Rapture in His Arms (21 page)

“Did you love any of them? Did you love Priscilla?”

“Nay, Jillian. I loved none of them.”

“Yet you bedded Priscilla.”

“Aye, but a slave can’t say nay to his owner. I had no choice in the matter.”

“Did—did you pleasure her?”

“Aye.”

“Did she pleasure you?”

“Aye,” he admitted though the answer sounded as if it had been dragged from him.

She bit down upon her lower lip and mulled his answer over for such a long time that Donovan feared he had repulsed her with the truth, that she despised him for what had happened to him on Bermuda. He feared that the debauched life he’d led with these other women, a life over which he had had no control, might now cost him the passion of this precious woman in his arms.

Finally, she looked at him, and a tear filled the corner of her right eye. “I’m sorry for what you suffered, truly sorry. I wish I could change the past for you.”

No one had ever been sorry for him before, and Donovan was so touched by her sorrow for a life she didn’t really understand that in that second, he fell hopelessly and truly in love with his wife. He couldn’t speak, as love welled inside of him and threatened to erupt in a volcanic explosion of desire so intense that his entire being was shaken by the experience. It was through the haze of passion, through the blood surging through his temples that he heard her voice, small and filled with an incredible longing, whisper into the darkness, “I wish for you to teach me how to pleasure you, Donovan. I want to learn so I can wipe the pain from your eyes and erase the heartache from your soul.”

“God, Jillian!” He couldn’t say what he wished to say. He couldn’t tell her that he loved her, not when he feared her heart belonged to Tyler Addison, not when he knew that she had married him only because Edwin had disliked Addison, and she wanted to honor Edwin’s wish. She was now his wife, and queen of his heart, though she didn’t know it. But he didn’t expect her ever to love him, a man so far beneath her. He’d be contented with her desire and would cherish the day she became his wife.

“Teach me to love you, Donovan. Show me how,” she throatily begged and wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him closer against her.

Donovan thought he was in heaven. The disbelief on his face soon gave way to passion when her lips made contact with his in a kiss which caused him to groan in unbelievable joy.

Jillian felt Donovan lowering her to the bed and against her pillow. His lips were unquenchably hungry and filled with fire as they roamed across her neck and down to seek her nipples. He laved each one with gentle but ravenous strokes, and he claimed her for his own with each thrust of his tongue upon the pearly peaks. Flames ignited inside of her, and an answering hunger consumed her. Never had she felt like this before or experienced such liquid need. Something disturbingly splendid was happening inside of her and for the first time in her life, she didn’t question what it might be and abandoned herself to the wild sensations flowing through her.

“Oh, that—feels so—wonderful,” she murmured and clutched at his shoulders. He didn’t reply but kept suckling her until she arched upward in a presentation of her breasts to him. A tingling, pleasant ache started between her thighs, and somehow she knew that Donovan’s feasting on her nipples was the cause of it. Then his lips trailed away from her breasts and began to move over her stomach. “Why did you stop?” she asked, more than disappointed.

“Because I want to taste all of ye, Jillian, every part of ye.”

She giggled because she doubted that was possible, but seconds later, she understood when his lips found the aching spot between her thighs and he soothed it with his mouth and tongue. Never in her life had anything felt this wonderful, but ever the moralist, Jillian couldn’t help but wonder at the righteousness of this act. “Donovan, what are you doing? Is this—is this sinful?” she asked and hoped against hope that it wasn’t.

He ceased his loving assault upon her. “Nay, Jillian, not with me. I’m your husband. Do ye want me to stop?” he asked.

She knew if he stopped she’d go insane. “Please, don’t stop,” she whispered and urged him on by wriggling her hips and arching them upward to his lips.

“Heaven, help me, woman, but you’ve bewitched me.” Then he lapped at her womanly core and stoked the flames higher. His tongue caressed her velvet center, and Jillian felt as if she were about to burst with a sweltering, sweet sensation, so powerful and potent that her moans filled the quiet room. She wasn’t certain what to expect, or even what to think, and at the moment she couldn’t think at all beyond what was happening to her body. And then Donovan withdrew from her.

She opened her eyes, a bit dazed and disappointed to be left with a hollow ache between her legs, and not knowing anything but a primitive need for fulfillment. But Donovan kissed her with a gentle kiss that promised much and when he moved up toward her and his hands tenderly parted her thighs, she relaxed. “I’m goin’ to make ye my wife now, Jillian,” he whispered against her lips and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “Hold on to me tight and let me love ye, let me become one with ye. I ache for ye so.’’

She felt his manhood, stiff and unyielding, nudge between her thighs and start to penetrate her warm, moist nest, bit by bit, slowly and steadily. How wonderful his length felt inside of her, soft like satin but hard like iron, too. She moaned her pleasure, and Donovan kissed her. The fires burned high within her, and she writhed to accommodate him. He moved further inside of her but suddenly his progress was stalled by a thin barrier. Jillian experienced a twinge of pain and groaned at the unexpectedness of it. “’Tis your maidenhead,” he reminded her. “I don’t want to hurt ye, love.”

“I … know. But unless ’tis broken, then we are not husband and wife.”

“Aye, ’tis true.”

She gulped, knowing there would be pain and fearing it, but she braced herself by tightly holding onto his broad shoulders. “I want to be … your wife,” she admitted on a sigh.

“Sweet Jillian, my sweet Jillian,” he mumbled and kissed her fiercely.

For a second she was enthralled by his passionate kiss, but then his body rose upwards, and his hands parted her legs further, and she thought he was withdrawing from her when she felt his length pull back but not leave. And then just as she would have asked him why he waited, Donovan thrust into her and broke past her virgin’s barrier. A cry of pain rushed past her lips and Jillian balked, and would have pushed him away, but he held her tightly. She couldn’t move, and the throbbing pain increased. “Easy, my love, easy,” he gentled her with his lulling voice. “The pain will soon end and the pleasure will begin.”

A tear ran down her cheek. “There is no pleasure in this,” she told him, perplexed. With her own eyes, she had seen Priscilla Mortimer writhing in ecstasy beneath Donovan’s hands, but Jillian felt only pain and fear. What was wrong with her? Was she not as much of a woman as Priscilla? At that second, she nearly hated Donovan for making her body want him, for making her believe there was something unexplainably wonderful that she was missing, and now to discover there was nothing but pain to lovemaking. How cruel nature was to a woman!

“Relax, Jillian. The worst part is over now.” His hand pushed a chestnut lock from her forehead and he kissed her in that spot.

“’Tis a lie.” She choked on a sob. “’Tis just beginning.”

“Nay, ye must relax and let me pleasure ye. Trust me, please trust in me.” How could she not trust him when he spoke to her in a voice that was warm and filled with husky desire, when his very manhood filled her? She quieted and tightened her grasp on his shoulders in expectation of more pain to come. But strangely, when Donovan began to move slowly within her again, she felt nothing more than a tiny prickle of an ache. He drew his throbbing length back and then thrust gently into her, over and over again, until embers of her earlier pleasure sparked anew. “Do ye like this?” he asked after he claimed her lips again in a kiss that filled her with molten fire. “Should I stop for a bit?”

“Nay—nay,” she protested. Her body writhed beneath his in wanton abandon. “Never stop.”

That was all the encouragement he needed. His strokes grew harder and faster, more possessively fierce. Exquisite throbbing saturated Jillian’s silken sheath with each rapturous thrust. Heat gathered and spread inside of her like rose petals opening to a morning sun. Each thrust filled her with desire so intense that she thought her entire body was about to explode. But soon the sensations centered within her heated core. She sensed something was about to happen, something astounding. When Donovan stilled for barely a second and then claimed her again, her womanhood contracted and expanded, seeming to explode into spiraling arcs of silver and gold that rose upwards to touch the heavens.

Jillian cried out at the same second that Donovan reached the summit and spilled into her. His muffled gasps of ecstasy fell against her parted lips. Minutes later, Jillian lay within Donovan’s arms, shaken and overcome by their lovemaking. She never thought anything could feel so incredibly wonderful and beautiful. In fact, never had she felt so beautiful as at this moment when Donovan gazed down at her with something like adoration in his eyes. “Are ye all right?” he asked in concern. “Did I hurt ye? I tried not to.”

Her fingers sensuously traced his shoulder blade and moved down his muscular arm. “’Tis no harm done to me. I am unhurt, though a bit sore.”

“I’m sorry.”

She smiled up at him, warmth on her face. “I have truly become a wife this night, I never knew what that meant before. ’Tis more to marriage than scrubbing floors and mending seams.”

“Aye,” he affably agreed and kissed her nose. “I’d prefer my wife beneath me in bed than on her knees in the kitchen.”

“Is that where you aim to keep me, Donovan? Beneath you in bed?” she daringly asked.

“Aye, and on top sometimes, if the spirit moves ye.”

“On top?” she queried with wide, baffled eyes. “Me?”

Donovan chuckled at her innocence and settled her against his chest. He kissed the top of her head. “Aye, on top, and in other positions, too. But I’ll give ye a chance to get used to bein’ on the bottom before I show ye other pleasures.”

She lifted her head and looked up at him. “I do want to please you,” she whispered.

“Ah, sweet Jillian, ’tis happy I am with ye. Ye have made me so glad this night.” He was deeply touched by her wish to please him as his wife, but he refused to show her the depth of his feelings, believing that she could never feel about him the way he felt about her. His fingers grazed her chin and he hid his love behind a teasing smile. “Is there another reason ye might be wantin’ to please me?”

There was, and damned if he didn’t know it! It was almost as if he could read her mind. “Well—I don’t want you to think about the other women you’ve loved—”

“I told ye that I never loved them,” he hastened to correct her.

“Yes, but I don’t want you to compare me with them. I want to find favor in your eyes.” Why this mattered so much to Jillian she didn’t know. She only knew that she hated imagining Donovan with other women, but most of all she disliked the memory of him with Priscilla Mortimer and wished she could block it from her mind.

“’Tis no other woman on my mind but ye, Jillian. I’ll prove that I want only ye.” His lips found hers and passion ignited between them again.

He possessed her completely, and when he had finished and brought her to earth-shattering fulfillment, Jillian knew she was the only woman in his bed and on his mind.

Grayson Chandler, Duke of Rockfield, glanced out of the window of his palatial estate just as the brown roan and its rider halted in the drive below. His solicitor, John Lattimore, a man well past thirty and sturdy of build, nimbly jumped down and handed the reins to the stable boy. Hurriedly, he made his way into the imposing gray stone edifice. Grayson heard John’s voice in the vestibule, speaking to the butler, and then the heavy thud of the man’s riding boots on the polished flagstone floor.

Grayson swiftly crossed the carpeted floor of his large library, to the marble landing where he saw John, who was just ascending the stairs. “Well, what news have you?” Grayson barked, wishing Lattimore had wings and would fly up the two flights of stairs. He’d waited so long for news, any news about his missing grandson, that the few remaining seconds passed like hours.

Lattimore began to take the steps two at a time, and finally he stood before the duke, a bit out of breath and haggard from the long trip from London. “Please, Your Grace, we must speak privately in your library about this.”

“Oh, bother, man! Come on then!” Grayson strode into the library with Lattimore behind him and shut the door with a forceful bang. He faced Lattimore in defiance of bad news; the lines around his dark eyes stood out in stark contrast against his tanned skin. For a man well past seventy, Grayson was still in superb health and physique, a daunting and domineering presence in anyone’s company. Grayson raked a well-manicured hand through his thick gray hair. Lattimore’s news must be good news, he thought, but worried that once again, they had reached a dead end. How much longer could he continue searching? He wasn’t getting any younger. “What is it? What have you to tell me? I can’t bear the suspense any longer, Lattimore. I’ve been pacing ever since I received your note.”