Chapter Five
The reaction Delia got with her unexpected response was ardent and a little frightening for a woman who’d never indulged in heavy petting with a man she wanted. It was immediately obvious that Marcus was a man of experience, and that he knew exactly how to get past a woman’s reserve.
His big body levered slowly down against hers in a sensuous, lazy movement that made her tremble with new sensations. His knee edged her legs apart so that he could fit himself between them.
She gasped and stiffened at the explosive pleasure.
He lifted his lips a scant inch from hers. His breathing was heavy, his eyes full of dark fire. “What’s wrong?” he asked roughly.
She was out of her depth, but she didn’t know how to tell him. He seemed to think she was much more experienced than she was.
“Too fast?” he whispered, biting softly at her mouth. “I’ll slow down. Is this better?”
Better? It was torture! His hand slid down her throat, around to her shoulder, and then with anguished slowness to the soft curve of her breast through the wet fabric.
Her legs were trembling. Her hands were gripping his broad shoulders for support. She was dizzy with sensation as his strong fingers worked magic on her soft skin. He teased up and down between her breasts with little brushes of pleasure that only built the hunger without satisfying it.
She arched her back gently and coaxed his fingers lower, but he lifted his head and looked at her curiously.
“You’re shy,” he mused, laughing tenderly. “I can’t believe it.”
“I’ve always been shy,” she whispered, shivering as his fingers finally edged out toward the taut, sensitive tip of her breast.
“But there’s nothing cold about you, is there?” he breathed at her lips. He nibbled the top one tenderly, tasting it with his tongue before his strong white teeth closed gently on the lower one.
At the same time, his hand shifted, and covered her breast under the dress. Her eyes rolled back in her head with the force of the pleasure. Her soft cry of pleasure was captured by the slow, hard assault of his mouth as it opened hers and his tongue began to penetrate it with long, deep thrusts.
Her body was no longer her own. She felt his hips sink against hers, so that they were intimately pressed together between her long legs. The close contact was agonizing. His hands were under the blouse now, under the bra, against bare, eager skin. She lifted toward them, shivering rhythmically with the gentle thrust of his hips against hers.
“It’s no good,” he groaned. “I can’t stop.”
She couldn’t even pretend to protest when he suddenly picked her up and strode into the house with her, his head pounding with a desire so sharp and profound that he couldn’t even think.
She lay against his chest, feeling his heart beat, feeling his incredible warm strength, her breath catching in her throat with each step. She was trembling with wild little pulses of desire, so aroused that she couldn’t bear even the thought that he might stop.
He carried her into the master bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him. He barely took time to lock it before he fell onto the patterned brown coverlet with her body under his.
He ripped at his shirt and hers until they were breast to breast while he kissed her with anguished, ardent passion.
His hands were relentless on her wet clothing, stripping it off expertly and tossing it onto the carpet. She lay nude under him, and her only thought was that his hands were heaven on her cool, bare skin. She moved helplessly as he touched her in ways and places that no man had ever touched her.
When his mouth drew down her throat and onto her breasts she actually gasped at the explosion of delight. When it fixed on to her nipple and slid down over it, she shuddered. There was a wave of heat swelling in her lower body. She was blind, deaf, dumb to anything except raw sensation.
“Are you taking anything?” he rasped at her lips.
“You mean…like the pill or the shot?”
“Yes.”
“No,” she whispered miserably.
“It’s all right,” he said huskily. “You don’t have to worry. I’m healthy as a horse. I’ve got something to use, and I’ll be careful with you.”
It would have taken more willpower than she had to question what was happening. She was twenty-three years old, and no man had really wanted her. Certainly she’d never wanted anyone so much. A little voice at the back of her head started screaming warnings, but she couldn’t hear it.
He stood up and stripped, letting her watch. When he tore off the black silk boxer shorts and she saw him aroused, she gasped. She’d seen one or two pictures of men like that. None of them compared to him.
He liked her rapt stare, but it aroused him even more. He fumbled something out of his wallet and pulled her up into a sitting position.
“Put it on for me,” he said gruffly.
She flushed rose red. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I don’t…well, I don’t know how.”
He grimaced, but the odd statement didn’t register through the desire. His hands were unsteady. He couldn’t remember being in such a state with a woman until now. Perhaps it was the long abstinence.
He managed to get the prophylactic into place in record time. He laid her back on the coverlet, his eyes intent, his body corded with desire.
“Don’t…don’t hurt me,” she managed weakly.
He felt a hesitation in her that puzzled him, in addition to the quick little frightened plea. But he was much too far gone to ask questions.
“I’d cut off my arm before I’d hurt you, sweetheart,” he whispered. “In fact, this is going to be the sweetest hour of your life. I promise.”
As he spoke, he bent to her body and his mouth opened on soft, warm skin.
In all her reading—and there had been a lot—nothing prepared her for the minutes that followed. She was shocked, overwhelmed, delighted and drowning in sensations. She should have protested, at least once, but she couldn’t manage a single word. Instead she opened her legs for him, lifted her hips for him, writhed in unholy torment as he kissed her slowly, expertly, and kindled such a flame of desire in her that she begged for relief.
He lifted his head and watched her face while his hand caressed her with deadly mastery, making her sob with building pleasure.
He bent to her mouth, brushing it with his lips. “You’re ready for me,” he whispered huskily. “Do you want to feel me inside you?”
She cried out in torment. “Yes!”
One long, powerful leg inserted itself between hers while his hand slid under her hips and lifted her into sudden, starkly intimate contact.
Her eyes snapped open as he began to move. He watched her wide-eyed shock with throbbing curiosity.
When she stiffened and her nails dug into his upper arms, and he felt the reason for her sudden stillness, he began to realize what was happening.
He paused for a second, his breath ragged as he searched her eyes. “If I’m your first man, you’d better tell me quick,” he bit off.
Her eyes were tortured. The answer was in them, stark and vivid.
He drew in a quick, shaky breath. He swallowed, hard. “It’s all right,” he whispered reassuringly, taking deep breaths to slow down the anguish of need. “I’m not going to move again. You are,” he said gently. “Come on. I’ll let you control it.”
“I don’t know how,” she whispered brokenly. “I’m so sorry…”
“For God’s sake, there’s nothing to be sorry about! Here. Push up against me,” he said urgently. “Come on, honey, I can’t hold it much longer. Push!”
She obeyed him, grimacing when the pain bit deeply into her.
“Easy,” he whispered. His hand moved between them and found the tiny bud that controlled her pleasure. He touched her where his caresses had already made her sensitive, brushing her lightly until she gasped and began to lift toward him instead of away from him. “Do it again. And again. Just like that.”
She felt the pain slowly lessen, the pleasure grow, with his expert touch.
“Good girl. That’s it. I’ll bring you to the edge of pleasure and when you fall, I’ll go into you,” he breathed sensuously against her open mouth. “I’ll go into you hard and fast and deep…”
She moaned hoarsely at the impact of the words and his sensuous caresses, and all at once, there was no more time. She cried out sharply as ecstasy rose up like a hot tide in her body and suddenly exploded into a symphony of pleasure.
She shuddered and shuddered, her eyes half-closed, her body moving rhythmically with his as he pushed down hungrily and she felt the power of him overwhelming her. Throbbing waves of hot sensation built to fever pitch as the sound of his harsh breathing echoed like her own. Waves of delight began to buffet her as the terrible tension finally began to shudder away in ecstasy.
She’d thought the pleasure had reached its peak, but with the sudden hard penetration of his body, her climax shot to an even higher level, one which she thought was certain to kill her. It was almost pain. She sobbed and sobbed as she felt him groan harshly and then shiver against her. His movements, like hers, were helpless, involuntary. It was so sweet that she wept.
When the world came back into focus, she was clinging to him with all her strength and still sobbing in the hot aftermath.
“Did you feel it?” she whispered brokenly into his hot, damp throat. “Did you feel it, too?”
“Of course I felt it!” He collapsed on her, giving her his weight as he tried to catch his breath. “I’ve never been so hot in my life! I’m still not spent. Can’t you feel me? I’m dying for you!”
“You…are?”
He lifted his head and looked into her wide, curious eyes. Virginal eyes. She didn’t have a clue what was happening. And now it was too late to go back. He moved his hips experimentally and she gasped and lifted toward him as what he’d said became starkly understandable.
“Can you go again?” he whispered tenderly.
“Yes,” she replied, her body throbbing with every soft brush of his.
He ground his teeth together. “I can’t stop,” he groaned.
She reached up and touched his cheeks, slid her fingers into his thick black hair, lifting its crisp waves. “I don’t mind,” she whispered shyly, having never felt so close to another human being. He was part of her now. Completely part of her, in every way.
“Forgive me,” he bit off as he kissed her passionately.
She wanted to tell him that there was nothing to forgive, but already the fever was rising in her body. She felt the first returning throbs of pleasure and closed her eyes.
Eons later, she opened her eyes and realized that they’d been asleep. As she looked at the wealth of bare skin on display under the light sheet, his and hers, she felt suddenly embarrassed and ashamed and guilty. She’d been saving her chastity for marriage. It had never occurred to her to give it away to a man she’d only known for one day! She was horrified at what she’d permitted to happen.
But she couldn’t blame him. She hadn’t made a single protest. It was her fault as much as his. She could still remember the hot urgency of the need, like an unquenchable thirst in both of them. There had been no way to stop it. It had happened too fast.
At least there wouldn’t be any consequences, she consoled herself. He’d used protection.
He opened his eyes, stretched, and gave her a long, quiet look before he drew her into a sitting position beside him and cupped her face in his big, warm hands. “I didn’t plan this,” he said firmly, with dark, steady eyes. “It was never meant to happen. I just lost control completely when I started kissing you.”
“I know,” she said miserably. “I lost control, too.”
He kissed her softly. “At least tell me you enjoyed it, so I won’t feel like drowning myself.”
He sounded genuinely upset. She lifted her shamed eyes to his. “It was the most incredible experience of my life,” she confessed. “I…loved it.”
“So did I,” he replied roughly. “It was worth anything. Even my life.”
She searched his eyes curiously. He didn’t seem the kind of man who would think of sex as a solemn act. Quite the opposite. But he looked totally serious.
“Delia, I’ve never been with a virgin,” he said in a deep, soft tone. His voice was husky, sincere. He touched her face tenderly. “I could barely believe it, even while it was happening.”
She couldn’t answer him. She was dumbfounded.
“I didn’t hurt you too much, did I?” he persisted.
She shook her head. “Only a little. Honest.”
He pulled her up off the bed with him and nudged her toward the bathroom. “Let’s have a bath. Then we’ll sit down and talk.”
“A bath?”
“In the hot tub,” he said.
He started the water and gathered up washcloths and towels. When the tub was full, he turned on the jets and coaxed her into the water. It was heavenly, although the water stung a little in her delicate feminine core.
“I was afraid of that,” he murmured apologetically. “Is it bad?”
“Not at all,” she said. “I’m fine. Really.”
He leaned back against the edge of the bath and scowled.
“Something’s wrong,” she guessed. “What?”
“You do know that no sort of birth control is foolproof?” he asked gently.
Her heart jumped. “Yes.”
He sighed. “Delia, what I used is for one time. We went two.”
“And…?”
“It tore.”
She felt uncertain. Her eyes were troubled.
He grimaced. “Listen, I’d take care of you, if something happened,” he told her.
“You mean…a clinic…?”
“No!” He looked horrified. He paused. “Would you…?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t.”
He relaxed. He stretched, grimacing as muscles protested. He saw her watching him and he chuckled. “I feel my age sometimes. I’m older than you. A lot older.” He looked at her worriedly. “Am I too old?”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, smiling.
He drew in a long breath. “Hell. I don’t know where I am. It was going to be lunch and a tour of the pirate tower. Now look at us.”
Her eyes dropped to his broad, hair-covered chest and his muscular arms. They were very strong. She remembered the power of his body above her, driving down against her with furious rhythm.
She blushed.
He lifted an eyebrow. “My, my,” he murmured. “Pleasant memories?”
She threw her washcloth at him.
He liked that, and it showed. He caught the cloth and moved suddenly, making a huge wave, as he imprisoned her against the wall of the whirlpool bath. “Now, that was reckless,” he whispered, crushing her mouth under his while his hands found her soft breasts and explored them hungrily. “You’re sore and I’m wasted.”
She linked her arms around his neck and kissed him back, hungrily. Her body was singing to her. She throbbed with remembered pleasure. “You’re just dynamite,” she whispered unsteadily.
“So are you. Explosive. Passionate. Delicious. I could eat you alive!”
“I thought that’s what you were doing,” she teased, kissing him sensuously, feeling, for the first time, her power as a woman.
“Delia, this is crazy. We’re both out of our minds! We can’t have this sort of complication,” he groaned.
She lifted her breasts against his chest and moved them seductively. “We can’t? Are you sure?”
He kissed her again, savoring the feel of her nude body against his. “You don’t know what it’s going to be like,” he said worriedly. “We’re going to want each other all the time. It will show. People will see it.”
“Does it matter?” she murmured in a dazed cloud of pleasure.
“Yes, honey, it does,” he replied solemnly, lifting his head. “You don’t know who I am, what I am. You don’t know how dangerous it could be.”
That was when she remembered what Barney and Barb had said to her. It assaulted her mind with shattering reality. She looked up at him with wild, frightened eyes that betrayed her knowledge.
He frowned. “You know who I am, don’t you?” he asked then. “You knew when I picked you up at your hotel.”
She bit her lower lip worriedly.
He eased her away from him and got out of the tub, drying himself perfunctorily before wrapping his big body in a white terry-cloth robe that emphasized the soft olive of his complexion.
She scrambled out of the tub and grabbed one of the big bath towels on the warming rod, wrapping herself in it with growing embarrassment.
He turned with a long sigh and looked at the devastation in her face. “I didn’t want you to know,” he said gruffly. “At least, not yet. Not until you knew me better.”
She laughed inanely. As if they could know each other any better physically!
“Did your sister tell you, or did Barney?” he persisted.
She drew in a long breath. “Both of them.”
He didn’t move any closer to her. He wanted to. He wanted to pick her up in his arms and cradle and comfort her. He actually winced as he realized what must have been said about him, about his past. He wasn’t like that now. He was legitimate in every way, but he couldn’t tell her that. He couldn’t admit that he’d broken the old ties, given up the old life. So much depended on his actions. He couldn’t afford to trust anyone, least of all a woman he barely knew—despite the unusual feelings she kindled in him. He’d already been sold out by one woman he trusted, and that incident had nearly cost him his life.
He was watching her, waiting, uneasy.
She felt sick to the soles of her feet. In the heat of the moment she’d forgotten everything she knew about him. Now, when it was too late, her reason came back.
“I’m not quite as bad as they made me out to be,” he said after a minute. “I’m not wanted anywhere in the States. In fact, I was only arrested once, when I was about twenty, on conspiracy charges. But they were dropped. That’s gospel.”
That made a difference. She relaxed a little as she looked at him. “I don’t know a lot about the real world,” she said after a minute. “I’ve been sheltered all my life, by my mother and, especially, by Barb. I’ve only had one or two dates, and they ran for the border after Barb grilled them when we got home again.”
He cocked an amused eyebrow. “Your sister intimidates men?”
She nodded. “She’s formidable.”
“Are you afraid of her?”
“Not afraid, exactly. But I’ve never disobeyed her much.”
He frowned worriedly. “Did you tell her you were going out with me?”
She blushed scarlet.
“Uh-huh,” he murmured.
“She’d have told me not to go,” she explained.
That made him feel better. If she was willing to risk her sister’s wrath for him, she must feel something.
“And you wanted to go,” he said softly.
Her eyes searched his with pure anguish. “It was all I thought about,” she confessed. “I wanted to see you, so much.”
“I wanted to see you, too.” He moved closer, his big hands reaching for her shoulders. He pulled her closer. “Take a chance on me,” he coaxed. “I can’t make any promises right now, but I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”
She smiled weakly. “Me, neither.”
His warm hands reached up to her cheeks. He searched her eyes hungrily before he bent and kissed her with aching tenderness.
He wrapped her up tight and kissed her until her mouth felt bruised.
“Stay with me tonight,” he ground out against her lips.
“All…night?”
“All night, Delia.” He lifted his head. “Yeah, I know, we’re both too sore to do much except hold each other, but I want that. I want it more than I can tell you.”
So did she. “What can I tell the desk clerk at my hotel if Barb calls and asks where I am? She’ll be frantic.”
“I’ve got a friend named Karen.” He smiled when she looked jealous. “She’s sixty and she loves a conspiracy, especially a romantic one. She’ll tell your sister that you met her here at the casino and accepted an offer to go sailing early in the morning. She’s got a yacht.”
“She does?” she exclaimed. “I’ve never been sailing!”
He chuckled at the excitement in her eyes. “Would you like to spend the day on the ocean? I’ll call her right now.”
He held Delia’s hand as he went back into the bedroom and pulled his cell phone out of his slacks’ pocket on the floor. He tossed the slacks into a chair and pushed a button on the phone.
He dropped down into an armchair and pulled Delia onto his lap. “Hi, Karen,” he said with a smile in his voice. “How’s it going?”
There was a pause. He tucked Delia against his shoulder and kissed her damp hair. “I’ve got a girl,” he said. There was another pause, and he laughed. “No, this one doesn’t gamble or drink. She’s from Texas and she teaches quilting.” Another pause. He laughed again. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. How would you like to meet her? She’s never been on a boat.”
He turned his head and looked down at Delia with warm, sparkling eyes. “We’ll meet you at the marina at 10:00 a.m. Bring a basket. You bet! See you.”
He closed the flip phone. “What’s wrong?” he asked when she frowned.
“I don’t have a change of clothes,” she said. “I’ll have to go by the hotel…”
“Baloney. What size are you?”
“I’m…I’m a ten,” she replied.
He picked up the phone again and spoke, but this time in fluent Spanish. He nodded and spoke again. He hung up. “They’re sending over a selection of shorts, skirts, and sundresses. You’ve already got those cute little zip-up pink sneakers,” he teased, indicating them on the floor.
“You can do that?” she stammered. “I mean, just have people send a shop to you?”
“Bibbi’s my cousin,” he said lazily. “She runs a boutique in the arcade down the street.”
“But she doesn’t know me.”
“I told her to bring pastels, pinks and blues and yellows,” he said. “I notice you like those colors.”
“You’re just…amazing,” she managed to say.
He smiled and bent to kiss her softly. “Wait,” he whispered. “You haven’t seen anything yet. What do you want for supper?”
“It can’t be that late,” she began.
He pulled a clock around on the table beside the chair. Amazingly they’d been in the room for three hours.
She started to speak and couldn’t.
He bent and kissed her eyelids shut. “I know it seemed quick, but it really wasn’t,” he whispered. “And we slept.”
She looked at his face with wide, curious eyes. “I’ve never done anything like this,” she said, trying to make him understand. “I take forever just ordering food at a restaurant. I’m very deliberate.”
“But you rushed into this without being able to think and you’re upset,” he said perceptively. “If it’s any consolation, it was just like that for me. I usually think things through myself. I’m not impulsive. But this was beyond my control.”
“That’s what I was just thinking.”
He touched her mouth with his fingertips, noting its slight swell. “You were waiting until you married, weren’t you?”
She nodded sadly.
“But you’d want kids, a home, a place you belonged.”
“Yes.”
His thumb rubbed at her lower lip and he scowled. “Would you want me, like that? Would you want me to belong to you?”
Her lips parted on a surge of feeling. “Oh, yes.”
He was still scowling. “Nobody ever wanted me for long,” he said absently. “For my money, sure, for a fling, an affair. But not with the works. A home and kids.”
“Why not?” she wondered.
“Maybe I’ve liked the wrong sort of women.”
“What sort?” she asked, because she was genuinely curious.
“Beautiful women with long legs and no scruples,” he said simply. “Models, showgirls, even an actress. They liked fancy cars and easy money and plenty of plunder.”
“Girl pirates,” she said, trying not to look jealous.
Her eyes were sizzling. “Why, you’re jealous,” he mused, surprised.
“Why would I be jealous of beauty and talent?” she asked wistfully. “I mean, I’m so drop-dead gorgeous and talented—”
“You’re beautiful all over, especially your heart,” he interrupted. “And I consider quilting an art.”
“I’ve never been a man-killer.”
“That’s what you think,” he said with a grin.
Delia’s eyes twinkled. “But I’m nothing to look at,” she protested.
He wrapped her up tight and smiled down at her. “I’ve already told you, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To me, you’re a knockout.”
She was suspicious. “You aren’t just saying that because you feel guilty?”
He shook his head. “I value honesty above everything. Just like you.” He did feel guilty at saying that, because he was involved in the biggest lie of his life, and he couldn’t tell her.