Katherine O’Neal (37 page)

“I should like to fling them at your
head.”

He removed them anyway. When he began to
massage her foot, rubbing out the aches, a shot of longing rushed
up her leg and settled in her loins. Angered anew, she kicked at
him. But he’d seen the effects of his touch. With a smile, he moved
away.

Another time, he came up and experimentally
touched her cheek. When she jerked away, he left as silently as
he’d come.

She was, by now, consumed with curiosity. At
first, her pride bound her to silence. She’d be damned if she’d
give him the satisfaction of asking his intent. But as dusk
deepened to night, she began to realize that her struggles, while
making a statement, were accomplishing nothing more than wearing
her out. Wearily, she dropped her head back on the pillows and
swallowed her pride.

“For the love of God, Mace, when are we going
to have done with this farce? Have you tied me to this altar just
to persecute me with torturous imaginings?”

He came and stood over her. “I’ve told you. I
intend making love to you. So thoroughly”—he ran his finger along
the top of her still clothed breast—“so satisfactorily, so
goddamned lovingly, that never again will you feel my touch and
think of another man.”

“Then when,” she asked through gritted teeth,
“are you going to get on with it?”

His eyes ran the length of her bound and
helplessly offered frame. “When you’re ready.”

“I shall never be ready.”

“Then I’m content to wait. For understand
this as you’ve understood nothing else. This is not a game. Neither
is it something to be gotten on with, or gotten over with. This,
Princess, is to be a night of nights. A night to remember. A night
to make poets sing. The most enchanted of all nights when you, my
lovely prisoner, will come to me, not with vengeance in your heart.
Not with control as your aim. But out of love. When you will see my
face and call
my
name. Because—and heed me well, my sweet—I
shall accept nothing less.”

His words had woven a spell, as he’d
intended. In them she’d found the will to lose herself in his
fantasy. To surrender herself to a confidence man’s promise of
brighter days. “If only it were possible,” she whispered.

“Impossible—”

“Don’t tell me. Is not in your
vocabulary.”

He ran his thumb along her lips and gave her
a smile. “Why, Princess. Humor at such a tender moment? I do
believe you’re ready.”

The tray of food was placed, just out of her
reach, on the bedside table. Taking the bottle of wine, he tipped
it and drank, swallowing several times. Then he put it to her lips
and helped her drink. “Better?” he asked.

She nodded. Her anticipation could be felt in
every nerve, every fiber, every cell, of her body. Drawn out as the
waiting had been, her imagination had taken over, conjuring up all
sorts of desperate ruminations about her fate beneath his hands.
Her senses felt strangely heightened. She could feel the wine slip
cool and quenching down her throat. She could feel it burn along
the hollows of her chest. Feel it settle in her stomach to warm and
soothe.

Mace took a corner of her blouse in his hand.
“Are you attached to
this?
” he asked.

Amusement at his words eased some of the
frenzied pulsing in her throat.

“No?” he answered for her. Reaching for the
knife, he cut the blouse away. He tossed it aside and moved on to
her skirt. “I trust you’re not attached to this, either.”

“I have a feeling I won’t be for long.”

He gave her a wink. “That’s the spirit,
sweetheart.”

A shiver rushed through her as he cut away
her skirt, then her drawers, until she was left in nothing but her
corset, her chemise, and her stockings. The chemise he split up the
middle with the knife, the corset he cut the strings from and
yanked from her ribs, the stockings he surveyed with a narrowed
eye, then decided to leave alone.

When he was done, she lay before him, bound
and vulnerable, clad in nothing but silk stockings, a look of blue
fire in her eyes.

He bent and kissed her foot through the
delicate silk. Shivers ran up her legs as he kneaded his way up her
calf, his lips following in the wake of his hands. Then he attended
the other foot, nibbling her toes, running his tongue along the
sensitive arch underneath her foot, moving slowly, deliciously, up
the length of her calf to her knee. A sigh escaped her.

He rose and shed his shirt. In the meager
light, his chest looked enormous, bulging with muscles, lightly
covered with thick black hair. It was a body of beauty, of power. A
body with no intention of taking no for an answer.

Bare-chested, he knelt between her legs.
Leaning low, he took up where he’d left off, nibbling the inner
flesh of her knees, raising them, and running his tongue
underneath. She began to groan.

His mouth moved upward, playing with the
soft, pliant skin of her inner thighs. Moaning audibly now, she
shifted her hips, trying to move herself closer to his wickedly
roving tongue. Each time she came close, he moved away. Bound as
she was, it was impossible to guide him where she would have
him.

“You’re not in control, remember?”

“How can I forget?”

He bent his mouth to her thigh again, and she
closed her eyes. “No, look at me,” he said, raising his head.
“Watch what I’m doing. Know that it’s me who does it.”

She tried. But as he bent his head over her
pale skin, the memory of another such dark head assaulted her. She
saw Lance, turned red as the devil by the light of the fire, loom
before her with a deranged and cackling grin. Without so much as a
rational thought, she flinched from him, backing with a jerk
against the headboard.

Slowly, he lifted his head. She could see the
hurt in his eyes. She was trembling, her flesh repelling him even
as she longed for his touch.

“Mace,” she whispered. “I’m frightened. I
don’t think I can do this.”

He crawled up her body and rested himself
upon her. The weight of him strained her wrists against her bonds.
Sensing it, he leaned on his elbows and took her face in his hands.
“You
can
do this.”

“I can’t. It’s all tied up with the rape—with
the fire, with my parents, with the baby. With the wrenching guilt
I feel inside.”

“That’s why you must put it all aside. Just
concentrate on me. On what I’m doing. Stop thinking. Just
feel.”

“I can’t. It’s those sensations that make me
feel this way.”

“I’m telling you that you can. Do you know
why?”

Miserably, she shook her head.

“Because I love you, Princess. Because I’m
not just another man who wants your body for his own selfish
pleasure. Because I want your soul. I want to reach inside and heal
you. To take away the pain so you can face life again unafraid.
Without the need of a mask to hide behind. Because that’s all we
do. We hide behind one mask, then another. Our lives are a
succession of stripping away the masks, only to find another
underneath.” He paused, his eyes serious. “For once, for one night,
let’s see what’s underneath that final mask. Let’s dig like seekers
of treasure until we find something that’s real.”

“Even if what’s real is ugly?”

“You listen to me. Nothing you can do—nothing
you can say—nothing you can tell me would be ugly to me. I love
you. Do you know what that means?”

“No,” she whispered. “No one has ever loved
me for myself. No one has ever really cared.”

“That’s in the past. Because you see before
you a man who does care. A man who cares, in fact, so much, that
he’ll go to hell and back, if that’s what it takes, to pull you
out. I’m not asking you to pretend. If you can’t feel passion for
me, tell me. If you must curse me, then for God’s sake, curse me to
the skies and back. Whatever you feel, let me see it. Not what you
think I want to see. Make me privy to what’s buried deep inside.
Somehow or other, together, we shall get through it. Wretched as it
may be, painful though it is, you and I shall come out of it
together. We shall face what we must together, holding nothing
back.”

“Is that what it means? To have someone love
you? That you must strip yourself naked for their perusal?”

“No, Princess. It means you’re safe. It means
that nothing and no one can drive me away.”

The words echoed through her, reverberating
like a moving melody somewhere in her soul.

“Not even Lance?”

“Not even Lance. I’m powerless to change the
past. But if nothing else, I can rescue you from what my brother’s
done.”

“Are you asking me to trust you?” she asked
lightly, parroting his own phrase.

He held her gaze seriously. “That’s exactly
what I’m doing.”

She searched his eyes. She searched for all
the identities she’d known. Archer. Tommy Ward. The greatest rake
in all of Europe. She could find no trace of them in those dark,
fathomless eyes. All she could see was a sincerity that threatened
to break her heart.

He was the best of the best. A con man so
good, he’d even conned
her
. And he was asking her to trust
him with her wounded heart.

She took a deep, shaky breath. “You don’t
know what’s inside me. You don’t know the depth of my despair.”

“Don’t I?”

The woman he’d loved had been killed because
of him. She and his unborn child. “Perhaps you do,” she conceded.
“I’m just afraid of scaring you away.”

“Faith means nothing when things are easy and
predictable, love. To trust is to suspend the tortures of your
mind, to cease wondering at the consequences. I tell you with an
open heart that you may trust me. Given the circumstances, if you
choose otherwise, I shall understand.”

He was opening himself to more pain than any
man should have to suffer, that he might free her of demons that
had driven her, sustained her, for more years than she could
remember. He was willing to risk everything for the sake of her
well-being. Her happiness. Her trust.

“Given the circumstances, how could I do
anything
but
trust you?”

He could have misread her intentions. He
could have assumed she meant that, bound as she was, she had no
choice. But he didn’t. He understood her words for what they were.
A decision to risk as much as
he
was risking on a venture
that held little save the promise of more pain.

She saw the relief in his eyes. He dropped
his head and lowered his lips to her brow. There he stayed for many
moments, savoring the sweetness of her words.

“Then we’ve already won,” he said.

Because her hands were tied, she nudged her
head up, forcing him to look at her. “Then kiss me, Mace. You’ve
helped me find the courage to face what we must.”

* * *

He did more than kiss her. He showed her,
with infinite patience, all that love could be. He caressed her
with hands that gentled and soothed. He nuzzled her with lips that
inflamed her body and pulled away when she grew afraid. Having been
given permission, he took over the reins and drove her to the brink
of passion and beyond.

It wasn’t easy. They harbored no illusions
that it would be. At times, the memories were so stark, she felt
she was reliving them again. She cried out against him, fought to
free her hands that she might beat against his chest and fight off
the demon of his desire. But he put his fingers in her mouth to
silence her and made her open her eyes. With her watching, he found
her between her legs and caressed her with such consummate skill
that she couldn’t help but respond. Even when her eyes clouded over
and she was on the verge of losing control, he forced her to watch,
to lock her gaze on his face. Then, just as she began to feel the
welcome tingling of release, he stopped what he was doing, put the
flat of his large hand between her breasts, and said, “Bring the
energy up here—right into your heart.”

At first, she thought he must have lost his
mind. But he explained that by allowing the sexual energy to rise,
unspent, to the chest, she could open up her heart, and expand her
capacity for forgiveness, for love. The greatest lover in Europe,
she thought. He must know what he’s doing.

After several tries, she was actually able to
feel the energy rising. Frustrated because she wanted relief, she
nonetheless forced the energy up past her loins and felt it settle
in her heart. With his hand upon her chest, his words coaxing her
efforts, she was continually snatched from the swirling of senses
that she hoped might make her forget. But it wasn’t forgetfulness
he was after. It was a new awareness of what was transpiring
between them.

Then, satisfied by her cooperation, he’d kiss
her and begin anew. The midnight moon crept across the sky as still
he taught her, with endless forbearance, the patterns of his
touch.

She experienced a renewed sense of panic when
he slipped inside her at last. By then, she’d almost spent herself
countless times, beneath his hands, his lips, with him rubbing
against her in preparation for penetration. But not yet had he
satisfied his own longings and entered her.

He did so at last, lifting her hips high with
his hands, teasing her with the throbbing head before plunging in.
Facing him proved more than she could bear. She struggled against
the damnable bonds that kept her pliable beneath him. She cried out
as if in some agonizing pain. Raising himself up to an upright
position, he put his hand to her face. She’d averted her head, and
he turned her again, for perhaps the hundredth time, his way.

“Look at me, Princess.”

She shook her head.

“
Look at me,”
he ordered harshly.

When the fierce command of his strong hand
registered his words, she finally dragged her eyes open and sought
his face.