Quiet Walks the Tiger (16 page)

“Ummm,” Wes drawled lazily, his nibbling kisses moving over her breasts, warm and moist over the black material. “That’s what you are now, you know, a possession.”

“No!” Sloan squealed breathlessly. Her fury was mingling with her desire and the undeniable arousal he was so easily eliciting. Mind and body waged a silent war. She had to stop him before it was too late, before she lost herself in the steadily increasing vortex of pleasure he was confidently creating. Her fingers dug into his hair, and she pulled his face to hers with all the strength her anger could muster.

“Ouch!” he exclaimed, and then she saw his eyes and the amusement that sparkled within them.

“You’ve been teasing me!” Sloan accused, relaxing somewhat but maintaining her punishing grasp of his hair. “You...you...you...” She couldn’t think of a fit name to call him.

“How about ‘Lord and Master,’” Wes taunted, placidly circling her wrists with his hands and creating a pressure which forced her to gasp and release her hold. Then both of her wrists were firmly held by one of his hands and pinioned above her.

“‘Lord and Master’ my foot!” Sloan retorted, squirming and wriggling her wrists to free herself. The effort was ludicrous. “I’ll get you for this, Wesley Adams,” she said tartly, panting but unwilling to accept defeat.

“I do hope that’s a promise,” he drawled languorously. “Now,” he continued, his tone lowering hoarsely, “just how do you plan to get me? Like this?” She felt the rough fingertips of his free hand delve beneath the black gown to travel with tantalizing leisure up the length of her thigh. “Or perhaps like this.” With a force belying his subtle tone, he deftly drove a wedge between her legs with a firm thrust of a knee and lowered his weight over her body, imprisoning her completely.

“Wesley!” Sloan’s calling of his name was a combination of amazement, irritation, amusement and—despite her firm resolve to remain unmoved by any of his advances until she was in control again—exquisite pleasure.

“Maybe you could ‘get me’ something like this,” he went on, undaunted. He showered her throat and breasts again with the moist, nibbled kisses that were driving all rational thoughts from her mind as they ignited a fire within her that raged rapidly to every tingling nerve of her body. “Maybe more like this,” he muttered darkly against her skin, and then before she knew his purpose, his teeth sank into the material of her gown as his hand momentarily halted its wanderings to rip the black gauze cleanly in two, leaving her slender form bared to his sensuous view. “What the hell are these things?” he demanded, slipping a finger beneath the elastic of the black panties. “Oh well, what the hell.” A single twist of his fingers ripped the string, and he tossed them to the floor with a nonchalant flick of his hand.

“Wesley!” Sloan gasped again. The word was meant to sound indignant, reproachful, but his name came out instead as a groaning plea. “Stop it!” she murmured weakly, renewing the struggle for freedom of her hands.

“Stop what?” he teased. “This?” His fingers began a feather-light caress on her belly, drawing circles that became larger and more inquisitive as he shifted slightly and continued to the sensitive silk of her thighs. “Or this...” His voice grated on the last, and the hands and fingers that sought the secrets of her femininity were no longer fluttery and teasing but hungry and demanding as was the mouth that claimed her breasts, arousing them to rigid peaks.

Sloan shivered uncontrollably, writhing and squirming, but no longer to escape his hold. She wanted to get closer to him, closer and closer, become one with him and allow the fire that now pulsed through her like a living thing to burn to its height of shimmering flame and ultimately consume them.

“Wildcat,” Wesley murmured to the roseate nipple his lips caressed. His face rose above Sloan’s, and she was dimly aware that his eyes glittered like a jungle cat’s and that his features were taut with his own desire. “My game, now, wife, and then no more games,” he muttered darkly.

“No more games,” Sloan echoed in a husky whisper, shuddering as if charged by electricity and arching to feel the crisp hairs of his chest against her breasts and the pulsating hardness of his masculinity that blatantly proved his own arousal. “Wesley...please!” Her words were almost a sob.

But he wasn’t through with his exquisite torture yet. He released her wrists, but only to allow his lips further exploration of her flesh. Freed, Sloan’s hands moved of their own volition, clinging to him, digging into him, seeking and desiring. And then, when she thought she would surely die of wonderful agony, Wesley’s hands moved to her buttocks and lifted her to him.

“Surrender?” He was gloating, but his demand was uttered in such a raw rasp that it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter anyway. He had driven her to an absolute frenzy.

“Surrender,” she croaked, parting her lips and hooking her arms desperately around the hard expanse of his shoulders. “No more games...”

Skyrockets of dizzying ecstasy exploded throughout her as Wesley completed his conquest, taking her with a rough urgency that matched the wild passion flaming hungrily between them. Wesley’s pulsating rhythm took them higher and higher to peak after peak, bringing them finally to a boundless precipice of sweet satiation that was so wonderful that Sloan could not move at its conclusion, could not disentangle her limbs from Wesley’s nor willingly draw away from his overwhelming heat.

It was he who finally moved, but only to shed the robe that still encased his shoulders. He tugged at the remnants of Sloan’s black gown. “Get rid of that,” he commanded softly.

There was no more fight left in Sloan, just loving, dazed obedience. She knew she had lost the upper hand—if she had ever had it! But she didn’t care. Her body still burned with the aftermath of pleasure; the memory of Wesley’s demanding possession still throbbed divinely where his virility had split her asunder. Filled with loving contentment, she dutifully cast aside the remainders of the black gauze and curled to his naked side, reveling in the feel of his lean, sinewed body. A sigh of sheer peace and satisfaction escaped her as her eyelids fluttered closed.

“Sleepy?” Wesley queried with a throaty chuckle, stroking her damp hair from her forehead.

“Ummm...”

“What? On your honeymoon?” he mocked. “My passionate little wildcat giving out already? Un-unh!”

“Wes,” Sloan protested drowsily. “I’m half-asleep...”

“I’ll wake you up,” he promised, and proceeded to prove he could do so. Slowly, more gently this time, with Sloan able to return every spark of arousal and explore him with equal intimacy. He demanded things of her, coaxing her with enticing whispers to tell him everything that pleased her most and exciting her to almost unendurable lengths by encouraging her own shy administrations with hoarse groans and guttural exclamations of her perfection.

“I think I married a sex maniac,” she told him euphorically as he swept her to his heights again.

“No, darling,” he muttered, his face taut with desire, “
I
did, little wildcat.”

“I never knew it could be this way...” Anything else she had to say became incomprehensible as moans obliterated her speech.

Later, countless eons later, she drifted off to sleep in the ageless, dreamlike satisfaction of one filled to the brim with enchanted satiation, held in the security of her lover’s arms. The night had been more than she had ever expected, even in her wildest imaginings. She had given herself to Wesley completely, and learned the superb sweetness of surrender. It was good, so wonderfully good, to be his and know that he was hers and that a man like Wesley slept beside her. She had been conquered, but the thought bothered her not at all. She didn’t need a superior edge anymore; she loved and trusted him totally.

She awoke in the middle of the night, keenly attuned to his touch. She was coiled against him, her back fitted into the curve of his stomach, sheltered by his arms. For a minute she was confused, wondering why she had woken. Then she realized that he was insistently fondling her breasts; the pressure of his powerful chest and his hot, probing masculinity telling her the rest.

“Wes!” she murmured with awe and surprise, a remnant of guile prompting her protest. A laugh escaped her. “We have tomorrow, you know.”

“Never put off till tomorrow,” he quoted as his teeth grazed her earlobe. Had she been more awake, she might have noticed the slight hesitance before his teasing statement. As it was, she merely mocked a sigh of resignation and succumbed to his advances, shocked by the vehemence of her response and the wild abandon with which she eagerly returned his lovemaking when by all rights she should have been exhausted, spent, and still sound asleep.

Wesley chuckled softly when she shuddered in his arms again. “Go back to sleep, darling,” he whispered. “I promise I won’t wake you again.”

Sloan obligingly rested her head upon his chest. A thought nagged at her, but she was so tired, she couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Then it hit her, but by then she was caught in the twilight between sleep and consciousness and she dismissed it immediately.

In all his words of coaxing and passionate encouragement, in all his whispers of hungry pleasure, never once had Wesley said he loved her.

What a ridiculous thing to be thinking about, Sloan thought dimly in her subconscious. She knew Wesley loved her; he had told her so many times, even when she had been setting her “trap” and was totally, unaware of her own, intense feelings for him.

And so she slept again, soundly and perfectly happy in her newly discovered joy and fulfillment, blissfully unaware of what the morning would bring.

T
HE BRIGHT, BEGUILING SUNLIGHT
of the Belgian morning streaked through the parted drapes to awaken her. Like a purring kitten she stretched languorously; like an innocent maid who had just discovered the wonder of love she flicked shy lashes and reached a tentative hand across the covers to touch her new husband.

He wasn’t there. Her eyes opened fully, and she smiled a sweet smile of contentment as she found him, sitting on a bedside chair, his strong fingers idly stroking his chin as he watched her. His dark hair was tousled, his broad chest incredibly sexy in its partial exposure at the loose V of his haphazardly belted robe.

But he didn’t smile back, and Sloan’s happily curved lips straightened tremulously. His look was as cold as ice, his piercing green eyes brutal in his tense, bronzed face.

Barely awake, Sloan blinked with confusion. It couldn’t be Wesley staring at her that way! She opened her eyes again to find the glacial image still before her. She struggled inwardly to ease her bewilderment. What had happened to change the tender and gentle man she had married into this basilisk of condemnation? How could he possibly be staring at her with such venom after the night of passionate love they had just shared together?

“So you’re awake.”

His voice was low, pleasant, the tone almost silky. For the briefest moment, Sloan began to relax, convincing herself she was reading things into his pirate gaze that simply weren’t there.

Then he began to speak again.

“It was...interesting?...my love, to see how you would handle the night. Very nice. I must say, darling, that when you sell out, you do go all the way with gusto.”

A creeping cold chill of fear seeped rapidly through her numbed senses. “What?” she whispered incredulously, moistening dry lips.

“The act is charming, Sloan, but no good.” He flashed her a pearly smile with a rapier edge. “It’s time for a little honesty.”

Lord, she wondered desperately, what
had
happened? “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she hedged, panicked. Forcing herself to keep a mask of calm on her features, she thought rapidly over the past events. He couldn’t have any suspicions regarding her original motives for marriage; he would have certainly called off the wedding! He
couldn’t
know anything harmful, she decided with a quaking bravado. Still, she clutched the covers protectively to her chin as she attempted a captivating grin and laughed gaily. “Really, darling, you should have warned me that you wake like a growling bear!”

Dark brows rose in an arch. “Should I have?” he inquired politely, the daggerlike smile still etched clearly into his taut profile. He stood and sauntered slowly to her while she watched him uneasily. She had the terrible, uncanny feeling that he was playing with her, as a great cat played with its prey before pouncing for the final kill. Her instinct was to run, but she was stubbornly insisting to herself that there was nothing that could be really wrong. Willpower alone kept her still, presenting a facade of guileless calm.

She felt his heat as he sat beside her, felt the tense, powerful coil of his thigh muscle against hers. She forced herself to meet his steel, green gaze unblinkingly, and when his fingers moved gently along her cheekbones and down to her throat, she silently prayed she would not flinch beneath the harsh rigidity that lurked, like a spiral about to spring, behind the tenderness of the gesture. Then she couldn’t bear the tense, pregnant stillness any longer. “What is it, love?” she whispered.

“What is it...love,” he repeated in a toneless, mocking murmur. Then the coil unleashed and the spring flew. His fingers clamped around her wrists like steel cuffs and he jerked her abruptly from the bed. She uttered a startled scream in protest, shocked by his sudden show of ill-controlled force, no longer uneasy or frightened but thoroughly terrified. She was well aware of the bricklike muscles that composed the frame of this man who was now a stranger, well aware that he could break her like so many match sticks if he so desired.

He was oblivious to her cries of protest as he ripped the protective sheet from her and pulled her into the bathroom where he positioned her firmly before the mirror, his hands on her shoulders but warningly near her neck, the breadth of his body behind her, holding her steady as she lowered her eyes and begged him to let her loose.

“Not just yet...wife...” he spat, the iciness of his eyes losing nothing as he met the trembling liquid pools of hers in reflection. “We shall see what we have here, first...”