The Devil and Ms. Moody (14 page)

“Tell me what you want, Princess.”

His voice was gentle. It was husky and rich with male sexual ardor. Edwina felt herself melting inside. “Princess.” She turned to syrup when he talked like that, called her that. If she had any willpower left, what she ought to do was leave. Quickly. Escape before his caresses had bled off all her control. Escape before he did something outrageous. And
she
liked it!

Her emotions whipsawed between flight and fantasy. If she stayed, she would certainly discover the “other” Edwina Moody he’d talked about. She might even learn things about herself that she didn’t want to know. But if she left, she knew she would regret it forever, wonder forever what might have happened.

“All that Maiden’s-Spring stuff?” she said. “Is it absolutely necessary?”

He brought her chin up. “Nothing’s necessary, Ed.”

The moonlight danced shadows over his features, and Edwina was caught off guard by his masculine beauty. His bones seemed carved out of the darkness, the lines of his face rapaciously gaunt. Long black hair gleamed in the starlight. El Diablo, she thought ... the devil.

“What are you doing to me?” Her voice was as whispery as the water cascading behind them.

“Nothing ... yet.”

“You know what I mean. I’m not the kind of woman who whimpers and melts all over the place. It’s not my style, this drowning-in-passion stuff. So what are you doing?”

“I think you’re doing it, Ed. Give yourself credit.”

She drew away from him, away from the dreamy stroking of his finger on her wrist. “I don’t want credit.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“That’s easy. You.”

“What do you think I’m going to do to you?”

“I don’t know. All kind of things ... everything.”

“I will if you want.”

She couldn’t take her eyes from him. She was transfixed by his shadowed features, caught in a way that she knew would haunt her dreams forever. She would close her eyes tonight—and every night—and see emerald eyes, black-lashed and piercing, set like gemstones in an outlaw’s handsome face. She couldn’t tell him what she wanted. It was scorchingly sensual, what she wanted. It was torrid.

“Maybe a rain check?” she said.

Edwina watched, fascinated as he wet his lips with his tongue, quickly, imperceptibly. It made her think of the time that she had touched her own lips ... and he’d become aroused just watching her. Remembering, she did it again, touching herself with unsteady fingers, thrilling to the naked sensitivity.

“Don’t do that, Princess,” he said. “Not unless you want a wild man on your hands.”

Edwina’s heart quickened. And yet she continued, drawing her forefinger slowly along the width of her lips, and watching his eyes go smoky. She could hardly believe her own recklessness. She was actually trying to entice him. It had to be the most dangerous thing she’d ever done!

His hand cinched her wrist, and he whipped her forward so abruptly that she lost her balance and fell into his arms.

“Don’t say you didn’t ask for this,” he said, his mouth closing over hers roughly. He clamped a hand to her behind, palming her intimately as he brought her up against his lower body. She could feel him growing hard as he held her, tautening against her body. It was frightening and thrilling to feel every inch of him so explicitly. A whimper rose in Edwina’s throat.

He deepened the kiss, crushing her lips under his. His free hand curved to the heavy ache of her breast, as though he could touch her anywhere he wanted, take any liberties with her body he chose. Edwina knew she had to stop him, but the riot of sensation inside her was shattering her control. The kiss was hot and hard and sexy, its message clear. He was a Warlord, and a Warlord took what he wanted when he wanted it. He massaged her breast in rhythm with the deep movements of his mouth, roughing her up a little before he let go of her, his eyes blazing.

“Is that what you wanted?” he asked.

She shook her head, her heart throbbing painfully. Her lips tingled with the shock of what he’d done. “That was unbelievably crude. Why did you do it?”

“Because
I’m
crude.”
And because you did want it,
his expression told her. The fire in his eyes banked a little as he considered her indignant distress. “Don’t play games with me, Ed,” he said, his voice lowering. “I know them all. I’ve been playing them a lot longer than you have.”

Edwina turned away from him, still breathless, still angry.

She heard him walk to his bike and hit the kickstand. “What are you doing?” she asked, turning.

“I assumed you’d want to leave.”

He could leave just like that? Unaffected? When she was shaking from head to toe? The arrogance, she thought, wishing she had a withering comeback. Anything to shake him up a little. “Don’t you ever lose control?”

Laughter sparkled in his eyes. “I think I just did.”

“No, I mean really lose control, the way I do ...”

He was suddenly alert, and faintly predatory. “How
do
you lose control?” He left the bike and walked toward her.

The words spilled out of her haltingly. “I fall apart when you touch me. I have these warm, watery feelings inside that make me think I’m drowning.”

He stood in front of her, and touching only her cheek, he bent over her and kissed her gently, a delicious drifting of warm breath across her waiting lips.

Afterward, he curved his hands to her face. “Drink from the spring with me. Princess, and let me show you how good those feelings can be, how wild and sweet and tender.”

As he stared into her eyes, Edwina had the feeling of being probed, gently and deliberately penetrated.

It left her weak with need. He could do that so effortlessly, she realized, reach inside her with a look and draw up sensations that made her feel as though she were dying of need.

She let herself be led to the waterfall.

Cupping his hands, he filled them with foaming bubbles that instantly resolved into crystal-clear water. He drank slowly of the water, and then, droplets still clinging to his lips, he offered some to her.

She moved to him, gazing at her own reflection in the glistening water. Her eyes were amber liquid, swimming in the golden fringe of her lashes. Drawn to her own likeness, she touched her lips to the coolness and at the same time felt the heel of his palm brush against her cheek. Her reflection shimmered and disappeared as she sipped, and she had the oddest sensation of drinking of herself. The water swirled and flowed down her throat, strangely effervescent.

Diablo let the remaining water spill to the ground. He touched wet fingers to her throat, a smile curving his lips. “Let’s initiate you. Princess.”

“Initiate ...” Her heart went crazy. “Now?”

“Yes.”

Edwina watched in confusion as he walked to a lush bed of greenery that grew in the mossy rocks alongside the pool. Even as he broke a wildflower off at the stalk and returned, she didn’t understand what he was doing.

“Pink larkspur,” he said, tucking a blossom into the curly blond hair at her temple. “To free the wolf.”

The pool seemed to come alive with anticipation as Edwina approached it a moment later. Staring down into its bubbling depths, she touched the waistband of her jeans. The feelings inside her matched the water’s turbulence. She fingered the metal button on her jeans, and wondered if she could go through with it.

She had left Diablo back by the bike, standing in the shadows, but she could feel his eyes on her, and the thought that he was watching unnerved her so much, it made her hands shake. But it also excited her strangely, filling the pit of her stomach with a vibrancy unlike anything she’d felt before.

The sensations inside her were more sound than feeling—the sweet clamorous clutch and clang of bells. Vibrations sang along the fine network of nerves in her breasts. They honeycombed her belly and inner thighs. It was beautiful, and terrible, the sound. As she worked the button of her jeans loose and found the metal tab of the zipper, the bells sharpened, pealing out their excitement, until finally it was almost more than she could bear.

“Don’t watch me,” she said, her voice a whisper.

She hesitated, then rode the slide down with her fingers, sighing tautly as the teeth unmeshed. A sense of disbelief swept her as she watched the tiny teeth come apart. They separated as though in slow motion, torturously, one notch at a time. Her nerves jumped with each soft click.

Turn away
, she told him silently.
Please—don’t watch me
.

The jeans dropped to her ankles, and a delicate shudder took her as she stepped out of them and made a three-quarter turn. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him, but she knew he was there, in her periphery.

Her skin was misted with dampness, and the clingy cotton top and panties she wore seemed part of her flesh. She crossed her arms and grasped the hem of the shirt in her fingers, drawing it up until her midriff was exposed, then hesitating as anxiety soared inside her.

“Turn away,” she pleaded softly, looking up. It took her a moment to locate him in the dark. As she did, she realized two things that astonished her. The first struck her with nearly physical force. His back was to her! He hadn’t been watching. She had asked him not to, but it never occurred to her that he would honor the request.

The second realization shocked her to the core. She
wanted
him to watch. “Diablo, I—”

She saw his head lift, and her breath caught. She waited, but he didn’t turn, and his hesitation forced her to try and finish the sentence. “I want you to—”

“You want what?”

He began to turn, and Edwina thought she would die of heart failure in the time it took him to come around. “To look at me,” she breathed.

Even in the darkness, she could see his eyes. They were luminous, like animal eyes caught fire. Beautiful eyes, she thought. Demon eyes. Whatever responses she’d felt before were magnified a thousand times as she resumed her painfully awkward striptease. She couldn’t look at the man watching her, but she was aware of him in every cell of her body.

Her breasts shimmered with sensation as she pulled up the top. Cool air touched her damp skin, and the shock of it made her dizzy. She heard the waterfalls roaring softly behind her and felt the clay soil give beneath her bare curling toes.

A sweet pain flashed through her limbs, but the most riveting awareness was the aching pull of her nipples. Their sensitivity brought back a sense-memory of his hands on her body. Rough, thrilling hands. Her flesh strained as she remembered how possessively he’d kissed and handled her. She’d bridled at his arrogance, but her body had responded. She still ached from his touch.

She caught one last glimpse of him as she drew the shirt over her head. He’d moved into the light, his hair flaring around him like a stallion’s mane. Edwina shuddered with excitement and apprehension as she bared herself to the moonlight and to him.

The cavern went breathlessly silent.

The man went still, frozen in motion.

Somehow Diablo checked the feral impulse that had drawn him out of the shadows. Animal instincts burned high in his blood as he watched her. Now he understood why a stag would fight to the death over a female in heat. He’d wanted women before, but never as he wanted this one. Rage, he thought, feeling the kick in his groin muscles. He was in a sweet rage of need.

She was slightly built, almost boyish. Her breasts were small and and yet voluptuously formed. Aureoles the color of light caramel crested the delicate swells of flesh. God, it made him hard just thinking about her breasts. He could still feel them nestling in his palms like heavy cream.

She was made to give pleasure to a man, he realized, his groin muscles tightening as he imagined all of the ways in graphic detail. She was made to drive a man wild
before
he got the pleasure. He’d never known a female who could confuse and arouse the way she did. His strongest drive was to claim ownership, to take her lithe, trembling body and make it his, the sooner the better.

The low throb he felt intensified as he locked it away from his awareness. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. There was another drive, a conflicting impulse that he couldn’t quite smother. He also wanted to protect her, improbable as that seemed at the moment. From predatory beasts like himself!

“You have a beautiful body, Princess,” he said, his voice echoing harshly in the cave. “Show it to me.”

She was naked except for the silk panties she wore—and the T-shirt that dangled from her fingertips as though she were afraid to drop it. Maybe it was the conflict in her that intrigued him. She was staring at him as though what he’d just asked of her was impossible, and yet he knew she was obsessed with the idea of making love with him, and had been since the afternoon they’d first met.

That knowledge hadn’t come from any need to gratify his own ego. Some men could sense a woman’s sexual threshold. There were plenty of giveaways—a scent, a nervous smile, a tension. Her quota was swollen, full to overflowing. He’d seen it in the dreamy cast of her mouth, in the way she touched herself. There was a voluptuary in Edwina Moody, a sensuous woman.

She toyed nervously with the lace on her panties and then began to draw them down. It surprised him that she had a tan line, and at the first glimpse of untouched pink-and-white flesh, he felt a groan rise inside him. All of the turbulence in the cosmos seemed to be concentrated at the base of his body. Muscles stretched and strained and fisted.

As the panties dropped around her feet, she looked up at him, a question in her limpid amber eyes.
Now? Are you going to take me now?
her eyes asked.

Diablo felt as though all hell had burst loose inside him. The rules were clear, however. He had made them. He couldn’t touch her until she took the flower out of her hair.

Edwina stood naked and trembling in the moonlight, her body continually misted by the fine spray from the falls. She was aroused and sweetly confused. She kept expecting him to come to her, and yet he didn’t move.

“The pool,” she heard him say.

The water was deliciously warm as she entered. Bubbles surrounded her with effervescence, and another sensation, luxurious softness. The minerals that fed the hot springs gave the water a satin texture, as though an exotic bath oil had been added. She made her way to the middle of the pool, immersing herself to her breasts. Little jets of foam surged against her limbs and her other parts. The sensations were indescribable, both stimulating and relaxing.