chapter twelve

The touch of her soft little mouth against his palm seemed to scorch his flesh. Matt could feel the heat of it shoot along his veins like an explosion of molten fire. The desire he had been battling for days threatened to consume him in its flames. Gritting his teeth, he fought the impulse to pull his hand away from her lips and replace it with his mouth, to drop down on the bed beside her and take her in his arms and never let her go. She wanted him, he knew. He could clearly read the passionate invitation in her huge purple eyes. But she had no more idea than a baby what it was she was inviting; it would be criminal of him to take advantage of her innocence and her affection for him. She was just a child, despite her heart-stirring beauty and the enticing, womanly shape of her.

“Teach me, Matt,” she repeated huskily. Her mouth slid from his palm to the inside of his wrist just above the loose cuff of his shirt. Matt felt the moist heat of her mouth against his drumming pulse, and was so tempted he could have screamed. He wanted to, oh, he wanted to . . .

“Amanda,” he said unsteadily, knowing he should leave her now, this instant, but unable to force himself to take what his mind told him was the only rational action. She silenced him by the simple expedient of placing her fingers against his mouth. To make the gesture she had loosed his hand; without his volition it lay feather light on the blanket just over her breast. With every fiber of his being, Matt was conscious of those slender fingers against his mouth and the soft female shape of her beneath his hand. Desire rose in him like a raging demon, screaming to be fulfilled. But still he fought it, grimly.

“Hold me, Matt,” she whispered. “Please—won’t you just hold me?” She met his eyes beseechingly. Matt thought that her eyes looked both pleading and bewildered, like those of a child who has been punished for something she cannot understand and is being denied comfort for an equally incomprehensible reason. A rush of tenderness for her accompanied the thought; Matt welcomed it, thinking it would provide a shield against the passion that threatened to overwhelm him at any instant. He looked down into her face, so small and defenseless on the white pillow, his eyes unconsciously absorbing the perfection of each feature and the loveliness of the whole. Her hair was the color of fine old wine in the moonlight, providing an exquisite frame for the pale serenity of her brow, the smooth curve of her cheeks, the elegant little chin. Her eyes beneath the silky black brows gleamed up at him with soft fire in their depths, like amethysts caught in the sun. Her nose was small and delicate, like the rest of her, and beneath it her mouth swelled, lushly red like a rose . . .

Matt stared at that mouth, unable to help himself as he remembered how it had felt to kiss those sweetly curved lips—and remembered, too, her response. She had gone up in flames in his arms . . . To his dismay Matt felt the tenderness he had counted on for salvation turn tail and join forces with the desire he found so difficult to control. Together, they tortured him with a hot, throbbing need that was almost impossible to resist.

Amanda’s fingers slid from his mouth to caress his cheek, her hand cool and soft against the whisker-roughened hardness of his skin. Matt stood rigid beneath her touch, fighting a passion that was almost crippling in its intensity. And he might have won—if she had not chosen that moment to run her fingers lightly, oh, so lightly, along the narrow, raised outline of the scar that twisted across his cheek, memento of a childhood beating with a riding crop administered by one of his mother’s gentleman friends. The gentleness of Amanda’s touch soothed a pain that had seared its way from his cheek to his heart years ago, and which he had thought long since forgotten. Suddenly Matt realized that he needed Amanda’s gentleness desperately, craved it, had to have more of it or perish . . .

With a muffled groan he gave up the fight, lowering himself to the bed beside her and enfolding her in his arms in a single violent movement. He sought her lips with his, finding them readily as she lifted her mouth to him without fear or restraint.

“Darling,” he murmured hoarsely before he began to kiss her with a savagery born of desperation. She should have shrunk from the barely controlled violence of his embrace, but, to his wonder, he felt her arms slide around his neck—and she was kissing him back.

After that his kisses gentled. Amanda gloried in the feel of his lips against hers, hard, hot, masculine lips that promised and demanded, stroked and caressed, took and gave. She gave herself up to their expert tuition, returning kiss for kiss. No longer shy when she felt his tongue invade her mouth, she met it with her own, and discovered to her delight that exploring his mouth was as deliciously dizzying as having him explore hers. When at last his mouth left hers to trace a hot pattern along her cheek to her ear, she trembled at the exquisite sensation his teeth aroused as they nibbled lightly on her lobe. Then his lips left her ear to slide hotly down the slim column below it. Amanda arched her throat against the moist heat of his mouth, feeling her toes curl as his lips rested finally on the throbbing pulse at its base. Her hands were in his hair, pressing against his scalp through the thick black strands as she held him to her. He rested against her for a moment, his breath hot against the skin of her throat, and then he lifted his head to look at her.

“Amanda, you’re going to have to stop me,” he said, the words so indistinct she could barely understand him. “Because, before God, I can’t stop myself.”

She smiled at him, a small curving of her lips barely visible through the silvered darkness, and allowed her hands to caress his silken black head.

“I don’t want to stop you,” she told him softly. His eyes smoldered and then blazed in response; then his mouth was on hers again, hard and hot and devastating in its impact on her senses, while his hands moved to the ribbon that secured her night rail at the throat.

Amanda trembled as she felt the brush of his fingers against the soft skin of her throat. This was what she wanted, she told herself, this man, this moment. She so desperately wanted him to kiss her and hold her and love her that she thought she would die if he were to draw back now. But she didn’t think he would—not this time. The fine tremor that shook his hands, the dark flush straining his cheeks, the hoarse, uneven sounds of his breathing, told her that he was as much under her spell as she was under his.

She watched the intense concentration on that hard face as he slowly and methodically worked his way down the dozen tiny buttons on the front of her night rail. With each button that he freed, he pressed a tiny, stinging kiss to the sensitive flesh thus exposed. Amanda felt the hardness and heat of his mouth, the rasp of his unshaven chin, the touch of his hands against her, and thought that her bones would melt from the sheer ecstasy. Her hands never left the black head as he worked his way down between her breasts to just above her navel, barely parting the material of her night rail so that a long, triangular section of her skin was exposed. When the last button slid out of its hole, unfastening the nightdress to the waist, his hands slid up her rib cage and then flattened just below her breasts.

Amanda felt the heat and strength of those hands burning through the thin linen to her skin, and instinctively pressed closer against him. She could feel the muscular length of his body burning her as he lay stretched on the bed beside her; the bedcoverings twisted around her hips prevented her from fully feeling the urgent pressure of his thighs as he moved them closer against her. But only the thin linen of her night rail shielded her breasts from his touch—and then, moving very slowly as if he feared to frighten her, his hands folded back the unfastened edges of her night rail to expose her breasts.

As she felt the cool night air against her bare skin, Amanda quivered and shut her eyes. Nothing happened, not a movement, not a sound except the stentorian rasp of his breathing. When eventually she dared to peep up at Matt from beneath the thick veil of her lashes, she saw that he was propped up on his elbow beside her, one hand supporting his head while his other rested with disturbing weight and heat against the bare skin just below her breast. His eyes were fixed on her breasts, his silver gaze darkened to smoke by a hunger that she, even in her innocence, had no trouble recognizing. A dark flush stained the flesh high on his cheekbones, and a leaping nerve in one corner called attention to the long, straight line of that beautiful mouth. As if he felt her gaze upon him, Matt looked up then; Amanda felt her own mouth quiver as she met his eyes.

“You have beautiful breasts, Amanda,” he said, his voice hoarse. He lifted the hand beneath her breast to run a gentle finger over the flesh he praised. Amanda drew in her breath sharply at his touch. Her eyes dropped from his face to the hand that caressed her; the contrast between the milky skin of her small, pointed breasts and the swarthiness of his large hand made her heart pound. Then he lifted his hand again to touch her nipple with that same seducing finger. Amanda could not stop the small moan that escaped her as her nipple quivered to life beneath his touch. She watched, half shamed, half fascinated, as her breasts swelled beneath his caress, seeming to beg for more. As if in answer, his hand moved to her other breast, and his palm rasped lightly against her second nipple. The sensation of mingled pain and pleasure thus aroused quivered down to her belly, where it curled in a tight, pulsating ball. She gasped at its intensity.

“So beautiful,” he murmured, his eyes on her breasts again as he traced concentric circles from her nipple to the outer edge of her breast and then back before cupping the whole in his palm. “Your skin is so soft, like gleaming white satin. I could touch it forever.” He drew in his breath on a ragged sigh; his hand tightened possessively over the breast it entrapped. His eyes came up to meet hers. Amanda thought she would be consumed by the smoldering heat she saw in their depths.

“If you have any sense at all, you’ll tell me to remove my hands and get out of your bed and leave you the hell alone,” he muttered roughly, the growling timbre of his voice telling her how difficult he was finding it to give her that advice. “But if you’re going to do so, for God’s sake, do it now. In another minute it will be too late. I won’t be able to stop if you begged me on your knees.”

Amanda looked up at him, her eyes moving over the hard, handsome face so near her own, thinking again how incredibly beautiful he was, beautiful in a purely masculine sense that left her devastated. The silver-smoke eyes, the hard planes of his face, the chiseled mouth, and even the profusion of thick black curls stirred her profoundly. Her hands came up to cradle his face. The gesture was shy at first, but as she felt the sandpaper roughness of his cheeks under her palms she lost every last scrap of her shyness in a blinding rush of emotion.

“I love you,” she said, wondering, knowing it was true even as she said it. He tensed, and then his eyes began to blaze with a fire so intense it all but liquefied her bones.

“Dear God, Amanda, you just sealed your fate,” he groaned, his voice strangled, and then he was bending down to her, his arms going tight around her as his mouth found hers again.

He kissed her desperately, his mouth devouring hers, as if he could never have enough of her, could never let her go. His arms around her locked her so closely to him that she could feel every hard muscle of his body through his clothes and even the entangling bedclothes. He was lying on top of her, his big body completely enveloping hers, his weight crushing her into the mattress while his hips moved in odd little thrusts against hers that seemed to increase in force and urgency as she caressed his broad shoulders with her hands. Even through his shirt, the feel of those sinewy shoulders intoxicated her. She wondered how it would feel to touch him without the barrier of his shirt to impede her hands. She wanted to touch his bare skin, as he had touched, was touching, hers . . . Her hands moved of their own volition until they found the V opening of his shirt and slid within. The feel of his chest hair against her fingers intoxicated her. She ran her nails over the soft mat of hair, loving the crispness of it against her fingers, loving, too, the moist heat of the flesh beneath. He stiffened at her touch, his mouth leaving hers to rest hotly against her neck, and then he was pulling away from her, his hands on her wrists restraining her as she tried frantically to hold him.

“Matt . . .” There was a world of anguish in the sound. He bent down to kiss her quickly, his hard lips reassuring her without words, and then he was impatiently freeing her from the covers that shrouded her from the hips down like a mummy. He threw the offending covers on the floor, leaving her lying defenseless on the white-sheeted mattress.

“Let’s get your nightdress off,” he said, his voice hoarse, and bent to catch the hem of her night rail and draw it up over her head. The night rail joined the covers on the floor. Amanda was left lying on the bed with only her hair to hide her body from his eyes. She had not guessed that he would want her naked; her hands came up in an instinctive movement to cover herself.

“Don’t be shy with me.” He was kneeling beside her, his eyes both tender and passionate as he brushed aside first her hands and then the clinging strands of hair so that her body was totally exposed to him. Amanda flushed but made no other move to shield herself as his eyes traveled from her slender shoulders to the high, firm breasts whose rosy nipples seemed to ache as his eyes caressed them, to her narrow waist and flat stomach, on down to her long legs and the dark triangle of hair between them. She could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he stared down at her, and then he was standing beside the bed, his movements clumsy with haste as he shed his own clothes. Amanda watched, quivering with fear and anticipation as he pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor, then sat down on the bed beside her to remove his shoes and hose. His broad, bare back was turned to her, and the fear she had briefly felt died and was replaced with an aching tenderness as she saw the mass of scars. She sat up, her arms sliding around his waist as she pressed her lips softly against the ridged flesh. Matt’s breath caught on a ragged groan; Amanda felt the strong body tremble against her. Then he was turning, lying on top of her as he pinned her to the bed, his mouth shaking as it slanted across hers. Amanda’s arms slid around his neck. She clung to him shamelessly, trembling as violently as he.

She could feel him everywhere, with every inch of her flesh. His chest hair rasped harshly against the softness of her breasts, arousing them until they burned with longing. The hardness of his stomach and abdomen pressed into hers while the thrusting strength of his thighs crushed her hips and legs. He was still wearing his trousers, but Amanda could feel grinding against her the hot, bulging outline of the part of him that made him a man. She had seen that part only on a baby boy whom she had diapered at Sister Agnes’s instruction, and then she had hastily averted her eyes. But her memory of that small, innocent maleness bore no resemblance to the feel of this huge thing that importuned her so insistently. She trembled as it pressed boldly against her; her hands clutched at his shoulders and then ran with increasing need over his back. She was intensely curious about him, about the look of him, the feel of him; her fingers were unsteady as they explored first the muscular breadth of his shoulders, marveling at the smooth hardness of his skin, and then traced gently over the outline of the scars on his back.

This was Matt, her Matt, who was disfigured so, and the small flaw in his physical perfection touched her to the heart. The words she had said a few moments ago, words she had not known were in her mind, came back to her: she loved him. Never in her life had she felt anything like the intensity of the emotion that shook her as she stroked his broad, scarred back.

He was kissing her throat, his mouth hot against her skin while his hands cupped her breasts. Amanda stiffened, first with shock and then with something perilously close to ecstasy, as she felt his mouth leave her throat to nuzzle at her breast. The feel of his unshaven jaw abrading her softness as he brushed his face back and forth against her nipples caused a moan to rise unbidden from her throat. Amanda heard the wanton little sound as if from a distance, wondering vaguely where it had come from until she realized to her horror that it had come from her own throat. And continued to come. She couldn’t seem to stop the animalistic little cries no matter how hard she tried. Then his lips closed gently over her left nipple and she stopped trying as her body went wild under his hands.

If she had been aware of anything except the intensity of her own pleasure, Amanda would have wanted to die of shame at the way her body writhed and twisted beneath Matt’s hands and mouth. He stroked her, first her silken belly and then her thighs, as his mouth continued to tease and torment her nipples. He moved from one breast to the other, first suckling and then catching the nipple between hard white teeth and biting down gently until her nails dug deep into his shoulders and she cried out his name. He shuddered as he felt her pleasure, and his mouth slid down from her breasts to trail burning kisses over her flat stomach, stopping momentarily to explore her navel with his tongue, before moving on down her abdomen to the place where her thighs joined. Amanda quivered with shock as she felt his mouth nuzzling her there, and her eyes flew open as she tried to squirm away from him. She was not yet so completely depraved as not to realize that the way he was kissing her now was wrong; he had to stop . . . But his hands were holding her in place, not letting her move away from him, and the pressure of his mouth against that place where no one had ever touched her before was doing funny things to her insides.

“Relax, Amanda,” he murmured in a low, thick voice, “and let me kiss you.”

Still she lay stiffly beneath him, resisting the nibbling little kisses he was pressing up the inside of her thighs. Her hands were in his hair, but gradually they stopped trying to pull him away. Instead they rested quietly, the fingers tensely entwined in the thick strands. She wasn’t resisting anymore, but she was no longer responding as she had, either. Matt’s hands slid down her sides to cup her hips, holding her loosely but making no effort to force her to do anything.

“Amanda.” His voice was hoarse with passion. Amanda looked down and met his eyes as he lifted his head so that he could look up at her. He was half lying, half kneeling astride her legs, and the contrast between his black hair and swarthy skin and the pearly glimmer of her stomach and thighs made her catch her breath. “You trust me, don’t you?”

Amanda thought about that for an instant, then nodded hesitantly. She did trust him: more, she loved him.

“Then open your legs for me, and let me love you properly.” Despite the husky overtones, his voice was cajoling. Amanda shivered at the image his words conjured up, but when his hands slid down between her thighs she let him part them and settle himself between them. Her nails dug deep into his scalp as she felt him press first gentle kisses and then hot lingering ones against the quivering softness of her. As he found each sensitive spot with his tongue, her heart began to pound so hard that she thought she must die from it. Instinctively she tried to squeeze her thighs shut, but he was fixed firmly between them now and she only succeeded in imprinting the feel of his rough cheeks against the silky skin of her inner thighs. Tugging at his hair, writhing in frantic protest against the sensations he was arousing in her, she tried her best to make him stop, but he would not. And then she didn’t want him to. Her body responded with a will of its own, arching itself against him, shivering and pulsating and clutching him to her with hands and legs.

“Sweet Jesus.” He was lifting himself away from her, his hands shaking as they moved to the buckle of his belt. “I know this is probably going too fast for you, but I can’t wait any longer. I’ll try not to hurt you.”

Amanda was in such a daze that his words barely penetrated. She lay as he had left her on the bed, her legs parted, her breasts quivering, and watched him fumble with the fastening of his trousers and then kick them aside as they fell down his legs. She had just a brief glimpse of his nakedness, of the white bandage adorning his hips; just enough of a look at him to register vaguely that he was as hairy lower down as he was on top and that that thing was really as huge as it had felt. Then he was on the bed beside her, his arms sliding around her, his mouth crushing hers as his knees slid between her thighs. She no longer had any thought of denying him. She was drunk with passion, scarcely aware of where she was or who she was or anything else except the feel of his big body against her much smaller one. She felt the rasp of his body hair against her breasts and belly and thighs, and trembled; she felt the hardness of his shoulders under her hands, the sinewy strength of his thighs between hers, the shaking passion of his mouth on her own, and wanted to die from sheer bliss. Never had she experienced anything like it, or even dreamed it existed. Never had anything felt so wonderful.

Something hard and hot probed insistently at the softness between her thighs. It managed to wedge itself a little way inside, and Amanda squirmed, trying to escape it. It was annoying to be distracted in such a way when she was trying to concentrate on an elusive, pleasurable something that she sensed was almost within her reach. The thing poked at her again, harder this time, and Amanda had to arch her back to escape it. She knew Matt wasn’t hurting her deliberately, but he was ruining the dazzling glow that his lovemaking had engendered in her. In fact, with that thing prodding her, she was barely able to enjoy the pleasure he was giving her with his hands and mouth . . . She had to tell him, or their lovemaking would be quite spoiled.

“Matt,” she began breathlessly as his mouth fastened on the pulse at the base of her throat while his hands closed over her breasts. Not knowing quite how to put her problem into words, she moved her hips so that he would be able to feel what he was doing to her. To her amazement, the simple sideways movement made him gasp, and his hands tightened painfully on her breasts. Amanda’s own hands flew to his wrists, seeking to ease the crushing pressure; she had opened her mouth to protest again when he surged against her with a groan. The thing that had been prodding and poking at her impaled her now, tearing through her flesh to embed itself deep inside her. The pain was so unexpected that Amanda screamed. Matt’s mouth on hers swallowed the agonized cry, but he could not have mistaken the frantic squirming of her body beneath his as she fought to get away from him.

“You’re hurting me,” she cried into his mouth as she tore at his hair. But if he in fact heard, he ignored her, pinning her beneath him with the sheer weight of his body and pulling her head back with his hand in her hair as he took her mouth in deep kisses that should have drugged her pain but didn’t. Then, when the first terrible pain began to recede and she was able to relax a little, he moved, thrusting into her again with a force that brought tears to her eyes.

“Let me go, Matt.” She was beating against his shoulders with her fists as he thrust into her again and again. He did not slacken his movements, but he did reach up and capture her hands and force them down beside her head on the pillow. When she turned her head away from his kisses, he buried his face in her throat without altering by so much as a heartbeat the hard, driving rhythm of his movements.

Amanda stopped fighting, knowing that it was useless and that he would not release her until he had reached whatever goal he seemed to be striving for. Feeling his sweat drip down from his shoulders and chest onto her skin, hearing the impeded rasp of his breathing, seeing the dark flush that mottled his face as he surged over and in her, Amanda shuddered. When Susan had told of how her virginity had been taken from her, she had been too embarrassed to go into much detail. Amanda had imagined that the horror and pain her friend had described had been due to the fact that she had been forced into the act by strangers bent on degrading and defiling her. But now she herself had been hurt, although the pain was subsiding, and as Matt heaved and panted over her shrinking body Amanda felt degraded and defiled as well. If this repulsive act was what men and women did together, she wanted no part of it, she thought, biting her lip to keep an ignominious sob from bursting forth.

“Oh, God, Amanda.” He thrust into her so hard then that she feared he must split her in two, then held himself inside her while a long shudder racked him. Amanda moaned in shame; he seemed to like that because his hands released hers to close about her, hugging her tightly to him. Amanda lay unmoving beneath him, stiff with anger and revulsion. It was some little time before at last Matt eased himself away from her.