The Lady and the Lion (11 page)

Her first lover.
A man who refused ties, promises, or even questions, who had offered a proposition rather than a proposal, and who had taught her to feel a passion so great that the memory of it now was still able to take her breath away. The man who was a few feet away in the bathroom, the man who had been shaken by her virginity and who was still, she thought, disturbed by it. The man who felt so
much
on so many complicated levels she might never get to the bottom of him even if he gave her the time to try. The man she loved.

She thought she should have been appalled, but drifted back to sleep without bothering to worry about it.

Her next sensation was of coolness as the covers were drawn away, and then strong arms gathering her up easily. She loved that, being carried by him, and murmured her pleasure. The next thing she knew, she was immersed in warm bathwater just the right temperature with bubbles up to her chin. She opened her eyes and stared at what little she could see of herself, vaguely aware that he had bundled her thick hair behind her head so that it formed a comfortable cushion on the rim of the tub.

This resort hotel supplied numerous amenities for its guests, including bubble bath for the deep, oval tubs that were the essence of comfort. Erin was comfortable—and slightly bemused.

There were several lights in the bathroom; he had turned on only one so that the illumination was soft rather than sharp. She looked up at Keith as he knelt by the tub, searching for words in the haze of contentment and finally settling for, "Why am I here?"

His mouth curved in a slight smile, though his eyes remained darkened and intent. "You may not feel it now, but you will in the morning. Any new—activity—uses muscles you didn't know you had."

Erin stretched out her legs and winced slightly as the muscles of her thighs twinged. "You could be right," she admitted, recalling her childhood days on horseback, when a ride after months out of the saddle had left her stiff and sore.

That thought led to another along the same lines, as she remembered a favorite theory of one of her teachers. He had maintained that the attraction of adolescent girls for horses had a sexual base. Many of the muscles used in riding were the same ones exercised by sexual activity, and
the
 
symbolism
 
of gripping a powerful
 
animal between the legs, he said, was rather obvious. It was a "safe" outlet for sensations and emotions with which an immature mind hadn't learned to cope.

After hearing that, Erin had stayed away from her horse for weeks, feeling ridiculously guilty about her affection for him. Him! She
would
have had to own a gelding! She wondered, now, how many of her classmates had been as unnecessarily upset as she'd been. That teacher had either been thoughtless or perversely cruel to have put those ideas into the minds of young girls, so many of whom had owned horses.

"Is the water too hot?" Keith asked.

She could feel the heat in her face. "No, it's just right."

"Then you're blushing. Why?"

Erin eyed him, and decided to keep her memories to herself. "I haven't been put into a bath since I was seven.
And never when I was sound asleep."
He had told her he couldn't promise he'd be kind, but this was kind, she thought.

His smile remained, and he seemed to hesitate before he said dryly, "If I'd lain there any longer and watched you sleep, you would have had even more reason for aching muscles in the morning."

Accustomed to graceful compliments and flowery words, Erin found his bluntness curiously refreshing. And she wasn't at all embarrassed by it.

"You watched me sleep?" she ventured, far more disturbed by that.

Keith nodded, but didn't elaborate. Instead, he reached out and down, finding her lower thigh beneath the bubbles and beginning to gently massage it. Erin had experienced the expert touch of a masseur in some of the finest spas in Europe, but nothing compared to the melting, boneless sensation that swept over her as Keith's fingers slowly kneaded her muscles. She actually wanted to whimper out loud with the pleasure of it.

Her eyelids grew heavy as weariness vanished, and between her lashes she stared at his arm, starkly bronze against the white bubbles. The heat of the water was seeping into all her other muscles, and both his hands were on her thighs now, massaging slowly and deeply. She was turning to jelly. Quivering jelly, because the touch of his hands was as sensual as it was relaxing.

Her veiled gaze moved up over his forearms, lingered on the pulsing movements of his biceps, then his shoulders, and finally his face. He was looking down at the bubbles that hid the body he was touching, his expression taut and eyes narrowed. She loved that look. It was fierce and hard, primitive in a way that touched some cord deep inside her.

Maybe that was it indeed, she thought dimly.
The reason.
He was unlike any other man she'd ever known, and the vitality in him, the intensity was so strong and honest, it touched a part of her no one else had even come close to. When he was like this, his hands on her, it was as if her whole body understood an immutable truth that her mind was accepting only now. She was his. She was connected to him, belonged to him, on some instinctive, ancient level where language was only emotion.

Erin made a soft, almost inaudible sound, and his hands stilled as he looked at her face. Then, without a word, he reached for the bar of soap lying on a ledge near the faucet. She hadn't been aware of the passage of time, but realized now that the bubbles had begun dissolving and that the water had cooled to lukewarm. She didn't want to move. Her skin tingled warmly from the heat of the bath and his touch, and though she thought she should probably protest his obvious intention to bathe her because it didn't seem quite right that he should do it, she couldn't summon the energy.

Keith flipped the lever that would slowly drain the water from the tub, then worked up
a lather
in his hands and set the soap aside. Beginning with her slender feet, he slowly worked his way up her legs, caressing and massaging more than anything else. He had meant this interlude to be relaxing, but should have
known,
he acknowledged silently, that he couldn't have his hands on her without going crazy.

A tall woman, she was so perfectly proportioned that her body was almost delicate. And she was revealed to him slowly as the water around her drained away, her golden flesh glistening in the soft light. He couldn't take his eyes off her, and his hands were reveling in the slippery exploration. He stroked the slick lather from her feet to her chin, moving so slowly that he was torturing himself. He saw her breathing quicken, watched her nipples tighten as his hands swirled the soapy foam around them, felt her stomach quiver and contract beneath his touch.

His heart was pounding so heavily that his chest ached, and when she made a soft little sound as his fingers slid between her legs, his own desire ran like fire through his body. He felt as if he was being taken apart, cell by cell, and wouldn't be whole again until he lost himself in her, surrounded
himself
with the warmth of her. He retained just enough control to reach for the hand-held shower attachment and turn it on, waiting seconds for the water to reach the right temperature. Then he began rinsing the soap off her rosy body.

He heard her murmur his name, her sweet voice husky with desire, and wondered dimly how such a simple sound could affect him so powerfully. It was like being touched by a live wire, an electrical current shooting through him. He wondered it he really was going out of his mind.

He didn't care.

The instant the last of the soap swirled down the drain, he turned the water off and lifted her out of the tub, setting her on her feet on the mat and reaching for a towel. He dried her warm body blindly, because his mouth was on hers, and he probably missed a few spots because he was in a hurry, but she didn't utter a word of complaint as he carried her to their bed.

Erin opened her eyes slowly, reluctant to abandon a very pleasant dream but nagged by the internal clock that told her she had overslept. She was curled up against Keith's hard body with her cheek resting on his chest, and both his arms were around her. She liked that.
A lot.
Sunlight flooded into the room through the large window, and the covers were drawn up around them snugly. Only the soft hum of the air conditioning disturbed the peaceful quiet.

Content to
lie
in his arms no matter what time it was, she found herself thinking again that she should be shocked by all this.
Or worried.
At least mildly.
It didn't seem quite decent not to be.

Odd the way one's upbringing prodded the conscience. Her mother,
raised
in a somewhat strict and socially visible family and married young to a British nobleman of frightening intelligence and cool manners, had depended a great deal on the conventions. She had clung to them because the rules were ironclad, unchanging in a world where so much else seemed to change from one day to the next. If anything, her husband's position and career had imposed an even stricter set of rules, where appearance was terribly important and doing the "correct" thing was at all times demanded. Erin's mother had lived by those rules.

Too young during the sixties to notice the whole world was rebelling, Erin had listened to her mother and, later, to the teachers who had sometimes taught manners and morals along with more academic subjects. And all of it, she realized now, might well be another reason she had so dutifully complied with her father's wishes these last years. Daughters were supposed to obey their fathers.

But Erin, unlike her gentle, soft-spoken mother, hadn't believed in all the rules—she had simply accepted them, she knew now. If it were otherwise, she'd be shocked to her bones for having broken most of them.

She wasn't very worried about it, just dimly bothered. Right or wrong, what she felt in Keith's arms was too wonderful to be a mistake. No matter how it ended, she had no regrets.

Needing, suddenly, to look at his face, she worked an elbow underneath herself and
raised
up.
His eyes opened almost immediately, very vivid as they met hers.

"Hello," she said solemnly. He didn't look sleepy at all, and she realized he'd been lying here awake just as she had.

Curling one hand around the nape of her neck, Keith drew her toward him far enough to kiss her thoroughly. "Hello," he murmured when he could,
gazing
at her beautiful face with an unconscious fascination. There was something different about her, something he sensed as well as saw. After their night together she was more... vibrant, more alive.
As if a gauzy veil had been stripped away, leaving her fresh and bright and new.

"Do you realize it's after eight o'clock?" she said after glancing over at the nightstand. "I haven't slept this late since I was a child."

"You had a busy night," he said, and felt his heart lurch when her lips curved in a smile so intimate it was like an actual physical caress.

"Yes, we did, didn't we? Did you wake me up around dawn? I think I remember that."

"You'd better remember it," he growled, the memory vivid in his own mind.
A new experience, making love to her in the darkness, only touch guiding them.

"You're insatiable," she said, then added musingly but in a faintly pleased tone, "And so am I. It's disgraceful."

Even though she had been totally responsive since the first time he had touched her, and had shown not a single flicker of embarrassment, hesitation, or self-consciousness in all the hours since, he had half-expected some sign of withdrawal this morning. It was the traditional moment for doubts, regrets, and coolheaded reason to prevail, and since she had taken her first lover—on his definitely one-sided terms—the night before, it wouldn't have been surprising if the morning after had brought with it a hint of some distress.

But if she felt anything other than contentment in the situation, it didn't show. And, gazing into the bright depths of her green eyes, he knew that she
was
content. Instead of reassuring him, the knowledge made him more afraid than ever he was going to hurt her.

"You're looking fierce," she said consideringly. "What's wrong, Keith?"

"Nothing," he said, because it was too late to stop this. He knew damned well he couldn't stay away from her now if somebody held a knife to his throat. Hell, he hadn't been able to let three or four hours pass without needing her so wildly it was like insanity. Keeping his voice steady, he added, "Except that neither one of us has been very sensible. We should have taken precautions."

"I didn't think about that," she admitted, "but it's all right. My periods got very erratic a few months ago, and my doctor put me on the pill. He said it was stress, and told me I needed a vacation." Her mouth curved in a smile. "I'm glad I didn't listen to him then."

He pulled her head down and kissed her again, angry at himself because his first impulse had been to tell her to throw the damned pills away. The thought of his child growing inside her was so seductive it made his throat ache. He had thought of having children before, the idle thoughts most men have at some point or other, but this—this was a grinding hunger that went deeper than his bones. A little girl with Erin's bright hair and sweet smile, or a boy with vivid green eyes....

God, he
was
going crazy.

When he finally ended that deep kiss, she drew back only a little. Lying half on top of him now, her forearms resting on his chest, she touched his beard-stubbled jaw with gentle fingers and murmured, "So much anger.
Such an angry man."

"I don't hide it very well, do I?" he managed with a short laugh.

"No. You hold it in, but you don't hide it."

He shifted his hand from the nape of her neck to her cheek. "It isn't because of you."

Her gaze was steady. "Part of it is."