Nicole Jordan (37 page)

“Now what do you mean to do with me?” he murmured, half taunting.

She returned her own taunting smile in answer. Holding his gaze, she reached for him, her hands cupping his hard, pulsing arousal.

His groan was soft and erotic in the quiet of the afternoon.

When he tried to pull her down to him, she released him abruptly and pressed her palms against his powerful chest. She intended to be the seducer this time. “No, Nicholas. You aren’t to touch me. You aren’t even to move.”

Reluctantly he obeyed, holding his arms by his side.

Aurora leaned over him, feeling the strength of his muscles beneath her hands, his hot skin against her palms.

“You think you can make me burn?” he asked, his tone challenging.

“I know I can,” she replied, feeling very, very powerful.

She bent to taste him, running her tongue over his silky, granite-hard flesh.

He arched against her mouth, as if in pain. “Aurora…”

“Be still.”

She knelt there in the warm sunlight, attending to him, arousing him the way he had her. It was exciting, exhilarating. She was totally in control this time, driving Nicholas slowly mad with desire. In only a few moments, his breathing became erratic. She felt his hand clutch in her hair as he strove to remain still.

“Enough,” he at last muttered roughly. “Have mercy. I surrender.”

He caught her shoulders and drew her down to lie full length upon him. Her breasts lightly caressed his chest as she stared down into his pleasure-hazed eyes.

Aurora didn’t protest as he lifted her up to settle her astride him. It was what she wanted, too. She drew a sharp breath as he lowered her onto his thick shaft, his slow, filling length impaling her, then sighed when she felt the heat of him inside her.

“Do you know how badly I want you?” he asked, his voice a hoarse rasp as he held her hips to draw her even closer, to push himself even deeper. “I want to bury myself completely inside you….”

Aurora arched her back, totally aroused. He was huge and hard and hot and filling her to bursting. Helplessly, she began to move, no longer maintaining the slightest measure of control. She rode him wildly, gasping, quaking against him, while her hips undulated in a mindless rhythm.

As her aching moans filled the air, though, his rough excitement grew to match her own frenzy. He arched up, driving into her. Aurora erupted, crying out with abandon as he forced jolt after tormenting jolt from her.

Her explosive heat shattered the last of his control. He whispered her name, fierce and low, and then let himself go, his body contracting in a wrenching, tearing release. When it was over, Nicholas sagged weakly back, while Aurora collapsed upon him, totally drained.

She lay there contented, bliss convulsing her senses. Nicholas had been right all along, she thought dazedly. She did have a hidden fire buried deep inside her. He had kindled it from the moment they had met.

She had not realized the depths of her need until now. Until knowing Nicholas, she had merely existed, pretending she could escape feeling a woman’s desires, a woman’s wants. And now she couldn’t deny them. He filled her with a yearning so powerful, she ached.

A line from the journal floated into her mind:
I belonged to him, a captive of his raw and untamed passion.
That was how she felt about Nicholas. She was prisoner of his desire. Her physical need for him was like a sickness….

Aurora’s contentment suddenly faded, while her throat tightened. Nicholas was doing everything in his power to bind her to him with chains of love, wooing her with his tenderness and his gentle-fierce lovemaking. He had made her a woman and now he was bent on capturing her heart.

Dear God, she didn’t want to love him. Yet he was making it harder and harder to resist.

The constriction in her throat increased.

Before Nicholas, she had yearned for a passionless life. She had desperately wanted to avoid the pain of loving him and losing him.

Yet how could she wall herself off emotionally from him now, when he was so set on taking full possession of her heart? How could she withstand his vital force when he was so single-mindedly tearing away her defenses with his incredible passion?

How, she wondered desperately, could she quell her own relentless need and this painful, yearning ache inside her?

Their agreement to live only in the present held into their second week. During one of their morning rides in the forest, however, they ventured into a discussion that Aurora would have preferred to leave alone.

She had just set her mount at a huge log, an obstacle that even Nicholas was leery of. She cleared it with inches to spare but had him shaking his head in wonder at her bravado.

“Don’t talk to me about the risks I take,” he said dryly. “I would never be so suicidal as to hazard that fence riding sidesaddle.”

She laughed, still feeling the exhilaration of her success, and patted her horse’s neck fondly. “I don’t believe you, Nicholas,” she retorted as she resumed her place beside him. “From what I have seen, you aren’t the least afraid of anything. You have no fear.”

“Oh, no,” Nicholas said with a twisting smile. “I have one very great fear.”

“And what is that?”

“I’m afraid I will lose you.”

Aurora fell silent, not wanting to tread such dangerous grounds. “You said we wouldn’t speak of such things.”

“Sorry,” he said unrepentantly. “But you did ask. And we will have to broach the subject at some point before I leave for America.”

Disquieted, she tried to raise her defensive walls. “Nicholas, our time together here has been…wonderful, but our relationship is merely pretense. Whatever feelings we share now are only temporary. They cannot last.”

“I would like them to be permanent, Aurora.”

She knew her dismay was written on her face, but then he made light of her alarm.

“Very well, I won’t ask for your heart. Only your body.”

His grin held such devil-may-care charm that she couldn’t be certain he was even serious, yet unaccountably she felt a stab of pain at his nonchalance.

Aurora shook her head. “I am not the sort of woman you want for your life’s mate.”

“I vehemently dispute that, love. You’re the perfect match for me. You have never had any trouble holding your own in our disputes or in any other arena. You are more than equal to any challenge I could throw at you.”

A troubled frown darkened her brow. “Don’t you understand, I do not
want
you to throw challenges at me. I am not like you, Nicholas. All you care about is danger and excitement and adventure. I’m not at all interested in such a wild life.”

“Nor am I any longer. I’ve thought about the questions you put to me, Aurora. You asked if I was willing to be faithful to you. Well, I am. Completely.”

She stared at him.

“I’m through wandering, I promise you. I’m through taking unnecessary risks. All I want is to settle down with you…to be your husband, perhaps raise a family.”

“You would actually give up your adventurous life in order to raise children?” she asked with total skepticism.

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I know, it sounds unlikely. But I’ve discovered something in the past few years…. Adventure begins to pall when you have no one to share it.”

She met his dark gaze searchingly. “I’m not certain I believe you,” Aurora said finally.

“Well, I don’t believe you’re as timid as you pretend,” he replied, his tone turning light once more. “I think you like to be daring, like how it makes you feel.” A wicked gleam shone in his eyes. “Come closer and I will prove it to you.”

They were riding side by side now through the dense, silent beechwood, his knee nearly touching her mount’s side.

“I cannot move any closer,” Aurora pointed out warily.

His mouth slashed in a sinful male grin. “Yes, you can.” Reaching out, he caught her around the waist and scooped her onto his horse to sit sideways in front of him.

Startled, Aurora clung to his arm for balance. “What in heaven’s name are you
doing
?”

“Showing you how daring you can be. Now turn around and lean back against me. Put your leg over my horse’s neck…that’s right.”

“Nicholas…this is
mad
….”

Her protest was interrupted by a gasp as he drew down the bodice of her gown to expose her bare breasts. An arrow of heat shot through her as he cupped the lush swells. Involuntarily Aurora arched against him, even as she gasped out an objection. “Nicholas…anyone could see us!”

“No one is within miles of us.”

She could feel her breasts trembling, peaking, straining to fill his hands as she quivered in his arms. “Damn you, why are you doing this?”

“Because,” he whispered huskily in her ear, “I want you to remember me. For the rest of your days, whenever you ride, you’ll think of me. Now hush and enjoy this….”

Her nipples became velvet daggers against his palms as he lavished her with tantalizing caresses. No longer resisting, Aurora bit her lip and leaned back against him, giving herself over to his erotic ministrations.

When she was thoroughly pliant, his hand stole unerringly beneath her skirts and found the curls at the apex of her thighs. His bold caress sent a shock of pleasure surging up through her body.

“Open your legs to me, love,” he murmured. Yet Aurora needed no further urging. She was so ready, so instantly aroused that she trembled.

She whimpered as his hand pressed wantonly against her starving flesh. There was a brazenness about it that thrilled her. Her breathing became harsh and ragged as he molded his fingers over her sex, stroking, teasing, finding a relentless rhythm that matched the steady rocking of his horse.

“God, you’re so silky wet….” he whispered encouragingly. “So wet and so hot, it makes me want to take you right here.”

She groaned at the indescribable pleasure of that possessing hand, undulating her pelvis beneath his palm. The heat building inside her was like a raging fire.

When she climaxed, Nick held her trembling, shaking body as passion flared through him. This was how he wanted her, hungry and burning with desire for him. Yet there was a vital element still missing.

He pressed his lips against her sun-bright hair, his own desire tormenting him with what he wanted more than breath. He should have felt triumphant, seeing her swept up in the storm of carnal passion he had striven to create. Aurora couldn’t deny her body’s need any more than he could. But while he could demand sexual surrender from her, it was her love he wanted. His want had become craving, a feverish hunger.

He had lied a moment ago. He did intend to ask for her heart. He could claim her body, but it would not be enough.

He was wiser now. Since meeting Aurora, he had come to believe an elemental truth. Something his father had tried to tell him, what the journal so eloquently expressed. That for every man there was one woman who was destined to be his life’s mate.

Aurora was his mate, his destiny; Nicholas knew it in his soul.

But he had yet to convince her of that. Hell, he hadn’t even told her of his love. Perhaps that had been a mistake. When he’d first realized his true feelings, he had wanted the opportunity to show Aurora how he felt, to give her the chance for her own feelings to grow. He had hoped physical passion would lead to love, and it still might…. But he was swiftly running out of time.

Nicholas drew a steadying breath. This wasn’t the right moment, but he would have to press the issue, and soon.

Chapter Twenty-one

Aurora stared without seeing at an open page of the journal. She sat alone on a stone bench within the walled courtyard, shaded by towering, scarlet-blossomed rhododendrons, yet her thoughts were far away, in another time and place. The quiet ripple of the fountain in the shallow reflecting pool serenaded her along with the echo of Desiree’s words written nearly a century before.

How I ache with the struggle in my heart and the irrevocable choice he has given me. I long for freedom; I yearn to escape this strange, exotic world and return to the familiar, genteel life I once knew. Yet the chains of passion binding me are as strong as my yearning.

What am I to do? What future is there here for me? He can never wed me, not if he means to survive the political intrigues of the Turkish court. Acknowledging his love for a foreign woman, a Christian no less, would be viewed as fatally weak. I can remain only as his concubine, one of many. The children born of my body would belong to his savage world, never mine.

And love can so easily fade, passion more swiftly still. He desires me now, yet what of five years from now, or ten, or thirty? Will I still be beautiful in his eyes when my flesh has lost its firmness, when my white skin its smoothness, when younger beauties seek to gain his affections? He claims so…but can I believe professions made in the
magical heat of passion? Can I believe the love that burns in his dark eyes?

He says the choice is mine alone. Seeing my sadness in captivity, he has offered me the power to break my chains. He will set me free, if that is what I wish, because he desires my happiness above his own.

And so I struggle to decide what is truly in my heart. Do I grasp at this chance for freedom, making my escape, never to see him again, never to feel his sensual touch again? Could I bear to live without him? Or do I remain with him, a slave to passion, abandoning all thought of my former life, my family, my friends, my very life, to be with him for as long as he wants me?

Sweet heaven, I do not know.

Aurora shut her eyes, torn by conflict as Desiree had been. Like the Frenchwoman, she had an irrevocable choice to make: to keep her heart safe and avoid the pain of an impossible love. Or to risk an uncertain future with a magnificent man.