Untouched (14 page)

She was slender and trembling in his grasp and sweeter even than he’d imagined. While he told himself to let her go, his

grip firmed, dragged her closer.

“What…” he managed to say before she clutched the sides of his head and tugged him down with clumsy force.

“Forgive me,” she said, the words muffled. Then her lips, hot and taut with purpose, jammed against his.

The world outside the embrace stopped. His mind ceased to function. His body began to function too well.

She wore the sheer nightdress. He wore nothing at all. Only a flimsy layer of material separated them. His skin burned

where it touched hers and he hardened in immediate response. Her womanly scent filled his head. Her heat filled his arms.

Before he could stop himself, he tightened his hold so her lush breasts flattened upon his bare chest. His shirt fell

disregarded to the floor as his hand shaped the sinuous indentation of her waist.

She gave a whimpered protest and tore her closed mouth from his. The kiss had been too brief to justify the name. But

even such brutal, fleeting contact inflamed his starved senses. He wanted her mouth on him again. He wanted time to

discover her taste.

“Kiss me,” she said unsteadily, her fingers kneading the muscles of his arms.

Keeping his hands off her was difficult enough when she maintained a decorous distance. Now he found it impossible.

Her warmth eddied out to lure him closer until he forgot everything but pleasure.

He moved his hands to her shoulders, as much to contain his own rioting reactions as to hold her off. What little he’d

learned about the shape of her, the curves and dips and valleys of her body, scorched his mind, urged him to discover

more. But he wasn’t totally lost to passion, although he wavered on the brink.

“We can’t do this.” Regret laced each word he wrested from his tight throat.

Her shuddering inhalation pressed her breasts into his chest. He gritted his teeth and struggled to stop his hands slipping

down to weigh and touch and explore.

“I have to,” she said hoarsely.

Even in his overexcited state, that response seemed odd. A voice demanding caution screamed at the back of his mind.

“God, Grace…”

She clasped his head in her cool slender hands. “Kiss me.”

The brief flash of clarity evaporated. Under his hands, she stretched up. For one incendiary moment, her mouth clung to

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ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

his. The intimacy was astonishing. His unruly cock swelled and lifted. Her lips were so soft, like warm satin.

Experimentally, he made a slight sucking movement. A shiver ran through her and the fingers clutching his arms dug into

his flesh almost to the bone.

He stopped. He must be doing this wrong.

His heart overflowing with self-disgust, he waited for her to recoil from his boorishness. But with a cry, she pitched

herself after him as if even that much separation was too much. His hands slid to her back, gathering her closer.

He rubbed his lips across hers. She opened slightly so he drew in her breath. He inhaled, instinctively parting to taste her

moisture. She gave another choked sound. Of distress or pleasure, he couldn’t tell.

She pushed herself so violently against him that they reeled onto the couch. As her delicious weight landed on top of him,

the kiss broke. Her nightdress rode up and one of his hands brushed the curve of her buttock. Her bare buttock.

The feel of her naked skin nearly shattered him. He surged up in a frenzied search for relief. She surrounded him, all hot

flesh and seeking hands. She touched him with hectic, clinging strokes as if afraid he’d disappear.

Something was wrong. His dreams couldn’t be so mistaken. This wasn’t how he’d imagined their embraces.

In a thousand secret fantasies, he’d held her close, he’d kissed and caressed her, he’d thrust inside her. She’d been soft

and yielding. She’d relished his possession.

The woman in his arms was stiff with tension and she shook as though in the grip of fever.

He rose on his elbows to kiss her again, then paused. His misgivings roared. He couldn’t ignore them any longer. He fell

back to lie beneath her and his hands dropped to his sides.

“Grace, why are you here?” he asked sharply, clenching his fists so he didn’t snatch what she offered and let

consequences be damned.

She scattered kisses across his bare chest. Desperate kisses. Just as her hands were desperate. Her fingers hooked into his

biceps like talons and she fumbled to bring his arms around her again.

“Don’t talk,” she gasped. She raised her head and he felt her eyes burn him through the darkness. “Kiss me. Kiss me

properly.”

She plastered herself across him as if force alone kept him with her, as if she expected him to fight her off. She smashed

her open mouth against his, hard enough to bruise. He tasted blood and fear. He lifted an unsteady hand to her cheek to

calm her wildness.

Her face was drenched with tears.

“Jesus!”

He shoved at her and jerked into a sitting position at the far end of the sofa. She tumbled away with a cry then crawled

after him until she straddled his legs. He would have read eagerness in her touch, if not for those betraying tears against

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his fingers.

Christ, this turned his sensual visions into distorted nightmare. In those visions, she’d panted with desire, not cried as if

her heart broke. He struggled to rein in the lust rampaging through his veins. He wanted her more than life. But not like

this. Never like this.

“Stop,” he grated.

“I will make you take me,” she said breathlessly. She rested back on her heels so she bumped the arm of the sofa behind

her. With ungainly movements so different from her usual fluid grace, she tugged the nightdress over her head and threw

it to the floor.

“Jesus…” he said again on a low hiss and closed his eyes.

Too late. Even through the darkness, the image of her seared his brain like fire. The glimmer of white flesh, the full high

breasts with their darker nipples, the pool of shadow where her legs met.

“Stop it, Grace,” he said while the devil inside him shrieked to take her, take her.

Her pale thighs braced his legs as she slid toward him. Her position was excruciatingly suggestive. She paused at a point

where if she moved the slightest inch, he’d be inside her. He clenched his jaw so hard it hurt.

“I have to do this.”

He heard the despair in her voice. Her shaking hand grazed his erection. Christ, she’d kill him before she finished.

Through the fireworks shooting through his head, he heard her shocked inhalation.

She snatched her hand away. “You want me,” she whispered as if even with unmistakable physical evidence, she still

didn’t believe it.

Matthew’s control shredded. With a roughness he couldn’t help, he thrust her aside so she bounced against the upholstery.

He scrambled to his feet.

“Of course I bloody want you,” he growled. “God, where the hell did you put your damned clothes?”

He scrabbled for her nightdress but when his hand alighted on a garment, it was his shirt. It would have to do.

“Here, put this on.” He thrust the garment at her, then grabbed his trousers and tugged them up. Without looking at her—

if he looked at her, his fragile resolution would crumble—he stalked to the desk and lit a candle with hands he could

barely control.

Only then did he face her. And wished to God he’d marched out of the room instead. She was in such a state that even so

simple a matter as pulling his shirt over her head took far too long. As the loose folds of linen tumbled over her smooth

white flesh, his cock strained painfully against his trousers.

Her head drooped on her slender neck and her body formed a despairing curve. Untidy tendrils of hair clung to her damp

face. One long tress escaped her plait and snaked down to disappear under his shirt. How his hand itched to follow that

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shining black line. He clenched hard on the desk behind him to block turning the wish into reality.

The only sounds in the room were her rasping sobs and the patter of rain against the windows. She knelt on the sofa,

struggling for breath so his shirt heaved over her breasts. Breasts he now knew were round and white and tipped with

small, perfect nipples. Another bolt of desire slammed him and left him shaking.

“Why did you kiss me, Grace?” he snarled.

Tears streaked her wan face as she looked up at him. “I want you to take me,” she said flatly.

“No, you don’t,” he said with an absolute certainty he wished to hell he didn’t feel.

“If you want me, why don’t you take me?” Her bewilderment cut to his heart.

Because you don’t want me the way I want you, damn it.

“You know why. It’s dishonor for you. And for me.”

“I don’t care about dishonor.” The same toneless voice. New tears flowed down her cheeks. Her throat moved as she

swallowed nervously.

She was frightened.

His heart contracted in anguished denial. “Grace, I’d never hurt you. There’s no need to fear me.”

Horror dawned in her eyes and she shook her head vehemently. “I’m not afraid of you.” A blush tinted her cheeks as she

looked away. “Or perhaps only a little.”

Of course he scared her. His desire had been immediate and flagrant. And was still rampant, as a married woman would

know, although so far she’d studiously fixed her attention above his waist.

“Then what is it?” He gripped the desk like a shipwrecked sailor gripped a broken spar in a stormy ocean.

Her hands twined in her lap with restless distress. “This was wrong. I shouldn’t have come to you. I’m sorry.”

He couldn’t help himself. Her misery called more strongly than his sense of self-preservation. He shoved himself away

from the desk and took the three strides that brought him to the sofa. “Grace, just tell me.”

Striving for control, he sat next to her and lifted one of her twisting hands. He wanted her to feel safe, to know he’d

mastered his ravening hunger. But his fingers trembled as he touched her.

“Tell me,” he repeated, beating back the lust that writhed and screamed inside him.

Her hand curled around his in a gesture of trust he didn’t deserve and she sucked in a deep breath. The faint color receded

from her face, leaving her even paler. “Your uncle said unless I…coax you into my bed before Saturday, he’ll kill me.”

Jesus, why hadn’t he guessed?

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Through the humiliation and fear writhing in her belly, Grace struggled for words. “And before…” She swallowed again,

then spoke in a frantic rush. “And before he kills me, he’ll give me to Monks and Filey.”

“God blast him to hell,” Lord Sheene said viciously, his hand tightening around hers.

“I’ve betrayed you in the worst possible way.” The shame that had shadowed her all night rose to choke her. How could

he be so kind when she’d set out to suborn him? She lurched to her feet, desperate to escape to the lonely privacy of the

bedroom.

Roughly, he pulled her back down beside him. “What are you going to do about Saturday?”

She searched his eyes for the disgust he must feel. She only found concern and the banked fires of anger at his uncle’s

machinations.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, although she shuddered because she did know.

At that moment, she reached a difficult decision. She’d never allow Monks and Filey to touch her. She’d kill herself first.

Her death had been inevitable from the moment those foul thugs had abducted her. Better that death came before the final

degradation. After tonight’s fiasco, she’d never again muster the nerve to try to seduce Lord Sheene.

Her course was set for irrevocable ruin. She wouldn’t take him down to destruction with her.

“You should have told me this,” he said gently.

“What could you have done? Apart from say there’s no hope.”

“We could deceive my uncle. If we share a bed…” He stopped. “If we share a bed, no one need know we’re not lovers.”

For one bright moment, rescue beckoned, then she remembered what the ruse would cost him. “Then your uncle will

think he’s won. After what you told me today, I know the stakes.”

“My pride isn’t worth your life, Grace.”

But pride kept Lord Sheene alive. If he conceded victory to his uncle, he was lost. She couldn’t let that happen. “No.”

His expression twisted with pain. “I vowed I wouldn’t hurt you, Grace.”

Useless tears welled up again. She felt so utterly helpless. “Everything’s impossible.”

Surprisingly, he gave her the sweet smile that made her heart cramp with futile longing. “It won’t look so bad in the

morning.”

The comfort one offered a child. Grace recognized its essential falseness. Still, when Lord Sheene drew her into his

embrace, she slid up the sofa to lean against him. He cradled her upon his bare chest as tenderly as if she were indeed a

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ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

child. But when she rested her sticky face on his cool skin, the feelings that flooded her were unmistakably adult.

Her failed seduction had opened the doors to forbidden knowledge. After tonight, his smell and his taste had permeated