Tears of the Renegade Read online

  For a moment pain so intense that it blinded her tore at her insides, and she inhaled sharply. Then she managed to push it away, accepting that she would have to prove to him that he could trust her, in all things. She moved against him in a way that wrenched a groan from his lips. With a lithe, powerful twist of his body, he rolled and placed himself above her, his muscled legs controlling hers.

  With one shaking finger, he outlined the small circles of her nipples, watching as the velvet flesh puckered into succulent buds. “Sweet Susan,” he breathed, and lowered his head to offer homage with his mouth. Like fire, his lips burned over the soft mounds of her breasts, and he teased the quivering slopes with his devilish tongue. Susan moaned, a sound unnoticed except perhaps by the deeper, primal instincts of the man who bent over her. Her insides were molten, her body liquid with the flow of desires that urged her relentlessly onward. He suckled strongly at her breasts, and the moans became whimpers, little sounds of pleading.

  But he lingered over her, as if determined to enjoy everything about her. With hands and mouth he explored her, discovering the different textures and tastes of her body, searching out her most sensitive places with probing fingers and a curious tongue. She writhed under his touch, her hips undulating as she arched higher and higher toward the sun, her skin breathing the perfume of passion. She cried out in hoarse, mindless reaction when his hand moved with sure, heart-stopping intimacy to discover the degree of her readiness, and he sucked in a deep breath. “Now,” he said with fierce intent, his hand moving her thighs apart, opening her legs to him. Susan obeyed the demanding touch instantly, unable even to think of not doing so, opening herself to him like a vulnerable flower, chaining him with her trust more surely than he could chain her with his strength.

  He moved over her, his eyes feverish with desire, his strong body shaking as he covered her softness with the hard power of his own frame. He slid his hands under her, cradling the satin curves of her buttocks in his palms and lifting her up to his thrust. Susan whimpered softly, wanting him so much that she was aching with it, and she arched invitingly. He took her with a powerful surge that drove him deeply into her, sheathing himself completely in the searing velvet of her flesh. The whimpers in Susan’s throat caught as a shock wave thundered through her body, her chaste body that hadn’t known a man’s passion since Vance’s death. A reflexive cry of pain slipped from her lips, and her fingers dug into his biceps, feeling them bulge with the strain as he reached desperately for control.

  He hung over her, staring down at her with astonishment freezing his expression. “My God,” he muttered hoarsely.

  Her lips were parted, her breath moving swiftly in and out between them, as her body struggled to accept him, adjust to him. “Cord?” she gasped, asking for reassurance, a little frightened with an instinctive, feminine fear.

  He held himself very still. “Do you want me to stop?” he asked. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “No, no! Don’t stop! Please, don’t stop.” The words turned into a moan as they trailed out of her mouth. She felt as if she would die if he left her now, as if a vital part of her would be torn away. But he didn’t pull away; he lay motionless atop her until the tension had eased out of her body and he felt the inner relaxation, until she began to move under him with little instinctive undulations of her hips. She clung to him, her arms around his neck, her legs locked around his waist when at last he began to answer her movements with his own. He was slow and gentle, taking incredible care of her, making certain that she was with him every step of the way as he pushed his body toward satisfaction. His hands and mouth buried her conscious thought under a flurry of hot caresses that intensified the fire in her loins, pushing her out of control, past any semblance of serenity or decorum. In his arms she wasn’t the quiet, demure Susan Blackstone; she was a wild thing, hot and demanding, concerned only with the riptides of pleasure that were sucking her out to sea. She clutched at him with damp, desperate hands, and her heels dug into his back, his buttocks, the backs of his thighs. He was no longer gentle, but driven by the same demons that drove her, pounding into her with a wild power that had only one goal.

  “I can’t get enough of you,” he gritted, his teeth clenched. It was a cry that erupted without conscious thought, and he heard it but scarcely realized that he’d said it. But it was true; he couldn’t get enough of her. He couldn’t get deeply enough into her to satisfy the burning need that was torturing him; he wanted to blend his flesh with hers until the lines of separateness faded and he absorbed her into himself. He wanted to bury himself so deeply within her that she could never get him out, that her body, the very cells of her flesh, would always have the imprint of his possession.

  While he was branding her with his touch, Susan branded him with hers. She’d never realized how incomplete she felt until this moment when she knew the shattering satisfaction of being whole. She tried with her hands, her mouth, the undulant caress of her body, to show him how much she loved him, giving him everything she had to give, declaring her love with every movement, mingling herself with him in an act of love that transcended the physical.

  There, on a sun-washed bed, she gave her heart to an outlaw and found a heaven that she hadn’t known existed.

  In the silent aftermath of passion they lay together with their bodies slowly cooling, their pulses gradually resuming a normal rate. Time drifted past, and still they lay together, reluctant to move and break the spell, reluctant to face the moment when their flesh would no longer be joined. Her fingers threaded through the tousled softness of his dark hair, stroking gently, and he settled his full weight on her with an almost soundless sigh of contentment. Susan stared at the ceiling, so happy that she felt she might fly into a million little pieces of ecstasy. Her lips trembled abruptly, and the image of the rough, timbered ceiling blurred. She bit her lip to stifle the sob that rose in her throat and demanded voicing, but she couldn’t prevent the identical tracks of moisture that ran out of the corners of her eyes and disappeared into the hair at her temples. He was relaxing into sleep and she tried to keep from disturbing him; it was silly to cry because the most wonderful thing in her life had just happened to her!

  But he was a man who had stayed alive by paying attention to his senses and gut instincts, and perhaps he felt the fine degree of tension in her body. His head lifted abruptly, and he surveyed her brimming eyes with sharp attention. He levered himself up on one elbow and lifted his hand to wipe at the tears with his thumb, the callused pad rasping slightly across the sensitive skin of her temples. He was frowning, the dark, level brows lowered over narrowed eyes that searched her delicate features so intently that she felt he could see inside her mind.

  “Is it because I hurt you?” he rumbled.

  Quickly she shook her head and tried to give him a smile, but the stretching of her lips wobbled out of control and vanished. “No. You didn’t really hurt me. It was only at first…I wasn’t expecting…” She couldn’t get the words out, and she swallowed, forcing her will on her voice. “It was just so…so special.” Another tear escaped her eye.

  He caught that one with his lips, pressing an openmouthed kiss to her temple and darting his tongue out to cleanse the salty liquid from her skin. “Susan,” he breathed almost inaudibly, saying her name as if he could taste it, as if he savored the sound of it. “I want you again.”

  Golden sunlight washed the room with brightness, allowing no shadows to hide their passion, and no shadows at all on her heart. Her lips trembled again, and she reached for him, drawing him into the tenderness of her embrace. “Yes,” she said simply, because she couldn’t deny her heart.

  Chapter Seven

  There were isolated moments, during the hours that followed, when she was able to think, but for the most part she was overtaken by the unstoppable tidal wave of desire. He knew just how to touch her, how long to linger, how to bring her time and again to the heart-stopping peak of pleasure. His hard hands learned every inch of her as he taught he