Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [71]
“We’ll talk about that later,” he said, and kissed her. She lay rigidly in his arms, refusing to let her mouth soften and mold itself to his, and after a moment he drew back.
“Don’t you want me at all?” he whispered, nuzzling her hair. “Did I hurt you last night? Is that what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know what’s wrong!” she shouted. “I don’t understand what I want, or what you want. I’m out of my depth, and I don’t like it!” The frustration she felt with herself and with him came bubbling out of her, but it was nothing less than the truth. Her mind was so muddled that nothing pleased her; she felt violent, but without a safe outlet for that violence. She’d been violated, hurt, and though years had passed, only now was the anger breaking out of the deep freeze where she’d locked her emotions. She wanted to hurt him, hit him, because he was a man and the symbol of what had happened to her, but she knew that he was innocent, at least of that. But he had dominated her last night, manipulated her with his lies and his truths, and now he was trying to dominate her again.
Furiously she shoved at him, rolling him over on his back. Before he could react she was astride him, her face pagan with the raw force of her emotions. “If there’s any seducing to be done, I’ll do it!” she raged at him. “Damn you, don’t you dare move!”
His blue eyes widened, and a rich understanding crossed his face. “I won’t,” he promised, a little hoarsely.
With a sensual growl she assaulted him, using her mouth, her hands, her entire body. A man’s sexuality had always been denied to her, but now this man offered himself in spread-eagled sacrifice, and she explored him with voracious hunger. Much of his body she already knew; the sleek strength of his muscles under her fingers; the roughness of the hair on his chest and legs; the male scent that made her nostrils flare. But now she learned the taste of him as she nibbled at his ears, his chin, his mouth; she pressed her lips against the softness of his temple and felt his pulse hammering madly. She kissed his eyes, the strong column of his throat, the slope of his shoulder, the sensitive inside of his elbow.
His palms twitched as her tongue traced across them, and he groaned aloud when she sucked on his fingers. “Hush!” she said fiercely, crouching over him. She didn’t want any break in her concentration. As she learned him, her body was coming alive, warming and glowing like something long frozen and slowly beginning to thaw. She moved upward, licked the length of his collarbone, then snaked her tongue downward through the curls of hair until she found the little nipples that hid there. They were tight, as hard as tiny diamonds, and when she bit them he shuddered wildly.
His flat stomach, ridged with muscles that were now writhing under her touch, beckoned her marauding mouth. She traced the arrow of downy hair, played a wet game of sneak attack with his navel, then slithered downward. Her silky hair draped across him as she kissed his legs from thigh to foot, biting the backs of his knees, dancing her tongue across his instep, then working her way back up.
He was shaking in every muscle, his body so taut that only his heels and shoulders were touching the bed. He was gripping the bedposts, his arms corded as he writhed in tormented ecstasy. “Please…please!” he begged hoarsely. “Touch me! Damn it, I can’t take any more!”
“Yes, you can!” she insisted, panting for breath. She touched him, her hand learning him, stroking him, and something close to a howl broke from his throat.
Suddenly she knew. For such vital strength, for such tender power, there was only one resting place, and that was the mysterious depth of her femininity. Male and female, they had been created to join together, the two halves to make a whole. She felt breathless, stunned, as if suddenly the world had shifted and