throat. He held her gently but implacably, his palms a high, warm collar while his thumbs tilted up her chin.

"My name's Ian, Susannah. This time I'll make damned sure that you don't forget it."

Then, even as Susannah reached up to clutch his wrists, tugging frantically in an effort to free herself before what she longed for and yet dreaded more than anything else in the world could happen, his mouth came down on hers.

19

Just as Susannah had feared, that kiss changed everything. Instead of punishing her, it was soft and warm, but insistent. His mouth moved over hers, brushing against her lips, nibbling at the corners of her mouth.

Before it could go any further, she tried to draw back.

"Ian," she began shakily, pulling her mouth free.

"That's right, Ian," he said with satisfaction, and kissed her again.

At this second touch of his mouth on hers, Susannah's body caught fire. Her hands, which had been tugging halfheartedly at his, stilled and curled around his wrists. Her lids fluttered down. Her heart speeded up, sending her blood pounding in a pagan rhythm that was foreign to anything she had ever experienced. His hands moved to cradle the base of her skull beneath the heavy braid, and her head lolled back against his hands. Her neck had suddenly grown too weak with wanting to support its weight.

"Susannah. Open your mouth for me, Susannah." His whisper was hoarse, raspy. His fingertips stroked the tender skin at the nape of her neck. His mouth brushed gently over her lips.

Susannah trembled and obediently opened her mouth. Never in her life had she expected to feel the way he was making her feel—as if she were on fire, her blood boiling in her veins, her skin searing all the way down to her toes from no more than the soft touch of his mouth. Vaguely she remembered the rough, crude way he had invaded her mouth before. Even that less than lover-like kiss had set off flares of wanting in the most secret regions of her body. But when she parted her lips this time and his tongue slid inside, there was nothing rough or crude about this taking of her mouth.

His hands still cradling her head, he slanted his mouth over hers, touching her tongue with his, stroking her teeth and the roof of her mouth. She must have made a slight movement, or a sound, because suddenly the hands holding her head went rigid and his kiss grew fiercely insistent. Before Susannah could go limp with wanting or cry out with need or do any one of the dozen or so other things that her burning body seemed to want to do, he withdrew his mouth from hers. Her lids lifted, and she blinked, dizzy. His eyes seemed to glow with a reflection of her own heat as they gleamed down at her. Restlessly his thumbs stroked the soft underside of her chin.

"Oh, my goodness," she whispered, her eyes moving down from his to focus on that beautiful, sensuously curving mouth.

Her words surprised a laugh out of him. It sounded curiously shaken, and when she glanced up to meet his eyes she saw that they were not laughing at all, but ablaze.

"I love the way you talk," he said, and then, as if he could not help himself, his mouth came down on hers again. This time he did not have to tell her to open her mouth. She parted her lips for him instantly, sighing into his mouth and leaning her weight full against him. Instantly her breasts, pressed against the unyielding strength of his chest, swelled, and her nipples hardened almost painfully. Her thighs, resting against the taut muscles of his, contracted. And her secret place made contact with a curious bulge in the front of his breeches that in a matter of seconds grew both enormous and rocklike. Spinster that she was, she still knew enough about men to recognize what was happening to him. The knowledge made her quake.

"Susannah." Her name on his lips was a mere breath of sound, muttered into her mouth. He slid his hands down her back, stroking her shoulders and the length of her spine through the thin cotton nightgown. His arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her tight against him so that she could feel every muscle and sinew of his hard body pressing against her through their clothes. Susannah, knowing with the one tiny part of her mind that was still capable of rational thought that what she was about to do was hideously wrong, prelude to a sin that would haunt her forever, nonetheless lifted her arms to wrap around his neck and kissed him back.

At her sudden fierce response he stiffened, and then his kiss changed. His lips grew harder, more demanding, his tongue urgent in its forays into her mouth. With a strange growling sound that emerged from somewhere deep in his throat, he bent her backward over his arm. One hand came up to crush her breast. Her nipple pressed into his palm, pebble-hard.

Susannah whimpered, not with pain or fear but with acute wanting. She needed him, needed him as desperately as ever a starving man needed food or a thirsty one, water. Her body ached for him, trembled for him, cried out for him. The very savageness of his embrace, where before he had been gentle, told her that, surprising as it seemed, he burned for her too.

When he reached down, scrabbling for the hem of her nightgown to draw it up from the back, she made no protest but even undid the single button at her neck so that he could pull it over her head and throw it aside. Then, for just a moment as she knelt naked before him, the soft breeze from the open window caressing her skin, she was conscious of a dreadful moment of doubt. But the doubt was not about whether she should lie with him, in direct violation of every tenet of morality she had ever believed or been taught. She had already made her decision about that, maybe as long ago as when he had pulled her into bed with him that night in the parlor. The doubt was about whether he would look at her, naked, and find her wanting. If he should turn away from her now for such a reason, she would be forever shattered.

His eyes were on her, touching her everywhere. Instinctively Susannah sank back on her heels and crossed her arms in front of her body in the classic pose of exposed femininity, one arm shielding her breasts, the other at the juncture of her thighs. Her wariness shone from her eyes as they lifted to his face. He paid no heed to her concern but reached down to gently catch both her hands and pull them wide.

Susannah did not fight him. She had too much pride for that. In that instant in which she hovered between heaven and hell, she seemed to see her own reflection in his eyes. Plain square face, unruly curling hair confined in a plait as thick as his wrist, obstinate chin tilted defiantly up. Creamy pale skin, neck and shoulders acceptably attractive, with her collarbone showing through her skin and a frantic pulse beating in the shadowed hollow of her throat. Breasts that, like her hair, were the bane of her existence, too round, too full, almost the size of ripe cantaloupes and tipped with distended, darkened nipples half as long as her little finger. Below them her waist, its ridiculously small measurement only making her breasts seem larger in contrast. Then the lush swell of her hips, like her breasts emphasized by the marked indention of her waist. The soft curve of her belly, with its small dark navel, dipping down to the sable triangle of curls where her legs met. Her legs themselves, milky-skinned and smooth.

Looking up at him, at the starkly handsome, dark angel's face diat legions of women before her had certainly swooned over, Susannah acknowledged herself for what she was—a plain woman, well past the first blush of youth, who was so lacking in attractiveness that she had never even had a beau. Her body was overwhelmingly ripe, so much so that, in the years before she had learned to hide it, it had elicited shocked stares whenever she had ventured out without a cloak. Her face was as unremarkable as a cabbage.

She waited, trembling, for him to turn away in disgust. Or, worse than that, to say something very, very kind as he sought to spare both himself and her feelings.

His eyes had grown very dark as they lingered on her breasts. By the time they moved over the rest of her body, then lifted to meet her eyes, they were almost as black as the night outside.

"By God, you're beautiful," he said in a harsh, grating voice that she could just barely hear. "But then, I knew you would be."

"Beautiful? Me?" Dumbfounded, she looked up at him suspiciously. His hands still held hers. He squeezed her fingers, then released them, a curious crooked smile twisting his mouth.

"Gorgeous," he said, his hands going to his neckcloth.

With a few deft motions he untied it and tossed it on the floor.

"Exquisite," he added, unbuttoning the buttons she had so recently reattached to his waistcoat, then sending that garment flying as well.

"Breathtaking." He shrugged out of his shirt.

"Sublime." He hopped from foot to foot as he pulled off his shoes.

"Sublime? Oh, Ian! You're teasing me!" Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Susannah wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth. Bare now except for his breeches and the white swathe of bandages around his chest, he peeled off his stockings. His wide shoulders were thick with muscle, his broad chest shadowed with curling black hair. His abdomen was ridged and hard-looking, his waist and hips narrow. Then, as his hands moved to the buttons on his breeches, Susannah averted her eyes. The rest of his person must go unas- sessed.

"Teasing you?" He sat down beside her on the bed, one arm sliding around her back. In the one brief, sidelong glance she managed before embarrassment overcame her, Susannah saw that he was naked. Magnificently naked .. .

"No, Susannah, I am not teasing you," he whispered as he pressed a tiny, stirring kiss to the pulse point just below her ear. His hand was doing something behind her back. As her hair loosened, aided by his fingers threading through the thick mass, she realized that he had untied the ribbon that bound her braid. Surrounded by a tawny cape of cascading curls, she watched as he pulled back a little to run his eyes over her. She blushed, hotly, one hand moving to cling to his where it rested on her waist, but she did not try to cover herself. The glitter in his eyes told her that he wanted her. Whether he was teasing or not, that glitter was enough for her.

His hand came up to cup and weigh a breast. His thumb ran over her nipple. Susannah caught her breath as his touch shot through her body like a lightning bolt. Her nipple hardened embarrassingly under his hand.

"Beautiful," he said thickly, watching. His hand tightened on her waist, the hand that had been caressing her breast rose to tip up her chin, and he was kissing her again.

She loved the way he kissed. Intoxicated, Susannah's head fell back. Her arms encircled his neck. A ribbon bound his hair, too, at his nape. Susannah felt indescribably wanton as she tugged it free and then slid her fingers into his crisp black hair. He lowered her to the mattress, then came down beside her so that she lay flat on her back with him on his side looming over her. Susannah's eyes closed as he pressed hot kisses to her lids, her cheeks, her temples. Trembling, her mind emptied of everything except the raw need of her own body that was threatening now to rage out of control. As his hands stroked over her breasts and belly and thighs, she arched her back. His touch was almost unbearably gentle against her overheated skin. Deep inside her, in the darkest, most secret regions of her heart, she had yearned for this—a man to love her, a man to put his hands on her breasts, and kiss her mouth, and initiate her into the secrets of carnal love.

How she had hungered after carnal love—and Ian! They were now inextricably bound together in her mind. Whatever came of this night's work—and Susannah refused to think about that until the morrow—she would be unrepentant. What she and he were doing might be a sin, but to go to her grave without ever experiencing this glorious bursting passion would be an even greater one.

His fingers wandered over her belly, explored her navel, found the soft nest of dark brown curls. Susannah went perfectly still for an instant as he delved between her thighs. He touched the scalding center of her, and she cried out.